State of the Art City Settings?

[Jeff Wilder]

I like Freeport, but you have to buy into the pirate theme a bit to use it.

Not just pirates; I could get behind that easily. Freeport just has too much silliness in it, which is, IMO, an unforgivable sin in a setting tied so closely to Cthulhoid horror. It also has too much niceness ... lemme get this straight: this is a city of pirates, but almost every single member of the Captain's Council is good-aligned? Bah.

I wanted to love Freeport, because I loved the three original adventures, but I just can't endorse it. (As a final strike against it, it doesn't even have an encounter table.)

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.

Hollowfaust is awesome, but it really is Scarred Lands-specific. I'm not sure the connection can be severed.

To JoeGKushner: what about Carse wasn't generic? I've been using the book through the years (and rules-sets) with no problem at all. (I absolutely love that map.)

 

[Garnfellow]

What really prompted my question was my recent purchase of City State of the Invincible Overlord.

As a work of nostalgia, I think this is a fantastic book. In typical Necromancer fashion, they took the best parts of the original work, updated the whole into rock-solid 3e mechanics, and gave it a nice new paint job. I'd much rather have a copy of this book than a copy of the original in mint condition.

There's another thread running right now asking about interest in 3e conversions of classic 1st/2nd edition modules. I would really only be interested in these if Necromancer did them -- the Necro team has absolutely nailed the art of converting old material into solid 3e mechanics without losing the integrity of the original material. Some conversions do too little actual conversion, and simply reintroduce bad or stupid game mechanics that got jettisoned from 3e for a reason. Others make such radical changes that you no longer recognize whatever it was that made the original material great. Necromancer consistently hits the sweet spot in between these extremes.

So I think their version of the City State stays utterly true to the original, warts and all. And on one hand, if I were to review it, I'd want to give it a 5/5 on being able to skillfully walk the conversion tightrope. It's really a very charming revisiting of a classic RPG setting.

But on the other hand, I'm also looking at using the City State in an upcoming game. And I'm finding the old-school structure rather hard to work with. It's really just a series of static encounter locations (though each location is rather vividly described by itself).

What I need are some adventure hooks, some quick and dirty ways to string a few of these isolate encounter locations together into a coherent adventure or two that would work for my particular party. I'm sure there are plenty of potentially exciting and challenging capers in the City State for a 4th level party, but I'd don't have a lot of time to invest on this.

So on the other hand, while I find the book a great read, as a practical gaming tool I find it a bit limited. One thing I like in my game books is an ability to use stuff right out of the box. But maybe that isn't a practical expectation for /any/ city setting. Am I being too hard on the City State?

Which led me to my initial question -- I'm interested in hearing about other recent city supplements, what they do differently and maybe better than the old school.

 

[EricNoah]

Anyone interested in D&D cities should also track down the web enhancement for the 3.5 DMG.

 

[Garnfellow]

Anyone interested in D&D cities should also track down the web enhancement for the 3.5 DMG.

I did not know about that -- many thanks. Here's the link:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20030719a

 

[Hand of Evil]

Oh, later this year The World's LARGEST CITY!

 

[Hand of Evil]

While not a city book, ARG's Toolbox has a lot of stuff in it to help a DM with cities.

 

[John Morrow]

I did not know about that -- many thanks. Here's the link:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20030719a

Using this supplement, I've been making rough city maps very quickly. Simply write (or use a graphics program like I do) the type of district, what's found there, and the population provided by this supplment on the map where it is without worrying about drawing all the roads or building. Only draw major geographic features (e.g., rivers, bridges, hills, cliffs, really major roads) and just use the district type names and for everything else like buildins and small streets just use your imagination or make it up as you need it. The result gives you the basic geographic relationship between parts of the city for purposes of time and distance and is good enough unless the city is the focus of an adventure. You can always go back in fill in the details later.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I did not know about that -- many thanks. Here's the link:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20030719a

I had no idea such a thing existed. Thanks guys!

 

[Patman21967]

I have Carse, and one called Baldemar, I think by Gygax, I'll have to look when I get home. Carse is awesome...It has been used in both DnD setting and RQII settings extensively..but, by far, the absolute coolest city has to be, Middenheim. period.

 

[WayneLigon]

My two favorite city books are .. way out of print New Pavis, with the huge fold out map, and the Theive's World boxed set, both from Chaosium back in the day. City State of the Invincible Overlord was well-done; glad to see they kept the same map. Cities of Harn and Son of Cities are both good books for very small cities.

I have no seen Gueneve. The Theive's Quarter book promises a very nice city. The temple quarter book will be out soon, I think, and once they release the entire city I might get it. The Seven Cities book was good, but they need a better mapper.

Bluffside, Streets of Silver, indeed most of the modern d20 city books do nothing for me. Hideous unbeleivable maps, virtually all of them. The Kalamar city book just made me shake my head. It looks like something a random generator put together.

The old Warhammer supplements had some excellent city maps and building designs. Indeed, the quality of building design in the British 1E AD&D products was always far, far superior to anything TSR every did (with two exceptions: Ravenloft, and .. something about a mirror - it had the first TSR castle map that wasn't a block with four towers.)