Urban Adventures

If you have not game mastered urban adventures before, they tend to be far different than running a dungeon crawl.  For one thing, it is a lot harder to keep the party of characters together.  Quite often, they all have different priorities and tend to wander off to pursue them.  This is most likely because they feel safe; they feel they can wander off without fear of being killed within the city limits.

Especially in a campaign where battle can occur in the streets and alleys, having members of the party in different parts of the city can not only be confusing and difficult to administer, it can be downright dangerous.  But these choices need to be those of the players and the player characters.  If they insist on living dangerously, it is your job as the GM to punish them for it, possibly even killing them because of it.

One of the main benefits of a dungeon style adventure is that the GM can determine many of the parameters surrounding a fight.  The dungeon is mapped; the ceilings can be pre-determined; line of sight angles can only come in so many variations.  This is not true of an urban adventure.  Fights can break out in intersections or parks, and line of sight can be affected by everything from buildings to trees to moving horse drawn coaches.  This adds to the complexity for the game master.  You and the players have to have a prearranged agreement that you know more about the staging than you can describe and they simply have to go with it.  Any player who argues about there not being a clearly defined map that he can place his figure on needs to be counseled after the game session that he’s being a jerk and needs to knock it off.

One of the best things that urban adventures can bring is the concept of overlapping time lines.  It is likely that several different things are all going on at the same time in the same town.  The main “mission” could be rivalries between merchant houses, while at the same time some thieves are feuding over a magical weapon they have stolen from its rightful owner.  The point is that even substantial clues and activities might not belong to your mission, but instead to someone else’s.

Urban missions are great for not having that “end boss” (aka the big, nasty, evil guy at the end).  There are multiple factions in a city.  Some will oppose the party, while others may be possible allies.  With so many moving parts, the adventurers should be a little confused.  They should never be 100% certain of whom they can trust, and that will keep the suspense high.

Further, not everything should be spelled out for them up front.  They will need to find clues, talk to people and learn as they go.  Obviously not everything they learn will be accurate, but again, more suspense and more fun.  This need for investigation may be new to some of your players who have never been challenged like this in a role-playing game.  Hopefully they will find it more exciting due to the newness and challenge.  As GM, you should also expect that characters who had pre-defined roles in more combat intensive missions may find themselves in completely different roles here.  Warning - Big, dumb fighter is not all that useful, until combat breaks out, if it does at all.

This is just a warning; we do not want to discourage you from running urban adventures.  As you and your players mature, the idea of hundreds of underground complexes filled with monsters becomes too much for the willful suspension of disbelief.  When that happens, you will find yourself working on the urban missions and avoiding the crawls.