Jürgen Hubert
First Post
I am actively developing such a list for Urbis:
Game Books
Fiction
Non-Fiction
Game Books
- Ken Hite: Suppressed Transmissions, Suppressed Transmissions 2 - Plenty of weirdness from the real world (or at least the imagined real world)
Fiction
- Alberto Manguel: The Dictionary of Imaginary Places: The Newly Updated and Expanded Classic - There are plenty of unusual locales taken from literature in this book that beg to be used in a role-playing campaign.
- Warren Ellis, John Cassaday: Planetary: A comic series where the protagonists are superhero archaeologists trying to uncover the secret history of their world. Its stories have a multitude of homages to superhero comics and other adventure stories of past decades while also showing that the world has moved on from them. In a similar way, Urbis tries to pay homage to the various fantasy worlds in general and Dungeon & Dragons settings in particular that came before it, and an entire campaign could be run with the player characters trying to uncover the secret history of Urbis - with plenty of suitable references to other classic role-playing game settings.
- Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Many of his stories are appropriate for Urbis. A small sampling:
- The Cats of Ulthar, Celephais, The Doom That Came To Sarnath, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, and The White Ship: These "Dreamlands" stories are perfect for some of the stranger and more remote regions of Urbis, especially the Lake of Dreams.
- The Nameless City: Very appropriate for any of the desert regions.
- The Horror at Red Hook, The Rats in the Walls: Urban Horror at its best.
- China Mieville: Perdido Street Station - The city of New Crobuzon wouldn't be too out of place in Urbis.
- Francois Schuiten, Benoit Peeters: Brusel, Fever in Urbicand, The Invisible Frontier - The "Obscure Cities" (or "Cities of the Fantastic") were the primary inspiration for Urbis, and thus are highly recommended. Sadly, many titles of this fantastic series of comics are unavailable in English, including a brilliant guidebook to the Obscure Cities - but these titles should be enough to get you started.
Non-Fiction
- Edwin P. Hoyt: Japan's War: Gives the reader a good idea about the present political situation in Narevoreen - and what the future might bring...
- Linda Nead: Victorian Babylon - People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London: Indispensible for the development of the city of Dartmouth, and highly inspirational for understanding how 19th century cities function.
- Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh: Off the Books - The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor: While written from a modern-day perspective, the insights into how the shadow economies of cities work are timeless and equally applicable to the world of Urbis.
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