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What Makes a Good Urban Adventure?
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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7143243" data-attributes="member: 97077"><p>It really depends on what the character of the city is. I think a good, strong theme is necessary to make an urban environment stand out. Sharn in Eberron or Sigil in Planescape are good examples. They're both exotic, but also familiar.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>In my view, pacing. The same can be said of every adventure, but in particular, urban adventures can suffer from a sudden urge to run mundane errands or to interview NPCs endlessly trying to find the dramatic conflict. Some people have fun with this, but I hate it. The second someone goes shopping in a game in which I'm playing, I check out mentally if not physically. </p><p></p><p>So, I think keeping that sort of mundane stuff short and to the point is ideal in order to keep the focus on the adventure. In my current campaign, there aren't adventures in the cities, but they are part of the overall campaign, so the PCs visit them periodically. I've taken to making any city visit a "phase" of play wherein the players can choose between four basic options for town tasks: Carouse, Gather Information, Get Services, Supply, and Special. Each of those tasks effectively takes a full day and any given task requires at least one PC to perform. Each task has several location-based opens that offer interesting trade-offs and local flavor so there are some meaningful choices to be had. "Special" tends to be a point of interest in the city or town that grants a boon if you visit it, under certain circumstances. This setup allows us to do the "town scenes" very quickly and is also something of a mini-game in and of itself.</p><p></p><p>Part of the reason it works well is because my campaigns run on timers. So you're already trying to get your quests done before time's up. That means limiting how much time you muck about town.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It depends. A city like Sigil has angels and fiends in it, so that's no issue. If it's just a fairly mundane city in a fantasy world, you might just set the campaign parameters to run from 1st to 10th-level or something like that. That's still going to be months of play, depending on how much you play and how you award XP.</p><p></p><p>Oftentimes, it's not individual monsters or NPCs that are the real threat - its entire organizations which can wield power better than the PCs can wield a sword or spell.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Sure. Sewers and necropolises come to mind. Any reasonably sized building is also effectively a dungeon. And you can always have the city built on the ruins of cities of previous ages.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="iserith, post: 7143243, member: 97077"] It really depends on what the character of the city is. I think a good, strong theme is necessary to make an urban environment stand out. Sharn in Eberron or Sigil in Planescape are good examples. They're both exotic, but also familiar. In my view, pacing. The same can be said of every adventure, but in particular, urban adventures can suffer from a sudden urge to run mundane errands or to interview NPCs endlessly trying to find the dramatic conflict. Some people have fun with this, but I hate it. The second someone goes shopping in a game in which I'm playing, I check out mentally if not physically. So, I think keeping that sort of mundane stuff short and to the point is ideal in order to keep the focus on the adventure. In my current campaign, there aren't adventures in the cities, but they are part of the overall campaign, so the PCs visit them periodically. I've taken to making any city visit a "phase" of play wherein the players can choose between four basic options for town tasks: Carouse, Gather Information, Get Services, Supply, and Special. Each of those tasks effectively takes a full day and any given task requires at least one PC to perform. Each task has several location-based opens that offer interesting trade-offs and local flavor so there are some meaningful choices to be had. "Special" tends to be a point of interest in the city or town that grants a boon if you visit it, under certain circumstances. This setup allows us to do the "town scenes" very quickly and is also something of a mini-game in and of itself. Part of the reason it works well is because my campaigns run on timers. So you're already trying to get your quests done before time's up. That means limiting how much time you muck about town. It depends. A city like Sigil has angels and fiends in it, so that's no issue. If it's just a fairly mundane city in a fantasy world, you might just set the campaign parameters to run from 1st to 10th-level or something like that. That's still going to be months of play, depending on how much you play and how you award XP. Oftentimes, it's not individual monsters or NPCs that are the real threat - its entire organizations which can wield power better than the PCs can wield a sword or spell. Sure. Sewers and necropolises come to mind. Any reasonably sized building is also effectively a dungeon. And you can always have the city built on the ruins of cities of previous ages. [/QUOTE]
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