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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PurplePCEater" data-source="post: 5412" data-attributes="member: 235">The thing I always find with city-based sessions is that they can easily end up very open ended - there's no easy way of 'channelling' the PCs in the same way you can in a dungeon- (or other site-) based game. A city, being comprised of open streets, many buildings, potentially vast numbers of people to interact with and so on can be somewhat overwhelming at first.What I try to do is not to let the actions of the PCs get too much in the way of the goals that I have in mind for the session. You might find it helpful to draw up something like a flowchart to help you plan out what events happen to whom and at what point in the scenario.For example, in your setup, you've got the group being pursued by foreign agents. Presumably this seal and decorated piece of metal are related in some manner, and these agents are trying to prevent the PCs from finding out about the connection. If you've got at least one agent to pursue them to the city, where he can link up with others of his group then you've got quite a nice setup already, at least for an initial chase and pursuit session as Grim suggests.Don't feel you need to 'force' the PCs to the part of the city that you've decided the event takes place in - there are often many equivalent locatiosn that will suffice. If, for example, you've got the intent to lead the PCs into an alleyway, have them ambushed by some of these agents, and to have the piece of metal 'recovered', then it doesn't matter if you ambush them in the alleyway between Short St and Market Way or the alley between the docks and Kings Road - the key thing to focus on in this encounter is the alleyway, regardless of where it happens to lie in the city.I normally find that whenever the PCs enter a town or city they have completely different ideas as to what they want than I'm expecting, so the key to this is to have a number of 'stock' settings that can be fleshed out into 'real' encounters in a suitable location. As an illustration, if the PCs have to meet an important NPC to be given information or a task or something, and you've decided they'll meet the NPC in a tavern, unless there is some specific reason why it has to be in the Stoat and Wyvern, there's no reason why the meeting can't take place in the Golden Griffin instead. Equally, if the PCs choose not to look for, oh, I don't know, a well-respected sage to help them identify said seal and provide them with a key piece of information and instead, when faced with more alehouses than they've seen before in their lives choose to spend a week getting drunk on their ill-gotten earnings, try using someone like a drunken and disreputable bard who might engage them in a game of cards while in one of the inns to pass said information on instead. "Hang on, I've heard tell of that symbol before..."Flexibility and the ability to recognise the key elements of any given encounter are what I find works for me when you lose the convenience of your environment being able to limit the actions of the PCs. As a suggestion you might want to have a look at either WotC Speaker in Dreams or some of the Freeport series for some ideas of how to run a plot-based (rather than site-based) flow-charted scenario.If you'd like some specific examples of plots it'll help to have a few more details about your game. HTH.</blockquote>

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