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quiet1mi
2008-03-13, 11:37 PM
hey guys, yep I'm asking for help again...

this time I was wondering how to handle an urban adventure in a large city like a metropolitan. such as organizations (thieves guild, merchant guild , wizards guild etc... , the town guard when the party goes on a murdering spree .... etc ( all the things people do in a dungeon) or the sheer number of npc they may want to interact with.... (is there a name generator for various races that is not from wotc, they may recognize those names)

CASTLEMIKE
2008-03-14, 01:17 AM
Sharn City of Towers and Waterdeep City of Splendors aren't bad. Both are Metropolis so you wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel. Can probably get a good price on them at Amazon or other online retailer.

I really liked the old AD&D Den of Thieves which could be acquired for less than $5 on line with a PDF or under $7 used on Amazon. The goes for the City of Ravens Bluff material.

Jayngfet
2008-03-14, 01:18 AM
try cityscape, it lets you randomly roll taverns and such, try the fantasy name generator for names

Tsotha-lanti
2008-03-14, 01:55 AM
This is an amazingly broad question. Plenty of name generators available online, too, although I prefer to use baby name sites (this one (http://www.20000-names.com/) has a nice selection organized by language / culture, as most do).

The Waterdeep book is excellent (heck, they've even got all the stat blocks just right, which is rare). Cityscape is decent.

Really, though, your question is too broad to give real answers to, but for what you've got so far...

Town guard & watch: Stat them; patrolman, sergeant, captain, royal/palace guard/elites. They'll probably have spellcasters (clerics and wizards/sorcerers) available for support. Levels should depend on the PCs' levels, as always, but within reason.

Organizations: You only need the ones you're going to use in an adventure. A leader, a bit of an idea of their structure, and some personalities. Maybe stat blocks for standard enforcers when you're talking about thieves' guilds.

NPCs: You'll have to improvise a lot there; after you've come up with an NPC on the spot, write down the name and some general details so you can use them later if appropriate. Reoccurring NPCs add versimilitude.

Other than that, make sure to have an idea about the government and laws of the place, especially as it pertains to adventurers; is magic regulated, can weapons be worn in public, can armed people gather in public, how do city officials take to adventurers fighting or adventuring in their city, and so on?

Paragon Badger
2008-03-14, 06:40 AM
Has anyone else realized how utterly retarded the city creation rules are in the DMG II? :smalltongue:

Seriously, Saltmarch (the sample city), with a population of 3850 and size of 5,700,000 square feet (1080 square miles) is almost as large as my home state!?

This is also explicitly described as the space the city takes up, not any surrounding agriculture or whatever. Even more maddening; it would take 45 days to go from one side of the city to the other on foot at a walking pace!

I had to create my own city just so the party could get from one side to the other in less than a day. :smalltongue:

Capt'n Ironbrow
2008-03-14, 07:15 AM
wow... that's big... unreasonably big.
I usually use the "old city centre of town" (European) for the dimensions of an urban area. Some can be crossed in ten minutes but were still considered big cities in the old times. My hometown, a Province Capital has an old centre which you can walk around in about twenty minutes, but was one of the biggest cities of the region throughout the middle-ages. Crossing the old centre of Amsterdam takes about half an hour (but that city got big during the renaissance and was a small port before)

Europe is a good place for templates, there's plenty of old walled towns that can be used as examples.

Tobrian
2008-03-14, 07:27 AM
hey guys, yep I'm asking for help again...

this time I was wondering how to handle an urban adventure in a large city like a metropolitan. such as organizations (thieves guild, merchant guild , wizards guild etc... , the town guard when the party goes on a murdering spree .... etc ( all the things people do in a dungeon) or the sheer number of npc they may want to interact with.... (is there a name generator for various races that is not from wotc, they may recognize those names)

I usually hate fantasy name generators, I use historical names, but that's just me.

For standard low-level (level 1-5) city guards and similar "standardized" NPCs, look through various supplements, there are often stats pre-made there.

Look beyond WotC products, to Mongoose Publishing, Kenzer Co., Atlas Games, Bastion Press... let's see if I can find a few specific examples:

Fantasy Flight Games published a book called "Cityworks" fairly recently in their fantastic Legends & Lairs series. From the same series, "Traps and Treachery 1, Way of the Rogue" discusses rogues and thieves guilds in urban environments, with PrCs such as the Roof Runner (although that specific book was published pretty early on and probably is still 3.0). If you want a less standard fantasy city feel, look into "Sorcery & Steam".

WotC Cityscape has already been mentioned.
Also, it may be AD&D 2nd edition, but try to find the "City Of Greyhawk Boxed Set" with the supplement "City of Greyhawk: Folks, Feuds and Factions - Gem of the Flanaess" and two huge color maps of the city (both as city map and as relief). I'm not sure if WotC ever republished it under 3rd edition.

For a premade fantasy city setting, you could grab the "Ptolus" books by Monte Cook from Malhavoc Press. Or "Sharn City of Towers" for Eberron from WotC.

Under AD&D 2nd Edition, there was a booklet titled "Adventures in Cities" or something, for Forgotten Realms with ideas for urban adventures, a couple of short adventure modules, and some random city encounter tables thrown in. All in all, not bad, but I only own it as a photocopy, can't remember where i got it from years ago.

Expedition Retreat Press has a d20 supplement called "A Magical Medieval Society - Western Europe" which also features town, city and kingdom generation rules.

If you want REAL (or as close as it can get) medieval flair, with lots of premade town and small castle maps, try to find the Harnmaster (World of Harn setting) RPG. Very low-magic world, similar not to the high-medieval/Renaissance tech level of D&D but more 1000 A.D. medieval with only small towns, few cities and infrastructure, lots of wilderness. Also, a brief but instructive intro chapters on what feudalism (not big monarchies, but the "thousand kingdoms" stuff) really meant and how it worked. Not many thieves or wizards guilds there, don't fit the setting, although lots of room for craftsmen guilds.


Keep in mind: Not all NPCs the PCs interact with need to be completely statted out. You don't need to fight them, in fact, as human in a human town, you dont want to fight your fellow humans or you're a criminal wanted by the law. Pickpockets are not killed, but handed over to the citywatch.
Try to start small, establish a few neighborshoods the PCs work in or grew up in, a few places and NPC allies they know. Are there ghettos for nonhuman races? Certain professions like tanners, dyers, butchers, gravediggers were considered "dirty" (anything with blood or dead bodies, dung and bad smells) and usually had their own little communities downwind at one end of the city or even outside the proper city walls.

There's usually a river, or at least a source of fresh water, like cisterns, aquaeducts, whatever. Sewers were not a given, except under large Roman cities, people usuallly threw their waste into the streets during certain hours of the morning and /or evening, but this is D&D... sewers and monsters and thieves guilds go together.

Tempest Fennac
2008-03-14, 07:29 AM
This could be useful for NPCs: http://www.aarg.net/~minam/npc.cgi (it has a tendancy to do stupid things like create Gnoll Wizards with ranks in Perform, though).

EDIT: it also seems to use 3rd Edition skills rather then factoring the 3.5 update in (I did 1 cgaracter just now, and it had ranks in Innuendo).

Tobrian
2008-03-14, 07:54 AM
Addendum to my above posting:


wow... that's big... unreasonably big.
I usually use the "old city centre of town" (European) for the dimensions of an urban area. Some can be crossed in ten minutes but were still considered big cities in the old times. (snip)

Europe is a good place for templates, there's plenty of old walled towns that can be used as examples.

Try to find the map of Ankh-Morpork (Terry Pratchett's Discworld setting) called "The Streets of Ankh-Morpork", it comes with an interesting little booklet about how the Steven Briggs and Pratchett tried to come up with a street map from all the little details and references in his novels, and tried to make it look organically and historically grown. As the said, cities grew from towns, and streets followed the paths cows made down to the river. Lots of little marketplaces interconnected by streets. Larger thoroughfares, geometrical and public buildings turn up in places where the municipal authorities did some "urban improvements" after a big fire or something. The oldest parts of a city are usually the ones with the smallest, curviest alleys. But keep in mind that every town and city needs markets, carts, resources need to be transported which means some larger streets have to be there for carts and herdes of lifestock to be slaughtered to pass through.


But i'd say it depends on your players: Are there sticklers for details and history buffs who will appreciate a city that looks like it has a history? Or are the looking for a city that is merely an urban dungeon crawl, with cool magical shops and gang warfare?

Sleet
2008-03-14, 08:22 AM
Has anyone else realized how utterly retarded the city creation rules are in the DMG II? :smalltongue:

Seriously, Saltmarch (the sample city), with a population of 3850 and size of 5,700,000 square feet

That's a square about 2400 feet per side. Less than half a mile. That's big for a town of 3850, but not all that big.


(1080 square miles) is almost as large as my home state!?

I think you did your math wrong. That's about a quarter of a square mile.

Narmoth
2008-03-14, 08:26 AM
Some ideas for things to include in the city:
- No weapons larger than dagger aloved in taverns. Spellcasters get two of their fingers on each hand bound together (with an official seal on it) to prevent them from spellcasting (a drunk epic level wizard could level the whole city, not just the tavern) = the effect is to minimize barfights and put the players at a disadvantage towards crimelords and such who would be albe to show up with full equipment if they raided a tavern.
- The bouncers are responcible for keeping order in the tavern, and will be fighters of level 2-5, depending on the wealth of the tavern owner. In addition, the townsguard are fast to respond, so the richer area of the town is safe, at least in daytime. Aply banning from instituions if the adventurers cause trouble there. = again, making parts of the town safe, at least for the wealthy. Adventurers might very well not be welcome here, and will ahve an additional problem t sircumvent, just like the spellcasting prohibition in Baldurs Gate 2
Include more than one marketplace, and a lot of shops for flawor.
Try to divide the town in a merchant area, a noblemans houses area and a poorer area = different encounter tables, different adventures, and realistic for those times.

- - to be updated later - -

Tsotha-lanti
2008-03-14, 08:33 AM
That's a square about 2400 feet per side. Less than half a mile. That's big for a town of 3850, but not all that big.

I think you did your math wrong. That's about a quarter of a square mile.

He got it doubly wrong. The sq. feet -> sq. miles was wrong, and there's no way it takes 45 days to walk across an area 1080 sq. miles big (that's approximately 32 x 32 miles, which looks like a 1-day trip in most situations).

Hal
2008-03-14, 08:35 AM
Has anyone else realized how utterly retarded the city creation rules are in the DMG II? :smalltongue:

Seriously, Saltmarch (the sample city), with a population of 3850 and size of 5,700,000 square feet (1080 square miles) is almost as large as my home state!?

This is also explicitly described as the space the city takes up, not any surrounding agriculture or whatever. Even more maddening; it would take 45 days to go from one side of the city to the other on foot at a walking pace!

I had to create my own city just so the party could get from one side to the other in less than a day. :smalltongue:

I'm playing in a campaign in Saltmarsh right now. The city has some interesting aspects to it. For the DM who doesn't want to go building a new city, I'd say that it helps you avoid going module to module.

Although we have one less item on the map, now. One of our players likes to solve her problems with arson.