D&D 5E How do you use cities in your campaigns?

[Fenris-77]

To bring in another thread, but not to derail, my taste for running urban campaigns very much informs my use of floating objectives. I agree with @Lanefan that cities are an ocean with a teaspoon proposition when it comes to any notion of 'fully prepped' so I've had to do things differently. What I usually do is hard plan some major objectives, the ones which all the other clues, hints, and rumors index. Then I semi-hard plan some second tier objectives and encounters based on what I think likely, and under that I usually have a whole mess of NPCs, rumors, mini-encounters, clues and other stuff like that in various states of soft planning, including exact location.

Depending on how the players engage with the initial hook and what direction they look like their heading I'll scatter breadcrumbs out along that path, again, in various states of hardness. The prep is there, and I have many times more info planned than I'll need, but I need to be flexible enough that no matter what the players decide to do I can pave a road far enough out ahead that I can avoid last minute deus ex machina. The biggest part of my decision making is actually the players' decisions. Part of the way I run is to let player decision making determine exactly how the fiction plays out. I can't control exactly how that's going to go in any game, but especially in a urban setting, so past a certain point I don't even try. If the players have a plan and put together the breadcrumbs in a particular way, then I'l take that and run with it. Not entirely, but let's call it for a given value of 'correct' with the value of incorrect being put on where it wil be the most fun to have them be wrong in their initial read on what's going on.

 

[Charlaquin]

Agreed. I find cities in particular can be a quagmire, particularly if the DM heavily relies on their use because they're comparatively easier to prep than a stocked adventure location like a dungeon or hexcrawl. I observe a lot of games on Discord and via Twitch. A ton of them fall into this mode of play. I certainly have long ago, too. So it's a thing and something I try to avoid chiefly by having civilization be where the adventure isn't with some exception as noted. This creates an incentive to be proactive and get out of Dodge and back to where the adventure is.

Very much in line with the thinking that went into the development of the original West Marches.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

With the right approach, running urban adventures can be much easier than many people think. There's two strategies that I use consistently:

First, the "Rule of Two". Anytime players need to make a choice, I give them two options. Need a weaponsmith? No problem. "After spending the morning asking around Armorer's Row, you learn that there are two weaponsmiths who come highly recommended for adventurer's like yourself...." Need a healing spell? Easy. "After jostling your way through the hucksters in the Temple District, you realize there are only two temples with both the divine power and the moral outlook needed to cast greater restoration on your fiend-patron warlock..." Throw in a few of those every session and the players very quickly think they're surrounded by an infinite number of choices.

Second, to generate NPCs quickly, I borrow/steal from 13th Age's icon relationships, which is really just a faction system in disguise. So if I'm stumped for ideas on the spot, I just look at the character backgrounds and use that to spin up a faction. For example, if one character has the soldier background, I might decide that one of the weaponsmiths is the retired armorer from her disbanded mercenary unit. And if another character is, I dunno, a half-orc, I might decide that the second weaponsmith is an orc quartermaster who sold the character the longsword in his starting equipment at a steep discount. Then I ask the players to name the NPC, give them a defining trait, and fill in a little shared history.

Maybe not to everyone's taste, but I love it.

 

[iserith]

Very much in line with the thinking that went into the development of the original West Marches.

You can imagine my consternation when I watch a supposed "West Marches" campaign wherein the party spends the whole session in town.

 

[Charlaquin]

You can imagine my consternation when I watch a supposed "West Marches" campaign wherein the party spends the whole session in town.

Linguistic drift. Much as how “Milestone XP” has come to mean “we don’t use XP” because that’s how it’s used, “West Marches” has more or less come to mean “not regularly scheduled,” or occasionally “a big group”.

 

[Don Durito]

I've run quite a few urban campaigns.

They tend to work someething like this.
Come up with a few main businesses - give each one some kind of plothook, like you would do for a sandbox to get the players started.

Make 2 or 3 factions. Work out roughly what is likely to happen if the PCs are not present. EG, the secret cult will summon a demon, the conspiracy will assassinate the duke, many members of the main thieves guild will be murdered by rivals during the festival of masks etc. It only has to be rough because the PCs will inevitably mess up timelines anyway.

Let it basically run itself.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

My players are bold adventurers facing dire peril, and often that peril is where the people are, from small hamlets to great cities.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I really like the aesthetics of urban play, but I have found D&D to be rather under stocked with rules and mechanics to make it easy. Which is to say I understand your reluctance - getting out of dodge and back to the action is a fine way to play. I tinker with systems and hacks not just because it's a fun hobby, but also to try and relieve some of the issues the D&D can have when played in an urban setting because I like to run urban campaigns as much as I do.

I’m a bit at a loss here. What about a city makes hacks and subsystems necessary? I use flashbacks in a heist, sure, but there are wilderness adventures where I’d do that, as well. Skill challenges I use at least as much in the wilderness as in a city.

not a challenge, just something I don’t get that seems obvious to you.

 

[Mallus]

How do I use cities? I run campaigns in them. They’re basically jungles and dungeons with better coffee shops and museums.

 

[Don Durito]

I’m a bit at a loss here. What about a city makes hacks and subsystems necessary? I use flashbacks in a heist, sure, but there are wilderness adventures where I’d do that, as well. Skill challenges I use at least as much in the wilderness as in a city.

not a challenge, just something I don’t get that seems obvious to you.

One issue in 5E is the rest economy. If a party is getting into 6-8 violent encounters in a single day then they're either going to be thrown into a dungeon, asked to leave, or the whole city is about to descend into civil war.

(Of course, if you're running an urban campaign, you do need to be prepared for the likelihood of all three of those eventualities, anyway.)

But if I was running a primarily urban game in 5E, I'd probably look at making long rests at least several days. (Given how urban adventures often go - I might even rename a long rest as "laying low".)