City Supplements - What do we like?

[Ralif Redhammer]

I'd vote for Volo's Guide to Waterdeep. It gives a lived-in feel to Waterdeep, full of rumors that might be true, or might not be. Making Volo semi-unreliable allows for the DM to take the best inspiration from it and discard or alter what they don't like. Two DMs can start with a location in Volo's Guide and have two very different takes. It also gives you that ground-level feel. Knowing how Waterdeep governs is useful, but knowing about the dangerous alleys or wild taverns can be more actionable.

An interesting one for me is Hallowfaust: City of Necromancers from the Scarred Lands. A strongly themed Necromancer magocratic city state, a strongly themed LN necromancer refuge in a hostile monster filled wilderness. It is different in being a place where mindless undead are openly used simply as protection and utilitarian service and non-evil necromancers are openly there and in power. Originally a bunch of necromancers just wanting a safe refuge base to live and do their research it built up with people flocking there for the stability in a dangerous magical post-apocalyptic world.

I adore Hallowfaust. It's a fascinating setting that upends the necromancer as villain trope. It's anything but generic and I include it in my games whenever I can.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

In the Wildemount book, each settlement has a short writeup that actually makes the town or city usuable and interesting.

I would love a similar style of write up for each district and important neighborhood of a city, if i was going to run a game in one city.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Knowing how Waterdeep governs is useful, but knowing about the dangerous alleys or wild taverns can be more actionable.

Absolutely.

A thing i have consudered in my own work is having a set of iconic characters, and giving 1-3 sentence descriptions of:

Places the characters would be familiar with, avoid, frequent, warn others about, etc.

What reaction the characters get in the key locations of each part of town.

POV descriptions of vibes, archtecture, and important NPCs.

 

[Voadam]

I adore Hallowfaust. It's a fascinating setting that upends the necromancer as villain trope. It's anything but generic and I include it in my games whenever I can.

It was beat to the punch in that regard by AD&D 2e Jakandor and their not-evil heavily necromantic Charonti society. Hallowfaust is easier to insert into most campaigns as a useable element though.

 

[Fenris-77]

Absolutely.

A thing i have consudered in my own work is having a set of iconic characters, and giving 1-3 sentence descriptions of:

Places the characters would be familiar with, avoid, frequent, warn others about, etc.

What reaction the characters get in the key locations of each part of town.

POV descriptions of vibes, archtecture, and important NPCs.

This a matter of scope - how many pages devoted to what.

 

[Cergorach]

Oh, I forgot one source, the old WFRP Marienburg articles in the old White Dwarves...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It was beat to the punch in that regard by AD&D 2e Jakandor and their not-evil heavily necromantic Charonti society. Hallowfaust is easier to insert into most campaigns as a useable element though.

It would be great to see Jakandor added to another setting. Even if it's not the focus of a mini-setting line again (which even back then, wasn't economically sustainable), it's such an interesting place compared to the black and white morality of 99% of D&D, without succumbing to the "well, no one is purely good, so they might as well all be terrible people" trope that 2000s fiction foisted off on us.

 

[zakael19]

This is a common complaint about city sourcebooks. I think it has to do with the design goals of city supplements being quite diverse. Duskvol is not, for example, much like City State of the Invincible Overlord.

Your outline above sounds good, and coming from the OSR-adjacent direction I think you’re already primed to go usable information dense over prose. I keep playing around with how I organize town/city style stuff, but my goal general is:

• Keep it to a paragraph.
• A bit of evocative wording that helps the GM paint that word picture for interior and exterior; the district and city building flavor can do the rest. The classic 1 or 2 distinctive things that sets THIS bar and THIS shop and THIS street etc apart.
• at least one NPC to bring it to life, generally you can extrapolate further off the vibe of the place and the marquee person. I tend to do a slightly more detailed version of Blade’s here.

Two examples; the first short form for my own prep, the second longer for a module I’m fiddling with:

- Fitzban’s
Tucked down a nondescript alley, a painted shingle announces only the name. For those in the know, the best weaponsmith in the city. Run by a Drakonan family that has lived here for generations, their fire annealing the steel.
Corundrum Fitzban (sapphire scales, eyes like the fire of a forge, growls phrases like he’s ready to return to work).

Fine for myself, and extending the district tenor to add in missing details.

For the module, a bit more long form:

Sahli’s Sundries
Exterior: Tiny wooden building, seemingly built around one big window. Display within crowded full of goods, mainly aimed at mining.
Interior: Blending strong smells (tanned leather, spices, oiled metal), goods arrayed around the edge on shelving, neat piles of barrels. Roiling chill and humming from a perpetually frozen block of ice.

Sahli (human, she/her, 30s, morose, hacked down dirty blonde hair, always arraigning something with her hands as she talks over her shoulder)
Wants: blah
Offers: blah blah

 

[Brendan Byrd]

It would be great to see Jakandor added to another setting. Even if it's not the focus of a mini-setting line again (which even back then, wasn't economically sustainable), it's such an interesting place compared to the black and white morality of 99% of D&D, without succumbing to "well, no one is purely good, so they might as well all be terrible people" that 2000s fantasies foisted off on us.

< tangent >
Given that the Crown’s expeditions tended to have a broad selection of people from most of the character kits, a lost expedition becoming an accidental colony is viable.
One seriously malfunctioning teleportal/gate, and next thing you know there is a Charonti enclave in your city.
< /tangent >

Jakandor:
I didn’t like the city maps provided for the Charonti cities. There seemed to be a disconnect between the stated population, the sample house given, and the number and shapes of the buildings on the map.

Overall, I prefer maps that show the roadways and not the buildings.
(Unless it is a specific location map)

I also dislike maps on glossy paper: pencil marks are harder to erase.

 

[Desdichado]

I love city books, but the way that I use them maybe is a bit esoteric. I don't use them as references, exactly. I don't run the cities as is. I read them for inspiration, and raid them liberally in a kind of kit-bashed sense to be my own cities when it's said and done. So actually having lots of raw material to mine is important to me, moreso than necessarily having really good and coherent cities per se. That said, my favorite city sourcebooks are clearly the systemless Freeport one, which is only slightly too tongue in cheek sometimes for me, and Five Fingers; a late entry in the 3.5 material for Iron Kingdoms. I also like some of the Pathfinder 1e city sourcebooks, like Cities of Golarion, Absalom, Katapesh, Korvasa, etc. I sometimes steal the maps, sometimes some of the locations, etc. Like I said, I never use them as is. But having lots of material to mine through is what's of value to me.