Tips and experience running a city campaign

[Dave G]

I was wanting to appeal to the collective experience of the players and GM's who have run/played in a city campaign.

I'm going to be starting one, and I've got some good ideas, but I figure knowing what makes a city campaign successful could only help me make the game better.

I'm going to be using the Bluffside campaign setting, and I want to keep this a true urban campaign.

Any thoughts?

 

[Hand of Evil]

NPCs, lots and lots of NPCs.

News! Take information from the news and create a newspaper listing events happening in the city.

Create landmarks. This way you can tell your players X is by Big Ben or a block from the docks.

 

[Pielorinho]

The first two dozen or so sessions of my current campaign were city-based, although there were three cities involved. Things I learned:

-They work a lot better with characters who have strong ties to the city. They don't have to be natives, but they need to be involved in city life, whether it's through their church, through their underworld connections, through a family business, through their occupation, through their ties to the city guard, or whatever. Strongly encourage players during character creation to formulate these ties.

-Similarly, if you've got the room to do so, let players build some sections of the city. One player in my game created the Court of the Moon and Sky, an elegant espionaged-based crime cartel, as part of his character background; I was able to expand on this organization and make it a significant part of several adventures. It not only helped me, it also helped him get more involved in the game.

-Give players a fair amount of information in the beginning, but don't overwhelm them. Know enough that you can rattle off the basic power structure of the city and give a one-sentence description of several power bases in the city ("The Scorolli family has huge landholdings outside of town and has a paternalistic, old-school attitude toward wealth and power. The Tower of Thought is a mysterious group of sages and wizards that live, strangely, in a towerless ring-shaped building in the Bookmaker's Quarter. The City Council is a strict plutocracy: anyone can gain a vote on the council by paying 10,000 gp a year for the privilege." etc.)

-Mysteries are great in cities, especially ones that involve politics: you can have all sorts of great blackmail, spying, love triangles, and the like going on.

-You've got a chance to blur alignments. In a city, players may have to ally themselves with squidgy people on occasion -- perhaps the only way to gain the information they need is to pay money to the ruthless crime lord, or maybe the Countess who employs them to destroy an apocalyptic cult also trades in slaves. Cities can be grim and gritty in a way that dungeons often aren't.

-Decide early on what level of violence is tolerated in the city. One one extreme is the city with few guards in which thugs roam the streets and violence is rarely punished by the authorities. On the other extreme is the city in which weapons must be peacebonded at all times (or are outright forbidden except to members of the government) and in which any use of magic on a nonconsenting target is a serious crime. Make sure the players know what you decide. Note that often, different areas in the same city may have different tolerances for magic -- street battles in the Old Quarter are all too common, whereas an unknown fighter wearing armor in the Noble Quarter will be quickly accosted by the guards.

I hope some of this is useful!
Daniel

 

[Teflon Billy]

I learned this the hard way my Fellow Billy, so please take it for what it's worth.

• Spellcasters are going to positively Dominate your game. Unlike normal dungeon crawls Spellcasters flexibility is going to be highlihgted to the detriment of an non-spellcasting class. In my experience, city campaigns tell to be a lot more RP intensive than your average D&D "Series of linked adventures". and there a re a *lot* more non-combat uses for the spell lists than there are combat uses.
  
  this is not exactly true of the ability to swing a weapon.
  
• Ramp up the EL of Combat Encounters, as there will be fewer of them. A combat encounter is supposed to use up 1/4 of the PC's resources (I think), if you only have one encounter a night (if that), the players will Breeze through your game like it was nothing. Ususally about 4-5 EL higher has done the trick in my games.
  
• Make those NPC's re-occur. It's one of the most fun bits of a city campaign for a DM
  
• Remember to include some kind of policing force that can challenge the PC's if they get way out of line. Standard lvl1 Fighter "City Guardmen" will not get the job done after a very few levels of PC growth.

More if I think of it.

 

[Dave G]

Thanks, this is exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for!

Keep it comin'!

 

[Pielorinho]

Good points, Teflon. A few comments:

• In my experience, actually, it's the rogues and not the wizards that dominate a city campaign. Those roleplaying skills just rock, and moving silently and hiding are also tremendously useful. In fact, this was such an issue for me that I ended up giving everyone 2 extra skill points for their first five levels, and allowing everyone to choose two skills to add to their always-on class list. This allowed fighter-types to get in on social scenes as well.
• Definitely ramp up ELs. I often find that a city-based session will have no or one fight in it, as characters spend most of their time schmoozing, skulking, and investigating. Combats should therefore be major events, both in terms of being scary ("Yikes, we're all going to die!") and advancing the storyline ("As you turn over the corpse of the man, his robe falls open around his neck, revealing a strange tattooed symbol on his throat. Make a knowledge: arcana check to see if you recognize it.")
• Most power bases in a D&D world will be aware that adventuring groups can wreak havoc, and will have some way to deal with that. Even a small village might be able to send word through their local church that some adventurers are messing things up, and the church's enforcers might come pay the village a visit. A large city will almost certainly employ a strike-force of high-level NPCs dedicated to taking down adventurers that threaten the city. This is perfectly plausible; equally plausible is that the PCs won't ever know the strike force exists until they draw its attention.

Daniel

 

[Ruined]

Lots of good advice above. I'll strongly second Billy's suggestion about using recurring NPCs. You may have an idea for an NPC that will factor into some cool plot, but it's too high of a level for the PCs. Go ahead and intro the NPC, then when the PCs are at the appropriate level, run the challenge and voila, instant foreshadowing!

Keep a list handy of typical stores that characters might seek (apothecary, weapon sellers, a variety of taverns). That way when the characters look for a place that they would know of, you can quickly hit them with 'You know of this bar that has these huge flagons they call Ogre Specials. And it's close by...'

In years of running a Planescape game mostly held in Sigil, I found that repetition is good to hit the characters with, to breed familiarity. After a short while, the players know all sorts of interesting places to visit, so they won't be at a loss for where to go, what to do.

Good luck with it. I personally love city games.

 

[MEG Hal]

Thanks, this is exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for!

Keep it comin'!

Try our free adventure to download as well, Right Under Your Nose it is at RPGNow, ENWorld (I think) and at Mortality and Pen&Paper...it is a Bluffside adventure. If nothing else pick out the stuff you want, it is free.

 

[NewJeffCT]

One thing I can definitely recommend is to create a fairly lengthy random list of names. In the past, when I ran city adventures, the PCs would inevitably do something unusual and get off the beaten track. Since I always struggled to find good names, especially when put on the spot, I found it handy to create a list of random names that you can stock in your local tavern, common room of an inn, barber shop (yes, I did have PCs that wanted a shave and a haircut once…), or just some name for local constables on patrol. Rather than just name the patron, "oh, his name is, ummm, Bob...and the girl is, uhhh... Mary." you can have a handy list to check off a name. "Oh yes, his name is Prentice Vellanas, and the young lady with him is Korinna Hightower..." I would have a column for human male, human female and any applicable demi-humans. Try creating a couple of good elven names on the fly and make it sound smooth and seamless in game? Not easy.

Similarly, names for taverns, inns and a few common shops (blacksmith, supplies, etc)

I agree with the above poster – the city should have a set of laws that they follow. If they are strict and lawful, PCs might need a reason to be out on the street after sunset, and guard patrols will be several men that are well armed and well prepared. If the city is not so strict, the guard patrols will be less frequent. We had one PC that displayed public drunkenness and was thrown in jail for a week! However, it was a very strict lawful good town that also frowned on drinking.

Landmarks are a good idea, too. The main town square, the market district, the castle, where the town watch is headquartered.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Something else I do, have the players make up places. These are places THEY know then place them on the map. How many, just a few each but they should relate to the player. A cleric would know where the temple was, a rogue the jail, a fighter the local tavern.

But let the players do the work for you, just given them guide-lines.

You can do the same for NPCs that they may know. I conside them contacts and think of them as special henchmen.