Inspired by Vermintide

[Trask]

I was playing the video game Vermintide with friends, and I thought about how cool a setting the game takes place in. I dont mean the Warhammer setting (although Im not saying that its not cool) but the idea that the players are in a huge capital city that is decaying near the end of the world and the city has been overrun with some kind of evil creature like rat men or orcs or what have you. They have a sort of home base in the inn or in one of the districts and everything else is overrun with survivors huddled around. Instead of dungeons you crawl through monster infested houses and sewers, or plunder the mansions of a corrupt and decadent elite that have secluded themselves from the disaster and have embraced dark powers/killed themselves/abandoned the city. It would be a great sandbox environment to just explore the city, gather treasure, and take back sections and maybe even entire districts from the evil chaos.

So established that it sounds cool, what are some good city supplements that I could use for something like this? Particularly stuff that has good maps and factions. My idea is to sort of steal or frankenstein some city stuff together, read it and get a good understanding of the city, and then make the city fall to an apocalypse.

Any tips would be great

[Anderlith]

Focus on things like, a courtyard garden, where some NPCs are walled up in, trying to make a go at at village like set up, & haughty nobles hosting a never ending party until it "all dies down". City sized dungeon maps should be a quick Google away. BTW, did you happen to post this on /tg as well?

[Trask]

Focus on things like, a courtyard garden, where some NPCs are walled up in, trying to make a go at at village like set up, & haughty nobles hosting a never ending party until it "all dies down". City sized dungeon maps should be a quick Google away. BTW, did you happen to post this on /tg as well?

Yes I did, also thanks for the good ideas.

[Knaight]

I'd look to history here - there are plenty of examples of cities in decline, at a tiny fraction of their earlier population. Rome, Luoyang, Cordoba, the list goes on.

[RazorChain]

The supplement Pavis for Glorantha (RuneQuest) was based on that New Pavis was founded on the rubble of old Pavis and the huge ruined city was kind of a megadungeon while New Pavis was full of never do wells that wanted some of that old treasure. Not exactly the same but....

I ran it in '93 I don't remember much of the detail but we had a lot of fun :)

https://www.blackgate.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Pavis-Big-Rubble.jpg

[Blackhawk748]

You may also want to take a gander at Mordheim. The old Core rulebook for it can be found online (legally) for free and it has a bunch of neat fluff in it.

[Spacewolf]

I imagine any game that involves zombie survival would fit this except you swap out your monster of choice.