What makes a great city Source book?

[Shades of Eternity]

I'm doing some writing and I'm curious,

What makes a great city Source book?

What do you consider the best and why?

What are your standards for such published material?

 

[Yora]

Factions. It's always the factions.

Factions are the main thing that makes campaign settings tick and give them a unique character, but that's even more so the case with city settings. That's pretty much 90% of what you're going to interact with in a city campaign. (The rest being sewer rats and graveyard zombies.)

 

[Voadam]

Clear themes and overviews. I am very partial to The Pirate's Guide to Freeport and the summaries of Freeport from the Freeport Trilogy. I have a great sense of the differences of the docks versus the old city and Drac's End, etc. The Pirate's Guide gives lots of specific buildings and NPCs with lots of hooks, but I was able to riff and improv a lot seemlessly when running the module based on area overviews such as when the party wanted to check out various bars in their investigations.

If the themes of different parts are not as clear and it is just a hundred different individual buildings and NPCs detailed, I find it much harder to usefully keep in my head for use at the table without stopping play to look things up in the book.

 

[aco175]

I always liked having themes to certain sections of the city. A poor area, a rich area everyone gets, but a little more like why did a large group of elves move to this street or what was the first gem shop to open on Gem Street Maybe why there are no gem shops on Gem Street. Flavor and secrets to discover.

NPCs. Maybe the innkeeper at (roll on chart for tavern name) cannot pay his monthly dues to the guild and needs some fast cash. Maybe he is a contact for the local thieves' guild or assassins guild. List some of the more important NPCs the PCs may run into. Give them a paragraph of how they interact and what is their goal.

Adventure. I like to have a few small adventures in the book as well. Maybe it is just rats in the cellar of the inn. This may lead to finding the secret room where the innkeeper smuggles slaves to the sewers for the assassin's guild. Adventures also bring the important NPCs to meet with hte PCs and now they each can gain the other's favor.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'll echo @Yora about factions. That's a huge part of it. I'll also mention institutions, which is like a faction subset... the organizations that actually run the city or elements of it.

I'll add districts. Have areas of the city that feel distinct from each other.

And I'd say the best ones I'm aware of don't attempt to detail every single thing. They leave things loose so that you can fill things out as needed.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Details and history.

• Why is the city there? Is it a port, a trade center, the capital, safe harbor, military base, all the above, etc.
• Give the city a few nick names. The Queen's City, the city of knives. the Jade City, City of Lies. Have a story for why it has that nick name.
• Power Structure - Who is in change and what groups have influence? What do they want and how are they going about getting it? Law and Order falls into this, based on your government and world you can have a complex system, with kingdom, city, church, Guild and civil courts.
• Timeline - just events from the founding to now.

Steal from real places.

 

[Aldarc]

Give me a good reason that I want to play in the city and for my character to stay in the city.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

For me, it's got to have interesting, unique details and lots of adventure hooks. The adventure hooks are really key, because that's what's going to bring the city to life.

 

[Dioltach]

Scratch-and-sniff cards for various districts. The slums, the docks, the tanners' yards, the gaol. You know, to really bring the city to life.

 

[payn]

Check out 3E DMG II. It has a write up for Saltmarsh thats pretty interesting. NPCs, factions, adventure hooks, etc...