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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5396869" data-attributes="member: 177">Another possibility: d) The authorities... don't have authority!As an example - I'm running a Deadlands game, and the party's currently hanging out in Dodge City, Kansas.  One of the lawmen in town is an icon of competent lawmen: Wyatt Earp.  How do we have the party not running to Earp on a constant basis?Simple - Earp's jurisdiction is limited.  He's a deputy Marshal in town.  His authority doesn't extend much outside of town proper, and is limited to enforcing the laws of the town.  The town government is actively trying to remain neutral with respect to the Union and Confederates.  So, intrigue and espionage, even when it represents a clear and present danger to people, is not in Earp's jurisdiction.  Until someone ends up dead, or some other local ordinance is broken, his hands are tied.Here's a note: for urban campaigns, maps are not all they're cracked up to be.  Humans make mental maps, but they aren't complete - they typically are built out of the individual locations the person is interested in, and the ways to get between them.   Know the major locations, and how you'd get from A to B to C, and leave the rest unspecified until you need it.  For example, I ran a game set in NYC, and I didn't use a detailed street map - I based off a subway map, as that was the best way to get around.You have a bit of time, and a few uninvolved friends?  Write up a script, and record the conversations you want the party to hear on your computer, radio-play style!The secret is to learn that you don't need to know what the NPCs are going to say in response to a question, but to know what the NPCs want to talk about.  Before you detail an NPCs stats, detail their current situation, motivations, and goals.  Conversation falls out of that.Yes, urban areas are cramped.  That's the way it is.  I have generally avoided the urge to try to make that not true.  The space is what it is, and if you want to fight, you have to deal with it.I've found this usually leads to both the PCs and NPCs holding off fights until they can pick the ground on which it is fought.  Less, even, for the ground, as the fact that in urban areas there are witnesses, and judicial systems.This is an artifact of the fact that we so focus on the action scenes, but not that the party spends huge amounts of time together not fighting for their lives.  If it were that important to them, after the third time it came up after a fight, someone would bring it up in a slow moment after dinner in camp.  Ask them to come to some mutual understanding on that basis.</blockquote>

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