Indie RPG Newsletter: Cities in RPGs

[hawkeyefan]

Cities in RPGs 1- Doskvol

I subscribe to the Indie RPG Newsletter. It’s a good weekly read, with links to other interesting articles, podcasts, and so on.

The author, Thomas Manuel, has decided to do a series that focuses on cities in RPGs. The first (determined by votes from his readers) is about the city of Doskvol, the setting of Blades in the Dark.

I figured I’d post it here to get peoples’ thoughts, and also to discuss useful ways to use cities in games, and good methods/processes for doing so.

So… what kinds of material do folks find useful for urban-based RPGs? Does anyone have best practices to share?

 

[pointofyou]

I have found it helpful to have a broad map of whatever city I'm using at a neighborhood level. Ideally there'd be things like what things are in what neighborhoods or at least some place names. If there are groups of any sort at work or play in the city it is useful to know where they are based and what their goals and current activities are. It is occasionally good to know why a city is as the PCs find it but detailed histories are rarely important.

 

[pemerton]

I figured I’d post it here to get peoples’ thoughts, and also to discuss useful ways to use cities in games, and good methods/processes for doing so.

So… what kinds of material do folks find useful for urban-based RPGs? Does anyone have best practices to share?

At the moment I'm getting familiar with Torchbearer's town phase rules. These are driven by town events (rolled on a table at the start of the town phase) and "lifestyle cost" - roughly, each action performed in town phase adds one to the Resources test to pay bills when leaving town.

In this system, an adventure in town still requires paying bills and leaving town phase. I expect to see how this works in the next session I run, as the PCs have learned that the Elven Ranger they aim to rescue is in a house in town.

Torchbearer defaults to location-based adventures with maps, so for this anticipated adventure I've mapped out the house in question.

The last town adventure I GMed was in Burning Wheel. Burning Wheel doesn't rely on maps in the same way, and doesn't have a town phase/adventure phase contrast. So I used various sorts of checks to manage the action in town: Catacombs-wise to navigate through the undercity; raw Speed vs Speed to race against another character to see who gets to the common destination first; Circles tests to manage meeting up with alllies/enemies; etc.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

So… what kinds of material do folks find useful for urban-based RPGs? Does anyone have best practices to share?

I run a lot of urban fantasy, in part because I like being able to research a real-world city or neighborhood, and use either current or period maps, including blueprints and similar layouts for famous buildings. But for older (real-world) city info and maps I often wind up digging through old GURPS books (GURPS Aztecs, Rome, etc.). Those are a treasure trove.

 

[Campbell]

Our Exalted and Vampire games were both based in singular cities. In a lot of ways they are both social crawls in the same way Blades in the Dark can be, but more focused on individual characters and their relationships to one another than factions. In both cases we kind of developed in terms of broad strokes. Individual locations and individual characters are painted in vibrant detail, but the layout is kept largely undefined or elided in the case of our Amsterdam by Night Vampire Chronicle.

Here's what we have defined for the city state that is central to our Exalted game:

On the pass between Kamthahar and Ember

Total population: 130,000 (50,000 in Elon'har, 70,000 in Kell)

On the Western edge of the canyon is Elon'har, lovingly known as Old Town. This drab, dusty, windy part of the city dates from the first age, yet whoever lived here, whatever deeds they lived by are long forgotten and lost. Cut into the stone of the canyon by sorcery no longer achievable in these days, the dwellings reach deep into the canyon walls, and further still deep under the earth. Some say the furthest reaches there are doorways to lands of the dead. Few live here, mostly those who protect the valley or research the histories of their ancestors.

On the Eastern edge of the canyon is Kell, also known as the City of Mirrors. A fashion mode of many ages ago, the rulers who raised this place from nothing chose to amplify the size of their halls with great mirrors. Homes and businesses too will create great back walls of mirrors to give the impression of a larger entrances. Here is where the wealth of the population lives and raises their families. As well this is the center of commerce as it holds open markets for all manner of peoples from across creation.

Tovharkha is the City of Ritual. Instead of religion, Tovharkha has the Entretamain. These are people who are responsible for the continued existence of this place in the face of a powerfully supernatural world. So close to chaos and elements of the South and East, Tovharkha is rife with events and creatures which conspire to tear it apart and reduce it to mere memory. Thus the city has developed finely honed practitioners of the arts who perform plays, songs, operas, comedies, and so on which honor the Events.

 

[Campbell]

I will add that I absolutely adore playing games set in a central location with lots of interconnected factions and/or NPCs (especially when there are strong connections to the player characters). Running/playing Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts and the like were a revelation to me on this front. The ability to really learn and master an environment, build long lasting relationships and strive towards long term ambitions while navigating a web of dynamic and changing circumstances/relationships really gets me invested in both play and the setting.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Quick tangent: For those who've played Blades in the Dark, I'm curious whether you think the overall Forged in the Dark approach pretty much requires a setting that's similarly bounded or contained? Most FitD games seem to stick to a pretty specific location (even Band of Blades, which allows some mobility, isn't exactly open-ended), but then Scum and Villainy only limits you to a sector, which is an awful big sandbox.

 

[chaochou]

My earliest urban game was a Runequest campaign using the classic Chaosium boxed sets Pavis and The Big Rubble. Those were an eye-opener (at the time). Each had a seperate keyed location book, player book and adventures book, and created a vibrant, dangerous playground. However, RQ used the resolution paradigms of the day, so while the freebooting and looting was fine, broader questions involving factions, groups, influence and politics - which were detailed beautifully in the literature - were close to impossible to actually play with.

I ran a long Cthulhu campaign around Arkham, Kingsport, Dunwich and Innsmouth. The consistency of the places, seemingly mundane, allowed a slower pace, a more creeping sense of doom, of horrors that could lurk behind any doorway. We had a real good time with it, despite it being totally traditional map and key stuff.

Other than that, I ran a HeroWars game set in Whitewall in Sartar, and that was able to handle far more sophisticated questions of politics and influence, as the system let's you assign scores to anything and everything and can handle both task and conflict resolution. So I didn't find myself needing maps, but instead a cast of clan elders and temple officials, backstreet urchins, wool merchants, Lunar scouts, chaos infiltrators and neighbouring clansmen for the players to plot with and bribe and coerce and impress and expose. I liked it a lot, although the group still tended to drift too readily towards the certainties of combat at that time. I think it would be a different game now - to run and to play - especially if I took Apocalypse World's advice on triangles and crosshairs.

 

[pemerton]

My earliest urban game was a Runequest campaign using the classic Chaosium boxed sets Pavis and The Big Rubble. Those were an eye-opener (at the time). Each had a seperate keyed location book, player book and adventures book, and created a vibrant, dangerous playground. However, RQ used the resolution paradigms of the day, so while the freebooting and looting was fine, broader questions involving factions, groups, influence and politics - which were detailed beautifully in the literature - were close to impossible to actually play with.

This reminds me of urban games I GMed in the late 80s and 90s, using AD&D and RM as the resolution systems. Much of the resolution becomes "GM decides" because of the lack of appropriate techniques.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I have found it helpful to have a broad map of whatever city I'm using at a neighborhood level. Ideally there'd be things like what things are in what neighborhoods or at least some place names. If there are groups of any sort at work or play in the city it is useful to know where they are based and what their goals and current activities are. It is occasionally good to know why a city is as the PCs find it but detailed histories are rarely important.

Yeah, the article talks about this and how Blades in the Dark handles it.

From the Article:

• One spread each for the 12 districts in Duskvol. Each district gets a little intro paragraph that the GM can essentially read to the players, 4 landmarks, 3 notable NPCs, some visual details, and numerical ratings for wealth, security, criminal influence, occult influence. This is a very pared down description - tightly defined and expertly laid out. It’s written to be referenced, not read like a novel.

From the Blades book:

Just really gameable stuff. Very similar write ups for all the factions. Easy to reference and put into play.