What are the best sources for City Based games?

[Shadowdancer]

Check out Thieves' Quarter from The Game Mechanics.

 

[philreed]

Check out Thieves' Quarter from The Game Mechanics.

You can get it here:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=2475

 

[MonsterMash]

I'm going to be a dittohead and pimp the Grey Citadel and City State of the Invincible Overlord

 

[JoeGKushner]

Check out Thieves' Quarter from The Game Mechanics.

Another great city based resource. Heavy on the fluff with utility in mind. Hardly any new crunch, maybe an item or poison, but it's all about the peoples.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

The single best city sourcebook I've ever owned is called Carse. I think -- though I'm not positive -- that it was put out by Midkemia Press. I'm sure the only place you could find it would be eBay. It had a fully detailed small city -- every building described, even if only as "currently empty," with plenty of NPC plot hooks. It had an isometric player's map. It was system-generic, allowing DMs who consider "powerful" to be 8th level to use it as easily as DM who consider "powerful" to be 16th level.

I was pretty impressed by Thieves Quarter, but it remains to be seen whether the rest of that city will actually see publication.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Would the Freeport modules be any use? I've not read them, but I've heard good things about them (and the word "gritty" crops up, so they might work).

Out-of-box Freeport is not gritty. It's actually very cartoonish. It uses way too much anachronistic humor, for instance. There's a little something wrong with the large majority of the ruthless and political Captains' Council of a pirate city is Good-aligned.

That said, with some relatively minor surgery, Freeport can be made gritty, which is how I use it.

Also, as I parrot myself nauseatingly for as long as it continues to be true, there's no damned encounter tables for the city! That's just an absolutely crazy omission for a setting as popular as Freeport.

 

[scranford]

Streets of Silver, by Living Imagination is the and biggest (310 pgs) and in my opinion best city book out there, and it fits easily into most fantasy settings. I'm also a big fan of Carnival of Swords, by Paradigm Concepts as a great "Roman Empire" feeling City adventure and sourcebook.

 

[Psion]

I don't have Cityworks (having feeling taken by the prior work in the series, I was feeling cautious about buying it), but of the other city references out there:

Lots of them seem to have details like demographics, establishments, and NPCs.

Precious few of them actually give you STUFF TO DO in the city. And to be frank, that's where I need the most help, otherwise the city just becomes a base of operations.

Anyone know of any exceptions, because I am having problems thinking of any city resources that shine in this aspect.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Precious few of them actually give you STUFF TO DO in the city. And to be frank, that's where I need the most help, otherwise the city just becomes a base of operations.

I'm not sure what you mean by "stuff to do," but most decent settings give a number of hooks or short adventure suggestions.

Now if you're talking about something more detailed -- but still less detailed than a full adventure -- I think it's a great idea. If a publisher created a book of, say, two-page summaries of "generic" city adventures, I'd buy it immediately, and I don't often buy stuff from small or PDF publishers.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about detailed encounters ... I'm talking about full adventures, but presented in outline or summary form, and suitable for plug and play. Don't invent new NPCs ... just tell me something like, "a ruthless or greedy moneychanger" or a "young and idealistic adventurer wannabe," and let me pick the appropriate NPC from my setting. Same for locations.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The single best city sourcebook I've ever owned is called Carse. I think -- though I'm not positive -- that it was put out by Midkemia Press. I'm sure the only place you could find it would be eBay. It had a fully detailed small city -- every building described, even if only as "currently empty," with plenty of NPC plot hooks. It had an isometric player's map. It was system-generic, allowing DMs who consider "powerful" to be 8th level to use it as easily as DM who consider "powerful" to be 16th level.

I was pretty impressed by Thieves Quarter, but it remains to be seen whether the rest of that city will actually see publication.

Carse and Tulan were great books. I never got a hold of Jonril.

I keep hoping that Midkemia Press will start making products again.