I'll be starting a fantasy campaign soon that takes place almost entirely within a city. Is there a resource out there along the lines of "This is all the stuff you should consider if you're running a fantasy city campaign."?
(I'll be running Council of Thieves, but that shouldn't make any difference.)
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I'm not aware of any book thats a one stop shop, but there are several that come to mind. A Medieval Magical Society: Western Europe by Expeditious Retreat Press in the downloads part of the Paizo store is excellent. Although not all of the book deals with cities, the information in the book you'll find useful and maybe closest to what you are looking for. Ptolus by Monte Cook is another great resource. Although its for 3.5, there's a whole bunch of locations and npcs that you would find useful. If you can find any of the Citybook Series by Flying Buffalo, you find a great resource with shops and npcs you can drop into your campaign. A final mention is Cityscape by WoTC for 3.5 D&D. Although some folks were not fond of it, there's a grab bag of items in it that you could use to spice up or help your campaign.
0One has a bunch of stuff on the Great City, still digesting it though. Don't know if that would work for you or not.
James
Another nice resource is Cities by Chaosium. Not sure if it's still in print, so check your FLGS.
And, if you happen to have a copy, Haven had a nice list of types of shops (with an explanation of what they sold), including a location by wealth chart.
It has an Eastern European/Clockwork vibe, but the Zobeck Gazetteer just came out, and there's Streets of Zobeck (which I led the charge designing) which covers more criminal/noir adventures in that city (and its web supplement). The OGL/d20 Tales of Zobeck has a variety of adventures set in Zobeck. Tales of the Old Margreve is set just to the north of Zobeck, the Imperial Gazetteer is set roughly beneath it (and loaded with ghouls) and the OGL/d20 Dwarves of the Ironcrags is set to the west of Zobeck. Almost (if not all) of those books/supplements have 4+ to 5 star ratings with multiple reviews.
All of this is complemented by the upcoming Midgard setting book (which covers the rest of the world), the Northlands book (much further north of Zobeck), Sunken Empires (tangential to Zobeck at this point), and the ongoing Journeys to the West patronage project (which is in the world, but not really involving Zobeck). If you like the steampunk aspect, I'd suggest KQ#7 for the airships-- but they're not covered in many other places.
I'm also a big fan of the Flying Buffalo system neutral Citybooks (1-7!), which offer up the different quarters of "The City." Several of these are discontinued here, but I think still available through the Flying Buffalo site. I find #1 through #4 particularly useful. I believe Dave Arneson contributed to #2.
-Ben.
There were seven Citybooks?
[checks Flying Buffalo link]
Ack! I'm missing one!
[We have 1-6 and use them a lot.]
I recall the Cityscape book in the Legends & Lairs line from Fantasy Flight Games being good for that type of thing. I don't see it listed at DriveThru RPG anymore.
In general, I thought that the Legends and Lairs books were good reading. Each book wasn't 100% useful (what source is?), but I found bits here and there in most of them. Cityscape was my favorite.