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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NewJeffCT" data-source="post: 1276886" data-attributes="member: 10784">I agree with a few above posters – a lot of vivid description of sights, sounds and smells.  If the players have just spent 3 months hiking across the continent to get to a large city, describe the differences in the smells and noise levels.  If you live in the suburbs of Connecticut like me, one of the first things you notice about Manhattan when you visit (after the tall buildings) is the smell and how many people are there.If you are intimidated in running a city, it may just be a matter of creating a few colorful NPCs to brighten things up – imagine Mos Eisely without Han Solo & Chewie (not to mention Greedo, the funky band, Jabba the Hut, etc)?  Imagine Bilbo’s party from the 1st LotR movie without Merry and Pippin?  All it takes is a couple of naughty hobbits, a worldweary smuggler, a sarcastic stable boy, a fast talking barkeep, a hardscrabble mercenary fighter, etc to make a city memorable.As also said above, landmarks and important streets are important in the city – imagine New York City without the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Yankee Stadium, Times Square, etc for landmarks or without Broadway and Fifth Avenue for streets?  Maybe your city has a huge 20 foot stone statue of the city’s founder in a square outside the castle?  Or, maybe a series of well cared for polished stone arches set exactly every 50 meters along the main road from the city gates to the King’s castle.  Or, the center of the merchant district is a large open market, at the edge of which sits a huge brightly painted (some proper folks say gaudily painted) inn and tavern frequented by traveling merchants from other lands.I also found a few small organizational things useful.  If you have players that like to talk and role-play, make up a long list of generic names to use in case the group decides to talk to *every* single person in the tavern.  It always makes play run smoother if you do not have to stammer and stutter while thinking of yet another name.  You may need a good list in a city, unlike the countryside.  Colorful names for a few generic inns and taverns help as well.</blockquote>

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