Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
I'll second this - though my current version is the one from Necromancer Games (I have their Wilderlands Box set as well)
Both of which are solid although I am biased in my assessment because I was one of the boxed set authors.
 
My favourites are Ptolus and Freeport. Both are written to be very gameable, and since I’m a busy GM, is exactly what I need.

I will also always have a special place in heart for the original Middenheim: City of the White Wolf book, as it was the first dedicated “city book” I ever owned, followed shortly thereafter by TSR’s Lankhmar book.
 
I have owned this for a while but haven't made the time to read (I have somehow acquired a lot of Frog God material). If it's not too much trouble I would appreciate if you could offer a few highlights or explain why you like it.

Bard’s Gate is a very vanilla fantasy city, which actually makes it very appealing to me. I haven’t read much of it, but here’s what sticks out to me:

It has a lot of detail
-hexmapped sandbox of the area around the city with 26 locations
-almost 300 locations detailed in the city with lots of maps
-city directory to quickly find locations
-section on real estate in the city
-detailed random encounter tables for each district
-8 adventures totaling about 75 pages
 
This is more of a village or town supplement but I do recommend Chaosium's Escape from Innsmouth if only for the simple reason that it can support many adventures. Not only is it a sourcebook for Lovecraft's Innsmouth but also an adventure series that recreates the US government raid on the same. Although I never ran it straight, pretty much all of it has been used in my various Mythos campaigns as Deep Ones and Xothians have spread to nearly every Earth-like ocean planet in the galaxy.

I am going to read Chaosium's Arkham Unveiled to prep for a future game. It's one of those books I have owned for ages but never got around to reading. I will let you guys know if there's anything interesting to report.
 
I am going to read Chaosium's Arkham Unveiled to prep for a future game. It's one of those books I have owned for ages but never got around to reading. I will let you guys know if there's anything interesting to report.
I've actually been reading over this the past couple weeks, looking for inspiration for starting a CoC game soon. I'm really enjoying the book. It's a very detailed city, with every street named and something interesting on every block. There's a mix of references to Lovecraft's material and new stuff, and probably plenty references to other material I'm just not familiar with. The town directory is a wonderful inclusion, making it easy to find whatever the investigators are looking for - churches, hotels, newspapers, evil cutlists, and so on. And the included scenarios all seem like they'd be fun. Very derivative of Lovecraft stories, but that gives them a nice classic feel that I think would make them a good introduction to the Miskatonic Valley region.
I'll have to give Escape from Innsmouth a read soon.
 
Luna city from Mutant Chronicles Resurrection because the moon is one big city full of corruption and sin.
 
For me, City State of the Invincible Overlord probably is a decent favorite. And one of the few I've actually ran. However, after running it, I'm struggling with how to make this kind of city setup actually work for adventuring.

Other favorites in no particular order are Pavis, Haven (Thieve's Guild), Sanctuary (Thieve's World), the Midkemia city books (all of them).

I used to collect cities like mad. I've since dumped a bunch, or have them in my "for sale" pile. Freeport, Ptolus, some other random D20, Greyhawk, Lanhkmar to name several I can think of (oh, and the Forgotten Realms one that I'm not recalling the name).
 
CSIO is kind of a special case because it is super detailed and super high powered and super crazy, and sits in the midst of an extensive, super detailed, super high powered, super crazy landscape (the Wilderlands). It is kind of overwhelming if your idea is that you will 'pitch' stories or leads to your players and they will then follow those leads to recover the McGuffin or save the prince or whatever. You can try, but if the players pay any attention to what is going on around them they will quickly get distracted. What these materials are great for is a group that thrives on the 'stimulus/response' cycle, where the stories and plots that happen arise organically from what the PC's do when they run across something and it inspires an idea. I feel like a more passive group of players or a DM who is focused on the sort of 'story of the week' concept of adventures will get frustrated from these. The only way to deal with a psychotic horse is to get on its back and ride. Or something like that.
 
The Ciudad Juarez write up in Rifts World Book 1: Vampire Kingdoms is amazing. If every Rifts book had as much gameable material as this, I’d still be a customer.

The really ambitious over-the-top WW books. Chicago By Night, 2nd edition. Constantinople By Night, for the Dark Ages line.

Still on White Wolf, Damnation City reaps deserved praise here but really, Block By Bloody Block is an unsung gem.

CSIO, of course. So good. Holds up amazingly today.

Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is just the right amount of weird for me.
 
The various CoC "Secrets of" city books are generally very good with lots of general detail and local plot hooks to tie into the local history.




No, they haven't... Sounds like my kind of thing, spill it. :argh:
I'm on my phone, so you get a mobile link, but here it is.
 
My all-time favourite RPG city remains White Dwarf's Irilian.
You know, I've hardly even read Irillian let alone used it, despite having it in full (I think I did lose one of the issues, but it's also in a Best of volume). I often even forget about it unless I've recently looked at White Dwarf...
 
I am liking Arkham Unveiled. It isn't meant to be read cover to cover like a novel or run like an adventure. It's more of a reference book that I can use for inspiration. I plan to print the 90 or so pages that describe the city and put them in sheet protectors + binder as a reference tome at the table that I can freely mark up. Even though the book is married to the CoC system I still find it useful.
 
Which ones do you like best?


I'm partial to Secrets of San Francisco, but that is partly because I'm local enough to appreciate some of the details they included and it is an interesting city.

I don't really think they have done a bad one, so much of it involves the city covered being interesting to you. Agree with Ronnie New Orleans is quite good, but again there is just so much history there for them to mine.

I'm on my phone, so you get a mobile link, but here it is.

Wow those look amazing, 1930s China is a highly underused amusement park of a setting for RPGs.
 
Wow those look amazing, 1930s China is a highly underused amusement park of a setting for RPGs.
I totally agree! I mean, martial artists clashing in the streets/on roofs, big businesses, possibly pirates, mystics, political and general plots&skulduggery, multiple Evil Empires (TM), Triads, gun-totting street gangs, drugs, ninja, poverty, extremely high crime rate, sleazy entertainment, an incoming World War, ethnic strife, at least two waves of refugees (one of them incoming at the moment), multiple territorial zones that you can reach by merely crossing a street, instant communications between wizard towers a.k.a. places with telephone lines...
Only in Shanghai in the 30ies:grin:!

And as a bonus, you can get it for what, less than $20 total:shade:?
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top