D&D General Not enjoying the urban adventure I'm running

[Imaculata]

I see no problem with letting the players call the city guards when in a city. But eventually they'll get into situations that the guards cannot handle, and calling for reinforcements would make them responsible for the deaths of those very guards. And of course there are also corrupt guards.

My players planned a raid on a shipyard at some point, and they called in all the allies they could muster. Rather than having the npc's fight the whole battle for them, I told my players that the reinforcements would fight the majority of the enemies in the background, but that I would be zooming in on their own personal battle. So narratively speaking it was a collaborative effort (all the npc's took part), but gameplay wise it still came down to a battle between a bunch of baddies and the players (with no npc's involved at all).

Another example was a fight where the players organised an army of dwarves with rifles to help fight a massive creature in a lake. I used swarm rules for the dwarves, where each odd round they would fire off a volley of shots at the creature. However, if the dwarven leader was compromised, they could break morale. So this actually added an extra objective to the battle that made it more interesting.

 

[aco175]

"We cannot go looking for missing party members for 48 hours." "They always turn up- you should check the local bars."

"Need help looking for someone, I know there is an adventuring party at the Golden Lion. They tend to charge 100gp."

 

[robus]

Urban/detective based adventures take a lot of prep and a lot of thinking on your feat to run successfully. There is a reason for the popularity of dungeons - they are nice and easy to run. I have found myself in the situation of having to play Xanatos speed chess against the players as the villain responded to the actions of the PCs.

Yep too many variables for my liking and not enough variety.

 

[Maxperson]

Yep too many variables for my liking and not enough variety.

What about just talking to them and letting them know you aren't enjoying this sort of game and seeing they would be amenable to you setting the game up to move to a more traditional style of adventuring campaign?

 

[robus]

What about just talking to them and letting them know you aren't enjoying this sort of game and seeing they would be amenable to you setting the game up to move to a more traditional style of adventuring campaign?

Normally I would, but we’re just playing to the end of the semester, so not enough time to reboot. I’m going to try some of the recommended tricks noted above and try and things back to a good place.

 

[Todd Roybark]

I refer to it as the other end of the Blake's 7 campaign.

Actually, in contravention of my prior jocular post, this is a brilliant idea.
Especially as robus, has already indicated this campaign is intended to be a limited run.

Disregard what I said before...Wipe the party out in the last session.
Better yet, try to get some intra-party tension, to shoulder some of the work.

I have found myself in the situation of having to play Xanatos speed chess against the players as the villain responded to the actions of the PCs.

This is precisely what I love about urban adventures.

Shame that Blake’s 7 is unavailable for streaming.

 

[Blue]

City watch, while numerous, are probably individually weaker than PCs.

So let them do exactly as they are planning, and then let the chips fall where they may. Think of how many low level foes are littering the floor when PCs are done with them, and apply the same logic. When there are a number of bodies because the characters invited them along, the players may decided not to involve the watch anymore. Or perhaps only in a "contact to get some information from them" sort of way and not in a combat related way.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I was worried about this before it started and it's actually worse than I feared. My worry was that, with an entire town of NPCs to pester, the PCs would be constantly talking to anyone and everyone making planning for an upcoming session quite hard. The worse part is that they (reasonably) keep expecting the powers that be to sort out their problems. In the most recent session, one of the party got taken prisoner by the local gang and after discussing possible options amongst themselves they went with going to the city guard to help them recover their comrade. Absolutely reasonable and, of course, no self-respecting city guard person is going to ignore a cry for help (and it doesn't help that one of the PCs was a member of the city watch, so has contacts). But they're doing it a lot and it's a bit frustrating.

Now I certainly didn't help myself by having them going up against a gang that is much more powerful than them (they're level 3) but instead of trying the softly, softly, sneaky, sneaky approach they went running to the guard for backup (again entirely reasonably to choose that option, but it turns them into bystanders). Amusing anecdote, they tried this a couple of sessions ago when they discovered the identity of a villain (and left a mess in the process) and then while they were off rounding up the constabulary, the villain returned discovered that their lair had been ransacked and made their escape, and is now plotting their revenge... I thought that might have learned them...)

So (and I realize I'm opening myself up to a lot of criticism here) what, if anything, can I do about this? And is this the norm for urban adventures where NPC aid is around pretty much every corner?

Get them PCs deputized, and give the rest of the guard other things they need to take care of.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And I just wanna chime in and say, D&D does urban adventure very well.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yep too many variables for my liking and not enough variety.

This is precisely what I love about urban adventures.

Yes. There are a lot of variables, and it requires both extensive preparation and fast thinking during the game. It is, in effect "hard mode" for the DM. And, just like beating a game on the highest difficulty setting, it can be extremely satisfying to pull off successfully.

And I just wanna chime in and say, D&D does urban adventure very well.

The actual rules system is largely irrelevant, since many encounters tend to be resolved through role-playing rather than combat. Although a modern (non-superhero) or Science Fiction setting is more difficult, due to adding police procedures and forensic science to the list of things for the DM to worry about.