What is your favorite city to base your campaign around?

[johnsemlak]

A city in an established setting? Greyhawk? Waterdeep?

A drop-in city like Freeport? Bluffside?

Lankhmar?

Do you like to 'drop in' a published city into your campaign?

 

[der_kluge]

Bluffside, of course. But, I'm biased, since I wrote a big chunk of it.

 

[Crothian]

Bluffside is a fantastic city, and the best that has been written in almost 20 years. That's because 20 years ago the best city was developed, Sanctuary, Thieves World. No better city exists.

 

[Agnostic Paladin]

I tend to stay away from major centres. I like having my players travel from town to town and occassionaly visit large cities. Part of that is that big cities can be a lot of work and another part is that my player's tend to leave towns with the understanding that they're not welcome back.

 

[Azure Trance]

Bluffside! But I've yet to read the various cities I have in the SL settings, although I doubt they are as DM Friendly & Universal as Bluffside is.

EDIT

Whoops. In 2nd Ed that would be Sigil. Need some 3rd Ed stats for that sucka ;D

 

[Silver Moon]

While the best city I ever used was from a homebrew campaign, the vast majority of the shops and NPC's in it were taken directly from an excellent long out-of-print Judge's Guild module named "Verbosh". While it may take a little work to update some of this source material to 3rd Edition, I would still highly recommend it to anyone who happens to find a copy.

 

[BeholderBurger]

Lhankmar is my city of choice at the moment.

It is just so dirty but still proper D&D.

 

[Outlaw]

Sanctuary

That's because 20 years ago the best city was developed, Sanctuary, Thieves World

Oooo, I own the board game! That thing rocks! ...I haven't played in awhile. Sounds like it's time to bust that thing back out.

 

[Outlaw]

Cities

The two I use most frequently are (of course) both from the Kingdoms of Kalamar, but they fit what I want out of a city. Narr-Rytarr, the Lost City is in the wild north, along the shore of a mighty lake (read: sea) and tucked nicely into a monster filled forest. Great for adventuring. It's easy to fit in monsters, lost catacombs, secret hideouts and relics of history.

I also use Bet Rogala in the Principality of Pekal. It's in the middle of everything. Independent from the old empire of Kalamar, they emperor wants to reannex the kingdom while there's potential for various other kingdoms to exert their will. Allows for good politics and military battles.

 

[Deadguy]

I regret that I have to be rpedicatable and join others who have said that of published cities for 3e then Bluffside wins hands down! It just has so much material that is easy to manipulate. Heck, in my own game, which makes a lot of changes from standard 3e, it is still easy to use Bluffside!

That said, of the cities that I have enjoyed running in my Shattered World campaign, my favourite is still my homebrewed City of Dinaglish. The site of the reopening of human habitation on the fragment of Mon Murthach, it is 900 years old, with a concretion of city structures one on another, including the original, earth elemental-dug sewers, and a separate island in the river of semi-independent wizards. In designing Dinaglish, I learned that I didn.t need to draw maps of every building in every street, but could simply describe neighbourhoods, and then draw up only buildings that were essential. Some day the PCs will go back, though they are in for a surprise: it will have been overrun by its evil neighbour, and is now a city under martial law!