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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 6380099" data-attributes="member: 2205"> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Intrigue.  Skulduggery.  Fantasy noir and crime.  The notion that adventure is what happens "out there" in the dungeon, or even the wilderness, while cities are boring is one that I've never understood.  In real life, I'm a country boy at heart and a cabin in the mountains on acres of empty land is my dream retirement home, of course, but in gaming I love to have Sam Spade in fantasy drag.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Eh.  I have a few custom tables/generators that I use.  I like to map out districts or neighborhoods, but much of the very specific details--names of NPCs, shops, taverns, etc. I make up on the fly as needed.  I like to give each city a bit of a twist, too.  I have one city, for example, that's split in two by a gigantic cliff.  There's Upside and Downside and they operate, in most respects, like two completely different cities that are often at odds with each other.  I have one city that has a gigantic slum bricked over with arched rooftops over the narrow streets and alleys so that the entire neighborhood is almost like a bricked up cavern, and the poorest of the poor literally have never seen the sun or been outside of Bricktown.  I have a city that's a combination of Green Ronin's Freeport and Lovecraft's Arkham.  I have a city that's undergoing a bit of a refugee crisis and is bursting at the seams because of political instability to the north of them.  I have one that's built along the side-walls of a gigantic sinkhole.  Etc. etc.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"Don't trust anyone."  Or maybe that's because I was just watching The Winter Soldier last night.  My city games tend to be a cross between The Matlese Falcon and The Godfather. My characters are rarely heroic, altruistic paladin types.  I run them like spy campaigns.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It doesn't.  Ray Winninger, in his excellent series of articles for the Dungeoncraft column a few years ago, made his First Rule of Dungeoncraft--"Don't create more than you have to."  This becomes much easier to implement in a city-based campaign (although you still need at least some sketchy information about what's beyond the city walls.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The best thing for me is creating a custom GM screen with random NPC names on it, random tavern names, and other things like that--for when you don't want to spend time up front mapping every single business and potential NPC that they PCs will meet, but want to feel like you're presenting the world as if it is a living, breathing entity all its own that exists independently of your ability to present it to your players.  If you're smooth with it, they'll never know that you're making stuff up as you go.  Oh, and keep good notes!  There's nothing quite like having your players remember the name of some random serving girl in a tavern who gave you some juicy gossip or hot tip on a crime lord or warehouse heist or whatever but you can't.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I tend to focus on three themes in urban campaigns.  Sometimes I mix them up and a campaign may focus on all three of them, but sometimes just one: 1) Crime and criminal syndicates (The Godfather, 2) Political intrigue (Tom Clancy) and 3) Horror (Dracula from the second half of the book when he's in London, etc.)</li> </ul></blockquote>

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