My collection of OSR dungeons has hit a critical mass that impresses with its diversity, volume, production values and overall creativity. There is really a ton of awesome stuff out there, from the most commercial megadungeons, like Rappan Athuk  to the most indie compilations, like Dyson's Delves, and everything in between.

There are fewer but still a significant number of good wilderness settings for this genre of games (though I'm still hankering for someone to re-re do Wilderlands for some OSR system).

In contrast, there seems to be very little in the way of cities for such games. Yoon-Suin is a really cool city-focused setting, but it backs away from the City-State approach of completist detail. There are a couple of classic originals you could turn to (CSotIO; Thieves World), but there isn't much newly made material. Maybe yggsburgh if you think of C&C as an osr game? Anyway, it surprises me and makes me wonder if I've missed something awesome. What'd love is to get a hard copy of the amazing city maps that are part of the Dyson's Delves web site, and at least one mega-volume city write up in the style of Rappan Athuk. Any chance of something like that out there?

Quote from: Larsdangly;863653the amazing city maps that are part of the Dyson's Delves web site

I'd never heard of that site before and I just checked it out. Great maps! Thanks for pointing it out.

Vornheim springs obviously to mind for city generation. I think to be honest completist detail is very hard, maybe even impossible, for a city, because part of what makes a city a city is the extent to which things feel random. That's the sense I was trying to bring across with my Yellow City in Yoon-Suin: every Yellow City is different because that's the philosophy of the book, yes, but also every Yellow City is different because real world cities are different every day. There's just so much going on in them.

City State of the Invincible Overlord, maybe?

Pete Spahn's Guidebook to the City of Dolmvay:

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/125884/Guidebook-to-the-City-of-Dolmvay-PDF?

Definitely a market there, innit? Good thread, I'll be following with interest.

What I'd like to see more of are city + (mega?)dungeon combos. You know, like Waterdeep and Undermountain, or (my FR favorite) Luskan and Old Illusk.

I think a 'completist' approach to an OSR city is obviously doable because it has been done, and well. City State is the iconic example, but you could add the Chaosium Thieves World boxed set, or Pavis, or 2E Lhankmar. I understand not everyone wants to create cities like this. But I do, and it is what I'm focused on in this thread.

One way you could combine recent materials to make something like this would be to use Vornheim as a kind of 'operating system' to help you generate content, and work off one of the Dyson's Delves city maps (unfortunately not yet in print form, but available online). I suspect a couple weeks of work using these as starting ingredients and you could have a decent skeleton of a city started.

If I were to do a city adventure, it would be Mordheim-ish where you were expected to break into houses, kill everyone inside and loot the place.

Hmm...

Haven the free city from gamelords is still available from diffworlds.com.   it gets good reviews and has a booklet for each district.   I believe it was intended to be a setting for Thieves Guild rpg which was all about city adventures from what I can tell.  Published originally in 1983 i think ao old schoolish.

Quote from: noisms;863660Vornheim springs obviously to mind for city generation.

I second Vornheim. It's perhaps the best city-based setting I have ever read, and all in something like 60 pages.

The great thing is that the street layout can be generated in a number of ways, ensuring that no two areas will have the same outline. Tons of little details that rarely get much thought, like strange laws and their even stranger punishments. And it still leaves enough open for GM interpretation as to be evocative without feeling unfinished.

Midkemia - 'nuff said. You can still buy the PDF on the official site.

Enharza -the original one-page city, published in Fight On ! magazine, is still my favourite, a challenge to DM DIY rather than rely on overwrought gazetters and other people's generative tables.

The main ones so far were largely abstract, non-standard in format. Stuff like Vornheim: no maps, no real structure.  The Yellow city in Yoon-Suin has structure but it still doesn't give you the kind of detail that was normal in actual old-school products for cities.

City-State of the Invincible Overlord is an example.  So was Port Blacksand from Fighting Fantasy.  Other than Dolmvay (which is OK but not nearly sword&sorcery enough for my tastes) I don't think anyone has done a book like those two for the OSR.

Not OSR. But X3 The Curse of Xanthanon presents a rather interesting approach to a city. Part random part fixed.

There's Flying Buffalo / Blade's City Book series, I think it's six volumes.  It's more encounters than maps though.

City Book by Midkemia press and reprinted by Chaosium and Avalon Hill is certainly an indispensable resource on city building and encounters.  They also published the cities Tulan of the Isles and Carse.

Harn has or had a nice supplement with a number of beautifully mapped cities.  I'm not sure if Harn is old school.

Palladium Fantasy Roleplaying Game Book II The Old Ones has a number of city maps with one line location descriptions.