Publisher: Lightspress

A core setting guide for city-state based fantasy roleplaying, written for narrative-first play and compatible with the Principia framework, with easy adaptation to other rulesets.

Fantasy campaigns often fracture at the city gates. Power concentrates inside walls, yet play drifts toward wandering errands, disconnected battles, and rulers who exist only as names. Pressure vanishes when institutions never answer back. Even capable tables slide into this pattern because mobility feels safer than consequence, and no one wants politics to stall momentum. The result is a map full of places and a story that refuses to settle anywhere long enough to matter.

That failure persists because fantasy cities promise density but reward avoidance. Laws are soft, factions blur, and violence resolves what should echo. Preparation doesn’t fix it. Skilled gamemasters track names and motives, players make smart choices, and still the city becomes scenery. Without a framework that treats governance, scarcity, and reputation as active forces, competence accelerates drift. Everyone performs well, yet nothing pushes back hard enough to force change.

When this book enters play, behavior tightens. Characters linger, bargain, and test limits because leaving carries loss. Supporting characters remember slights, treasuries empty, and patrols respond with pattern rather than whim. Scenes stack instead of resetting, and victories arrive tangled with obligation. Violence narrows options instead of clearing them. Table talk shifts from plotting routes to weighing costs, because the city-state acts as a single pressure system that never turns off.

Different readers use this material differently. Some lift tools to give their capital a spine, applying them to an existing setting without ceremony. Others read until a tone settles, then adjust habits at the table, asking harder questions about authority and risk. Gamemasters mine it for adjudication posture, while players read to understand how leverage forms. No path demands total adoption; partial use still reshapes decisions.

City-State Fantasy assumes collaboration that tolerates friction, consequences that persist, and authority that answers action. The tone favors grounded fantasy where banners, coin, faith, and fear compete within walls built to endure. Triumph counts, but so does what it binds, and it’s measured over time. Attention before play matters here because choices gain weight only when the city can answer them, session after session, without improvisation erasing memory.