City Adventures. Such a rarity in Dungeons and Dragons. How often have you run your own players through a city adventure? The most common adventure type is the dungeon crawl or some variation such as a castle or above ground ruins or the like. But how often have you actually done more with your towns and cities than just allow the adventurers to rest and resupply and maybe visit a tavern? There is so much more that can be done with your cities in Dungeons and Dragons.
Some Possible Adventure Opportunities in the City
There are a myriad of possible things that can lead to city adventures. Before the adventurers have even left for the dungeon they might find themselves in all kinds of situations and predicaments. Some possible adventure opportunities might include:
- The age old favorite……the were-rats living in the city sewers. Of course you could substitute Yuan Ti or some other villainous evil sewer dwellers
- Palace intrigue – bad guys want control of the kingdom. They will stop at nothing to get it. They might even assassinate the king. Who will stop them?
- The greedy tax collector keeps coming around. Do you bribe him to get him off your back? Or just keep paying these incidental taxes until you have no money?
- The pesky thieves guild. One of their street urchins just grabbed our wizard’s spell book and ran off into an alley…..
- An assassin’s arrow found one of our henchman. Why?
- A beggar just offered us a treasure map. I wonder if it is a fake?
- A city guardsman is threatening us. Should we bribe him?
- That tavern looks enticing. A nice bar fight is always enjoyable. And sometimes those bards tell stories that might lead to valuable treasures
City Adventure Resources
There are many fine products available on making city adventures. Fortunately many of these are still available. The first I want to discuss is called Citybook. There are several fine volumes in this line from Flying Buffalo. These are detailed books which give you complete descriptions of different types of establishments that you might find in the city. Each of the volumes covers a certain quarter that you might find in the city such as the thieve’s quarter or the temples. These books were not written for 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons or for 5E specifically. But they are easily modified for use in your own games.
The City of Barrowmar
Joe Mohr wrote an entire city adventure called the City of Barrowmar. Barrowmar is the capital of the land of Zanzia. It is a walled city in the center of the land. And there are all kinds of adventures that could be found there.
Cities and Settlements
Another interesting product is called Cities and Settlements from Troll Lord Games. I am afraid I have no link for this one. You can probably find a used copy somewhere. It is a detailed write up of different kinds of settlements than just human ones. An Orc Stockade Village. A Gnoll Settlement. Things along those lines.
City State of the Invincible Overlord
One classic of old school role playing is a product from Judges Guild. Judges guild produced products for OD&D as well as AD&D. Many of these products were incredibly simple. Judges Guild produced the very first adventures sold for any Dungeons and Dragons system. Early on the makers of Dungeons and Dragons saw no need to provide pre-written adventures. Once they saw the success that Judges Guild had they quickly changed their mind.
One of Judge’s Guilds early efforts was to produce a massive city and campaign world of their own. Many old school players still play in that gaming world preferring it over the ones later produced by TSR. One example of this is the City State of the Invincible Overlord.
City State of the Invincible Overlord
City State 3.5 and Later Edition
Thieves Quarter and Temple Quarter
These are some extremely well written and detailed books dealing with various quarters of the city. There were three of these books written but I could only find two of them in print. One is for the Thieve’s Quarter and the other is for the Temples District. The missing third book is called Arcane Quarter I believe. Again I could not find a link for you to buy or browse this one from. But you can probably find them used on ebay or Amazon. They are from Game Mechanics. And are written for D20 but you could easily modify these for any system.
Conclusion
City Adventures can be a fun change of pace. And the fun thing is. The players don’t even have to know that the city is where the adventure is taking place. You can spring things on them in the city and lead to something totally unexpected. The adventurers may thing they are just going to the local house of ill repute. And then they discover that a powerful noble in the next room just had a heart attack and died. The owner needs help. How do we cover up this tragedy so that the city guard doesn’t close the place down? Perhaps the adventurers just want to buy supplies. And the owner offers them a quest for some item he needs to make a powerful magical item? There are lots of opportunities in the city if the adventurers can find them.
