City Supplements or Adventures

[Beoric]

I think the thing about including DM-facing history is that it can help the DM present a consistent tone and to focus improvisation, so that even where the DM is ad libbing, hopefully the players can sense some kind of underlying logic or theme that makes the place feel real.

However, if hints at that history are also player-facing then the history does more than one job. In addition to helping the DM to be consistent, it can give the player a sense of discovery as historical elements are revealed. And it grants the player a sense of accomplishment as they start to form hypotheses about what was actually going on. And if those hypotheses allow the players to make better decisions or uncover hidden things, then they become actively related to the adventure content.

Because D&D isn't literature. Tolkein has to tell you or show you the mood-setting bits; literary characters coming to an epiphany because of what they discover does not scratch the same itch as D&D players coming to an epiphany, or putting that epiphany to use (unless the reader puts it together before the character, which can actually be a bit of a let-down). The active role of the player in D&D means that passively receiving information, however cool, may not be enough.

This does not mean you need to make a bee-line to the BBEG. Distractions are necessary, because in order to have a sense of accomplishment from progressing, it needs to be possible to not progress. And in Classic/OSR D&D, the DM doesn't necessarily know what the climax is going to be; the boss fight might be such a cakewalk that the players hardly mark it, while solving the puzzle of the well in that hidden room might be something that sticks with them for a long time. Because its the players who decide what constitutes "progress".

I also feel like, where possible, hidden areas should add to the vibe of the dungeon - that it part of the reward of finding them.

Also, @Malrex I totally get what you are saying about the "discomfort" vibe in PoUR.

 

[Malrex]

I don't think anyone is against that. Certainly not me.

I quoted you because you got me thinking to myself about the challenge of always balancing everything...enough info, yet terse, fluff vs. dry, etc. So was just musing.

I think the thing about including DM-facing history is that it can help the DM present a consistent tone and to focus improvisation, so that even where the DM is ad libbing, hopefully the players can sense some kind of underlying logic or theme that makes the place feel real.

This statement nails it for me. I call it a 'welcome mat' but this is essentially what I'm thinking as well. God damn, thanks Beoric. Hard part is knowing the balance of what is necessary/helpful/useful, and what is too much/not useful/fluff.

 

[Evard's Small Tentacle]

So each of you are making your own city adventures or settings based on this discussion right?

 

[Beoric]

So each of you are making your own city adventures or settings based on this discussion right?

Actually, recently one of my players asked if I would run a mostly urban campaign, and I've been tinkering the city for a while.

 

[Palindromedary]

So each of you are making your own city adventures or settings based on this discussion right?

I was inspired enough to track down an OG copy of The Free City of Haven (2nd version) and do some plotting out, so yeah (though I'm more focusing on making an interesting home base than a formal city adventure proper). Throw the Chaosium's Cities book and the Nocturnal Table in that box and you've got yourself a stew, baby.

 

[Evard's Small Tentacle]

Nice...i am going back to reading my favorite city suppliment/adventure- The City of Lies Boxed Set for Rokugan.

 

[The1True]

What I'm getting at is, although I think side quests/explorations are important and make an adventure better (and I totally prefer it), I also think that it could also kill or diminish a vibe if not done right. Did anyone else get a vibe of uncomfortableness from PoUR or was it just me? Maybe my head was just in it too deep.

I think if anyone's been following my saga over the last year or so that they will find that side-quests are the surefire route to project-purgatory.

Despite that, I still think they're the greatest and I intend to persist with what I've got, though it's killing me. But the more you fuck around with sides and red-herrings, the more you put off the completion of your project, and I've got to say; there was plenty of content in PoUR and as I recall you guys had to push mightily just to get it out the door. Sure, there were things you could've added to flesh it out, but you would never have delivered a product on time and it would have ballooned into an expensive monstrosity.

Stay focused has got to be the moral of the story!

 

[Beoric]

Actually, recently one of my players asked if I would run a mostly urban campaign, and I've been tinkering the city for a while.

Part of the reason I'm moving to hex-mapping is because the city my upcoming campaign is set in is Sharn. "The City of Towers" lies in an area where the walls are thin between Eberron and a plane that, among other things, symbolizes flight. As a result, flight and levitation magic is much easier there; as a further result, the towers are a mile high, with other buildings being built inside of them, or attached to the outside, or floating with bridges attaching to the towers. It is a very 3D environment, which I defy even @The1True to map on a street by street (bridge by bridge, elevator by elevator) basis.

 

[The1True]

Have they not mapped Sharn in any official products?

 

[squeen]

Part of the reason I'm moving to hex-mapping is because the city my upcoming campaign is set in is Sharn. "The City of Towers" lies in an area where the walls are thin between Eberron and a plane that, among other things, symbolizes flight. As a result, flight and levitation magic is much easier there; as a further result, the towers are a mile high, with other buildings being built inside of them, or attached to the outside, or floating with bridges attaching to the towers. It is a very 3D environment, which I defy even @The1True to map on a street by street (bridge by bridge, elevator by elevator) basis.

Whoa!

 

[The1True]

Oh yeah.... Noooooo....


Glad to know I'm not the only insane obsessive in the hobby: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eberron/comments/pwm90u
yeesh: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eberron/comments/sei567
anyway. good luck with that ;P

 

[squeen]

faux medieval it is not...looks like Manhattan!

How could you hope to manage something that size? Perhaps write an AI?

 

[The1True]

looks like Manhattan!

Yeah, they've got magi-tech trains and stuff like that.

 

[Beoric]

faux medieval it is not...looks like Manhattan!

How could you hope to manage something that size? Perhaps write an AI?

It has a "magical technology" level roughly equivalent to the late 19th century. Very little high level magic, quite a bit of low level magic, but most low level magic is performed by artisans using lengthy rituals; true wizards are rarer.

There are existing "maps" of the ground level, plus horizontal cross-sections of the towers at their midpoint and near the top, an industrial area beneath the city, and a floating plateau where the uber-rich live above the city. But all they really show is the cross-sections of the great towers, and don't detail the buildings or streets. So more inspirational than representational. They also mark borders between the districts.

I have placed a hex overlay onto those existing maps, and lined it up so I can keep track of how towers line up vertically. I treat each hex as a tower or cluster of towers, and use the map underlay as inspiration for the types of towers a hex might contain. I also have posited the existence of skymalls, which I call "plazas" and which are generally linked to other towers by major bridges; including the ground level there are 13 plazas in the towers proper. I then created random generators to suggest locations for places, by randomly selecting a hex, plaza level, and floor above or below plaza level.

So for the DM a location might be "hex 10.14, plaza 2+3". I have a spreadsheet with a list of locations by map, hex and plaza +/- level. Whereas the in-world address would be "The Broken Anvil Inn, Mason Tower, Callestan [a sub-district], Lower Dura [a ward]". And directions might be, "head to the nearest plaza, make your way over to Dura, take the bridge network to a square tower called 'Mason Tower', take a lift to the second plaza and take the north ramp up three levels, it's on the northern corner of the tower".

So perhaps you can see why I might lean toward the abstraction of wilderness mapping rather than the precision of dungeon mapping. There are thousands of ways to get to each destination, so trying to keep track of a particular route is pointless. As a DM what I really need to track is which districts they move through, since each one has a different character (and different encounter table), and (if time is a factor) whether they get lost on the way. Travel in the upper wards is nearly always safer, so if you have the time, it is best to go up, then across, then down; but that can greatly increase your travel time if you are going somewhere that is more or less on the same level as you.

I seem to have misplaced the hex files, but here are a couple of sample maps of the ground and middle levels, and a bit of concept art.

 

[The1True]

I suggest adding some kind of connection generator for your hexes so PC's can find ways up and down as well ways to laterally exit the hex.

 

[squeen]

Surely you can't be the first to try and run this behemoth. What's the word on the street?

 

[squeen]

It has a "magical technology" level roughly equivalent to the late 19th century.

Gunpowder? Electricity?

 

[Beoric]

I suggest adding some kind of connection generator for your hexes so PC's can find ways up and down as well ways to laterally exit the hex.

Yeah, that's currently in my head. Although it is only really relevant if the physical environment comes into play, as when combat is initiated; I am not going to record all the connections except in the immediate proximity of an important location.

Surely you can't be the first to try and run this behemoth. What's the word on the street?

Most of the people running this setting are of the Trad/OC schools; travel is hand-waived, and there are no random encounters.

Gunpowder? Electricity?

Magic Missile! Continual Light!

You look at the practical applications of existing spells, and assume someone has created a specialized variant that mimics something technology could do in the 19th century. There are various artisans and professionals who don't have the power and versatility of PC casters, but are very good with a one or two utility spells.

Imagine a smith working in this era who knows one ritual, which he chants while he is working; it makes him a better smith, and takes the place of things like power hammers. And maybe he knows a variant of Affect Normal Fires in ritual form, which allows him to better control the heat of the forge instead of a mechanical forced air blower - or maybe he uses traditional bellows but they are animated and respond to his commands. Or it could be a suite of variant spells: variant Strength to replace a power hammer, variant Affect Normal Fires to control heat, variant Mending to form welds, a variety of variant Unseen Servant rituals to perform specific automated tasks, etc.

Or imagine various other professions that use rituals or magic items that use variants of the cantrips in UA. Like a laundress who does not have chemical cleaners or an automated machine, but knows a specialized "clean" cantrip that takes some time to cast but will clean a whole basket of laundry; or perhaps she invested in a magical washboard that cleans each piece of clothing that it rubbed against it in a fraction of the time it takes to beat it against a rock in the river - it is too expensive for your average home, but a worthy investment for someone who cleans clothes for a living. Or an exterminator with no chemicals and who only knows one ritual - a variant of the "Exterminate" cantrip - but is very good at it and can cast it multiple times and cause it to affect an area.

There are no gaslights, but there are professional lamplighters who maintain the continual light spells on city streets. At least in wealthy neighbourhoods and main roads.

There are no muskets or pistols, but there are wandslingers who can squeeze a first level attack spell out of a wand or staff one or more times per encounter.

There are no printing presses, but there is a magic quill which can record what is written or drawn on a page, and can duplicate the writing/image when run across a blank page.

There are no cannons, but there is a "siege staff" which is a log-sized staff that increases the range and area of effect of spells cast through it, at the cost of reducing the amount of damage it does.

There is no mechanical irrigation, but there are variant rituals of Precipitation and Cloudburst.

EDIT: @squeen, you may hate this for your material plane, but I bet you could find a use for it in the outer planes.

 

[squeen]

EDIT: @squeen, you may hate this for your material plane, but I bet you could find a use for it in the outer planes.

That's a good use-case (for me), and I do see the appeal of the setting. It is Ren Fair magic, but sounds like it could be fun if it were an ELSEWHERE special event---a "upside-down" place to discover. Straight out of a novel, it would be like going to Barsoom or stepping Through the Looking Glass.

But is the massive scope/scale a necessary adjunct? I would find that hard to manage without A LOT of hand-waiving. Truly, it would overwhelm me.

 

[Beoric]

But is the massive scope/scale a necessary adjunct? I would find that hard to manage without A LOT of hand-waiving. Truly, it would overwhelm me.

I have played with scaling it down, but it does seem to lose it's luster.

There is only one city like Sharn in Eberron, so it is easy to avoid. But it has a lot going on (there are, for example, 4 criminal gangs, 2 of which are actively at war), and I've been thinking for a while how I might do it, so when I was asked to run an urban campaign I thought I would give it a shot.

One other thing I am doing is concentrating on the neighbourhood level. If moving between hexes horizontally takes the same amount of time as moving between plazas vertically, I can more or less use hex procedures to run the thing. There are maybe 15-20 hexes and 4 plazas in a neighbourhood, which as I have organized it amounts to the equivalent of 60-80 hexes on a flat map. That is quite manageable if I start out confining the campaign to that neighbourhood.