D&D 5E What Makes a Good Urban Adventure?

[LordEntrails]

Agree that urban adventures are best designed as "Node-based". Check out the Alexadrian articles on node-based scenario design. Very useful.

To me, the one thing that defines an urban adventure is "grey".

In a dungeon, see an orc, kill it. Even if it's Neutral Good, nobody is going to complain you killed an orc. In an urban adventure, see a kobold? Maybe you can kill it, maybe if you do the town guard will arrest you and have you tried for the murder of a well known do-gooder. Someone know to bring milk to the homeless children, etc.

Urban adventures have civilians, whether they are good or evil, they are civilians and you can't just kill them unless you have proof! Evil might be evil, but there are laws. There are multiple power groups. Their are rivalries, even the good guys might not be friendly towards the party.

 

[S'mon]

Any or all of the 2E Lankhmar materials, as well as the 2E Book of Thieves are great references for an urban campaign.

No!

Don't buy anything by Dale 'Slade' Henson.

Trust me on this. 25 years later & I'm still traumatised...

 

[The_Gneech]

No!

Don't buy anything by Dale 'Slade' Henson.

Trust me on this. 25 years later & I'm still traumatised...

Now, now. The corny bits fit the corny bits in Lankhmar perfectly. Fritz Leiber was basically writing "If Nero Wolfe stories were set in medieval Florence."

-TG

 

[GlassJaw]

I love urban campaigns...but they cab be difficult to run. As others have mentioned, a true urban campaign isn't simply "dungeons in the city". The city needs to be a major player in the mood and feel of the campaign, which becomes both a blessing and a curse.

As someone who has thought a lot about and run urban games, my advice is this: paint in broad strokes and embrace improvisation. Role-playing and improvisation are job requirements for a DM when running an urban game. You simply cannot flesh out every NPC and every storefront.

What I do is focus on the high-level description and "essence" of the city. I like to be extremely vivid with sites, sounds and smells as the players travel around the city. Then I pick a few locations and flesh them out in detail to serve as the players' "home base". Familiarity with locations and NPCs will give the players a sense that the city is home.

I've also found that the traditional "kill monsters and take their stuff" adventurer motivation don't work as well in urban campaigns. The players need new motivations, and preferably, the primary motivation early on is survival. The city itself needs to be a threat. I tend to fall back on my Thief and Shadowrun upbringing. Cut back on treasure. Cut back on magic. Make the players savor their first gold piece. Enforce lifestyle expenses.

 

[Soul Stigma]

I love urban campaigns...but they cab be difficult to run. As others have mentioned, a true urban campaign isn't simply "dungeons in the city". The city needs to be a major player in the mood and feel of the campaign, which becomes both a blessing and a curse.

As someone who has thought a lot about and run urban games, my advice is this: paint in broad strokes and embrace improvisation. Role-playing and improvisation are job requirements for a DM when running an urban game. You simply cannot flesh out every NPC and every storefront.

What I do is focus on the high-level description and "essence" of the city. I like to be extremely vivid with sites, sounds and smells as the players travel around the city. Then I pick a few locations and flesh them out in detail to serve as the players' "home base". Familiarity with locations and NPCs will give the players a sense that the city is home.

I've also found that the traditional "kill monsters and take their stuff" adventurer motivation don't work as well in urban campaigns. The players need new motivations, and preferably, the primary motivation early on is survival. The city itself needs to be a threat. I tend to fall back on my Thief and Shadowrun upbringing. Cut back on treasure. Cut back on magic. Make the players savor their first gold piece. Enforce lifestyle expenses.

Improv is key, you should bold it!


Sent from my iPhone using EN World mobile app

 

[Yaztromo]

I like adventures taking place in run down factories, with automation that keeps going, dangers from moving robotic arms, melt metals and the like. Think about some memorable Terminator scenes.
This could be a kind of urban dungeon, after all...

 

[THEMNGMNT]

I'm not convinced that urban adventures mean the players can go anywhere and do anything. After all, the same is technically true in a dungeon or wilderness adventure. But the players (hopefully) have a clear understanding that the adventure is in the dungeon, which is why they stay in the dungeon. Similarly, in a city, I would hope and expect that the players follow the thread of the adventure. This can even be explicit--in Monte Cook's original Ptolus campaign, he and the players had a metagame agreement that they would never leave the city.

Two of my favorite urban adventures are Expeditions to the Ruins of Greyhawk and Monte Cook's The Banewarrens. Both are dungeon delves with extensive action in the city. I think both provide great examples of how to balance freedom with structure.

If you have all freedom and no structure, it's not really an urban adventure. It's an urban hexcrawl. Which is something entirely different.

For DMs, I think it's important to give yourself a set of tools that help with creating consistency in urban adventures. Otherwise, you're endlessly improv-ing. For example, a city that is strongly thematic (like Sharn or Menzobarranzan) is one way to create consistency. Another is to utilize factions and allies. For example, if a player is a member of a merchant's guild or thieves' guild or the Harpers or whatnot, let them use those connections all across the city. So you don't have to create NPCs from scratch--you can give them a common background or shared goal. This is one area where 13th Age's icon relationships can be a great inspiration.

 

[Aldarc]

In addition to many of the aforementioned issues, there is another exceptionally important issue for GMs and players in urban adventures: establishing a sense of place. Wilderness and dungeon adventures essentially have players playing sight-seeing "tourists." You are not a resident. You don't have real social or personal connections. You are not forced to see these same faces over and over again. Urban adventures are about establishing that sense of place. Your neighbors remain your neighbors. You will see these shopkeepers, authorities, and citizens on a fairly regular basis. PCs should have a feeling of "this is where I live" in relation to the city.

 

[Yaarel]

Great thread.

 

[Charles Rampant]

Great thread.

Yeah! My name is Charles Rampant, and I endorse this product or service.

One thing that I think Urban adventures offer - and almost demand - is the opportunity to let the social differences between the characters shine. If Bob is playing an Outlander Barbarian (such as an Uthgart), then his character is going to feel comfortable in a very different part of town than the socialite Arcane Trickster played by Gillian. Let them each get that; have the Barbarian's favourite tavern be closed down due to a murder, and not opened until the culprit is found! Then the Barbarian can be the party face for a time, taking them to all his mates in the dodgy dock district. Maybe the next adventure features a new arcane library opening, and the Arcane Trickster is invited with a plus one; but when arriving, she spots signs of possession in the eyes of the host.

In a dungeon, everyone is basically in it together, against the world; heroes surrounded by darkness. In a city, the party's differences are likely to be much more noticeable. After all, the party Wizard might find himself much more interested in the thoughts and opinions of Maskar Wands, head of a wizard school and important local practitioner of magic, than in the stifling ideology espoused by the party Paladin. So try to have that matter in your adventure writing. Let Wizards and Clerics and Rogues and Fighters take centre place in your plot by means of their social worlds becoming the plot for a time. It ensures that you don't just have everyone following the Bard around all day, just like a riddle or a trap in a dungeon takes the spotlight off the Fighter and puts it onto the Rogue.

Of course, it can be hard to do this until you know what kind of party you have. So you might need to wait until character creation to really get the texture of your campaign worked out; it's pointless to write up loads of plot around the bardic college if nobody in your party wants to interact with it! (You could ask the party to have at least one bard, but you know what I mean.)

As to dungeons, I think that there is a good reason that three out of the four premier D&D cities - Greyhawk, Waterdeep, Sharn, Sigil - have crypts and ruined cities and suchlike below them, while Sigil uses portals to other planes for the same purpose. It's a game of killing things and taking their stuff, after all, so letting the party leave the city and do some stabbing, but still keeping them in the same location, is very helpful for pacing. So make sure your city has some kind of a 'dungeon escape valve'; something that the players, at a time of their own choosing, can turn to get back into a combat zone. You will find though that the party takes a different view to things; when you can always pop back to the tavern from the dungeon, you don't worry so much about trail rations or suchlike!