Fantasy Cities

[jedavis]

Vornheim might be worth investigating; don't have it myself, but have heard good things.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I heartily recommend Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe, a 2003 Ennie winner. It has a decent random neighborhood/ward generator, quite a lot on guilds and power structures, and goes into some detail on fees and resource rights that can provide plot points.

 

[S'mon]

Vornheim might be worth investigating; don't have it myself, but have heard good things.

Yeah, I've heard Vornheim is great.

I'm loving Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh; the random encounter, weather, scene & inn resident tables at the back alone are brilliant, never mind the over-1,000 plot hooks & detailed adventures.

 

[IronWolf]

I heartily recommend Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe, a 2003 Ennie winner. It has a decent random neighborhood/ward generator, quite a lot on guilds and power structures, and goes into some detail on fees and resource rights that can provide plot points.

This is what came to my mind as well when I read the original post. Awesome book.

 

[Hand of Evil]

More...

Schedules: like flow this when events happen but more detailed. It covers things like:

• A murder takes place every X number of days
• A mugging takes place every X number of hours
• Goods are smuggled in the city X number of days
• Goods are smuggled out of the city X number of days
• It rains every X number of days, except in spring which is 1/2X
• It floods every year during spring

What this goes is give your population something to talk about. It is gossip, bar talk and such but can also be plot hooks.

• Hear about Ranger Bob, got mugged twice in one night...once going into the tavern and once coming out. So, much did you get?
  
• Hey Squire, it will soon be spring and we want to know what you are doing to stop the floods in Lower Ward. We do not like your crap flowing into our homes. Yep, last year it flooded a nest of Rat men from the sewers!
  
• Okay, the elf weed is coming in next week, pay me more and I can even tell date and location.

 

[Gilladian]

I have several cities and towns on my campaign wiki. Marig in particular is pretty well detailed after having run a half-dozen campaigns in and around it. You can read it to see what I find most useful and interesting...

When I start from scratch, I try to decide the following things, in no particular order:

What is the governing structure of the city and how did it originate? Is the town a nobleman's seat, a free city, based around a port or a defensive site?

Where does their economy come from? Where is the food coming in from? What do they export a lot of, and to whom? What do they import, and from where?

What's the weather, geography and climate, and how does that affect the physical layout and description of the city? Are there sewers? Or are they still using cruder methods of disposal? or magic?

What is the law-and-order structure? do they have police? firemen? paramedics? are they city run, or do people hire their own? Do the guilds organize watches and fire vigils? ARE there guilds?

Magical Medieval Society, as mentioned above, is really good at helping you answer a lot of these questions, in a medieval way.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Sterotype common NPCs - if these are use once and just for background crowd that is...all bartenders are the same, they will give you a drink and move on, same for wait staff. The City Watch is the same way, you see them and move on. So, sterotype them.

Let your PC know places of their own - let your players pick locations and NPC that they know and associate with. Just 1 or 2 a level, these become contacts for the characters. You just work with the players to round them out. Example: a wizard may know a book store (location) or another magic-user (NPC) in the city that can provide information and help. This makes the players feel like they are part of the city.

 

[Desdichado]

WotC produced a fun book on the subject called Cityscape for 3.5. Might be worth checking out.

It's not bad, but personally I found it kinda banal and obvious, most of the time. It had some neat-o city maps, at least.

I tend to prefer running urban intrigue games. In fact, I greatly prefer them to dungeoncrawls. A lot of what I do is kinda intuitive rather than the product of much forethought, so I'll try and see if I can shake some specific advice out of my head.

• Read some mainstream thrillers. One of the best models for an urban game is mainstream thrillers. Spy thrillers, crime novels, mysteries. Robert Ludlum, Robert Patterson, John Le Carre, etc. See how those stories are structured, what kinds of action scenes are normal, and adapt them. Give some thought to shadowy organizations behind the scenes who secretly (or not so secretly) pull the strings. And then "fantasy" it up a bit.
  
• Embrace the idea of people as antagonists. Urban campaigns tend to focus less on monsters and more on NPC antagonists. Thugs, assassins, crooked constables, etc. And what monsters there are tend to be more subtle. Not much in the way of rampaging owlbears in the city, but a medusa or vampire crime lord or crooked politician, on the other hand, can go a long way. Ghouls in the sewer system makes more sense than otyughs in the streets.
  
• Consequences! In many games of D&D, the PCs are wandering killers, and it's assumed that whatever they do is heroic and necessary and right. They're the PCs, right? In urban campaigns, this isn't always so clear cut. You can't cut down Fergus the Ostler because he detected evil unless you want to face down a murder charge. Of course, that doesn't mean that skullduggery and violence can't be very common. Most of my cities tend to be "wretched hives of scum and villainy" where a few dead bodies in the harbor or alleys every morning is to be expected. But even that comes with consequences. What if the thug you killed was only the first wave of enforcers looking to expand a protection racket over your neighborhood? The mob's not likely to take kindly to you offing their agents so callously.
  
• Alternate reward systems. Because "dungeoncrawling" in the city feels kind of forced and awkward--and may come with breaking and entry and larceny charges as well--you might want to think about alternate means of putting treasure and XP in the PCs hands.
  
• Have plenty of material handy. There's a lot of good city products out there. I tend to immerse myself in all of them before running an urban game, and then because it all blends together, I borrow anything that I remember from any source and use it. Although not comprehensive, I have books on Sharn, Freeport, Five Fingers, Absalom, Katapesh, Korvasa and more, and I usually at least skim if not re-read all those named books before running.
  
• Have plenty of charts handy. You can never detail a city the way you would a smaller area. You don't label very many individual buildings, and you have to accept that the PCs are likely to encounter places and people that you never planned for or prepared for. Have some charts handy so you can generate NPC names, tavern names, or other places of business or important and/or interesting people smoothly and seamlessly, and so quickly that your players never realize that you didn't already have them prepared.
  
• Don't worry too much about where things are. At most, pay attention to districts or neighborhoods; it's unusual that it matters exactly where anything is beyond that level of detail.
  
• Take advantage of the environment. In combats, take into account the stuff around a city. Carts, passers-by, balconies, signs, barrels of apples, wagons full of manure... make the combat more interesting than just "I move ten feet and attack with my sword." There's all kinds of interesting things in the city that can and should be integrated into combat. Fights on rain-slicked and slanting rooftops, narrow, tight alleys packed with non-combatants who are running around screaming, or gathering in a circle and placing bets and throwing fruit, NPCs that jump on a passing carriage when the fights looks bad and make quick getaways--there's so many interesting things that can happen in a city setting combat encounter. Think of a few and try to make at least every other combat have some kind of flavorful oomph thrown in besides just your basic tactical grid.
  
• Consider other types of action scenes besides combat. In particular, chase scenes. Pelting down the street after a spy or thief, racing two carriages back and forth through winding alleys, etc. It's a staple of action movies and has been a notorious and glaring miss inthe rules of most editions of D&D, but they're especially fun in a city setting, IMO. There's just so much more going on in urban chase scenes then you can have when running through some farmer's field or the woods.

 

[Will Doyle]

One of the first things I do once I've sorted the basics is prepare a newspaper. The sort of scroll you may expect to find in the possession of a town crier, or pinned up in the city square. I always include a few ads, reports of escaped convicts, and what have you. Headline stories are great for introducing campaign story arcs.

I also take great pains over naming. At the moment, I'm building a district for a steampunk city, and I've found these old maps of London particularly inspiring. Old London has the best names:"Fireball Alley", "Blind Beggar Alley", etc.

 

[grodog]

My favorite city-based supplements and adventures are:

• Lankhmar City of Adventure (TSR)
• Thieves World (Chaosium, boxed set)
• The Free City of Haven (plus supplements, by Gamelords; various Thieves Guild materials would also fit in nicely)
• Cities, Tulan, Carse, Towns of the Outlands (Mikdemia Press but Cities, Tulan, and Carse were also reprinted by Chaosium)
• Bard's Gate (Necromancer Games)
• Marienburg and Warharmmer City (Games Workshop)
• FR1 Waterdeep
• Citybook series (Blade/Flying Buffalo)
• "Barnacus: City in Peril" (Dragon Magazine #80)
• Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins (WotC)
• Pavis and Big Rubble (Chaosium)

Of those, the ones that really help make your homebew city come alive are the Midkemia Cities book (most of the useful bits of which is also reprinted in Thieves World) and the Citybook series from FBI. All of the rest can be stolen from, of course, but Cities in particular is a good guide to making cities come alive.

I've checked out Vornheim, but wasn't very impressed with it as a usable book---the content looked OK-ish, but it's really small font and garish layout kept me from ever finishing reading it New Infinities released Bob Blake's Town of Baldemar if you're looking for a town-sized book, and of course there's always the Wilderlands of High Fantasy city books (City State of the Invincible Overlord, etc.; I'm not a big JG fan, so I can't say much about the strengths or weaknesses of those products).