City Campaign Mistakes that Ruin RPGs
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- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
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Running a city campaign in RPGs and D&D is often considered challenging, and many game masters steer clear, believing city adventures are beyond their experience or ability. However, running a city campaign in Dungeons & Dragons or other roleplaying games isn't as hard for dungeon masters as one might believe. Indeed, there are three common mistakes that GMs often fall into that make running a city campaign far more challenging than it needs to be. In this video, we discuss those common pitfalls and how to overcome them.
Trial & Trust, the September 2022 issue of Lair Magazine has an article in it titled Creating a Settlement. the-dm-lair.my...
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Trial & Trust, the September 2022 issue of Lair Magazine has an article in it titled Creating a Settlement. the-dm-lair.myshopify.com/products/trial-trust-lair-magazine-21-september-2022-issue
Perfect city adventure:: You're in Seattle - you must break into a Hasbro subsidiary and steal the scroll of Olga's Great Adventure version 1.0a. You will have to fight faceless suits and lawful evil outsiders...
😬😬😬
Shades, Zombies, various races under mind control, and numerous NPCs trapped by a Devil's contract.
That would actually be a great idea for a session of d20 Modern.
Im working on it
@@Metanaut1 When you make your new system, base it on a d24 to help it be new and not tied to previous systems.
I actually liked building cities, I ended up spending a whole week making a big city named The blue port. Writing little sentances about the guards, the shops, the magic laws and the city nobility and distracts the ganges.
the city is ruled by a woman called Aella, who is secretly serving a bronze dragon that spend his days begging for money on the street (He is the real leader)
Nice flavor here. It’s amazing how just a few details and hooks can provide a vision of your concept.
Players, "Why don't the Guards deal with it?"
GM, "Because the Guards are basically security guards. You wouldn't send a bunch of security guards in to neutralize a hostage situation. You send in SWAT. Adventures are SWAT. When's the last time you saw security guard with a tower shield? Yet it's standard gear for SWAT."
The game Neverwinter Nights is a good example of a city campaign that is very linear and still really engaging. If you can get a copy and run it on an emulator, it'll give some good inspiration for your own campaign.
I've been playing this game for like 15 years. My favourite game of all time, up there with SWKOTOR. I have the Beamdog conversion for Android.
a big tip is like making these games like an adventure with split paths that all lead to the same goal or make a guild system
Cities require more planning prior to starting a campaign, but once the local features and story points are set, your guardrails are already in place and the actual game isn't hard to run. Great tips Luke!
I ran a campaign for seven years in a city totally railroaded the characters all the time with my plot hooks linked to feel like a sandbox.
then years later, they watched a video on railroading and told me they’re glad that I never did this to them. Lol.
It's possible you're misunderstanding railroading as a specific term with a linear plot, but hey, happy ending!
Railroading done right is fun. The real question is why would the characters ride this railroad? If they want to go on the ride it is fun, if they go just because that is all the DM prepared, it is less fun.
@@dougmartin2007 No, it's not. You're confusing linear campaigns with railroading.
@@dougmartin2007 ? I always only prepare what I can foresee my players to actually so, what else am I supposed to do?
@@rich63113 A lot of people would say a linear campaign is just the DM trying to make the railroad sound nice.
Don't get bogged down in semantics.
I thought many of the same things, but after looking into Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, I figured we'd give it a shot. Me and my group were so pleasantly surprised, we are going to continue the campaign in WD even after Dragon Heist is done. And WD has a great way to extend the adventure, because there are 4 villains you can use.
I think there's a supplement out there called liked "The Alexandrian Dragon Heist" or something like that which actually connects the story and adventure throughout all four seasons. I haven't looked into it myself, but it was always the way I planned on running Dragon Heist if I ever got to.
@@rookiedrifter4273 Yeah, I have heard of it, but thanks for the reminder. I'm sure there's tons of inspiration in there if nothing else.
I unfortunately don't have a group to play with:(
However, I have created 6 different lvl 1 characters in case I found a group.
One of which is an Astral Elf Anthropologist background Female Paladin (planning Oath of Conquest). Her primary goals are to conquer part of the "Material/Mortal Plane", establish a new Queendom, and create a new Pantheon primarily based off "Dead/Lost/Weakened" Deities such as Garagos. She sort of has plans on what her central Palace/City will look like.
The last point about stat blocks is a very interesting idea for a separate video.
For example listing possible stat blocks for NPC's like commoner, veteran, evocator, conjurer, champion, etc...
I think that would help a lot of DM's
I had no Idea people thought city campaigns were for experts. I ran one for my players on their second adventure.
The hardest part is finding appropriate battle maps.
Theater of the mind.
I use MS Paint for battle map ideas, screenshot and save them, then when we play I lay down a wipeable whiteboard where I can quickly draw up/erase anything we need.
This is great advice!! Thank you for breaking down how to put a city together - I’ve been wanting to run a larger city but was feeling pretty intimidated. Awesome video!
When I'm not preparing anything else, I just prepare a list of these locations so if they're in a city that MIGHT have one of these, I just cut it from my list, and paste it into my campaign, then read from it
A nice thing with city adventures you don't usually have to deal with travel getting to sewers,, underground ruins, cult temple, etc. The older Fafhard and Gray Mouser series of books has some awesome inspirational material with it's city of Lankhmar.
"City campaigns aren't sandbox campaigns!" Wait, what do you think a sandbox campaign is? 'Cuz what you described sounds a lot like a sandbox campaign.
Hey Luke longtime sub , first comment thanks for continuing to make great rpg content. You could be going nuts with video after video on the ogl hype, but it’s nice to actually have something related to actual gameplay stuff rather than the controversy! You do great work, keep it up!
Yes thank you for the regular recipe
Truth! Much of Luke’s content is universal for any game.
It is very refreshing to get a quality and helpful video that serves to excite, educate and motivate us. With all the OGL drama and videos putting a negative light on this game we all love so much, this video is a much need reprieve. So many creators are trashing the game and pushing people to move to different systems. Yes WOTC and Hasbro upper management have proven to be horrible human beings but D&D isn't about them. It is about us, our players, our tables, our adventures.
Luke has produced another great video that helps remind and motivate us to create better worlds and campaigns. Thank you for all you do.
An easy way to do all murder mysteries all the time is to have the player characters be police detectives who solve murders that happen in a large city.
Also, a serial killer could be the big bad, so you could literally be solving a series of related murders. If not part of official law enforcement, you can have a group that is essentially a private investigator and their associates. Dresden Files style, or Spenser For Hire...
I love running stuff for a city. But I also like improv/ adding a tailored experience for my players that is to help them/ their character care about the city. One of my GM tips is when a player asks if the town/ city has (fill in the blank) I ask for a check for looking for (the thing) while my brain is making it up while the dice rolls.
Great guide and it sounnds like all a city campaign is like a region one where you don't phycally move all that far and thuse need to pour that energy in a tighter circle... Also 3 is such a great list thank you!
Thank you for getting back to normal D&D content. I agree with you on the problems of the OGL, but honestly, I'm sick of hearing about it. I am also running and open world city adventure now, so this is super helpful. Thank you
Great video again Luke; city campaigns can be a great experience for the players because they can really get grounded in the city itself. And we know how beautiful a campaign can be when the PCs feel grounded and invested in a particular area.
One building I would've like to see included would have been an Adventuring Guild. These can offer a great organization within the city the PCs can choose to join, it offers a great place to seed a job board for one-off adventures that may not be within the city proper (1-2 days ride outside the city) which are very easy for DMs to design and then set aside not caring if the PCs ever see them or not, and it brings in "fun tension" to the game in the form of competitions with other adventuring groups. Of course, you can choose to what lengths the Adventuring Guild rewards the PCs. Extra points if you make the Adventuring Guilds leader apart of the City Council, or maybe they have a direct backroom communication line with the King/Queen's spymaster etc.
I'd suggest, that it COULD matter more on the "flavor" of the City you're working on... Guilds ARE "glorified unions"... AND so some local governments who contract work to Adventurers might not be so keen to have such a Guild putting pressure on "legitimate pay" for what would be tantamount to mercenaries... even when they DO help the local guards/police...
As such, similar to a Rogues' or Thieves' guild, something like a local Tavern of note or other business might have to serve as a "front" allowing for business to be done... bulletins and communications posted, and the like, and even dues-contributions building to retirement pensions, medical aid (and such), and all while covering taxes with an "otherwise legitimate" business to report to the nobility/leadership caste...
Don't forget that's where Al Capone messed up... The tax-man will get you. (haha) SO you never know when you'll need to hide out behind and beneath one of the washing facilities in the local laundrymat or a dry cleaner's... using the catacombs under the city as a more secretive meeting place to avoid the scrutiny of the "City Guard"... ;o)
Thanks a lot for this video! I think it’ll be really helpful, and made me think of a few things I needed!
And well, I’m currently building a city campaign, but I’m facing a few other challenges besides those mentioned in the video:
1. The focus will be about overthrowing the tyrannical king running the city, and thus the whole kingdom. The PCs patron found out the king is an impostor, and their goal is to either organize a rebellion and start a revolution, or find the true heir and expose the king as an impostor.
2. This also means that players will have to be on the lookout for city guards, since they won’t be on their side for the most part, and they will be seen as criminals for a large portion of the campaign.
3. And the main problem I’m facing, it’s a high level adventure with players starting at 14th level. It’s part of an ongoing campaign we’ve been running for a few years, but we’ve never been in a proper city adventure. I’m concerned that the PCs might be too powerful to find city guards and faction enemies actually challenging. Or that they won’t really worry about consequences since they’re at a point they’re unbeatable.
I’m slowly finding ways to overcome these problems by altering stat blocks and adding powerful enemies here and there, but if there’s any tips about running a high level city adventure with the government as your enemy that I may not have thought of, I’d really appreciate that.
Thanks again!
I currently have the players in one of my groups in Mirros (formerly Specularum) of ad&d 2e’s Mystara setting, and theyre prob gonna be there for awhile. City campaigns can be alot of fun
Last campaign one of my player made that comment "why are the city guards doing something about this"...... so I decided to make them the local constabulary in a city about the size of waterdeep for our current campaign
Thanks for a normal Dnd video!!!!
The scariest part of cities is quantity of people lol
man you are the only youtuber i dont forward the sponsor adds
Castle Zagyg. This broke me of my "how much detail is too much?" concept. This was way too much detail.
For those that haven't discovered this, one of Gary Gygax's last big projects was "Castle Zagyg". It was a MONSTROUS expansion on the concept of his original Yggsburgh campaign with a city with so much detail you could choke on it.
The city is MASSIVE. Districts, streets, avenues, alleyways, you name it, it's there. Greenhouses and shops and markets and factories and warehouses. EVERY ONE OF THEM has NPCs, complete with mini-stat blocks and often enough interrelational text about Shopkeeper Smith is having an affair with Goody Henson, the seamstress around the block. Bimbum Kettlebottom keeps a stash of gold under a loose floorboard under the main checkout.
It's rather stunning. Borrowed from it, and even cut the city into smaller sections that I liked and made my own city, only to use his details in my city. But to ever attempt that on my own? No. I don't think I will.
Thanks for the advice over the years my man.
Fantasic video! My fav campaign was one i ran in Waterdeep. The misconceptions are real! That said, the most intimidating/hardest part for me is dealing with PCs who break the law and get arrested since that really changes the direction of the campaign.
I created an NPC dwarf who is bald and whose beard is wispy and is falling out. I gave him a Hat of Disguise and he uses it to make it look like he has a full, bushy beard. He doesn’t have a stat block, but my players will remember him because of that quirk.
I’m running Waterdeep Dragon Heist as a first-time DM. I would recommend a city campaign for a first timer, all the adventures and resources are available to the players. And yeah, it’s sandbox-y with a main quest set up. The players love it
#3 was probably the biggest fear I had; that since the players could ask for anything, I had to have everything ready. Needless to say, your response put my mind at ease. The rest of the video also helped immensely.
Also, what you were going for around 7:54 was the "Doylist" explanation, i.e. the out-of-game explanation, whereas having the guards be less powerful, being busy with a million other things, or not qualified for the jobs the adventurers are being sent on is the "Watsonian" explanation. Basically think of it as how John Watson explains the plot of a Sherlock Holmes story (being a character in it) vs how Arthur Conan Doyle would (being the author).
I have a somewhat sandboxy campaign (though my players enjoy linear quests littered throughout) and they are now going to a city. They have an objective but i like leaving things open for them so i have anticipated exploration and have several side quests to direct them to in variable locations
The most challenging thing in my campaign, which so far has been mostly city-based (albeit across several different cities), has been memorising as much information as possible, especially NPC and lore related. I feel like in the campaign I'm running, the depth and intricacies of the world are as important as they are challenging as a DM.
As an example of this: a couple of sessions ago one of my players asked a knowledgeable NPC faction leader about the 11 electoral candidates for the upcoming elections in a different city, what they knew about them as well as their opinion on the candidates. I have a 20-page document describing all of that in detail, but I hadn't read it prior to the session because I didn't expect that question to come up. I had to pause the game for a couple of minutes while I quickly scanned through the document to at least be able to give them SOMETHING, but I had to tell the player that I would send them a more complete and in-depth document later. That felt like a major failure on my part, as it was a piece of lore that was obviously important for the upcoming elections which they will probably try to influence.
Nice work. Created a hive type City on my own world that has the center being high society where the outsides our individual suburbs and we've had quite a fun time just exploring one or two of the suburbs and the adventures there.
Great advice, appreciate the video.
JUST recently embraced EZD6 by DM Scotty... and Dude... Between what you suggest here and EZD6... Players may have a whole new TTRPG experience. Just discovered your channel and looking forward to exploring the other vids. Cheers!
0:50 Pitfall #1: Assuming that City Campaigns are Sandbox Campaigns
4:20 Pitfall #2: Making the Campaign and Adventures All About Politics
9:19 Pitfall #3: Creating and Fleshing Out EVERYTHING in the City
Just started Dragon Heist a few months ago (planning on using the Alexandrian Remix too), and it's gone really well so far. Scariest thing about this campaign is there's an entire chapter that is just a big open sandbox. Even a pseudo sandbox is not terribly difficult with some forethought:
1) Before the campaign even started, I created/gathered NPCs, quest hooks, magic items, mysteries/clues, locations, etc.
2) I made sure everything I prepped was modular. Now if a player wants to do some random thing: "Sure, you go down to [NPC #12] and he tells you he needs help with [Quest #6]"
3) Like the video suggested, I'm constantly dangling plot hooks from the module or of my own making. By session 2 or 3, I had a very good idea of what the players were going to do like 90% of the time.
4) Again like the video said, I made a point to mention during session 0: "Hey, this is a sandbox, and I think I'm ready for y'all to go crazy. But I'm also just one man and a novice DM. There may be a time or two where I have to tell you 'I'm not ready for that, can we do that next session?'"
Other than that, I just spent a lot of time in the weeks before session 1 reading and watching things about waterdeep. Just kind of immersed myself in those stories for a while so that I felt confident improvising. It's been a blast. Only complaint is my PCs are enjoying this sandboxy chapter too much and dragging it out while I'm ready to move on to the actual plot XD
Likeable NPCs is THE BEST advice from this video. If all your NPCs are pricks then the players are going to either want to kill them or avoid them. Sure, some NPCs can be bad tempered, but in general, especially in the case of merchant NPCs, they will not be successful in their business if they are an ass to their customers. This also prevents players from “learning” the bad lesson that all NPCs are going to screw them over and should be at least distrusted if not killed outright. Most murderhobo players I have known did not start that way. They learned the behavior over time from GMs who made every NPC an adversary of the PCs. Don’t do that!
chatgpt is suuuuper rad for fleshing out a city. Once you've done one city, you can use it as a template for the next one. Took me about a day to work up my first city, but the nation was completed the next day.
I think myself as a very experienced DM (30+ years). But i still struggle when the PC actually earn a NPC (individual or group) to help them out.
I think is because i already got the "guard wont do the aventure for you" buried in my mind. But sometimes, the story, their action, the development really calls for a NPC vs NPC resolution, and i never enjoy having to RP all by myself
The only solution i find (but wont work everytime) is to handle the friendly NPC RP to the players, and let them tell me how the "The Red Cape Society" defeat the "Evil Cultist of Xa".
Well for any plothook there needs to be a quite accurate knowledge of the overall PCs' capabilities and a who, why and how.
Who did what?
Why did who what?
How did who what?
The why and how leave plausible options for tracking. And those need to be within the capabilities of the group. Even hiring NPCs needs to an option.
So if you do not have a good oversight about what the PCs can do to actually follow any given hook.
Flesh out what you need to support the group's options.
Leave everything else to a note and improvise when needed.
I usually create all existing PC and NPC classes by the DMG first.
Those are running the infrastructure.
Military
Logistics
Culture
I will focus mainly on logistics. Teleport being normal how would a city handle wizards et al being able to actually appear anywhere out of nowhere?
Antimagic Fields? Glyphs? Forbiddance? Force Fields?
Then the law enforcement.
Then the culture. A brief founding history plus according important city spots.
A few important events to have a reason for holidays.
All in all cities in a high common magic game like dnd should be very restrictive towards weapons and armor worn as non city military as well as non city casters (psssst... this make Bards, Rogues and having social skills actually useful).
That provides a good setup for [possible] underground cities where anything goes.
Avoids politics in games, thinks cities are full of bad guys.
I have suddenly become very suspicious
In my game the players are contracted criminal investigators. I still had a player ask "Why don't the Azorius solve this?" To which the captain NPC replied, they are, that's why YOU are on the case!" And the detective player just replied, "Oh. Right..."
The only time I created the stat blocks of many NPCs is in the very beginning of the last campaign I DM'ed.
The basic principle was that King Godfroy III of Caranvalle asked for adventurers to explore the mountains and neutralize the mosnter threat, because each time he sent his armies to do it, they would have to face a guerilla warfare from monsters AND the possibility that his rival, Prince Richard of Gaillefort would use the occasion to steal parts of his lands.
But he also wanted to avoid a free for all of murder hobos going to war against each other in his "backyard" so he organized a tournament of hero groups and the 4 finalist groups would recieve a medal from him that was basically a permit of adventuring. I created 4 other hero groups with their own theme against which my players fought (in a friendly non-lethal way). Since they were all level 1, it wasn't too complicated.
Eventually, during the campaign, they would come across the other hero groups they had fought against and would help each other in their respective investigations.
I'm running my first EVER campaign in a city this coming week and I see this... "AM I MAKING A MISTAKE!?" LOL glad I ran into this honestly.
I think of "politics" in D&D as the interplay of differenty factions that have power with their own particular spheres where those spheres often rub up against one another, not _just_ nobles, professional politicians, and government ministers, although that may may also have their own factions. That can happen outside of cities as easily as inside them. Take BG 3, where there is, early-on, conflict between the tieflings and the druids (and between different subgroups within the druid Enclave), and between the druids and the goblins. But cities are especially good for such dynamics as they arise naturally with large numbers of people living side by side and competing for wealth, power or other resources.
In my longest running city campaign, there was an alliance of kobolds who controlled most of the sewers and who often came into contact with several of the criminal gangs interested in using the sewers as safe passage. The gangs, however, did not always get along with each other or with variuous mercantile/artisanal guilds, including a guild of adventurers (but often entered short term alliances when needed), so more politics there. The official church was not a govenment agency, but represented the four sanctioned deities that were legal to worship in that city and its surrounding lands. The churches sometimes hasd their own internal tensions, but always collectively opposed "heretical" religions (including several formal monastic orders) as well as attempting to undermine the social acceptance of the use of "black magic" (i.e. arcane casters). Under the weight of this social opprobrium, many arcane casters would choose to band together into "schools" (not necessarily based on class or subclass as much as differing philosophies) to defend themselves from the slanders of the State Churches. So there were lots of politics without ever having a single royal, noble, or person on the government payroll.
It was very hard to become prominent without picking sides in at least some of the inter-group conflicts (unless the players choose to piss off all sides).
I love that because you have plenty of antagonists for the players to dislike who were not mustache-twirling or "Capital-E" evil...they just want different things and often find themselves in what they perceive as zero-sum situations.
Great video!
Mistake #4: running travel in a city like it’s a dungeon rather than a point crawl. PCs should easily be able to ask how to get between locations so you can move the story between locations quickly. Of course, the information may be false.
This also means you don’t need to map the city. I just mark a few key buildings and market squares. Each market square has adjacent tavern, inn, blacksmith, market events.
Thanks for the video, I'm a new GM and will be running a ruined city campaign like Mordheim and Drakkenheim. I just hope my players like what I come up with.
Having ran a very city focused campaign 3 is so important, it's so easy to get lost in the sauce.
City campaigns also have a risk of forgetting the golden rule. You need to run the game your players want. I love political intrigue, sandboxy, shades of gray stuff.
My party... Doesn't, they want a patron to give them directions, they like more defined "bad guys/good guys" and they want to go to a dungeon and whack monsters.
and cities can totally do this!
The other big tip I have. Is it your city campaign drags.. you can always hit the reset button. As a first time dm, I made a super over complicated web of plots and storylines, the fave was really grinding under the weight, players felt listless...
So I borrowed a page from Matt Colville's playbook. The orcs attacked. (I actually had the then unseen BBEG open a portal to the abyss above the city and basically bombard it with demons.
Created a great season of the party trying to fight, then escape the city and it wiped the slate clean.
@the DM Lair ChatGPT is STUPIDLY GOOD to template your district and subquest. He even REMEMBERS stuff. Check this out:
Input: Describe a fictional small town from the early industrial era, in the Pathfinder 2E universe. The town should have 4 districts, each district it's own unique military outpost.
Output:
Ironhold is a small town situated in the foothills of the Iron Mountains in the early industrial era of the Pathfinder 2E universe. It has a population of around 5,000 people and is known for its iron mines and smithies. The town is divided into four districts, each with its own unique military outpost.
The Mining District: This district is home to the iron mines that provide the town's livelihood. It is also where most of the town's smithies are located. The military outpost in this district is responsible for protecting the mines from bandits and monsters that may lurk in the mountains.
The Residential District: This is where most of the town's residents live. It is home to small houses and shops, as well as a few inns and taverns. The military outpost in this district is responsible for maintaining order and protecting the residents from any threats that may arise.
The Trade District: This district is where the town's merchants and traders conduct their business. It is home to a large market square and several warehouses. The military outpost in this district is responsible for protecting the town's trade routes and ensuring the safe passage of goods and merchants.
The Fortification District: This district is home to the town's main fortification, a large stone wall that surrounds the town and protect it from invaders. It also have barracks, armory, and command center. The military outpost in this district is responsible for the town's overall defense and coordinates the actions of the other outposts in case of an attack.
Ironhold is a bustling and active town, with the constant activity of mining, trading and the presence of the military outposts gives the town a sense of security and prosperity
Quirky but gives you a good start. To me, a not very creative person, this is god given
I recently read "Red Nails" by Howard where Conan comes to a city with around 100 people in it, broken into two factions and all of them are crazy. Would be nice to see info on how to run an adventure in a lost or abandoned city
I'm DMing my first homebrew campaign. It's in a city. We are 11 sessions in. I think I have my players fooled into believing that I have the city fleshed out. But honestly I'm just planning session to session. I don't even know who the BBEG is other than a city official ':)
They are enjoying the game alot tho'. They just robbed the library's archive to get a map of the ruins that the city is built upon, which they are going to use in a heist.
I'm a relatively new GM (I've run a few one shots but never a campaign). I'm thinking of running a city campaign where the players would be starting a thieves guild from scratch, then battling their old guild for control of the city. I'm planning on breaking my city into different sections, each section being a different "XP Level". So the richer the area the higher level characters and villain's they'll face. I'm just worried that the players will want to go straight to the rich area before getting control of the slums.
One aspect that is vital for a city is industry and commerce. Is it a thriving hub for merchants, or a backwater fallen on hard times? Is the city famous for a certain product, like fabrics, perfume, glassware? How powerful are the trade guilds and merchant guild? Is there a special festival devoted to the speciality the city is famed for? There will be merchants' houses, warehouses, caravanserais (in need of caravan guards), and so on.
In one of my past 3.5 campaigns, the characters lived in or went to a big capital. One of them was a young female LE cleric/wizard/true necromancer, incredibly beautiful but also nasty and dangerous, which was the city's necropolis warden. As a city officer, she had to attend the council's meetings, something that bored her to undeath, since she really didn't care for anything but her beloved dead.
But then some corpses started to vanish from the necropolis and she went full extermination mode. It was easy to have her follow the line of plot hooks I left around, dragging the rest of the party with her. I will just say that the only "survivor" among the morons that dared to disturb "her" deads' repose ended up dying of terror while closed in a coffin with one of his dead companions for three days, only for the girl to have his body stuffed by a taxonomist and placed near the entrance of the necropolis with a sign telling "grave robber", because his horrified death expression was of her liking.
She basically created a new notable place in the city without me doing anything.
This kind of character forced me to design in greater detail the necropolis, though, as well as other parts of the city where the other players often went, especially the rogue and the bard, who where some big trouble seekers, or the LG cleric/sorcerer/mystic theurge, which visited all the plazas and squares to preach and give sermons. I had to describe a lot of recurrent npcs too, but it was worth it and really fun.
Town guards have a steady paycheck, a title, some authority and "opportunity" for advancement, and, of course, the chance to bully others to feel important. All the worst traits of bureaucrats. So why would they risk their necks for, what, a little treasure maybe? How many retired adventures are their living the high life, versus the total number of adventurers everyone sees go out to make their fortune.
If I'm not mistaken, ancient Sumerians had Banks.... Or was it the Pursians?.
I could be wrong.... But banks have been around a long time
Currently running an Eldritch Hunt campaign taking place in Yharnam from Bloodborne.
For me, dungeons just have obvious hooks.
"There is some treasure in a dungeon. Go Find it." With that simplicity, I also add stuff to it. However with a city my monkey brain needs to be a bit more creative to find a basis of my adventure.
Because most people are laymen I tend to keep the politics quite simple in my campaigns. The courtly intrigue, political factions, unrest between the plebs and other social upheavals does make for a more indepth story, making it sound more realistic however for the sake of the flow of the campaign most details of the city's politics is unnecessary. Politics can be present but you don't have to flush it out.
I dont use politics...... except the extended campaign of the guy trying to take over Sword Coast.
So big question, is you channel going to show more paizo based content? I think paizo needs more love broadly...dare I say, maybe the new stewards of the game
"It's ok for me to make money off of another company, but they can't off of me..." unconscionable LOL
Thank god AI exist, it saves me work when i make NPCs, obviusly I review them and add/subtract details.
Will check out your store Luke 👍 Also for city interaction/ play, the Dungeon Dudes Drakkenheim series have tons of city exploration and faction interactions. Binging those in the background while painting minis + several cups of coffee 😆
I'm currently running a Drakkenheim game, and I'm enjoying it a lot. I've always liked faction play, and it incorporates it from level 1. The players were surprised at first, because they expected that they needed to be high level badasses before factions got interested in them, but they got over that quickly 🙂
Guards, nepotism, underpayment, 6 babies to keep fed, violence adverse => poorly motivated to take charge and root out gang of vampires
The DM Lair, If you gave characters more than one plot hook for which plot to decide to pursue, then it is a sandbox campaign...
Ptolus is perfect for this! Been running a game in the City by the Spire since 2017. Even built an entire website and RUclips channel dedicated to it! ❤
you don't totally suck, quite the opposite, you are nice, & I reqlly liked this video (almost) sounding system agnostic.
Thanks for this, The Barbarian Skit gave me a good chuckle .... 👍👍👍👍
I think you missed the goal of removing the intimidation factor. The end of the video seems to pile on the complexity of such an endeavour.
I agree with the idea of not making it, open ended.
It helps to draw a flow chart. Don't be afraid just to tell the characters they're at a dead end and remind them of the options left.
Just in time.... running a home brew for a bunch of 13 year olds today in a city... thanks.
Read comic book set in cities to get ideas for city stories. Superpowered people who rely on violence to overcome threats and problems in an urban setting? Not much effort required to convert to a medieval setting. Keep a list of names with a single sentence description of individuals not assigned to anything so that you can assign them on the fly to individuals the heroes meet in their wandering around town. Make a note next to the name as you assign them.
I am done. I am done. Finally after all these years, all 100K npcs are stated. For my 1E Star City. oops.
dammit, i typically fast forward through promotions but i love the barbarian so much i just cant.
ive been enjoying alot of your content over the last 6 months but im curious. some of your older videos (over a year) have alot of patreon content id be interested in. any way to get old content like do patrons have access to all your stuff or just stuff during months they paid for
I got one for you Luke, my players bit on a rumor! They want to run off and chase Granny night shade but thereisnt one???
Very helpful video... If you're running fantasy.. sadly I am running more contemporary cities in coming games so a lot of the tips past "it's not a sandbox" won't really go well in a vampire chronicle or coc mystery. But when I get my Pathfinder books and learn the basics this will be extremely helpful, so I'll save this vid for then
The presence of plot hooks doesn't make something not a sandbox - properly run sandboxes have tons of plothooks.
I've been beside you for the last 12 days, Cheers my friend! Your awesome! 5E forever!
watching this as I'm making my first homebrew campaign set in a city because I thought it would be easier than a whole world smh
Who in their right mind would do something so mindboggingly stupid to get themselves thrown in jail?... This guy right here. me. I did that thing xD
Why should it be hard? Don't people read books or watch movies and TV shows set in cities?
You didn't mention places to train and people to do the training. How are they expected to gain levels without training?
My players are veterans... they hate city campaigns. They avoid them. 80% of the time.
Whoever this advertisement guy is sounds like Gollum meets My Pillow Guy.
Soooo no politics but yes factions which is not a different name for politics says you? ;-)
I’ve been using ChatGPT to instantly flesh out NPCs and give them stat blocks.
Ptolus makes this so much easier ❤ Monte Cook Games. Epic city campaign setting
I have the exact opposite problem. My players keep adopting bandits and crap
I dislike the skits with the wacky lisp character. I always gotta skip ahead and look at the thumbnail to avoid it
I’m going to watch this as I’m doing Cyberpunk right now.
...I think you've got a very hardine definition of sandbox.
What are some good books to prepare for a city campaign? Is SCAG a good one?