State of the Art City Settings?

[Garnfellow]

As I look over my d20 collection, I see tons of monster books and rule expansion books, a handful of adventures, and a couple of campaign settings. But no city books.

In fact, the last city setting I bought was Waterdeep from 2nd edition, which at the time was pretty much the gold standard for RPG design.

So what's the gold standard for 3e cities today? And what makes them so good?

 

[JoeGKushner]

City State of the Invicible Overlord published by Necromancer Games has some great details and isn't a lawful good friendly happy smiling type place.

Bluffside has some great elements (adamantine mine) but is a bit high fantasy with it's odd mixture of races like Steam Gnomes.

 

[philreed]

Track down a copy of Cityworks by Mike Mearls and published by Fantasy Flight Games. It's an excellent city toolkit that you can use to design your own cities.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Bluffside
City State of the Invicible Overlord
Freeport
Silver City
Geneauve (sp) KoK city book
Waterdeep
Couple from Mongoose

There are a number out.

 

[MonsterMash]

I like City State of the Invincible Overlord for a major city and Grey Citadel for a smaller city setting (in an adventure), both published by Necromancer Games.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Thieves Quarter is a great book, but though it is (was?) intended to be a part of a complete city, it obviously isn't a full city in and of itself.

The best city book I ever found was a generic book from 10 or 15 years ago, called Carse.

 

[Eosin the Red]

Thieves Quarter and Gueneve are the two best IMO.

Phils recommendation is also spot on - Cityworks is a great read and a good tool.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Thieves Quarter is a great book, but though it is (was?) intended to be a part of a complete city, it obviously isn't a full city in and of itself.

The best city book I ever found was a generic book from 10 or 15 years ago, called Carse.

That wasn't generic! That was Midkemia! That and Tulan and another book or two madei t out of Midkemia Press and I've been waiting for a RPG ever since.

 

[Desdichado]

I like Freeport, but you have to buy into the pirate theme a bit to use it. I also like Hollowfaust a lot, but you might need to take out some Scarred Lands specific stuff if you're using it in another setting. Same for Sharn; that's a nice book, but very Eberron specific.

 

[Staffan]

Sharn is a great city book, but much of what makes it tick is tied to the Eberron setting as a whole (dragonmarks, Inspired, artificers, the Last War, and stuff). But me, I see that as an advantage