The City of Carse (1980) gets off the city streets. The idea here is to detail, building by building, a generic fantasy city. The method is fast and brief, listing out the building’s purpose and its residents. This is raw material. More refined information, like plot hooks, are a bit rare, but there are some scattered through the text. In the back are details on some additional important buildings, factions, random street encounters and information on laws and commerce. The result is a ground up depiction of a city. You get a sense of everything and how it all works together the way a resident might, rather than the eagle eye omniscient view we generally take as GMs, which can feel a bit unusual. This approach makes it a bit hard for the GM to see what is going to happen when the players start mucking about, but perhaps that is part of the fun!

Chaosium did a version of Carse in 1986 and its production values make it much more pleasing to use — particularly the maps of the city districts. Not my favorite Day Brothers cover — that mage looks weird and the S&M bartender is an odd choice. I quite like Marco Cardelli’s interiors, though.