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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 816905" data-attributes="member: 259">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</blockquote>

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