Suggestions to make a city interesting


Homebrew and House Rules


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Hey everyone!

I'm looking for some suggestions to make a homebrew city called Amoch interesting to visit and explore. It's in a heavily agricultural temperate region with a population in the thousands. I have been running this game with a slightly Roman theme when it comes to the national government, the Regency, so I want to keep that theme going to some extent. The party will likely, in part or as a whole, will most likely be visiting at least a church of Iomedae, a magic supplier/shop (with no gold on hand, just items to barter, in a talismanic component crafting system), and, of course, a tavern/inn.

It's not much to go on, but I would love to hear all of your ideas. Any idea that can help to flesh out a city and its inhabitants is welcome. The more detail the better.


First: How long are they going to spend in the city? If this is to be a city themed campaign then you'll want to do a lot of background prep.

If this is just a rally point between dungeon crawls you probably don't need to do much.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Some ideas spring to mind:

1. The Ivory Palace, the centre of government, is created from the bones of a fallen giant

2. An arena for gladiator type golem battles (robot wars but medieval)

3. The city suffered an earthquake some years back and a small portion sunk into a swamp. It hasn't been recovered and strange goings on are happening...

4. The Collegium, a school of mages, styling themselves as ancient loremasters, whilst behaving like the wizard-mafia

5. Sphinxes sit in the middle of crossroads. They are silent, however give them an offering, and they will tell you a secret of the nobility.

6. The church of Iomedae has become increasingly fundamentalist and anti-magic. They preach how the Goddess will smite the Collegium at any time. Tensions between factions are high. Rumours of witch-hunts and pyres being built are abound....

Feel free to use, twist or reject! :)


Love those ideas, especially #6.

The city won't be the focus of the campaign, but it is the first city that I have presented in this country. They started the campaign in a remote region, and only now have they found real civilization. They will probably move on to the capitol before too long, but I am trying to encourage more exploration from the group. The campaign has been quite linear so far.


If they're to progress to a larger urban center I would focus on designing that; the smaller city's politics can be reacting to larger issues happening there, thus setting the party up for more in depth quests once they reach the next area.

Primary political landscape:

Sources of Coin:

Nobility

Merchants

Craftsmen

Potentially Magic Users -- depends on the campaign.

Sources of Power:

Nobility

Elected/Appointed Officials

Guilds (crafts/assassin/thieves/wizards/church)

Religion (if appreciably different from guilds)

Collegium (if appreciably different from guilds)

Create a couple sources of drama between the floozies of the important factions in the capitol and let the party try to fix them. This can lead to letters of introduction and a larger political landscape in the capitol.

The biggest conflicts occur when those with coin don't have power, those with power don't have coin, those with one type of power (i.e. arcane) covet other types of power (i.e. political). Thw worst tent to occur when one of the above grows so large that the other factions disappear. This leads to party schisms and generally war between wizards, which can be quite hard on the common folk.


What's illegal in your city?

Wherever there are restrictions, humanoids will find ways to get around them. Crime can be hidden or tolerated in plain sight. What happens if a craftsperson or merchant tries to enter markets protected by guilds, like say, a prodigy from the lower classes who wants to sell potions without going being a guildmember? Does she get threats, or toughs come break her shop, or does she get arrested?

If a humanoid robs another humanoid in the street and runs off, do they usually get away? Does the chance of apprehending criminals depend on the economic or ethnic or social status of the victim (or the criminal)?

Playing off your like of #6, if anti-magic zealots start getting aggressive on magic users, or magic users start getting aggressive to anti-magic zealots, will the local government and/or other sources of power be able to stop or quell the violence? If not, the capitol will intervene eventually.

Maybe there is a charismatic leader of non-guild experts and commoners who is closely tied to an important Iomedan Priest, who supports the anti-magic zealots. This Iomedan priest dislikes the corruption that the rich guilds sponsor, and is (or equally, depending on Amoch's church's outlook) vocal about supporting economic mobility.

...

I have another idea to make them leave the city, get them exploring, and probably on the way to capitol. A large event causes the city to be rendered dangerous or hostile or emptied or destroyed.

Examples:
1) Emptied: The keep has holed up and shut doors while the populace flees towards the capital from an army of _____ (ex. 120 fire giants led by a red dragon that can turn into a gargantuan red giant).

2. Destroyed: An earthquake has leveled the town, People have lost their livelihoods, and need help from outside to rebuild. The guild of masons and woodcraftsmen have been killed by mobs for their poorly constructed buildings.

3. Hostile: In between adventures, a source of power has convinced the others that the PCs are now enemies of them. The PCs are shunned, exiled or attacked and forced to leave due to a lack of opportunities, Alternatively, no free "little humanoids" in the fire giant occupied Amoch.

4. Dangerous: The city is ungovernable. Living here is now hazardous and possibly fatal on a daily basis. It could be in the midst of 19th century Paris-style urban war, being harassed by an great wyrm dragon every day until the city submits, or powerful undead march through the streets at night attacking stragglers on the streets after the Iomedan Church was completely overtaken by ghouls who now maintain the illusion of being alive and Good with [ii] ghoul visage [/i] and elaborate disguises and charades.


All of these ideas are great. In particular, I really want to start getting the party involved in political intrigue within the religious and arcane communities, along with the government of course. However, I have no experience in pulling this off, and there is a paladin in the party who liberally uses detect lies/evil to uncover facades. The party is very fit for these kinds of situations: two are former members of nobility, another is a graduate of the arcane collegium, and the kitsune has high charisma.

It seems like it would be really hard to make disguises and bluffs that would conceal adequately without just making it impossible, especially if they are evil.

Ghouls seem like a great idea, especially if they are something like secret necromancy experiments with beggars or a result of the church of Iomadae (or even all of the good/neutral religious groups in the city) being infiltrated/overrun.


Politics. Every interesting place has complex politics and economics.

Throw in some baddies hidden amongst the populace and aristocracy and you are good to go.


Poink wrote:

All of these ideas are great. In particular, I really want to start getting the party involved in political intrigue within the religious and arcane communities, along with the government of course. However, I have no experience in pulling this off, and there is a paladin in the party who liberally uses detect lies/evil to uncover facades. The party is very fit for these kinds of situations: two are former members of nobility, another is a graduate of the arcane collegium, and the kitsune has high charisma.

It seems like it would be really hard to make disguises and bluffs that would conceal adequately without just making it impossible, especially if they are evil.

Ghouls seem like a great idea, especially if they are something like secret necromancy experiments with beggars or a result of the church of Iomadae (or even all of the good/neutral religious groups in the city) being infiltrated/overrun.

Paladins will gravitate towards obvious signs of evil. Paladins will gravitate towards obvious signs of deception. Keeping evil lackeys in the dark will protect the inner circle ["I don't know nothing about no evil plans, I swear!"].

The Angel skin magic item would be excellent here because it hides your alignment. Not would it protect against divination, it would make for horrifying implications (they keep some good priests alive and dominate them to summon angelic beings to harvest for magic item components). They only have say a dozen or two of these for the key members of the conspiracy, and are making more so they can expand their influence. Disposing of these items in terms of GP is no problem for your party - your paladin would not allow the party to keep/sell them since they are unspeakably evil magic items.

Mechanically, taking 10 or 20 on disguise with a lot of aid another (and magic too) will make disguise work very easily.

Now that its not obvious to the paladin, something must go wrong in their evil plan or someone gets cold feet and wants out. Follow the "Three clue rule" and have at least three hooks/clues for the party to figure out to investigate.


Give everyone a level of vigilante. Dual identity can negate detection spells. There's also the spell "Undetectable Alignment"


Building off the necromancy idea: perhaps there's an ancient artifact hidden in an ancient tomb somewhere near the city. Representatives from the Arcane and Divine factions in the capitol are vying to get the artifact first when along comes a group of merry adventurers...

Things you'd need:

A) A political framework for the capitol (include things like stance on necromancy, institutions of power)

B) A general idea for the divine faction

C) "" arcane faction.

D) A suitable ancient necromancer (maybe a mystic theurge/lich? -- what level is the party?). If the necromancer is/was undead (as they usually are), is he still around or has he been sealed/smitten/destroyed?

E) Who designed and built the tomb? What safeguards did they implement and why (this goes into scenario design). What bits of information have survived the millenia about D and E? How has the crypt changed over the same timeframe?

F) A suitably powerful artifact.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Homebrew and House Rules / Suggestions to make a city interesting All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Homebrew and House Rules