The City Adventure

[Scott]

The city/town/village adventure potential is an area I often neglect while DMing. Does anybody have any suggestions, stories, etc. involving urban adventures they've run, or been involved in?
Scott

[Casey]

How about a murder mystery in a city setting?

Rough Scenario:

A couple of bodies turn up during the beginning of the adventure.
The characters must travel to various crime scenes gathering clues.
As the adventure continues, more deaths occur. The characters must race to
solve the murder mystery before more innocents die.

You can have the murders occur in cool places like these:

opera house
grave yard/catacombs
gambling house
opium den
bath house
library
park pavilion

At various points in the adventure, the characters might be visited by the apparitions of the murderer’s victims. These apparitions could be used to add flavor and contribute clues and/or red herrings.

Of course, all the victims will have to have something in common - something with which to lead the player characters to the villain’s motive and modus operandi.

Possible Villain:

Were-creature
Religious zealot
Evil necromancer type (harvesting organs and such...)
jealous wife/husband (victims are all former lovers of the killers’ (late?) spouse)

You could combine a couple of these as well:
Jealous wife finds that husband is cheating.
Wife makes pact with some dark power.
Wife kills first victim (husband’s lover) and is rewarded/cursed with transformation into were- creature.
Death, madness, and mayhem ensue.

Possible problems with adventure:

Too many divination spells available to the characters could ruin everything.
Also, a goodly segment of the adventure might contain little or no fighting - could create boredom if the tension isn’t maintained and/or players and dm prefer more hacknslash.

Casey

[Lord Cias]

This is an area that I could use help with as well, as I've never actually run or designed a city adventure.

I have come up with a couple of broad ideas. One, like Casey detailed, is a murder mystery. To add another option of possible villians to Casey's list, how about a Jack the Ripper type character. He could have the abilities of an assassin and might have supernatural powers (maybe possessed by a demon).

Also, all types of shapeshifters make great city dwelling monsters and mysterious plots can be built around them. The list of city encounters on page 191 of the DMG is a great source for insperation. I think that simply detailing where such creatures lair within the city, why they are there, and what needs to be done to stop them could result in a very cool adventure plot.

[Scott]

Some ideas I've come up with:
I believe cities would make excellent adventure locations for thieves or thief-acrobats. Gang wars and cat burgler type stuff.
Along with the murder mystery, an important person charmed, possessed, or replaced by a double, and now causing trouble is a pretty standard theme.
Have an important artifact stolen, and give the PCs so many days to track it down before it is smuggled out of town. That would work for a kidnapped victim as well. Or have the party go to an evil/enemy city and have to steal some artifact and sneak it out of the city.
Stopping an assassination.
Getting on the bad side of some gang or guild, and having to track down and destroy the gang before they get you first.
A vampire has moved in and is killing and creating lesser vampires.
A werewolf is on the loose, and ends up being some good NPC the characters know.
A Mr. Hyde type adventure.
Lots of ideas from the Night Stalker and the X Files might work.
Scott

[grodog]

I love city stuff, Scott. Are you really looking for general good city resources (like the Citybook series, Cities from Midkemia Press, etc.), or for actual city plots and encounter elements?

[Scott]

Either. A good resource is a good resource.
Scott

[Falconer]

I do recommend Cities from Midkemia Press. They also made some good full-fledged cities (Carse, Jonril, Towns of the Outlands)--this was back in the early 80's? All hard-to-find stuff (but I'll bet Alan has a bunch of 'em), except Cities, of which they still have copies. Regards.

[foster1941]

Falconer, that page you linked to hasn't been updated since 2000. Do you happen to know if they still have copies of "Cities" (perhaps from having ordered one yourself)? I've got a copy of "RuneQuest Cities" (from 1986 -- it's the same book, but with the RQ logo on the cover and a few minor RQ-isms inside -- prices refered to in "pennies" rather than "g.p.", etc.) which I've gotten tremendous use out of over the years and consider one of my favorite and most valuable rpg supplements, but I'd like to get a copy of the older version too, if possible.

[Falconer]

Yes, I ordered a copy of Cities from them myself, not too long ago. It is my understanding that they have plenty of copies.

Great, great book. Easily worth the small price. Regards.

[grodog]

I do own several of the Midkemia Press books, and they're good stuff. Cities is one of my favorite city supplements ever published, along with (in no particular order):

• Thieves World (Chaosium),
  
• Lankhmar (TSR 1e version)
  
• Warhammer Cities (GW for WFRP)
  
• Middenheim (Hogshead for WFRP)
  
• Barnakus, City in Peril (Dragon 80)
  
• Citybooks 1 and 3 (Flying Buffalo)
  
• FR1 Waterdeep and the North (TSR)
  
• the City of Greyhawk from the LGJ articles (map in LGJ #2 or on Maldin's web site)---though I still hate the stupid pyramid ;-)
  
• the Haven series of city supplements (Gamelords, all also available from Different Worlds if you're interested)
  
• Starstone (more of a regional setting with villages in it, this was a generic 1e supplement and is pretty rare)
  
• Irillian (from White Dwarf issues in the late 40s; I recenlty learned this was reprinted in Best of White Dwarf Articles #3, which is cool since I don't have all of the parts)
  
• Town of Baldemar (New Infinities)
  

There other good ones I'm forgetting (like Ed Greenwood's City of Peace book for Kenzer), but half of my bookshelves are obscured by boxes, so that'll have to do for now.

PS: I'm hoping DWP will be able to reprint some of the items on this list this year....