City-States of Adventure

[Dumnbunny]

Guidebook to the City of Dolmvay: Massive city, hundreds of buildings, neighbourhoods, and institutions. Many buildings have named NPCs, plot hooks, rumours, and adventure seeds. Classic swords & sorcery tone—gritty, grounded, yet fantastic. Good reviews, and the price is right: PWYW for the PDF. As an added bonus, it was published under a permissive license enabling others to add onto the city with their own supplements. The system is Labyrinth Lord, and conversion to DCC is easy enough to do it on the fly.

The Blight (Swords and Wizardry): Even more massive, almost too massive depending on your needs. The supplement clocks in at almost 900 pages, describing a city of almost 4 million people. Outrageously detailed, each district described building-by-building. Every NPC is twisted, with dozens of plot hooks per district. Dark swords & sorcery — think Clark Ashton Smith meets Gormenghast. Urban horror meets pulp swordplay. Available for Swords and Wizardry (again, you can convert to DCC on the fly), and 5e (and PF1, if that matters).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The Blight (Swords and Wizardry): Even more massive, almost too massive depending on your needs. The supplement clocks in at almost 900 pages, describing a city of almost 4 million people. Outrageously detailed, each district described building-by-building. Every NPC is twisted, with dozens of plot hooks per district. Dark swords & sorcery — think Clark Ashton Smith meets Gormenghast. Urban horror meets pulp swordplay. Available for Swords and Wizardry (again, you can convert to DCC on the fly), and 5e (and PF1, if that matters).

There's also a ton of supplemental material available for The Blight. I believe it all came out of a massively deluxe (for the time) crowdfunding campaign.

 

[Argyle King]

After all the controversy and discussion, I did decide to back City State of the Invincible Overlord. I'm not looking to rehash any of the turmoil surrounding that product here, as there have already been multiple threads discussing it. I only mention it because looking for other options is what lead to this thread.

I still appreciate a lot of the feedback that has been offered in this thread. There are a lot of products I have learned about that I plan to check into.

I've been thinking about writing something for one of my groups containing mostly newer players.

The general idea is a settlement as a central base for the PCs, with the surrounding area starting out as a mostly blank map that would be revealed through a combination of hex crawl, PC backstory, and whatever emerges through ongoing adventures.

•By "mostly blank" I mean that there may be some vague idea of 'mountains X days to the west' or '...the nearby river flows 2-days-journey South to the sea..." but what's in between would be blank until filled in.
•For hex crawl, I have a few books of random tables geared toward that. (I may even allow players to roll for it when it's something related to their character or something that needs generated in response to what they're doing.
•PC back story could be used if something such as a character claiming to have been raised in a monastery in the mountains were stated; that introduced fact would be penciled onto the map.
•Results of adventures could reveal things through play by plugging in pre-made adventures or via needing a location for something and picking an empty space that makes sense to fill in.


It's still a very rough idea at the moment, but I think it will be fun to get the group involved in building pieces of the area they'll be adventuring in.

 

[dbm]

The current Dragonbane crowdfunder is for a new city book - Arkand (and an expanded magic book, too).

 

[Argyle King]

The current Dragonbane crowdfunder is for a new city book - Arkand (and an expanded magic book, too).

I have never played Dragonbane. The general premise of the system sounds fun.

 

[SteveC]

I'll suggest the Free City of Haven. I remember this from back when it was released. I played a game in it but didn't own it myself. I think this is still available from channels.

 

[Voadam]

For a sword and sorcery vibe there is the OGL 3.0 128 page city state sourcebook Shelzar City of Sins that always seemed to be the Conan style decadent city/city state of the Scarred Lands setting. The various city states of the Scarred Lands each have a very different theme and flavor (paladin holy city, neutral necromancer run one, dwarven undermountain city, would be growing evil empire that offers stability and security, etc.) and in the setting are very much points of light amid wilderness and hostile entities with a magical post apocalypse setting about 100 years after a world shattering divine war of gods versus titans.

 

[dbm]

I have never played Dragonbane. The general premise of the system sounds fun.

I haven’t got it the table yet myself, only read it. But it reads really well as a more grounded fantasy game. It gives me The Fantasy Trip vibes.