Have you ever wished to create your own King’s Landing? Make a medieval Gotham for your dragon themed vigilante to fight crime in? Maybe, you have less lofty goals but still want to make a unique city for your players to explore in the wider world of your favorite Dungeons and Dragons setting. Regardless of how large or small your gaming urban planning goals are, Kobold Press has you covered with the Campaign Builder: Cities and Towns. This book goes over everything a Game Master might need in the creation of their own personal city, providing a comprehensive but sometimes shallow breakdown of all the pieces that go into creating a city from scratch.
Creating a town from scratch can be difficult, and not just because maps are often difficult to create convincingly. There are dozens of pieces that all work in conjunction to create a believable fictional town, which Cities and Town breaks down in beautifully simple but all encompassing detail. Any book that uses the word Thorp, meaning a settlement of only a few dozen people, not only shows it has depth to its subject matter but also that it is unafraid to hold its readers hand through the process. The book outlines not only what a Game Master should think about when creating their city, such as having entire sections dedicated to what crops or exports are most important to your new settlement, but also provides them with a whole host of tables that they may roll on to answer these questions. This heap of random tables can sometimes lead to humorous and ridiculous combinations, like a Mountain Region Thorp whose primary function is being the only place a river is passable, but with some common sense it is possible to quickly roll up a host of different towns in almost no time. The book outlines every conceivable component from the area a city should occupy to who inhabits it with suggestions and outlines on creating unique guilds and characters.
Cities and Towns also provides several pre-made play maps, new creatures, and pre-built NPCs to fill your town with. It truly is a one stop shop for creating and planning cities. The one minor gripe with the book is that it is relatively light on actual planning literal maps for players to scrounge around in. It makes some suggestions on how to make your own and provides several nicely detailed maps in the back but a more complete look at how to create your own street maps would have been appreciated. Still for Game Masters looking to create their own towns but unsure of where to begin, unsure of what information they should have, or just want to skip some of the more boring but necessary work in urban planning; this is a great all in one resource. 4/5 Dragons.