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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8725590" data-attributes="member: 4937">Since it is as a practical impossibility to fully document an urban environment of more than few hundred people, urban adventures require an amazing amount of improvisation.  The prep work you should do is probably similar to a hexcrawl in a lot of ways just with every hex accessible simultaneously.  I rely heavily on an overall district map, and random encounter tables for color and knowledge of my setting to improvise NPCs, buildings, and shops.  Players will do a lot of shopping IME.  If you are new to this by all means create a 'typical' tavern, alchemist, hedge mage, armorer, weaponsmith, etc. and create a few typical townhome floor plans.  You can definitely use real world floor plans as inspiration for buildings.Cities definitely benefit from having a separate encounter table for night/day.  However, don't overload the night encounters with overly lethal things.  People live in a city without dying every time they go out at night.  Still, there are definitely urban hazards.Except for buildings you intend to use as dungeons, you don't need a map of everything.  You just need to handwave through buildings just like you do streets and start the scene in an appropriate room.  Urban adventures tend to be as much event based as location based.  You write up not just encounter locations but encounter events.  You mention railroading.  Railroading in an urban environment should definitely be used generously to keep the story going whenever the players have lost the plot.  You've got lots of NPCs around that can be used to nudge the PCs in the right direction.   Take inspiration from Detective/Police Procedural shows.  If the PC's are out of clues, you can always have the villains undertake new actions that will leave more clues.  Helpful NPCs can always remember something they forgot earlier or have encounters of their own and seek out the PCs afterwards.  Events in the story can be moved to where the PCs are to keep them in the loop.Keeping focus is a real problem in an urban adventure.  As you detail out the city there is a tendency for your city to acquire a lot of red herrings.  If you are running a sandboxy sort of campaign where the PCs pick which hooks to bite, this isn't a problem.  But if you are running a more adventure path sort of game with a central villain who has a devious plot that must be stopped, this can be a problem since the PCs will encounter all sorts of factions not directly related to the plot.   Make sure your adventure path has enough time built in for side quests.</blockquote>

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