City Supplements - What do we like?

[Blue]

Players don't interact with cities the same way they do adventures, and that difference guides me. I don't find location based at the granularity of "you walk down this street and see..." useful at all.

Usually an overview of the city, including some movers and shakers in terms of NPCs and organization. Just enough for the GM to have a feel for what's going on.

Then I break down into districts. Same idea of movers and shakers, plus a tenor for each district, examples of the types of buildings there, things you could see on the streets from buskers and carnivals to pickpockets or servants shopping to dwarven slaves building new buildings, and a few notable NPCs of the district outside the movers and shakers that people might direct the NPCs to. A few notable buildings as well, but more in the "This district also hosts the famous Lapis Lane, a street of jewelers and white-smiths anchored by the House of Gold at the northern end, renown across the Imperium for the quality of it's good".

Then I want hooks and ideas. "Ideas" means things that are either changing rapidly that the PCs can get caught up in, or things poised to change that the PCs might be a factor in doing so. Hooks should be around the specific people or notable features of the settlement, not generic quest ideas, but need not take place in the city. Perhaps there will be a wedding of the scions of two major trading houses and they need Edelweiss flowers as a local superstition for successful marriages, but the mountaintop where they grow now has become the lair of something not detailed as the GM can make up a reasonable thing."

Obviously non-fantasy cities would have different specifics, but the same general idea.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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

In the Wildemount book each town gets like half a page or a page IIRC. If it were a supplement for say...Sharn, i would love about the same for each of the major districts/neighborhoods, along with faction descriptions. Each area writeup could have a short note on what factions intersect, if any, in that area.

maybe 1 full page, 2 at most, per area. Same per faction. Maybe some demographic details when/where it may actually impact adventures.

and art with clear direction that actually helps ypu imagine the city overall and each area.

 

[Voadam]

Players don't interact with cities the same way they do adventures, and that difference guides me.

Do you mean cities vs. dungeons instead of vs. adventures?

The Death in Freeport module is set entirely in the City of Freeport, for example.

 

[Piperken]

...So what are your favorite city sourcebooks, or specific mechanics, or procedures, or rules? You might even tell us why!

Plenty of published sourcebooks already mentioned.

Rules/mechanics/procedures for cities that I have fondness for:

• Downtime in Zyan (Ben Laurence)
• Sandbox Settlements: Prep, Run and Thrive (elmcat)
• Relationship Complications (Marcia B.)
• Swyvers generator for The Smoke (Gearing & Hoskins)

In addition:

• A map, preferably broken up into smaller maps when each locale is discussed.
• How one may travel, and travel times between different locales.
• What locations are restricted e.g. by pass, class, a key, or lack of reputation.
• Some sense of what can be accomplished in a day (or night).
• Faction pages.
• Curated encounter tables for locales, that integrate points of interest, NPCs, factions, rumors etc., possibly with a day/night split.

Inspiring Writing:

• Invisible Cities (Calvino)
• Hill Cantons (Kutalik)

 

[Blue]

Do you mean cities vs. dungeons instead of vs. adventures?

The Death in Freeport module is set entirely in the City of Freeport, for example.

Not quite, but you did catch a mistake a made because I didn't qualify non-adventure interaction.

A city based adventure has locations and specifics just like a dungeon, likely has maps where you explore and you need to know that location. It's important if you take the door on the left or the stairs up. That's not how the players interact with a city when they are not adventuring.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Cities need to have a pulse - this is a flow of jobs of goods and services. If the players look at a crowd, they see a type based on where they are in the city. Cities have a schedule - Things happen on a regular basis in city, people go to work, eat lunch, go home, seek entertainment, this should be reflected in common locations and less common locations. Cities have laws - seen too many city books that overlook this and allow player to run rampant. There are multiple chess game going on at all times in a city, competition is everywhere. Most do not involve or concern the players but will concern the GM. So, a timeline will be needed to plan adventures to.

One of the problems I see with city books is that there is too much city for a party. Parties will just roam withing a small percentage of the city and never visit the rest of it, this is fine, but you have to flesh out what they are interesting in. So, ward/district/townships have to be detailed more than the city itself. Focus should be on what the players will be dealing and living with.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

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.

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.

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.

Jakandor is a hole in my collection and knowledge. Probably should fix that one of these days....

 

[Fenris-77]

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.

I think the second is far more useful in the case of most NPCs, especially when we're talking about the urban environment where the group is literally surrounded at all times by potential NPCs.

 

[Brendan Byrd]

The Monster Overhaul by Skerples has two indexes, one alphabetic, and this one, which is fiendishly clever:

This kind of approach could be a reasonable compromise between those who dislike random generation tables, and those who think they are useful to have.
If a bit of space was left between the number and the text, that would leave room to write in your own dice rolls…

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

One of the problems I see with city books is that there is too much city for a party. Parties will just roam withing a small percentage of the city and never visit the rest of it, this is fine, but you have to flesh out what they are interesting in. So, ward/district/townships have to be detailed more than the city itself. Focus should be on what the players will be dealing and living with.

There was a series of 3E books that just focused on a quarter at a time. There was a thieves quarter, an arcane quarter and at least one more. It was a pretty fun concept.