City Survivor! - Round 2

[Cthulhudrew]

Okay, so last round the Epic Level city of Union got wiped off the board- it seems some Mercane from Sigil convinced all the Epic Level grocers that they really should be running their own merchant enterprises rather than doing waiting tables for a living. As a result, the city's food supply abruptly disappeared, leaving all the other Epic Level characters to take off for parts more amenable. Union became a ghost town practically overnight.

So the time has come again- which city do you think will fall before the awesome might of its competitors?

For reference purposes, here's some info on the cities that I probably should have included last time:

Barovia: If you don't know the name of this spooky little Ravenloft hamlet, you really should be shot- with a silver bullet.
City of Brass: The fabled extraplanar home of the evil efreeti.
Freeport: Avast ye! This be the main port o' call for Green Ronin's d20 materials!
Glantri City: This city is home of Mystara's Great School of Magic, and the centerpiece in all the political machinations of the magocracy.
Greyhawk City: The Free City of Gygaxian origination.
Lankhmar: Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (and not those two similar guys from Greyhawk novels) call this place home.
Palanthas: The largest city on Krynn, the secrets held in its library are matched only by the secrets contained within its Tower of High Sorcery.
Ptolus: The City by the Spire, this city boasts the largest visitor's guide known to man!
Sharn: Chief city of the world of Eberron, they've managed to solve overpopulation problems by building straight up!
Sigil: Another city by a spire, though this one's a little more remote. The planar hub of the multiverse.
Waterdeep: The most famous city in Faerun, and perhaps the largest; it also sits atop one of the largest man-made dungeons.

 

[Felix]

Enough with the City-with-tall-pointy-things. Ankh-Morpork is the only city I want to game in whose dominating feature is a huge tower.

Abiding by generally accepted accounting principles, Last In, First Out: so Ptolus is his-to-ray. Sharn and Sigil, you're next!

 

[Shemeska]

Palanthas is about to have its dead man walking moment.

How many times has it been invaded and seemingly just rolled over and taken it now? It seems to be a theme.

 

[Tonguez]

Newbies got no bus'ness ere wif da big boyz so Ptolus go home to Mama

 

[GAAAHHH]

Barovia isn't really a city, now is it?

 

[crazy_cat]

Goodbye Palanthas.

 

[Nifft]

d10 says: Ptolus. oh well.

-- N

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Why is the City State of the Invicible Overlord not on the list?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

One could have had many more cities added to the list. I'm a urban geographer by education. Always loved fantasy cities done well and originally. I think a pole like this might suffer from folks voting against settings, but maybe that's a feature of the poll. Planescape seems to have two cities representing it while other settings have one city per setting.

Barovia is furthest from being an honest city. I seem to recall much larger cities from Ravenloft, such as the one that was its own domain whose residents were turned into undead. I forget the old name of the city, but it changed to Necropolis I think. True, it's not well known.

The Rock of Bral was one of the better fantasy city sourcebooks. Deserves a place here in the poll I think. It really is a portable city that could go to any setting, it's on an asteroid!

Menzoberanzan certainly is a famous fantasy RPG city, although it might be said that its sourcebook covered more than just the city. But then Toril/Faerun has one city representing it already.

Dark Sun had Tyr with its own city sourcebook.

Blackmoor had, well, the city of Blackmoor. Which was really a little bit more than just a large town, and the Kingdom of Blackmoor had larger "cities". It is still more populous than Barovia.

Al'Qadim had its City of Delights earn a sourcebook... and dozens of other Cities of [fill in the blank] across the setting.

Well, that's my fantasy city commentary for now.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I think a pole like this might suffer from folks voting against settings, but maybe that's a feature of the poll. Planescape seems to have two cities representing it while other settings have one city per setting.

That was my reasoning in the first poll for not including any information about the cities- I wanted to try to veer away from people seeing campaign setting information and voting against that. Then I had people saying they didn't recognize some of the cities, so I decided to include some information. I guess you can't win.

As for other cities, I've had a number of others pointed out, and even remembered some I'd forgotten but would/should have included initially (Blackmoor, as you point out, was a key one). However, the poll had already started, so I don't see any reason to drag things out by adding more in after the fact. If anyone is interested in seeing more cities make the cut, we can either do another one, or they can start a competing poll, and we can have the winners of the two duke it out at the end.