City Supplements or Adventures

TerribleSorcery

TerribleSorcery

Should be playing D&D instead
I somehow missed this thread until now!
I have been running a B/X city-focused campaign for the past 2 years using the City-State of the World Emperor (Map 6 of the Wilderlands). When I started out, I found a ton of city supplement books/pdfs and read through them, trying to get some tools & material. But what actually came in useful on a day-to-day basis was surprising:

Vornheim - never gets looked at, I'm selling my copy. What's the point?
Midkemia Press Cities & Carse - not bad, a few bits & pieces I like
DCC or Savage Worlds Lankhmar - Some of the adventures are cool, you can rework them if you don't mind the effort & they fit your setting
Corpathium - some good ideas and a few tables I like, but the actual content is too wild
I still haven't gotten around to reading the old Thieves' World or Haven stuff.

JG City-State of the World Emperor box - Obviously I use most of this
Matt Finch's City Encounters - Very useful
Melan's Nocturnal Table - Hits the table almost every session
Medieval Demographics Made Easy - obviously a must-read
I use carousing rules and those are great for cities, the bigger your tables are the better.

TBH running a huge metropolis is a dumbass idea and I regret ever trying, but what the hell right? You have to do new things.
 
Beoric

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
TerribleSorcery said:
I somehow missed this thread until now!
I have been running a B/X city-focused campaign for the past 2 years using the City-State of the World Emperor (Map 6 of the Wilderlands). When I started out, I found a ton of city supplement books/pdfs and read through them, trying to get some tools & material. But what actually came in useful on a day-to-day basis was surprising:

Vornheim - never gets looked at, I'm selling my copy. What's the point?
Midkemia Press Cities & Carse - not bad, a few bits & pieces I like
DCC or Savage Worlds Lankhmar - Some of the adventures are cool, you can rework them if you don't mind the effort & they fit your setting
Corpathium - some good ideas and a few tables I like, but the actual content is too wild
I still haven't gotten around to reading the old Thieves' World or Haven stuff.

JG City-State of the World Emperor box - Obviously I use most of this
Matt Finch's City Encounters - Very useful
Melan's Nocturnal Table - Hits the table almost every session
Medieval Demographics Made Easy - obviously a must-read
I use carousing rules and those are great for cities, the bigger your tables are the better.

TBH running a huge metropolis is a dumbass idea and I regret ever trying, but what the hell right? You have to do new things.
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I have some 2e Lankhmar stuff that I haven't read yet, but it is on the list.
Vornheim is a dead loss for me.
I have never found a copy of City Encounters.
A lot of the other resources (eg. Medieval Demographics Made Easy, the Nocturnal Table) aren't useful for the setting I'm running.

Since I (or more accurately, the player) haven't picked a direction yet, I was hoping to find a couple of decent low level urban adventures. I'm not finding much that I like. There are lots of convoluted plots involving the aristocracy that really ought not to be low-level, and are ridiculously contrived and convoluted to boot, but not much that plays on the urban aspect of an urban campaign.

To give an example, the hooks I am thinking of are things like:
  • local merchant owes money to protection racket/loan shark/drug dealer, possibly with the additional incentive that the equipment he was making/procuring for you is confiscated as collateral
  • caught in the middle of a criminal gang war
  • favoured NPC harassed/shaken down by guards/criminal gang/lordlings
  • favoured NPC witnessed a crime and is targeted for assassination
  • various evil slumlord shenanigans
  • various corrupt city officials shenanigans
Which in my case carry the additional limitation that the PCs are expressly not loot/experience motivated, i.e. they want to be heroes fighting for the little guy. I'm having no luck with finding published adventures and will probably have to make a few NPCs and hooks, wing the first session, and make it up from scratch thereafter.
 
Beoric

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
Ugh, one of the things I hate most about reading "modern" (read: 3-5e) modules is the way they are constantly burying the lede. You always have to plow through the entire wall of text to determine if this is information you actually need.

I'm reading a few city adventures trying to see if I can find anything useful, and most really don't make it easy.

The module that prompted this post is a 4e adventure. Just reviewing the "background" section to see if it has any possibilities, and I have to go through 6 paragraphs to find out that its about people kidnapping spellcasters to try to get them to remove a curse from their buddy. Because it has 5 paragraphs of irrelevant backstory about how the dude got cursed.

This is actually a setup that has potential for me, so I will plow on and see what they do with it.

EDIT: Four paragraph hook. Spellcaster has been hiding out in shady party of down, you need to find him and tell him it is safe to come home. Three of those paragraphs are irrelevant and highly contrived backstory about why the spellcaster was in hiding.

EDIT 2: Add two paragraphs of the same hook, with readaloud dialog of the questgiver explaining irrelevant and contrived backstory.

EDIT 3: The module has a decent rumor table and a decent keyed map. And the rumors point you toward the keyed locations. But it screws it up by treating the keyed locations as "events", like the module writer doesn't even know how a location based module is supposed to work. Everything you need is there, but I have to mentally rework it into the proper format.

In the end I have a hook I can work with, an investigation rumor table I can work with, a pretty decent map I will use entirely, a few NPCs worth grabbing, a number of event based "social" encounters that I will rework as location based encounters, and three combat encounters I will likely replace with entirely different encounters. A better than usual haul, but I wasn't able to tell if it was going to be worth my time until I was 7 pages into the 14 page module.
 
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TerribleSorcery

TerribleSorcery

Should be playing D&D instead
Yeah you really have to DIG deep to find useful stuff in those big modern tomes - mostly I find it so frustrating I give up!
 
Beoric

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
TerribleSorcery said:
Yeah you really have to DIG deep to find useful stuff in those big modern tomes - mostly I find it so frustrating I give up!
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I usually do, too, if I don't find something useful quickly. Although I find it is almost always worth it if there are decent maps, because it is easier to add, remove or substitute elements, and to de-linearize the module.
 
E

Evard's Small Tentacle

*eyeroll*
Beoric said:
I usually do, too, if I don't find something useful quickly. Although I find it is almost always worth it if there are decent maps, because it is easier to add, remove or substitute elements, and to de-linearize the module.
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My ADD sets in with these thesis wall of text all to convey some flavor that can be done in a sentence or two. What i find jarring is how the pictures and maps seem to convey a lot more these days than 90 pages of text.
 
Yora

Yora

Should be playing D&D instead
A page of text is much cheaper than a page of maps and pictures, but sells for the same price.
 
Beoric

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
Yora said:
A page of text is much cheaper than a page of maps and pictures, but sells for the same price.
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I think @Evard's Small Tentacle is referring to the fact that the text is bloated but conveys nothing, as opposed to lauding the maps and pictures. I personally find older maps to generally be more useful, not only because they are less linear, but because they contain less detail and can therefore be repurposed.
 
grodog

grodog

Should be playing D&D instead
Evard's Small Tentacle said:
What are some of the best city supplements or adventures? Most seem to so rote, with little interactivity, often wasting a lot of space trying to be too encyclopedic, with little consideration given to adventuring other than some boring adventure hooks interspersed that seem little to do with the city and any 5th grader can come up with. I am planning on running a city only campaign...
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My favorites:

My favorite city-based supplements and adventures of all time are (in no particular order):
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From https://grodog.blogspot.com/2018/05/these-are-few-of-my-favorite-things.html

Allan.
 
Johnny F. Normal

Johnny F. Normal

A FreshHell to Contend With
I think Pat Wetmore's Denethix from ASE1 is worth mentioning, Factions are laid out along with the nature of the City and a bunch of tables much like Finch's City Encounters just nuttier and not as exhaustive as MF's 699 daytime and % nighttime. The latter of which really is just a random table of monsters.
 
Attronarch

Attronarch

A FreshHell to Contend With
The Lost City of Barakus by Necromancer Games (originally for 3.5E, reissued for S&W) details a city of Endhome and seven adventures within it. It's a great module with city, wilderness, and five-level dungeon, with multiple intertwining factions.

Bard's Gate by Frog God Games details a large city (population of 125 000) and eight adventures (levels 1 to 10+). It is a 400 page monster with dense walls of text. One could start and finish a whole campaign there.

City State of the Invincible Overlord by Judges Guild has multiple adventures within, around, and underneath it. It's supposed to be played as a dungeon crawl. Wraith Overlord, also by Judges Guild, details a five level mega-dungeon underneath it.
 
squeen

squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
Attronarch said:
The Lost City of Barakus by Necromancer Games (originally for 3.5E, reissued for S&W) details a city of Endhome and seven adventures within it. It's a great module with city, wilderness, and five-level dungeon, with multiple intertwining factions.

Bard's Gate by Frog God Games details a large city (population of 125 000) and eight adventures (levels 1 to 10+). It is a 400 page monster with dense walls of text. One could start and finish a whole campaign there.

City State of the Invincible Overlord by Judges Guild has multiple adventures within, around, and underneath it. It's supposed to be played as a dungeon crawl. Wraith Overlord, also by Judges Guild, details a five level mega-dungeon underneath it.
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I have the first three, but the Frog's offerings always struck me as a bit bland. I never was motivated to run them. The city elements come across as both vanilla and episodic. Did anyone else get that impression?
 
Attronarch

Attronarch

A FreshHell to Contend With
What's wrong with vanilla? What do you mean by episodic? FGG published a fair number of mediocre stuff, but Barakus ain't one of 'em.
 
squeen

squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
There's absolutely nothing wrong with vanilla, just reluctant to buy other peoples' at this point. It's easy enough to home-brew.

Episodic: It didn't feel site-based. More like vignettes that get triggered. It lacked details to be explored and felt like "you go there and precisely T*H*I*S happens". That style of play is just not my cup of tea. Leans a little towards the post-Hickmann style IMO.

The dungeon part of Barakus is good. It was just Endhome that felt under-cooked.

Attronarch = Tzunk? Welcome!

It's worth checking out his OSRIC errata PDF on his site.
 
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grodog

grodog

Should be playing D&D instead
I remember liking Bard's Gate sufficiently to include it in my list of favorite city supplements; I've never played in it, to date.

I was never a huge fan of Barakus---always prefereed the Vault of Larin Karr and Tombs of Abysthor from NG in their heydey (most of their earlier stuff outside of RA itself).

Allan.
 
Attronarch

Attronarch

A FreshHell to Contend With
squeen said:
Attronarch = Tzunk? Welcome!
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I'm not Tzunk, I simply typeset errata he collected so I can print it. I shared the document with his permission.

grodog said:
I remember liking Bard's Gate sufficiently to include it in my list of favorite city supplements; I've never played in it, to date.

I was never a huge fan of Barakus---always prefereed the Vault of Larin Karr and Tombs of Abysthor from NG in their heydey (most of their earlier stuff outside of RA itself).

Allan.
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I placed Tombs of Abysthor in my campaign, and I hope the party goes there. What are your thoughts on the Slumbering Tsar modules/saga?
 
Beoric

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
Beoric said:
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.

View attachment 1233View attachment 1234
View attachment 1238View attachment 1237View attachment 1239View attachment 1235View attachment 1236
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Planning on running this beast this weekend, assuming PC doesn't get distracted on the road to the city.

In prepping I suddenly realized I spent too much time making content (mostly NPCs and factions in this case), and not enough if figuring out DM logistics, so I cobbled together a spreadsheet that charts hex number vs skymall level; the plan is to keep a notebook of locations that are invented during play (some prepped stuff is already there), which I will number in sequence, and place the number in the appropriate cell in the hex vs level spreadsheet. I printed that out so I can do it analog, and reduce the number of windows I have open, since I will be working from a laptop.

I didn't get my encounter tables done, so I copied the city table from Appendix C and will riff off that. Also haven't finished my random street generation tables, so I added Appendix A, and will riff off that. Almost have random building/business generator ready, may try to get that done tonight as I don't have a good alternative to improvise from. Will also print those off to reduce windows.

I also didn't finish making VTT tokens for the various NPCs, but I do have have a few hundred tokens made for PCs over the last several years, at varying levels; and I also picked out maybe 100-150 NPC tokens. I have sorted these in folders according to the category they fall into in Appendix C, which should help if my randomly generated encounters end up in a fight. I do need to make a generic "noncombatant" token, but that shouldn't take too long.

Damn, I think I need to make tokens for the player characters. Fortunately it's a small party.
 
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