Campaigns in Urban Environments, how to keep it fresh?

[Naicz]

Hello once again GitP forums!

I am about to start DMing a campaign that I want to take place almost entirely in a massively large populated city. The players are acting as agents for various guilds in town. I have a few ideas for some early campaign quests, but the more I think about the long-term campaign, I quickly realize that I may hit a wall when it comes to keeping the player's adventures varied, fresh, interesting, and engaging while the setting stays mostly "stagnant". Things like sewers/towers/guildhalls/slums/high society offer a good variety, but I have always been a more "high-fantasy" style DM with campaigns ranging across all environments. My group has never played a urban-themed campaign before so I will be breaking new ground.

Any thoughts/tips/anecdotes/ideas for a campaign setting that places the players in areas where other people are always present? Where guards and commoners are around every corner and every action the party takes is watched and weighed? Obviously RP is going to be huge because the story will need to be carried by the guild conflicts and political machinations that the players will be working for/with. What are your experiences with Urban campaigns? What works/doesn't work? Any memorable moments that stuck with you?

I always see some great ideas on the forums and any help is greatly appreciated. Brainstorm GO!!!

[gfishfunk]

Immediately create and introduce eight to ten MegaStructures(tm) that are useful for prolonged dungeon crawls or return visits.
- Citidels
- A Palace
- The Waterfront Keep
- Wizard Tower
- The Overlook
- The Lolth Foundation Magical School for Mischievous Young Women (or Men)
- Etc.

I would immediately suggest that the city is run by a tyrannical dictator or some shadow factions, because that gives your players options and incentives for understandably attacking and engaging city forces.

In an enclosed environment more so than other places, I would recommend having some settings and quests plotted out ahead of time that give you directions to go so that you do not end up against that wall of 'nothing left to do.'

[RickAllison]

Consider that you don't have to keep the actual place "stagnant". Invading armies create a tense atmosphere and allow for more epic and magical battles. Trade treaties with formerly-hostile nations create a powder keg dynamic where one terrorist act could destroy the fragile peace, or where spies could be scoping out defenses for a surprise attack (Teleportation Circles...); to explore such a dynamic, I suggest reading "River Secrets" for examples. Internal coups, sudden power changes due to a death in the royalty or nobility, or even a surprising new player like a powerful cleric of Kelemvor. Suddenly everything goes into subtle chaos as nobles are rallying for the new player as an ally.

There are numerous ways to break up any stagnancy. If you really need a shakeup, just check out pre- and post-Cataclysm cities in WoW..:

[GladiusVCreed]

As previously stated, having places that can be revisited and are pretty big in the city is a good idea. Perhaps there is some shift of ruling in your city during a campaign? For example, the king was a good ruler, and had fair rules, and people were happy with him. Well, mid-campaign you could change that entire mood- the king dies of illness and the kings son is more of a dictator. He enacts restrictive laws and fears the guilds because they are organized and pose a potential threat to his rule.
This opens up a possibility of a rebellion, which I find players enjoy. Your PCs could be saboteurs, attacking the guard, breaking into the places they once were allowed to freely go in.
In my opinion, the best way to make a "stagnant" environment exciting and continually amusing is to 1)Have TONS of secrets and locations within the city for the players to investigate and find, and 2)Change the atmosphere that the stagnant environment in.

Good Luck!

[Joe the Rat]

A city of sufficient vintage can have catacombs for the ancient dead. This will most likely be a single site, though one that you can revisit.
A city of sufficient complexity and advancement will have some underground tunnels. "Sewers" is a fantasy staple, but you can also have (al an alternate or in addition) a storm drain system. Less fun, more opportunity to travel unseen. A city of sufficient vintage and complexity can have forgotten tunnels in this regard. A great place to hide the occasional evil shrine or massive conspiracy.

Some themes to play with.
Rivals. Look at how the party defines themselves - as independent contractors, as a team, as a special "trouble-shooting" company... and set up a rival team. There are enough things to do that the players can't possibly deal with every problem. Have jobs that sit too long or get "out-leveled" disappear as someone else is dealing with it. Or they're the upstarts, and whatever is normally dealing with these issues (thieves guild, city guard, or strangely both) may make the party's life less easy.

Conspiracy. How is the city run? Is it a capitol, or an independent state, or simply a large and valuable jewel is some Baron's control? Lord Mayor, council, both? Introduce agents of change. Assassination is gauche, try a little defamation and material ruin to open a seat on the Merchant Council. Have trouble brewing in the local temples. Infiltration by cultists, or a schism within the church of the god of war could come to actual blows, and bloodshed in the streets.

Morality as gray as the dusty streets. Your villains should have an role in the city, and your benefactors should have a few shady traits or lingering skeletons. Smugglers may be bringing in illegal goods that are harmful, but they may be the only way to get the necessary reagents to complete a potion to purify the entire water system.

Catastrophe. Bad things happen. Fires. Plagues. Invasions. Summonings gone awry, leaking Out of the Abyss antics all over the place. Urban Renewal. These are good for shaking up the status quo. Use sparingly.

Shopping. You don't have to roleplay every purchase, but special things should have special time, or costs. Magic items are rare, but that doesn't mean someone doesn't have something. Maybe it's part of a payment. Maybe it's finding the person to trade. Maybe it's finding who has it, and deciding that taking it is fair game. Make a big deal out of expensive purchases.

[Laserlight]

I quickly realize that I may hit a wall when it comes to keeping the player's adventures varied, fresh, interesting, and engaging while the setting stays mostly "stagnant"....

Any thoughts/tips/anecdotes/ideas for a campaign setting that places the players in areas where other people are always present?

People don't necessarily have to be present everywhere. Inside the wall, the city may have parks, fields, private preserves, the duke's gardens, ruined and abandoned neighborhoods, the island in midriver or at the harbor mouth. If there has recently been a plague, possibly quite a lot of the city is deserted and ruined. For more limited deserted areas, consider the three hundred acres of badlands where the Sacred Captain fought and slew the dragon. Dead Square, site of the necromantic duel between Othon of the Twisted Staff and the boneweaver witch.

Can they go outside the city? There's probably a forest nearby where people gather firewood. A river or lake for cargo ships. Possibly mines in the hills.

Under the city, perhaps gypsum mines which are now extensive catacombs, as in Paris. If the city is on limestone, there may be sinkholes and natural caverns.

I'd break it up by figuring out what environments you want, and moving the party into a new environment at different levels. L3, the Bloody Gate and the markets and warrens there. L4 dockside. L5 thieves and politicians. L6 back to the dockside and the sewers under them. L8, murder in the duke's gardens. L9, the Kaan ambassador an d his entourage arrive. L11, spies at the Forgotten Gate. L12, the sewers now open to Whispering Cavern.

[Alejandro]

Hello once again GitP forums!

I am about to start DMing a campaign that I want to take place almost entirely in a massively large populated city. The players are acting as agents for various guilds in town. I have a few ideas for some early campaign quests, but the more I think about the long-term campaign, I quickly realize that I may hit a wall when it comes to keeping the player's adventures varied, fresh, interesting, and engaging while the setting stays mostly "stagnant". Things like sewers/towers/guildhalls/slums/high society offer a good variety, but I have always been a more "high-fantasy" style DM with campaigns ranging across all environments. My group has never played a urban-themed campaign before so I will be breaking new ground.

Any thoughts/tips/anecdotes/ideas for a campaign setting that places the players in areas where other people are always present? Where guards and commoners are around every corner and every action the party takes is watched and weighed? Obviously RP is going to be huge because the story will need to be carried by the guild conflicts and political machinations that the players will be working for/with. What are your experiences with Urban campaigns? What works/doesn't work? Any memorable moments that stuck with you?

I always see some great ideas on the forums and any help is greatly appreciated. Brainstorm GO!!!

I suppose it is not as helpful as some of the other answers, but there is one thing I would definitively nail down ahead of time:

What happens if the PCs leave (or try to leave) the city?

[Regitnui]

What's the character of your city? My main town is a pirate port with a rich high-class area on a bluff, the warehouse and the slum district. There's also sewers left over from the original dwarven city on the site; the slum district is the slum district because the sewers that provide firm foundations for the rest of the Lower City don't extend that far, leaving it to sink slowly into the muck.

Also. what's the history of your city, and what's nearby?

[Naicz]

People don't necessarily have to be present everywhere. Inside the wall, the city may have parks, fields, private preserves, the duke's gardens, ruined and abandoned neighborhoods, the island in midriver or at the harbor mouth. If there has recently been a plague, possibly quite a lot of the city is deserted and ruined. For more limited deserted areas, consider the three hundred acres of badlands where the Sacred Captain fought and slew the dragon. Dead Square, site of the necromantic duel between Othon of the Twisted Staff and the boneweaver witch.

...

I'd break it up by figuring out what environments you want, and moving the party into a new environment at different levels. L3, the Bloody Gate and the markets and warrens there. L4 dockside. L5 thieves and politicians. L6 back to the dockside and the sewers under them. L8, murder in the duke's gardens. L9, the Kaan ambassador an d his entourage arrive. L11, spies at the Forgotten Gate. L12, the sewers now open to Whispering Cavern.

Loving the help everyone! Laserlight's anecdotal examples are exactly the kind of style I love. Even a sentence or two of things happening really get my mind going, it is that initial hump that I struggle with.

This will basically be a megacity, country sized in span. I will definitely remember to use the run down areas and abandoned regions for more "wild" terrain encounters as mentioned above. The politics that I realize will need to be in place are starting to intimidate me. How does a DM weave a web of politics on a "Game of Thrones" and beyond scale? I'm not a professional writer by any means...are there strategies/guidelines other DM's follow when making political/mercantile subterfuge part of the game or should I just wing it as the moment arrives for a twist?

[Regitnui]

If it's a megacity, look up some lore on the Magic: the Gathering plane of Ravnica. One of the parts that make it unique is that even the oceans have been built over, so everyone kinda forgot about them. It took the merfolk appearing from beneath the city and taking over one of the ten guilds for the vast population to remember that there were once bigger bodies of water than reservoirs.

[Reaper34]

Dungeon mag put out a bunch of 1 offs centered around sharn. shouldn't be too hard to convert/steal ideas from them.

even if you don't take them the sharn source book 3.x can give some good ideas for city building to establish enough places to explore without running out of ideas too quickly.

[Laserlight]

This will basically be a megacity, country sized in span. I will definitely remember to use the run down areas and abandoned regions for more "wild" terrain encounters as mentioned above. The politics that I realize will need to be in place are starting to intimidate me. How does a DM weave a web of politics on a "Game of Thrones" and beyond scale? I'm not a professional writer by any means...are there strategies/guidelines other DM's follow when making political/mercantile subterfuge part of the game or should I just wing it as the moment arrives for a twist?

"Country-sized in span" is rather vague. Which country? If it's a city the size of France (or Texas), you could fit the entire population of the medieval world in it. Not that you would have the logistical support to govern it or feed it, without lots of magic. The largest medieval-tech cities had perhaps 400,000 people, and I've seen claims for 1 million so let's run with that. Let's say the population density was 100 people per acre (Paris was an outlier, with 275 p/a, but 100 was more common). 1 million people / 100 people per acre / 640 acres / sq mile = 15.62 square miles. If you want it bigger, lower the population density because hey, here are some parklands because His Illustrious Radiance doesn't want to have to leave the city when he feels like hunting.

As for politics, it's not that hard. Realistically, you will have two main coalitions, and you can just leave it at that if you want. Guelphs v Ghibellines, for instance. If you want to break it down more, figure each faction will be composed of two or three subfactions which agree on the main issue but disagree on other topics. You have a few key issues, which you can define in a few words. "Low tariffs, open trade" v "Protectionism". "Strong central authority" v "Weak central authority, strong nobles". "Tolerate dwarvish piracy to gain dwarvish trade" vs "strong antipiracy fleet and if it leads to war with the dwarves, they had it coming". "Do we ally with the elves or with the Wolf barbarians". Figure out who the spokesmen / figureheads are for each subfaction and go from there. However...I wouldn't bother with that unless you poll the players and find out that they want a poltical sort of campaign. If they want to be murderhobos with an occasional mystery or chance to accidentally offend everyone at the duchess's party, then you've wasted a lot of prep.

Bear in mind that if the two coalitions take the position of "murder, poison, and massacre the other side whenever possible", that's basically a permanent state of war and you're not going to get shifting alliances and trade deals and such. In the real world, powers might stay on reasonably good terms even when they were actively fighting each other, because you might want to switch sides. A lot of wars weren't "kill their king and all his family and retainers", but rather "capture that one minor city on the outskirts of their territory."

[LaserFace]

Hello once again GitP forums!

I am about to start DMing a campaign that I want to take place almost entirely in a massively large populated city. The players are acting as agents for various guilds in town. I have a few ideas for some early campaign quests, but the more I think about the long-term campaign, I quickly realize that I may hit a wall when it comes to keeping the player's adventures varied, fresh, interesting, and engaging while the setting stays mostly "stagnant". Things like sewers/towers/guildhalls/slums/high society offer a good variety, but I have always been a more "high-fantasy" style DM with campaigns ranging across all environments. My group has never played a urban-themed campaign before so I will be breaking new ground.

Any thoughts/tips/anecdotes/ideas for a campaign setting that places the players in areas where other people are always present? Where guards and commoners are around every corner and every action the party takes is watched and weighed? Obviously RP is going to be huge because the story will need to be carried by the guild conflicts and political machinations that the players will be working for/with. What are your experiences with Urban campaigns? What works/doesn't work? Any memorable moments that stuck with you?

I always see some great ideas on the forums and any help is greatly appreciated. Brainstorm GO!!!

My thoughts are that you should just have a vague idea of how most major factions operate and maybe one feature that makes them distinct. You could give them each a broad goal, and maybe one important NPC each. Maybe their attitudes toward other factions; perhaps some have tenuous alliances, others might outright hate each other. I'm sure if you get very detailed, you could have numerous campaigns surrounding just the one city.

But you shouldn't start off with everything clearly defined, however tempting that might be. Your players won't want to be overwhelmed with all this lore that they're not involved with. You also want to leave room to adapt.

You mention you think you'll hit a wall as you go on, but I think if you keep a narrow focus within the city, you won't. Instead of leaping from faction to faction to explain all the ins-and-outs of each, I recommend you start with a focus on small-scale conflict, perhaps between just two weaker factions. They might be two groups within just one small district.

Allow your party to actually see how these factions operate and understand what they really are. Give yourself time to fully characterize the factions, and make their dealings unique enough to remember. Over time you can flesh out their motivations, their goals, headquarters, resources and try to figure out what makes them stand out. Make the most of every inch of what you're establishing. When the players encounter a new faction, use the same method but with new unique features.

As the game goes on and the party grows and explores further, you can plant the seeds for involvement of other factions, perhaps in other territories within the city. Maybe if you started off in a really slummy area, introduce them to nicer places as you progress. Maybe one of the earlier, smaller factions are pawns of a more powerful force that focuses on other areas of the city. Perhaps you can foreshadow the involvement of other factions by just hinting at their presence in subtle ways before a bigger reveal.

Basically, if you want some deep faction intrigue, let it arise naturally in a way consistent with how the game has been running. You can keep vague concepts in mind but let them be mutable until it's truly relevant to the players. You don't have to make some masterful novel that you set up from day 1. And, I find it usually works better if you don't do it that way, because what you planned and what your players perceive don't always line up.

Anyway gl with the campaign

[Specter]

The most difficult thing is to keep players interested. In a city, people need to go after events and informations specifically. If the party is a Bard, an Assassin and an Wizard all hungry for power and with low morality, it's cool. With clerics and paladins, it's easier to lose focus.

What you need (like, really need) to do is keep important places well-defined (like a neighborhood or a castle), and keep some events prepared in case the table gets cold (like a rogue at the tavern telling about an abandoned house he unlocked and where he saw horrible monsters).

[KarlMarx]

A few ideas both historical and fantastical:

-Include locations that are well beyond the pale for cities in general. Elemental vortexes, other extraplanar/plane-influenced locations, abandoned districts where only thieves and wild things go(a place for druids/rangers?), etc. Don't simply fall back on "parks"
-A city country will probably have significant lakes/waterways in it. Make sure to define how these fit into an urban landscape.
-Define how nonhuman races fit into the city

-Make sure to keep the political aspect suitably complex. Medieval cities had three main power bases: The King/secular authority, The Church/religious authority, and The Guilds/mercantile authority. A citizen's assembly could also be useful.

-Do at least some basic research on time-period cities, especially those beyond what are traditionally thought of in the medieval period(Italian city-states, Constantinople, etc.). Some good examples are, in my opinion, the Republic of Novgorod in Russia, as well as the Hanseatic Cities, Baghdad, Timbuktu, Cordoba, and the cities of T'ang China.

-Don't be afraid to leave the city occasionally, especially if that's what your players want. Cities, especially medieval cities, were dependent on the countryside for food and other resources--potential for adventure(what if the city is covered in antimagic and you need to sneak through a siege to bring in critical supplies?). You can always return to the city after such sorties, and last of all don't be afraid to change based on what your players want.

-Finally, I'm not sure if a medieval city is historically the best model. It's definitely doable, but you might want to look at ancient metropolises(cough...Rome...cough...) and possibly model yours on that setting, simply advanced technologically to a medieval period. It might be a better way to think about it that a massive medieval city, which was extremely uncommon(at least in western europe)

[LordVonDerp]

A city of sufficient complexity and advancement will have some underground tunnels. "Sewers" is a fantasy staple, but you can also have (al an alternate or in addition) a storm drain system.

...Is there a difference between pre-industrial sewers and storm drains?

[Joe the Rat]

Fair point.
(For my city, there are separate tunnels, but that has more to do with the original builders not being "pre industrial").