Keeping urban campaigns simple
Rel
Liquid Awesome
Celebrim's post #9 up there is a very good starting point. Urban adventures don't need to be terribly different from dungeon adventures. They are just not in dungeons.
What I mean is you can still design your encounter areas and just sort of pretend that they are connected by longer, invisible corridors. The other tricky bit is that all these corridors start at "secret doors" that you need to somehow let the players find by way of some kind of clue. There are lots of ways of doing that and the ways you pick will depend on the exact nature of the adventure you are running.
But my other main bit of advice is two-fold. First, one thing that tends to happen a lot in urban settings is that the players find it easy to go outside the confines of the invisible dungeon you've set up. That's fine that they want to do that. I don't think you should tell them that they can't. But you need to constrain it so you can make it work for you rather than against you. The best way to do this in my opinion is to handle a lot of detail stuff like that out of session.
For example a PC might say, "Hey, this city has a large temple for my deity. I want to go there, pray, make a donation and see if there is anything going on. Maybe introduce myself to the Bishop." That's great. Some cool character-building potential there. What I tell the player is, "Excellent. I'll send you something about that later this week." Then you can swap a few e-mails with them at a later time telling them what they found at the temple.
This helps you in a few ways during the session. First it keeps the player from starting a tangent to the adventure that only he is interested in while the rest of the group sits there bored. Second it lets you deal with the subject in greater depth if you like in the e-mail. Third, it gives you time to think about the details when you've got more time and aren't distracted by running the rest of the game and are coming up with stuff on the fly.
The other aspect of my advice here is that this always works best when you have a clear understanding with the players. Discuss with them the fact that, in an urban setting, there are plenty of options. But that if they change direction on you every five minutes to go see if the apothecary has any new potions or to look up the Fighter's sister who supposedly lives in town, it makes it hard to run the game. So you are willing to give these side treks the attention they deserve if the group can agree to handle a lot of that out of session.
What I mean is you can still design your encounter areas and just sort of pretend that they are connected by longer, invisible corridors. The other tricky bit is that all these corridors start at "secret doors" that you need to somehow let the players find by way of some kind of clue. There are lots of ways of doing that and the ways you pick will depend on the exact nature of the adventure you are running.
But my other main bit of advice is two-fold. First, one thing that tends to happen a lot in urban settings is that the players find it easy to go outside the confines of the invisible dungeon you've set up. That's fine that they want to do that. I don't think you should tell them that they can't. But you need to constrain it so you can make it work for you rather than against you. The best way to do this in my opinion is to handle a lot of detail stuff like that out of session.
For example a PC might say, "Hey, this city has a large temple for my deity. I want to go there, pray, make a donation and see if there is anything going on. Maybe introduce myself to the Bishop." That's great. Some cool character-building potential there. What I tell the player is, "Excellent. I'll send you something about that later this week." Then you can swap a few e-mails with them at a later time telling them what they found at the temple.
This helps you in a few ways during the session. First it keeps the player from starting a tangent to the adventure that only he is interested in while the rest of the group sits there bored. Second it lets you deal with the subject in greater depth if you like in the e-mail. Third, it gives you time to think about the details when you've got more time and aren't distracted by running the rest of the game and are coming up with stuff on the fly.
The other aspect of my advice here is that this always works best when you have a clear understanding with the players. Discuss with them the fact that, in an urban setting, there are plenty of options. But that if they change direction on you every five minutes to go see if the apothecary has any new potions or to look up the Fighter's sister who supposedly lives in town, it makes it hard to run the game. So you are willing to give these side treks the attention they deserve if the group can agree to handle a lot of that out of session.
Wik
First Post
My quick answer:
Take a piece of graph paper, and give it a scale. Then, divide your city up into regions - the Merchant District, the Royal District, the University District, the Slums, and so on. Write down, in point form, the defining characteristics of each district. The Slums, for example, could be a series of hovels placed on top of each other, and probably stink.
Next up, figure out where your city walls are. Slums are probably on the outside of the city, or near dock areas. Many cities have an inner wall and an outer wall - the wealthy live within the inner wall, and many of the upperclass areas will be here, as well.
Then, draw your major roads - not alleyways, or anything like that. Just the major roads - one will lead to your main market area, one will lead to the dock, and one should lead to the centre of the city.
That's the basic design of a city.
After you do that, start adding details to each district. Try to think of some of the obvious things that would happen in each district (i.e., the University District will have a sizeable student population, will attract the fairly wealthy, and should have a few taverns catering to the students), and then try to think of some creative ideas that will generate adventures (The University district is home to two schools - an artisan school, and a magical school. They both vie for limited funding, and have been locked in a non-violent "cold war" for years. There are often pranks played from one school against the other).
Do this for buildings, too - a general description of how the buildings in the slums differ from the university buildings. In the old world, slums would often have more floors, while the wealthier preferred one- or two- floored dwellings. SLums are also probably more closely packed, and riddled with alleyways.
Next up, write up a random encounter list for each district. I'd go with 12 each, so you can roll a d12 if things start getting boring. These probably shouldn't be combat encounters, but instead interesting RP encounters. The University District could offer an encounter with some panicking students, a political protest rally, or a pub crawl; the slums could offer an encounter with a thug gang, a pickpocket, or a "lady of the evening" hoping to sell the PCs some information.
Try to figure out how the districts interact. Think about how your city would actually work. Write up a bunch of NPCs, and feel free to drop them in the campaign liberally. And re-use them, even if it doesn't always make sense! If the PCs bump into a bureaucrat in the Civic works section that they like, don't hesitate to have him pop up a few months later working for the library, and then a few months after that as a dockside authority!
When running the game, mention the main streets, and use those names whenever possible. Always mention district names (and it could be an idea to give at least half of the districts evocative names - "The Black Stink" is a much better name than "The Slums"). Describe the area in a sentence or two, and don't describe as PCs move from street to street. Encourage the PCs to use Coachman services, and even the use of city guides.
Remember that, in real life, we don't partake of every part of the city we live in. There are probably five or six places in my entire city that I go to for dinner on any sort of regularity. We are creatures of habit, and your PCs will probably be the same. Once they first find a weapons shop, odds are they'll keep going back there, unless the NPC is a pain in the butt. So, don't go overboard writing up descriptions. I'd just write down a few inn names and a few shop descriptions, and drop them when the PCs go looking for 'em (and reflavour as necessary, depending on which district they're in at the time).
Take a piece of graph paper, and give it a scale. Then, divide your city up into regions - the Merchant District, the Royal District, the University District, the Slums, and so on. Write down, in point form, the defining characteristics of each district. The Slums, for example, could be a series of hovels placed on top of each other, and probably stink.
Next up, figure out where your city walls are. Slums are probably on the outside of the city, or near dock areas. Many cities have an inner wall and an outer wall - the wealthy live within the inner wall, and many of the upperclass areas will be here, as well.
Then, draw your major roads - not alleyways, or anything like that. Just the major roads - one will lead to your main market area, one will lead to the dock, and one should lead to the centre of the city.
That's the basic design of a city.
After you do that, start adding details to each district. Try to think of some of the obvious things that would happen in each district (i.e., the University District will have a sizeable student population, will attract the fairly wealthy, and should have a few taverns catering to the students), and then try to think of some creative ideas that will generate adventures (The University district is home to two schools - an artisan school, and a magical school. They both vie for limited funding, and have been locked in a non-violent "cold war" for years. There are often pranks played from one school against the other).
Do this for buildings, too - a general description of how the buildings in the slums differ from the university buildings. In the old world, slums would often have more floors, while the wealthier preferred one- or two- floored dwellings. SLums are also probably more closely packed, and riddled with alleyways.
Next up, write up a random encounter list for each district. I'd go with 12 each, so you can roll a d12 if things start getting boring. These probably shouldn't be combat encounters, but instead interesting RP encounters. The University District could offer an encounter with some panicking students, a political protest rally, or a pub crawl; the slums could offer an encounter with a thug gang, a pickpocket, or a "lady of the evening" hoping to sell the PCs some information.
Try to figure out how the districts interact. Think about how your city would actually work. Write up a bunch of NPCs, and feel free to drop them in the campaign liberally. And re-use them, even if it doesn't always make sense! If the PCs bump into a bureaucrat in the Civic works section that they like, don't hesitate to have him pop up a few months later working for the library, and then a few months after that as a dockside authority!
When running the game, mention the main streets, and use those names whenever possible. Always mention district names (and it could be an idea to give at least half of the districts evocative names - "The Black Stink" is a much better name than "The Slums"). Describe the area in a sentence or two, and don't describe as PCs move from street to street. Encourage the PCs to use Coachman services, and even the use of city guides.
Remember that, in real life, we don't partake of every part of the city we live in. There are probably five or six places in my entire city that I go to for dinner on any sort of regularity. We are creatures of habit, and your PCs will probably be the same. Once they first find a weapons shop, odds are they'll keep going back there, unless the NPC is a pain in the butt. So, don't go overboard writing up descriptions. I'd just write down a few inn names and a few shop descriptions, and drop them when the PCs go looking for 'em (and reflavour as necessary, depending on which district they're in at the time).
Hairfoot
First Post
This is great stuff. It should be in the DMG! Thanks to all.
Rel nailed down the biggest problem I'm having currently: the proliferation of side- and sub-quests that occur simply because the players have so many options available. I'll start dealing with more of it out-of-session.
I'm pretty sure I'm over-thinking it at the moment. I'll pull the city back to the basics and let the PCs create more of the environment for themselves.
Cheers again.
Rel nailed down the biggest problem I'm having currently: the proliferation of side- and sub-quests that occur simply because the players have so many options available. I'll start dealing with more of it out-of-session.
I'm pretty sure I'm over-thinking it at the moment. I'll pull the city back to the basics and let the PCs create more of the environment for themselves.
Cheers again.
Rel
Liquid Awesome
I ran an Eberron campaign set (for the first half anyway) in Sharn. I found the book pretty useful.
Basically I just did what I talk about above in terms of trying to keep the game focused on the adventure at hand and detailing those locations within the adventure. As I hinted in my earlier post you need to be fairly obvious in terms of clues that get the PC's from Point A to Point B. My experience is that if you leave any ambiguity that they will wander off to talk to nearby shopkeepers, constables, etc.
If you are really good at off the cuff GMing then that isn't such a big problem as you can either use these side encounters to steer them back toward the adventure or make a new adventure happen wherever they go. I'm ok at that but not great. So I try to make sure that I leave a pretty obvious trail of breadcrumbs from one part of the adventure to the next. And when I say "pretty obvious" I mean I leave entire loaves of bread every couple of inches.
One other thing that I've taken to doing in all my campaigns but especially in a city-based campaign is to have the PC's run afoul of some sizable organzation of "bad guys" (it's sometimes more fun when these bad guys are actually good guys with a very different agenda than the PC's) right in the early going. Getting on the wrong side of a church, an organized crime family, the assassins guild or even just a cartel of powerful merchants helps you out over the course of the campaign. Because then, whenever they wander into unexpected territory and you suddenly have no idea what to do, you can just have a group of priests/thieves/ninjas/thugs run out of the nearest alley and attack them.
The nice thing about this setup is that I don't force the PC's to go deal with the bad guys. They can go after them or not. But it gives me a "random encounter" that feels less random. If the PC's don't pursue these bad guys though, and they also aren't actively harming their interests in the city, I do eventually have the evil organization say, "We've lost enough thugs so let's just stop attacking them." Because by that point the PC's are certain to have pissed off a new set of bad guys or three.
That brings up one final thing: Make the city be a living, changing place. I sort of think of it as a big web of alliances, hatreds and interests. I mean networking is one of the big advantages of any society but especially one in such a compact area. So whatever the PC's do they are probably messing up somebody's plans. And not always the obvious bad guys either. By the same token they are probably forwarding somebody else's interests too. It's a nice change of pace from being attacked all the time to have somebody show up on their doorstep with a bag of gold and say, "Thanks for eliminating our rivals." It is especially delicious if the person who does that is somebody they have a reason to hate.
That's where the player tendency to hare off and pursue individual agendas pays you back for addressing it. It gives you an avenue to feed information to the PC's rather than just saying, "Make a Gather Information/Streetwise check." If they have buddied up to the local temple then the High Priest might call that PC in for a meeting and say, "We appreciate all the work you've done here but you've painted a big target on yourselves and we got word that the Bennelli Family has hired the Assassins Guild...." And these allies can be useful in promoting the PC's agenda too. In my Sharn campaign the party Cleric had cultivated the allegiance of a group of poor Kobolds and had them going around town painting anti-Silver Flame graffitti on the walls of buildings at night.
And sometimes people can just be friendly. A city campaign is one instance where you know that the PC's won't be in a new town every adventure and so you can develop the personalities of the local NPC's better without feeling like the effort will only pay off in the short term. In the Sharn campaign the PC's helped get a local baker's brother off of drugs (by killing his dealer actually) and after that fresh baked goods would be delivered to their doorstep every morning my the baker's cute little daughter. When criminals later kidnapped the girl to use as leverage against the PC's they were HIGHLY motivated to rescue her. That's cool.
Wraith Form
Explorer
Rel's commentary should be in the next DMG, and WotC should pay him a decent wad of cash for it.
I'd love to hear Rel expound upon the whole "web of alliances, hatreds and interests" aspect of his game.
Good stuff, everyone!
I'd love to hear Rel expound upon the whole "web of alliances, hatreds and interests" aspect of his game.
Good stuff, everyone!
Rone Barton
Explorer
A matter near and dear to my heart. I'm not trying to sell a book I wrote here, but I would like to explain how the process of writing it taught me a few things about how to organize and prioritize when birthing a rich urban environment that focuses on game-useable elements.
My co writers and I had to ask ourselves many questions when developing and writing a city book called the Great City Campaign setting for 0one Games, and some adventures for the Road to Revolution urban adventure arc set within it.
Where to start first? Well first we needed to figure out what the city's gist was. What makes this city any different from any other? In our case we decided that there was an imperial force that left the city a century ago, but returned to resume occupation just a few decades ago. That provides ample noble vs. native poor type tension, and tension is the name of the game when developing a city fertile with adventure seeds.
We created many intrigues begging for investigation, factions for PCs to join, all sorts of interelating alliances, rivalries and mysteries between politicians, guilds and cults, and criminal organizations. We loaded it with power player NPCs, and even just interesting characters in the different wards.... speaking of which, the book is divided between the The Army Ward, The Castle Ward, the Docks Ward, The Residence Ward, the Temple Ward and the Trade Ward... and a different writer took a crack at each. I got Temple Ward.
So, aside from designing a couple of city-specific deities, new monsters and religious organizations, I had only 12k words allotted to flesh out a bunch of temples, inns and other places of interest, not to mention sidebars indicating ward-specific events. The maps provided for me had keyed entries, and a bunch of unlabeled little buildings... and so I concentrated on giving 19 interesting locations in the ward and no more. If you can't make an adventure out of a Temple Ward with 19 locations, you're just not trying. Even if I was given extra word count and allowed to flesh out 30 locations, the reader would have had to crawl through it all. I figured, leave the even greater detail to supplemental projects such as adventures.
All in all, the book is a good fast paced read that doesn't mire in the eensiest details, but reveals just enough of them that GMs will have what they need to hit the ground running. When designing adventures for use with the setting, a setting left deliberately modular so that it could snap into anyone's homebrew or favored game setting, we did our best to ensure that the corebook wasn't absolutely necessary for play, only useful as a way to further flesh outcertain elements out if desired.
From this point on, when designing cities I'll be using the particular TOC we created because I think it's a winning recipe in terms of deciding what people need to run a city worthy of adventure and how much information to mete out before passing the 'school textbook' tipping point.
My co writers and I had to ask ourselves many questions when developing and writing a city book called the Great City Campaign setting for 0one Games, and some adventures for the Road to Revolution urban adventure arc set within it.
Where to start first? Well first we needed to figure out what the city's gist was. What makes this city any different from any other? In our case we decided that there was an imperial force that left the city a century ago, but returned to resume occupation just a few decades ago. That provides ample noble vs. native poor type tension, and tension is the name of the game when developing a city fertile with adventure seeds.
We created many intrigues begging for investigation, factions for PCs to join, all sorts of interelating alliances, rivalries and mysteries between politicians, guilds and cults, and criminal organizations. We loaded it with power player NPCs, and even just interesting characters in the different wards.... speaking of which, the book is divided between the The Army Ward, The Castle Ward, the Docks Ward, The Residence Ward, the Temple Ward and the Trade Ward... and a different writer took a crack at each. I got Temple Ward.
So, aside from designing a couple of city-specific deities, new monsters and religious organizations, I had only 12k words allotted to flesh out a bunch of temples, inns and other places of interest, not to mention sidebars indicating ward-specific events. The maps provided for me had keyed entries, and a bunch of unlabeled little buildings... and so I concentrated on giving 19 interesting locations in the ward and no more. If you can't make an adventure out of a Temple Ward with 19 locations, you're just not trying. Even if I was given extra word count and allowed to flesh out 30 locations, the reader would have had to crawl through it all. I figured, leave the even greater detail to supplemental projects such as adventures.
All in all, the book is a good fast paced read that doesn't mire in the eensiest details, but reveals just enough of them that GMs will have what they need to hit the ground running. When designing adventures for use with the setting, a setting left deliberately modular so that it could snap into anyone's homebrew or favored game setting, we did our best to ensure that the corebook wasn't absolutely necessary for play, only useful as a way to further flesh outcertain elements out if desired.
From this point on, when designing cities I'll be using the particular TOC we created because I think it's a winning recipe in terms of deciding what people need to run a city worthy of adventure and how much information to mete out before passing the 'school textbook' tipping point.
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Jack7
First Post
I concur completely.
This is something I wish more players, and more DMs or GMs of any game understood, the obvious advantages of - establishing, maintaining, and plying long term networks and networking contacts.
Informant networks, financial and financing networks, expertise networks, contact networks, political networks, religious networks, social networks, professional networks, and so forth and so on.
By establishing and maintaining viable and valuable networks and contacts wherever the characters go the players build up a market of expertise and ability that compliments their own, and can assist them whenever they really need it (and the reverse is true of course, networks are never one-way streets).
And by encouraging networks GMs build up a much, much more believable not to mention much more interesting world, than just continually laying out a never ending multitude of single term contacts whose only real value is to work one event, action, or incident.
It's just like in real life. It's far more practical and valuable to have a personal cadre and cache of human contacts and expertise to draw upon than to try and establish a new set of contacts on the fly to help resolve every problem you encounter.
Yes, occasionally or maybe even often you want to expand your personal networks, of course that's true, you want to replace extinguished or unreliable contacts, and want to add to the capabilities of your already existing networks, but instead of looking at every contact as a single-use function, you look at others as a long-term resource that can be exercised multiple times for problem solving. And you don't have to like or agree with every contact in your network, especially in networks like informant based or information based networks. You don't have to like them, they just have to be useful and trustworthy. (And if they are not then replace them with someone who is. Better fewer and more reliable contacts, than a multitude of untrustworthy ones.)
And like Rel said cities are an especially useful place to establish such networks.
That was a great series of observations on networking.
Rel
Liquid Awesome
Aw shucks. Thanks for the compliments from you and Jack7.
As for me expounding, you can find some in this thread:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...commentary-rels-d-d-4th-edition-campaign.html
But I'm pretty much posting it in real time (meaning that non-retrospectively) so I can't reveal too much info without tipping off my players as of yet. So I guess I'm saying, "Watch as I expound...in SLOW MOTION."
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