City Supplements - What do we like?

[RenleyRenfield]

Chicago by Night (at least the first one) does a great job of having 1 - NPCs that are doing stuff and 2 - things for the PCs to do in it. So many setting books do a great job at describing the locale, but don't actually give you a reason to go there or any good hooks for the GM to use.

Such a good point! Yes!

Some games can feel like "your character is not needed here" or in worse cases "your character will have no fun here since everyone is already doing the things you want to do and better than you at it"... and then as you say there is the whole "we made a setting for you and there is no real purpose to being here!" I have seen all three....

The no purpose to be here can be actually a red flag for a game system overall, where it exposes how the game never really gave players a purpose for their character...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That's the thing with NPCs. Is it useful to know their stats? Sure, but it can be more useful to know what they know, how they are situated in the world.

Yep. It's easy to make up the stats to suit the story and moment. If you can make NPCs that are tied to parts of the city thematically and dramatically, it then becomes easy to use those NPCs and those parts of the city in a game in ways the players will care about.

Another thing I want in city books is something major and a few things minor that set the city apart from other cities. Things like how Sharn is a mile high city of towers, sure, or how a city in my world of Chevar is built in a fjord with waterfalls flowing through the city from the mountains to the sea, but I also want little stuff like the street food and music scenes and what Little XYZ neighborhoods exist in the city.