City adventure ideas?

[Gareman]

I'm running a campaign in a bustling city, somewhat of a composite of Monte Cook's Ptolus and Freeport. Can you recommend some published city adventures? How about your own adventure seeds?

I'm looking for the city to be the adventure setting, as opposed to trecking out to some nearby dungeon or fortress.

Thanks!

 

[Natural20]

Ideas

Some ideas that have worked for me:

1) Wererats live in the sewers, and are taking over the thieves guild.

2) A Noble's son had a fling, and tried to break it off, but the angry lass locked him in the basement and now doesn't know what to do. The family hires the party to scour the city for him.

3) A doppleganger replaces an important official, priest, etc. and starts changing policies.

4) Temple versus temple espionage. Merchant on merchant espionage. Noble on noble espionage. Guard on guard espionage.

5) There is a Jack the Ripper type serial killer on the loose in the poor quarter. The party must find him.

6) Begger children keep disappearing. Turns out an escaped circus animal/vampire/displacer beast/(you picked) is living in the sewers/back alley's, preying on them.

7) Some rich obsessive dude has captured/bought a dryad/mermaid/sirine/(you pick), and is keeping it in his mansion.

8) Stirges in the belfrey.

9) Rip off any Shakesphere play (Romeo & Juliet, etc)

 

[Bibliophile]

Well, I'm starting up a campaign in a city soon, this is what I'm using:

"Shonal is a fairly large, metropolitan city, and one of the few remaining strongholds of humankind (regarded as a servitor race in most of the world). Its walls are high, and its markets are extensive. Yet, unrest lies even here, you [the party] have been hired by a prominent noble to help protect his new wife from assasination attempts. You see, there's been an age-long feud between the noble's house, Arkain, and the Hattorain (who are believed to be behind the assasination attempts). Now, this all sounds fairly plain, but the noble's new wife is a celestial who chose to live with the mortal races. On top of all this, a few of the caravans sent out to the south by the House Arkain have fell to raiding parties with unusual allies: demons."

Basically the goals are to protect the noble's new wife, find out and stop the source of the assasination attempts, and figure out what's going on with the caravans. To make it all more interesting, the Captain of the Guard is from House Hattorain, so they better have really good evidence before they can prosecute them. What the party doesn't know, however, is that the noble's wife isn't really a celestial, but an Erynies in disguise. The assasination attempts are coming from a group calling themselves the Golden Hand, and are lead by a Paladin from the church of the local god of trickery. In addition, erynies is after a powerful artifact necessary to complete an Evil Ritual (tm), which can only be retrived by someone in the noble's bloodline. You guessed it, it's in the south, and the demons don't want anyone affiliated with the noble to get a hold of it, as completion of the Evil Ritual (tm) would entail a fair advantage for the devils in the blood war.

 

[Stormborn]

Peridido Street Station is rife with ideas for a city campaign. Depending on how "adult" you want to make it there can be: drug dealers, nightmare-ish mosters, ambassadors from Hell, self-spawning intellignet constructs living in the city dump, and of course racial tension and violence.
The above mentioned Wererat's in the sewers is a classic, but I am planning on putting in a twist using Sean. K. Renyolds rules for aquiring the wererat template over at the WoC site. The wererats are a cult that teach self reliance and free will to the poor massess in the slums. Initiates who prove themselves trust worthy are granted the "Blessing of the Rat." So, you have a cult threat that the PCs can slowly become aware of, perhaps deciding to act or beign forced to do so a little to late.
For more insteresting fun in the sewers try werecrocs from the FR setting, lead by a shaman.
I have used the published campaign Speaker in Dreams, adapting it for my own city, and thought it was excelent. I have heard others say the same.
If the city is old enough, and from your description it should be, have the PCs discover an ancient prison, long ago collapsed into the ground and built over and arround, containing unspeakable evils somehow still alive; ancient temples often have vast catcombs and layers no longer in use, a cleric could send them into the depths to retrieve an ancient relic or tome, only to find that stagnet magics are spawning undead or worse in the dark; or take a complelty different approach and head to the roof tops, where there is a secret vagabond community, long tolerated but now on the run because one of their members has seen somethign she shouldn't have while peeping into a noble's window.
Hope this helps.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Take ideas from the news and use in your game as current events, fires, murders, and such can become plot hooks.

Let the PCs do some homework, have them create NPCs for you. Also let them create locations for you, as magic users, fighters, would all have their own places of interest.

Don't detail the city too much but create landmarks, the square, the palace, the statue. Give this to the players, during the games refer to them and then mark places on your map.

 

[Desdichado]

Presumably you've picked up the Freeport adventures? The Witchfire Trilogy by Privateer Press is also essentially urban (most of the time) and full of good ideas to steal.

 

[MarauderX]

There is a city adventure from an OD&D gazeteer that I ripped off and modified once, and it involved higher level PCs.

Someone has stolen a phoenix egg from a well protected mage tower in the city, and they need to track it down and prevent it from being used as it could lay waste to the whole city as it keeps being reborn. There should be a few groups that will be trying to do the same thing, so the adventure should seem a bit competitive. Have it be stolen by an experience cat thief who only works alone, and the PCs have to get in touch with her via the thieves guild, who only hires the cat thief through a certain monster, and must pay well to pass along any messages. They should be able to come up with a list of possible buyers that would hire the thief and know how, and they should run down the list one by one, using the next to last one reached as the target.

Once the PCs set out given a couple of leads, they should try to out-run the other groups to get to the first lead, then just keep giving them piece by piece until they learn some things about the phoenix, and perhaps hint they may want to trade a magic item or two for a fire-resistant blanket, shield, or other equipment. Whenever they start towards the last target are within sight of it, a huge phoenix should explode out from the building, destroying it and setting other nearby buildings on fire. The PCs should be the first to get there, and have them battle the phoenix the first time, until it falls into ashes. After that, have one of the other groups show up along with the town guard when the phoenix re-ignites a few rounds later and starts setting more buildings on fire. It keeps doing this, and no matter how many times it is defeated and the ashes scattered, the phoenix is revived and must be fought again.

The PCs should have gathered enough clues to realize that the only way to defeat this particular phoenix is to gather up the ashes inside the egg once again, and seal it with a Mend spell. They will need to climb through the destroyed building to locate the two halves of the egg during the battle and bring them to the ashes without getting fried themselves. Put in challenges like climb, jump, balance, str checks, etc. to get through the burning mess to recover the egg halves from some dying low level wizard who thought he knew what he was doing, and perhaps his familiar and some cronies attack the PCs, thinking they were finishing off the wizard.

If the PCs split up or decide to stay and fight the phoenix, they should be on their last legs by the time the egg halves arrive to trap the phoenix. Each time the phoenix is revived have it blow things up like carts, guards, a building or two, some random things as it cruises along the streets away from the egg. It makes for a good mission to complete within a day, forcing the casters to expend some spells and find magical items like a scroll with Mend on it if the PCs don't have it memorized, all in the interest of time to save the day. Give them something cool as a reward for saving the city, and if they prevent their competitors from getting killed have each group give them a fire protection magic item, replacements for the items they sold, or something else as cool from the adventure. It works out well, and everyone gets a piece of the pie.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Some ideas that have worked for me:

blah blah blah good but standard ideas blah blah

Just to be subversive, here are some variations on Natural20's ideas.

1) The theives guild killed families and threw the children in the sewers. The children went feral, and are now preying on the Theives and eating them. The Theives approach the players for help.

2) A Nobles son was cursed and became a wererat, and the parents want you to cure him. He is not intrested because he has become romantically invovled in a fling with the were rat queen.

3) An important official tells the party that the city mayor is a doppleganger. He hires the party to put a stop to the schemes of the mayor. Of course, he is lying.

4) An escaped circus animal/vampire/displacer beast/(you picked) is preying on merchants. The merchants suspect the local Evil church of relesing it.

5) There have been a gristly string of murders in the poor quarter of town. The murder claims that the cities poor are possessed by demons. Turns out that the murderer is telling the truth, and the players must kill off the poor quarter before sundown in 3 days to hold off the demons.

6) The city sewers have leaked into a dwarven city. The dwarves are retaliating by holding the nobles in the sewers against their will. The noble children dont know what to do, and hire the players to find their parents.

7) Some rich obsessive type is collecting stirges, and other hazardous pests. He hires the players to capture more for him.

8) A band of faries have infested a church belfry, and have replaced boring worship services with drunken relvelry and debauchery. This has offended the god, who will smite the city unless the players can rectify the situation.

9) Rip off a shakespear play, but half way through the story, inturrupt it with something that has no business interacting with shakespearean drama. Ie: Hamlets castle is attacked by Drow invaders, Romeo and Juliet are fireballed to death by an evil wizard, etc.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Stormborn]

Another literary source: I am currently reading Quicksilver by Neal Steaphenson. The first section/"book" primarilly takes place in London in the later 1600s. Great information and great ideas. Some of which I intend to add to an upcoming campaign.

 

[shivamuffin]

City adventures are tough, but fun if ran properly. The key is to make it active. There should be a thousands things going on at once, and that many possible twists and turns to throw in front of the players. It will have to be open ended, and practice ad lib and on the fly campaigning ( Take lots of notes ). Campaigning outside of the city is more controlled, and thus safer for the DM's sanity. Cities are usually left for mid level PCs, and not intended for eternal gaming...To make it believable, the DM will have to learn how to create a controlled chaos campaign. After a few sessions, a dungeon crawl or wilderness hike will be a refreshing break.

It's tough, and good luck to you.

GSI