Tips and experience running a city campaign

[Malcolm]

Good input from alot of folks.

In keeping with the "make it personal" theme mentioned, I do:

1.) Make sure some NPCs just hate the PCs. Some will have reasons and some just won't like the way they look. Interactions will vary based on NPC and PC power levels, etc. They will go out of their way to make sure the PCs time spent in town is awful (a good reason to get out of the City every now and then or go into a Dungeon!)

2.) Have some NPCs just Love the PCs. See #1 above. They will go out of their way to make sure the PCs want to stay in town (someone to fence magic items and treasure off to for good prices? someone who heals them randomly for free when they can; or even someone who just has an encouraging word)

3.) Have various folks in the city who recognize the PCs as tools (some for nefarious means, some for benign) and who arrange for the PCs to carry out missions, not always knowing who the ultimate power is. PC/mercenary figures give powerful people (or those with some extra cash) means to "get around in the city" without "getting around".. if ya know what I mean.

Let the PCs decide how they will react to these 3 groups, and then milk it for campaign ideas from there. If you let players forge their own alliances/vendettas they will usually build the campaign for you in some ways, and along a path they desire.

 

[mseds99]

Great advice above...but here's one more:

Always write down NPC's:
what they do
a dominant characteristic about them
how that NPC interracted with the PC's.

I use index cards for this info and keep it in alphabetical order. I guarantee that info will be useful later on.

I also tend to send out an updated "NPC sheet" to my players every now and then. It helps both the players and the DM remeber who is who.

Good luck and have fun.

 

[F5]

Give the PCs a home base. It helps tie them to the city if they can point to a map and say "that's where my house is".

 

[Ghostmoon]

I agree with all the above and offer a few thoughts:

• Make sure everyone is well aware before character creation that this will be an almost purely urban campaign. This will allow them to create appropriate characters for the game and not get stuck with a PC they don’t want or that is fairly useless.
  
• Keep an eye out for spotlight hogging, even if it is unintentional. In combat, the spotlight tends to be fairly equally distributed and the action passes from player to player via initiative. In a more RP intensive environment, you don't have this mechanism and the action can be rapidly skewed to one or two players while everyone else sits around bored. Since you will likely be doing more RPing, this has to be carefully watched.
  
• Watch out for "side treks" and the party splitting up. In the city, players will likely feel safer (and rightly so) and may be more willing to split up. Depending on the size of your group, this can be a disaster, especially if it is an intensely RP type game. One way around this is offer to handle individual side treks outside the game via e-mail or message boards. This is a time commitment though.
  
• Repetition is key to breeding familiarity and thus a strong connection to the city. A few, key, well-described memorable NPCs and locations with short or easy to remember names will make a huge difference in bringing the place to life.

If you like to see how our group is doing an urban campaign, check out the link in my sig.

 

[Gizzard]

Running a City has been very different for me than running a dungeon.

As the poster above mentions, the party is much more prone to split up into mini-parties and go out on their own. This is almost impossible to stop, and certainly makes matching the EL of any planned encounters a bit dicier. We've had one (pathetic) fatality which was due to the Cleric being otherwise occupied while the rest of the party stumbled into the Boss Monster. Running a Freeport-style "evil beneath the city" adventure can clean up some of this; although the party never seems to *all* go into the sewers at the same time at least they are reluctant to go in by themselves on a whim. I think whats more important from a DMing point of view is that the under-city runs a lot like a traditional dungeon crawl, which is IMHO a good change of pace.

As far as NPCs go, I wrote a short C program that randomly generates 3 attributes to add some depth to the people that the party meets. Its certainly done some stuff I never expected - a Cult member who is just described as "female" in the module ended up being "wizened, make-up'd & hard-hearted". The party spends a bunch of time discussing whether to kill her or torture her for information expecting just a generic "Cultist" - then they yank off her Cult-mask and find some crazy old woman crying great tracks in her overdone mascara. Anyway, this sort of detail gives the DM some direction to take the character.

The points about law-and-order are also well taken. In a Freeport-style city you have a City Guard, Thieves Guilds, mercenary groups and private guards hired by wealthy people. There are a lot of power-factions to cross! I'm not sure what the best path is - I've been letting the players run rampant, but they've used the opportunity to aggravate some powerful people in the city. I dont think we'd have had as much fun in some sort of lawful city where weapons have to be checked at the gates, but theres a balance to be struck between "fun" and "trouble". ;-)

 

[officeronin]

Here's few tips:

1. Use index cards for NPCs. Create a format that includes most of the information. Create a half-dozen NPCs of each class, varying levels, and more of classes that would be prevalent like rogues, commoners, experts, warriors, fighters, etc. (you could have the players help with this...) These NPCs do not have names -- they are in addition to the "named" NPCs. They become "named" on the fly.

2. Every conflict has at least 3 parties -- the two sides and the other interested parties.

3. Purchase one of those little books of baby names at the Supermarket Checkout aisle.

4. Think about economics -- where do these folks get food, fresh water, etc.? Also, why did they build here?

5. Think about history -- why did they build here? If there are multiple social groups (differentiates by race, economic status, religion, etc.), how did each of them come to be there, and how did/do they get along? Many times, there are different "quarters" or (in the European sense) "ghettos" for the different groups. I'd make maps for each era of the city's history, showing how it grew and changed -- maybe a timeline, too.

OfficeRonin

 

[Desdichado]

I glanced over most of the replies here, but I'm sure I'll repeat stuff that's already been said. Too bad!

• Have a list of names handy for that on-the-fly guy you need to name.
• Have a few NPC stat-blocks handy for impromtu scuffles.
• Have a list of traits that can make NPCs memorable, and apply usually just one to folks that they meet. Whenever they meet them again, be sure to stress and repeat this trait -- it'll be a good hook for the PCs to remember him by, as well as making him more real.
• PCs typically need to have some involvement with the city; otherwise, why would they stay there? If this is so, they also need to have some knowledge of the city, so you may end up giving relatively detailed briefings to the players before the game starts just to get them up to speed enough to play their characters convincingly.
• PCs need some kind of reason to adventure in the city, and some kind of "license" to do so -- if they're constantly in jail for causing trouble, the game isn't very fun. There's a tricky balance between letting the PCs cut loose a little bit, but reminding them that they're smack dab in the middle of a civilized location and can't expect to solve all their problems with violence.
• Maps are good, and a generic city map is a good tool for players, especially if their characters are supposed to be familiar with the city.
• Plan out plots and intrigues ahead of time, and let the PCs discover layer upon layer of mystery as they adventure. City games need the convoluted plots, twisting intrigues and the like, since they don't otherwise have the straightforward excitement of wilderness and dungeon adventures. For this, you'll need a fairly good understanding of your power blocks, some NPCs within them, and their agendas.
• Read drnuncheon's Freeport story hour for inspiration! That's great city adventuring, IMO.

 

[Emiricol]

Lots of good advise given already. Let me emphasize a previous point though - rogues and wizards will both be major players in the game so do NOT let them get away with having a weak background. You will need built-in plot hooks and conflicts to keep them in check.

Also, bards are murder on many city campaigns, but also good tools for you. Expect Gather Info and Bardic Knowledge checks early and often so use that to your advantage. Don't make mysteries anything a bard could conceivably unravel - this means having NPCs who are pawns of other NPCs be the visible enemies and allies of the PCs for example. But if you want them to follow a particular clue, let Tim the Bartender reveal it in a gather info check and they'll usually be off like a cat on string.

Experience is often an issue in city campaigns, as combat is less frequent and PCs are itching for fights. One way of doing things is to assign XP per hour of gameplay- 25 per hour per level of the PC for example - plus the combat XP.

Another way might be to assign an EL to any die roll the PCs have to make (if the DC is 5 more than the PC's skill, it is CR=PC level, if 10 more CR=PC level+1, etc). This one takes some work as you will need to make most of the checks opposed checks or the PCs will quickly stop being able to gain XP as the tasks become relatively speaking easier and easier.

Finally, one way to give PCs real tie-ins and built in plot hooks is to give PCs "contacts" that are not defined at game start - 1d6 contacts plus cha mod - which represent allies, people the PC grew up with or encountered in their past. Any time a PC encounters an NPC they can check to see if they have a history with the NPC, or the DM can arbitrarily decide an NPC is one of a PC's contacts. I made the check a simple D20 roll, no stat mods, DC 10 plus whatever I felt appropriate. So, a fighter with a criminal background might be more likely to know the rogue guild lieutenant than a cleric from a LG church who grew up in the order...

 

[Rel]

I've run and am currently playing in a city campaign. Most of the stuff I'd recommend has already been touched on above. But one little snag that seems to come up frequently in city games is what I term the "Let the police handle it" problem.

Almost inevitably, the party will wind up going against some group of evil-doers. These evil-doers are...well...doing evil. This evil they're doing is probably also illegal. There could easily come a point where the party feels overwhelmed and the obvious solution seems to be to turn the matter over to the local constabulary and let them help, if not take over entirely, battling the evil-doers.

There are lots of ways of leveraging the party out of doing this. But remember that if you lean on the party or paint a picture of a place where the police "don't want to get involved", then it's tough to later have the cops come down on the party when they start a bar fight or a building accidentally gets burned down.

 

[Pielorinho]

I've run and am currently playing in a city campaign. Most of the stuff I'd recommend has already been touched on above. But one little snag that seems to come up frequently in city games is what I term the "Let the police handle it" problem

Hoo boy -- this is a great point. There are a couple of ways I've seen to handle it:

1) The police are slow-moving: by the time they're on the case, the evil plot will have commenced.
2) The police are suspicious: if you go to them warning them about cult activity, they're just as likely to arrest you, suspecting you're trying to stir up trouble.
3) The police are corrupt: go to them about a problem in the city, and you'll find out they're part of the problem.
4) The police are inept: if they try to confront the bad guy, they'll get creamed. (works better in smaller towns)
5) The police hire adventurers: when unusual problems come up, they prefer to handle them via hiring an adventuring party. This gets them the most bang for their buck, since they don't need to keep powerful NPCs on salary, and they often find that adventuring parties will work for bad guy loot plus a ridiculously small stipend.
6) Some combination of the above. Maybe the police mostly want to keep order amongst the nobles and don't care if nobles are involved in a plot (inept/corrupt); while the wheels of justice will eventually close in on the nobles, they'll be slowed down by the bureaucrats who depend on the nobles for their jobs (slow-moving). But a hard-bitten idealistic guard who works for the police hears about the PCs' case and meets them after hours in a bar to find out how to work with them (hire adventurers).

But yeah -- if the police are so all-fired effective, then either the PCs should be part of the force, or they should look elsewhere for adventures.

Daniel