The Accidental Tourist in Golarion

[Palanan]

I'm kicking around ideas for a city campaign, and I'm coming to realize that I'll need a larger city than you can easily find in the Forgotten Realms. I've almost always set my campaigns in the Realms, out of familiarity and a wealth of material, but I need a city that's upwards of half a million people, and apart from Waterdeep and Calimshan I don't think there's anything in Faerûn that comes close.

So, I'm shopping for planets where I could set down a good-sized city, and so far I haven't quite found what I'm looking for. Athas falls a little short on the fertile-lands-and-great-oceans yardstick, Eberron is a bit out there with the funky races and magitech, Kalamar is much too staid and frumpy, and Krynn is too epic-struggle-dragon-legendy for my needs.

Can anyone recommend a nice planet, maybe Toril-esque but a little more coherent, and not so burdened with lore?



-- EDIT: I've been pointed to Golarion, which looks great in theory, and now I need some pointers as to where in Golarion would be a good place to drop my city.

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[AWiz_Abroad]

Sigil?

I mean, there's lore, and a fair amount of it, but I'm having a hellaciously fun time playing 14 different factions (3rd ed, but pre faction war).

[the_david]

Golarion? Greyhawk?

Ofcourse you could just make an entire planet up. If it's just the city campaign you don't even need a planet.
You might make up a name for the planet, and the country they are in. You might want to tell the players where the races that live in the city come from. You don't really need good deities, the players can make that part up while you work out those evil deities that play a role in the campaign.
And then you could always steal things from other settings.

Ooh, and Baslag! That's a good city.

[Agent 451]

Are your players travelling there, or will they start there? There are some powers in Faerun that possess Spelljammers. Maybe you could have them travel from Faerun to this new city/planet if you don't want to completely leave the Realms?

I know it isn't exactly what you're looking for, but this way you wouldn't necessarily have to stat out anything outside the city, and can explain it (and the sheer size of it) away by saying something like "Spelljamming is dangerous, you never know exactly where you will end up" and have that particular part of the plant act like a Spelljammer lodestone, knocking ships off course. They could either be stranded there, or they could pass to and from the place freely, creating a large trading hub.

Have you looked at any d20 Modern/Future resources? The Dawning Star campaign setting is set in a solar system that is rife with multiple sparsely populated/explored planets. You could easily use on of them.

[DeltaEmil]

I'm kicking around ideas for a city campaign, and I'm coming to realize that I'll need a larger city than you can easily find in the Forgotten Realms. I've almost always set my campaigns in the Realms, out of familiarity and a wealth of material, but I need a city that's upwards of half a million people, and apart from Waterdeep and Calimshan I don't think there's anything in Faerûn that comes close.

So, I'm shopping for planets where I could set down a good-sized city, and so far I haven't quite found what I'm looking for. Athas falls a little short on the fertile-lands-and-great-oceans yardstick, Eberron is a bit out there with the funky races and magitech, Kalamar is much too staid and frumpy, and Krynn is too epic-struggle-dragon-legendy for my needs.

Can anyone recommend a nice planet, maybe Toril-esque but a little more coherent, and not so burdened with lore?Why don't you just up the population count of one city so that it does have half a million people living there? You could say that for example Athkatla, the capital of Amn, got a huge influx of refugees, immigrants and impoverished country yokels seeking work there. Or new immigrants in form of Kara-Turians and Zakharans arrived to make a new living. Or huge amounts of slaves are being imported from Maztica.

Considering health magic that is superior to our own modern medicines, the huge amounts of good deities of healing and their cleric servants roaming around, perfect weather control and crop-growing abilities, it would make sense that the Faerûnian cities would all be far far bigger, and that's without going to Tippy-verse application of what D&D 3.x-rules would realistically mean for a world.

[Agent 451]

Ooh, and Baslag! That's a good city.

There is a Dragon magazine issue that has Bas-Lag content. I think it's #352 or #353. Near the end of the 3.5 run, for sure.

[Ashtagon]

Mystara?

Canonically, Thyatis City in the SE Brun region is of the size you want, and there's probably a dozen or so on the Alphatian empire's mainland of a similar size. Hule is a bit low-population canonically, and has sparse information but that means you can do pretty much what you like with it.

Alphatia: (Magocracy with lots of variations)
http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10314

Hule: (Cult of Loki with humanoids and Turkic flavouring)
(Azurun or Khuur are your best cities to use here)
http://www.pandius.com/hulemap.jpg
http://www.pandius.com/hulegeog.html

Thyatis (Byzanto-Romans):
http://www.pandius.com/thyatis.html

[ArqArturo]

Ravnica... Err, I mean, Sigil.

[CigarPete]

Could always use Ptolus. Plenty of material there if you want to use it, or massively detailed environment if you want to let the players roam.

[Greasy]

Ptolus is a ton of fun to play in.

[Palanan]

Okay, thanks for all the suggestions so far. Some good ideas here.


Originally Posted by DeltaEmil
Why don't you just up the population count of one city so that it does have half a million people living there? You could say that for example Athkatla, the capital of Amn, got a huge influx of refugees, immigrants and impoverished country yokels seeking work there.

As it happens, Athkatla is where I'd originally been thinking to set the campaign...but once I started reading up on the place, the tone and background really had nothing in common with what I had in mind. (Being ruled by a secret and mainly evil circle of merchant-lords especially doesn't square with what I need.) I could drop in my own city, but it wouldn't jibe with the rest of Amn and would end up taking more work to shoehorn it into place.


Originally Posted by Ashtagon
Mystara?

Canonically, Thyatis City in the SE Brun region is of the size you want, and there's probably a dozen or so on the Alphatian empire's mainland of a similar size. Hule is a bit low-population canonically, and has sparse information but that means you can do pretty much what you like with it.

Okay, thanks for the suggestion; I'll check into it, since it sounds generally appropriate. (And is Pandius supposed to represent an ancient Earth, very roughly about 200 mya?)


Originally Posted by Agent 451
Are your players travelling there, or will they start there? There are some powers in Faerûn that possess Spelljammers. Maybe you could have them travel from Faerûn to this new city/planet if you don't want to completely leave the Realms?

I hadn't been planning on anyone doing any spelljamming; that would radically alter the campaign I have in mind. Just looking for a setting that would have room for a larger-than-Waterdeep metropolis.

Other folks have suggested Golarion, Greyhawk, Ravnica, and Ptolus, and I'm kicking myself for not having thought of Golarion. I've been meaning to look into Pathfinder for a while now, and this could be a good opportunity.

Can anyone tell me which Pathfinder sourcebooks to look in? And maybe suggest a region that might work?

[Ashtagon]

(MYstara)

Okay, thanks for the suggestion; I'll check into it, since it sounds generally appropriate. (And is Pandius supposed to represent an ancient Earth, very roughly about 200 mya?)

The world's name is Mystara; Pandius refers to a city run by the immortals as a neutral ground that is on one of the planet's moons. The Vaults of Pandius website is the main archive repository for fanworks.

The general geography is blatantly Earth from a few million years ago. Most nations are essentially a magical version of one (or more) RW Earth nations with added magic.

[Someonelse]

My favorite setting is a city called Ptolus. It has a world, but 90% of the detail is on the city. I love this setting. I have run several full length campaigns here (Lv1 through epic) and I still haven't used all the material in the book.
And for some nifty trivia, did you know that when Monte Cook wrote the 3rd edition DMG he used the Ptolus setting to play test the rules?
check it out, I can't say enough good things about it
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1588467899

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Ashtagon
The world's name is Mystara; Pandius refers to a city run by the immortals as a neutral ground that is on one of the planet's moons. The Vaults of Pandius website is the main archive repository for fanworks.

Okay, thanks for clarifying. I was looking at maps on the fansite, and "Pandius" was the name that wedged in my mind.


Originally Posted by Ashtagon
The general geography is blatantly Earth from a few million years ago.

As for the geological timeframe, there's an overview map (http://pandius.com/myst3d.gif) of Mystara (and very nicely done) which looks to be late Jurassic (http://www.scotese.com/late1.htm) or a little later. I didn't see anything explaining this on the Pandius site, although it's probably in there somewhere.


Originally Posted by Someonelse
My favorite setting is a city called Ptolus...check it out, I can't say enough good things about it.

Yup, I've had several recommendations for Ptolus already. Not sure if the "dialed to eleven" approach really fits with what I have in mind, but it's certainly one of the classic city settings and worth drawing ideas from.

[TuggyNE]

And for some nifty trivia, did you know that when Monte Cook wrote the 3rd edition DMG he used the Ptolus setting to play test the rules?

Somehow, that's not reassuring. :smalltongue:

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tuggyne
Somehow, that's not reassuring. :smalltongue:

I confess I had to laugh at that. It really isn't.

:smallbiggrin:



--So, I've pretty much decided that exploring Golarion is what I'd like to do. From the reviews I've glanced through, it sounds like a remarkably coherent and well-designed game world.

That said, I don't know the first thing about it, apart from the fact that it has an Inner Sea (really, who doesn't?) and at least one continent that's all dragon-empirey and stuff.

That sounds interesting, but not really what I need right now. Can anyone suggest some other region of Golarion that's well-populated and generally stable, civilized to the point of stuffiness, and not overly averse to gladiators and slave markets?

[dysprosium]

And I was going to suggest Unicron . . .:smallcool:

[Palanan]

So, second call for city sites in Golarion.



Any advice? Directions for a tourist?