What are the best sources for City Based games?

[Scribble]

I'd like to add the Magical Midevil Society: Western Europe to the list. While it isn't specifically about cities, it does have a nice long section about cities and how they relate to the world around them, how they start and why, and what can be found in them. Good book.

Also I know there was a Dragon Magazine theme that ran for I think 2 issues. I forget the numbers, but it was all about Urban adventuring...

 

[Ron]

Lankhamar, for 1st edition AD&D is the best city supplement I've read. It is a licensed product based in Fritz Leiber stories. There is a lot to take from that book, including the culture, taxes, law, as well as a magnificent map of the whole city and smaller detailed portions you could add anywhere.

The City of Greyhawk Boxed Set, for 2nd edition AD&D is also pretty good. It's very similar to Lankhamar, which is no surprise, as Lieber was one of the inspirational authors for Gygax. Still it beats Lankhamar in the extensive use of colours and by including a bunch of min-adventures, which I got a lot of fun playing.

 

[philreed]

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.

Have you tried my rumors?

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=3087

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=2807


Here's a review:

http://www.enworld.org/reviews/index.php?sub=yes&where=active&reviewer=Kajamba_Lion&product=ADDR1

 

[The_Gunslinger658]

Geanavue

Hi,
Geanavue is from Kenzor Co. and written by Ed Greenwood and comes with a large color map of Geanavue, very nice indeed.This is a fantastic book on the City of Geanavue for Kingdoms of Kalamar but can easily be ported into another campaign. Lots and lots of crunch as well as fluff, This book goes into great detail on court intrigue in Geanavue, City life, city land marks, my favorate is the Sick Horse Fountain, a wizards soul "might be Trapped" within...........
Excellent detail on the ruling Class, the King is more or less a figure head and trade is actually king. Guilds are another feature of Geanavue, not just the Thieves or Assassins guilds, but also stoncutting guilds, mage guilds, and so on. Lots of NPC's to fiddle with, a few pages of Rumors and lots more.

I would highly recommend this one as a great source for city adventuring.
I would recommend City Works from Fantasy Flight publishing, theres some good crunch in City Works, like an Assassin, Acrobat and Pit Fighter base cless, some cool Prc classes like Kingpin, the Sreet Stalker and so on. The Feats are basically RPG based with the only two exceptions being Opportunist Shot and Quick Strike. As for spell's, some really cool ones including my Favorate, the Urban elemental made of trash. Detailed City encounters, NPC stats for law enforcement but thats about it for NPC stats not alot actually. Some great fluff on building up a city, city factions, gangs, plagues and so on.

If you can, try to get ahold of the old Warhammer FRPG books, some great ideas can be gleaned from them.

Scott

 

[diaglo]

Flying Buffalo's city books

Harn from www.columbiagames.com

and Dungeon Magazine


also for newer edition stuff try Freeport

 

[JoeGKushner]

Flying Buffalo has some great stuff in their City Book series! My favorite, off of memory, has got to be Deadly Nightshade. Ah, the duelist school... the assassisn... the treachery around every corner...

I keep hoping that we'll see a 3.5 version of this book but thus far... then again, seeing as how you can still buy the originals at conventions and such, I guess there are a lot of them floating around still.

 

[barsoomcore]

Geez, people, Citybooks have to wait to the second page?

Acid_crash, if you can find anything with "Citybook" in the title, buy it immediately. You can buy from Flying Buffalo's online (sort of) store. The Citybook are just compilations of urban encounters, each one with personalities, adventure hooks, maps, illustrations, the whole nine yards. No game stats, you have to make those up, but they're still the best urban resources you'll ever find.

It's not too much to say that Citybook changed the way I run campaigns.

Highly recommended.

 

[Treebore]

Lost City of Barakus, Grey Citadel, Morrick Mansion, City State of the Invincible Overlord, Lahkmar 1E, Waterdeep, Zhentil Keep boxed set, and many others are possible. There are a number of Dungeon villages/towns/cities I have used over the years.

I never heard of Streets of Silver, so I'll have to find it. One thing I have noticed about accessories, you can never have too many cities/towns/and villages. Unless you DM a sparsely populated campain world.

 

[Dr Simon]

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.

Ah, well I stand corrected. Perhaps others have done as you have. My understanding was that it started gritty and got cartoonish in later products but I guess I was mislead

 

[JoeGKushner]

Ah, well I stand corrected. Perhaps others have done as you have. My understanding was that it started gritty and got cartoonish in later products but I guess I was mislead

The original three adventurers are pretty gritty but the sourcebook itself, and some of the adventurers after it, have some... odd moments.