What is the appeal of city-states?

Intimacy/coziness

>>54609290
Cities and infrastructure but not too much to stop things from feeling open for exploration.

IRL?

Big time career politicians tend to avoid them like the plague since their small size makes corruption easy to root out.

Just look at Singapore and compare it to the EU Russia and United States.

>>54609290
>Historical reference (ancient Greece/Rome)
>wildly varied cultures/citizens
>lots of political intrigue
>lots of different maps (we had a crafty DM that literally printed out city maps of Old Athens and used that for one of the cities)
>lots of different geography

I personally think city-states are the best way to play most games, and would highly encourage you check it out.

>>54609290
You can have games of international politicking but on a more manageable scale.

>>54609739
No, not in IRL you fucking moron this is /tg/ not /his/.

>>54609290

Most people has never been or worked in a farm or a small rural town.

Decentralization helps prevent the rise of organised crime.

>>54609951
> using irl trufax as a basis for your fantasy setting.
> this is bad somehow.

Not even that guy but wut

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>>54609290
You can have different cultures, ideas, political figures without taking months to travel to another country.

Everyone can see their vision of a perfect city and a collection of cities where everyone is bound to find something that fits them.

Also its easier imagining oneself being part of the nobility of a city state than a massive empire.

>>54609290

A lot of fantasy is rooted in Ancient Greek and Italian ideas, and those were very much rooted in the city-state model.

From a storytelling perspective, it's a comfortable middle ground between grand epic scope (where everything is empires and great powers) and the aggressively local (where you're talking about how great the beer in this one tavern is). You can have distinct culture and enough 'big picture' actions for there to be big meaningful stakes to the action, but you can be local enough to let you get attached to specific things.

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Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

>>54609290
They're really convenient for DMs.

You only have to build the culture, inhabitants, and layout for a single city, and just fiat the rest of the surrounding area as having undead or bandits in them.

Just big enough that the players can explore and run into plothooks, while small enough that you don't have to deal with the players getting distracted and completely missing an area that you put a lot of work into.

What's really fun is when you have a collection of massive city-states that are ruled over by a singular uber-diplomat to maintain balance and control over all of them while being threatening and powerful enough to cope with any three of them at the same time. Politics dialed up to 10, and opportunities dialed up to 13.

>>54610018
People get pissy when fantasy makes sense

>>54610329
You mean like when the king orders the peasants to build a fortification when the enemy army has gigantic trolls in it that can smash said fortifications faster than you can blink.

>>54610379
How about fortifications build by trolls?

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>>54610440
How about fortifications built out of trolls?

>>54609290
Convenient scale.

Also, IRL 'large city' is about as big an administrative unit as can be meaningfully managed. Any bigger and you end up having to basically federate a country anyway.

>>54610379
Could you clarify? What's your point?

>>54610379
Maybe trolls are rare.

>>54610048
pure kino

>>54609290
They allow for more complicated politics, and a higher standard of living, than the standard "Ye Olde Feudal Kingdom" without imposing the uniformity of "The Empire".

>>54609290
From a campaign standpoint, I think it's a matter of being able to have an entire nation be very self-contained and easy to design, while only having to make one city.

They do have some other appeal sure, but if someone wants to have a kingdom without also having to have a bunch of sprawling castles and other noble families everywhere across a countryside, they can just shove it all in one big metropolis and have it work.

It's also beneficial, since having all the civilization in one place means you can have all the monsters and wilderness everywhere else.

>>54610329
Speak for yourself. I like gritty fantasy that makes sense. Its the only shit I can really stand.

>>54609290
They're a good way to create 'neutral territory' among a bunch of big empires. They can be interesting in just explaining how they are independent. Maybe they have particular focuses, be it on different gods or magical research. They have also historically had more in the way of vague republican or democratic processes.

In something that I think is particular to RPGs, it's a bit more feasible to get a really good reputation in a city-state than it would be to get one across a large empire. If you actually put some work in, there's some earnest reward for your good deeds and the reputation you've gained that you can't get in a city that's part of a larger regime, with all the bureaucratic ties and political shuffling that entails.

>>54611507
Personally my interest isn't so much with gritty tone or dark themes as it is with logical, consistent, and detailed settings, it's just that stuff like that is more common in gritty fantasy

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>>54611110
We need more series about travelers

>>54610286
That's just an empire

>>54609290
For players or DMs?

It lets you pretend you have politically-significant backing for your adventures without having to deal with the international politics of an empire or the succession politics of a kingdom.