A Tale of Two Cities: Baldur's Gate and Ubersreik
When the Baldur's Gate Gazetteer was made available on Dndbeyond, I had just finished rereading the Guide to Ubersreik that is part of the Warhammer Fantasy RPG 4th Edition Starter Set.
The Guide to Ubersreik is one of my favorite city sourcebooks - I therefore was really happy to notice several unexpected parallels between Ubersreik and Baldur's Gate.
Unexpected? Well, D&D and Warhammer Fantasy RPG (or, WFRP, pronounced WooF-Roop) are quite different in its setting. Here D&D, the quintessential high-fantasy RPG in which almost every character class can do at least a bit of magic and the characters pretty much start out as heroes and advance to half-gods (if you play all the way to level 20). There WFRP, self-described as grim & perilous, where magic is always dangerous (either because your spell blows up in your face or it alerts some witch hunters who begin chasing you), and characters are likely to start out as rat catchers and end up as half-crazed, mutated abominations.
But parallels there are between the two cities. So let's look at them!
The General Mood as conveyed by the very first sentences in the gazetteers
WFRP characters might feel quite at home in Baldur's Gate, which certainly is one of the darker places in the Forgotten Realms - danger and crime is one of the leitmotifs of the Baldur's Gate Gazetteer. Here are its introductory words:
Even the most hardened adventurers watch their steps in Baldur’s Gate, where lives hold prices in copper and greed proves deadlier than dragon fire. Baldur’s Gate has a reputation for being a rough place, where crime and opportunity walk hand in hand, and where anything can be bought, sold, or seized at sword point. (...) Meanwhile, crime flourishes under the control of the Guild, which oversees almost every organized criminal act, from dockside gambling rings to blackmail at patriar garden parties. Either under the Guild’s auspices or in defiance of them, those who cut purses or throats make a decent living in the city, their talents traded as briskly — and often just as openly — as those of any other professional.
The preface of the guide to Ubersreik starts with a brilliant twist: a lengthy quote from "official" sources ("Ubersreik is one of the brightest jewels in the Reikland’s crown ...")
is contrasted with the words of a somewhat more honest observer:
Ubersreik’s streets run red with the blood of Reikland. Corpses of good, stout-hearted folk hang from the walls for no crime but obedience to their liege-lords. The Cult of Sigmar demands all honour their noble lords and masters, but the only reward for such loyalty in Ubersreik is a short drop and early passage to Morr’s Realm.
A Time of Instability
What makes the Guide to Ubersreik so great for finding adventure is the precarious situation in which the city finds itself: the Emperor's troops have ousted the well-liked ruling house of Jungfreud and taken over the city:
None can understand why Altdorf State Soldiers arrived to remove Graf Sigismund von Jungfreud from power. The Emperor claimed the old graf was preparing for war with the Duchy of Wallenstein to the north, that he had marshalled soldiers by the thousand in secret and was ready to strike. But few believe such elaborate claims, for the graf was a fair, strong ruler and beloved of the people. So, nobles and commoners alike gossip like fish-wives from the halls of power to the cheapest tavern. What could cause the Emperor to do this?
The Emperor's soldiers are controlling the city of around 7000 souls, with several town districts half empty, because several hundred loyalists of the Jungfreuds have fled the city. There is a notable shortage of coal in Ubersreik, because the Jungfreuds still control the lands from which Ubersreik used to be supplied and have halted the shipments. The day-to-day running of the city is carried out in an uneasy co-operation between the Emperor’s representatives and the local town council.
The situation in Baldur's Gate is not quite as volatile, but there is also a power struggle in the air:
Ravengard [one of the city's four councilors] was recently tricked into attending a diplomatic summit in Elturel, unaware that his political enemies in Baldur’s Gate orchestrated this meeting in a fiendish plot to remove him from power.
If you like adventures that contain some political intrigue, both Baldur's Gate and Ubersreik are your kind of city!
Evil Cults!
Evil cults are front and center in WFRP. To quote from the Guide to Ubersreik:
Beneath the veneer of civilisation, the Empire is riddled with corruption and moral decay. Scratch the surface and you will find secret cults and fanatics willing to risk their very souls (and the lives of their neighbours) to appease and placate whatever dark master has them in thrall, whatever form they may take.
Death-Cults also play a significant role in Baldur's Gate:
Yet, Throughout the city, no names are as synonymous with dastardly acts as those of Dead Three. The demigods Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul walk among mortals, personally seeking followers to their cause. More than once, it’s rumored, the trio has even trod the streets of Baldur’s Gate.
Both the gazetteer to Baldur's Gate and the Guide to Ubersreik provide links between the respective evil cults and NPCs and locations, providing the GM with hooks for cult-centered adventures.
A larger-than-life River Bridge
Both Ubersreik and Baldur's Gate feature a larger-than-life river bridge. In the case of Baldur's Gate, it is Wyrm's Crossing (actually two bridges that meet on a rocky islet in the river's center:
This neighborhood is actually two enormous bridges, each spanning half the Chionthar River and meeting at Wyrm’s Rock, a tall, rocky islet in the center. While the Flaming Fist maintains a fortress on the island to tax travelers along the Coast Way and control city access in times of trouble, the bridges themselves are fair game for squatters. Ramshackle wooden tenements, taverns, and shops crowd both sides of the arched stone spans, leaning out over the narrow road between them. Even more cling to the sides of the bridges, anchored to each other or cantilevered over the water.
In Ubersreik, we have the Ubersreik Bridge:
It is supported by a number of great, stone pillars sunk deep into the riverbed, to a height making it visible from much of the town. The pillars, tightly grouped near the riverbank, open out in the centre, offering two broad channels through which even tall masted river barges can safely pass. The bridge is inscribed with ancient Dwarf runes, ensuring strength and stability.
There is one significant difference: Wyrm's Crossing is a neighborhood all of itself, with many buildings on and at the sides of the bridge. In Ubersreik, local laws prohibit building on top of the bridge, but there is a small shanty town, Dunkelfeucht under the bridge's shadow.
Humor
WFRP books tend to be pun fests and Dad-Jokes (remember the erstwhile ruling house of Jungfreud? The family name might remind you of two notable psychoanalysts...) and full of wacky humor - in my mind to a much larger extent than a typical D&D publication. The Baldur's Gate Gazetteer, however, had me laughing out loud at the booming peacock trade around Baldur's Gate and the reason behind it:
By tradition, Baldur’s Gate bans animals larger than a peacock within the city walls. Visitors determined not to surrender their beloved pets (or valuable animals they intend to sell) sometimes arrive at the city with large peacocks in tow, to prove their furred companion meets the legal requirement. This has led to a burgeoning, noisy, and particularly cutthroat peacock-breeding industry in the Outer City.
Interesting Relationship to Computer Games
Both Baldur's Gate and Ubersreik have an interesting relationship to successful computer games. For Baldur's Gate, the connection is obvious: the free publication of the Gazetteer to Baldur's Gate is an obvious tie-in for the launch of Baldur's Gate 3, the latest in a long-running line series of computer games going back to 1998, which have contributed significantly to what is now established lore of the Forgotten Realms (and the city of Baldur's Gate in particular.)
The City of Ubersreik is one of the main locations of the successful Vermintide series of games (I have not played them, since first-person shooters are not really my thing, though.) Also in this case, the computer game has influenced the tabletop RPG setting: the developers of the Guide to Ubersreik used the computer game with its beautiful graphical representation of Ubersreik for inspiration -- I seem to remember reading somewhere (when the WFRP 4th edition was published), that the team behind Vermintide supplied the developers with digital tours through and flights over the city. Founders and staff of Fatshark, the studio behind Vermintide, have been immortalized as, you guessed it, ratcatchers in the Guide to Ubersreik:
Wahlund’s Rat Catchers, as the guild is now named, is located in a former tavern on Grossweg. Wahlund purchased it from a retired seaman. The tavern’s sign had depicted a snarling, fat shark, so it now has a dead rat painted hastily into its mouth. (...) The guild comprises only nine members. It is lead by Guildmaster Wahlund, who arrived in Ubersreik shortly before the Altdorf forces invaded. Wahlund brought with him a small company of experienced, heavily tattooed Sewer Jacks: Anders de Geer, Mårten Stormdal, and Rickard Blomberg. They joined the town’s five local ratcatchers: Melina Heilbronn, Günther Burkharrt, Reineke Rattenfanger, Fritz Vogelman, and Thormo Hakenbein.
Pointers for City Gazetteer Enthusiasts
Some things to do for RPG City Gazetteers Enthusiasts:
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If you haven't done so yet: go to Dndbeyond and claim the Gazetteer to Baldur's Gate -- one never knows, for how long it will be available.
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Have a look at the WFRP 4th Edition Starter Set: you get a lot of content relatively cheaply. Even if you have no plans to ever play WFRP, it is always worthwhile to look at other RPGs for some inspiration. Alone the Guide to Ubersreik is worth the price of the starter set IMHO.
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Learn directly from the main developer of Guide to Ubersreik:
The main developer of Guide to Ubersreik, Andy Law (whom D&D fans may know as the artist behind some very beautiful maps, e.g., those in Critical Role's Tal'Dorei Reborn source book), is very verbose about his craft (well, not only about his craft, to tell the truth ;) and extremely generous with sharing his knowledge. You can watch him create a city map in his Mapping Kalagen series on Youtube (the text below this latest video provides the links of all previous installments -- the first one lasted around 7 hours or so!) Recently, he also gave a Master Class on Writing Awesome Locations as part of the Inside the Rookery Patreon, which, along with his master classes on cartography, I cannot recommend enough.
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Enjoy the beautiful maps of Plan Janusza, who is mapping both Warhammer and D&D cities. Here is his take on Ubersreik:
PS: Another RPG city guide I am looking forward to reading is the Iskandar City Sourcebook by M.T. Black, which I will receive through M.T. Black's latest Kickstarter (running until September 18th) for his city adventure "Old Town Saga 5E". The big digital bundle containing the source book also includes M.T. Black's The Anatomy of Adventure, another excellent resource for those interested into RPG publishing.
Release from the OGL Vault
An 100+ page adventure inspired by the OGL debacle, chock full with easter eggs for the true D&D afficionado to discover.