I was digging through the depths of my hard drive tonight and I found the remains of one of my oldest documents.
"The Urban Survival Guide" was going to be a guide book for living in and running adventures in cities.
I never finished it but it got me thinking.
Have you all ever used cities as a main adventure area? In a D&D like game?
I have Vornheim and it is awesome, but any city is fine for this discussion.
10 comments:
I ran the old B/X module B6 "The Veiled Society" as the first adventure in my 3.X game starting back in 2001 (and it's still running).
The module is a murder mystery that takes place in a fantasy city called Specularum. It worked pretty well and my group had gone back to visit it severalt times over the course of the campaign - it's sort of like their home base at this point.
I would have love a guide on "how to run an urban adventure" when I started that module.
Heck, yeah. City-State, Sanctuary (Thieves World), Manifest (Ghostwalk), and my homebrewed 3e setting's largest city.
And if we're talking non-fantasy, Paris is the center of gravity for my Flashing Blades campaign.
Oh yes. One of my best CoC campaigns was called "Panic in Detroit" and it used maps and photos from 1980s Detroit. It took place on Devils eve so the police/fire/etc were too overwhelmed and there was too much chaos for mere end of the world destruction to be noticed.
I used the old Book-Cadillac hotel as the "tower" for the villains, which in its day was a gem (Frank Sinatra met Sammy Davis Jr there for the first time) and has recently been restored, but at the time was 1,100 rooms of decay and death.
It was fun!
I ran lots of adventures in the around the City of Greyhawk.
I am also now working on an urban campaign setting.
Always wanted to -- Lankhmar in particular for AD&D.
Plenty. Mostly cities of my own creation, but also Lankhmar.
My Greyhawk game is centered in the city of Istivin, capital of the March of Sterich. Love running games there - it's got depth and texture.
For RuneQuest, I got to play in the grand city of Pavis for a few games. As a sable-riding, nomadic plainsman, it was a tremendous culture-shock. Which, of course, translated to some amazing gaming! I still need to thank that GM for his efforts to put this very alien city on his table. There's a new HeroQuest book out supporting Pavis, which I'm frothing to get my hands on...
As for real-world cities, my hometown got some serious wear and tear using FGU's Psi World. Cairo was the center of a ShadowRun game, back in the day.
So, yeah - urban adventures don't suck! Love them to pieces.
My latest is playing in Golarion's Korvosa. Half-infernal tiefling monk, trying to atone for his very existence. Lovely!
I've been in some good urban adventures. Sharn, the metropolis of WotC's Eberron world is a great city to adventure in. It's got such depth. City adventuring is a good way to mix in the social and political aspects of the game. Open combat will often bring unwanted attention, so players need to get creative.
I ran a Lankhmar campaign for over a year. I think the party left the city walls once and didn't like it very much. Their urban thief skills didn't really add up to face the horrors of the great outdoors. It was quite a hoot!
I've also run a few Waterdeep game sessions, but they didn't live very long. The players were more of a "travel and dungeon delve" type mindset, so it didn't work out.
Goes to show that you really need to know your players before dropping a concept on them that may or may not work.
I ran a game in Thoda, a city modeled after the City State of the Invincible Overlord and a few short adventures in Monte's Ptolus. I think I prefer Urban Adventures, over anything else.
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