city

How I’d Run Every Borough Bound Setting

Borough Bound has a lot of settings. Where do you start? Read this quick overview and choose for yourself!

Will Savino

15 Dec 2025 — 15 min read

Borough Bound has released over 20 city settings now, and that’s made me reflect on the sum of our output: thousands of pages, hundreds of tracks, and so many goddamn jpgs. It’s a lot of total STUFF, and even though I’ve worked with my team on every part of it, I still sometimes get a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of content.

So where do you start? I thought it might be instructive to discuss how I have used our content in my own campaigns or how I might in a future adventure. Hopefully these quick overviews of our settings will help you decide which borough you want to run and how you’re going to incorporate it into your sessions. Do you want a quick spooky one-shot? Or something with dense lore to fully obsess over? We’ve got a huge range, so explore below!

I'm going to try to keep this article updated as we release new boroughs. That way, you can always use this to browse our whole library and pick the city that's right for you.

Meddenfirth

The City on a Bridge

Keywords: Ghibli-esque, trade hub, independence, war

I love Meddenfirth, mostly because it so perfectly captured our team’s aesthetic sensibilities right from the get-go. You can absolutely plop this one into any campaign world by just setting it on a river between two nations. Swap some key details about the adjacent cultures, and you’ve got yourself an ideal location to use for a quick change of pace as the party moves from one part of the world to another. Do a shopping trip, add a chance for minigames (fishing! recycling! balloon ride!), and maybe some info gathering.

tl;dr: use the bridge city as connective tissue between two settings

Kadhizi

The Genie City in a Ewer

Keywords: genies, demiplane, desert, prison

Kadhizi is begging for a quick mini-campaign. Session 1 starts with the party getting trapped in this magical demiplane, and then the next few sessions see the party acclimating and trying to escape. The setting guide provides a handful of plot hooks that might result in the party escaping, so just make it a freeform adventure as your party figures out what the hell is going on and how to leave. The unique genie culture will make this one feel unlike any other quick campaign your players have completed.

tl;dr: escape from Kadhizi over a handful of sessions

Ancora Bay

The Sinking Tropical Seaport

Keywords: tropical, cults, cosmopolitan, post-apocalyptic, climate change

This is a setting from one of my home campaigns. The lore is quite dense and nuanced—unique races, religions, factions, history, and so forth. You can use the setting to run more generic swashbuckling pirate adventures, but I think that misses just how detailed and intricate the setting is. The best Ancora Bay adventures are those that embrace the complexity. This is not just fantasy Nassau.

Anyway, in my campaign, this was the site of a number of adventures. The party broke Rister’s parents out of the Forfeited Citadel, confronted a mirror party at the Gatherer orphanage, and then fought their way through the city streets as the Corians marched on the halfling village. Eventually, Commander Danglip wanted to execute the party. In short: lots of complex adventuring with political undertones. If you really want to dig deep into one of our more complex boroughs, this might be the one for you.

tl;dr: dive deep into the complex lore

Vyndurvoht

The Dwarven Mesa Library

Keywords: library, dwarves, forbidden knowledge, tundra

The conceit of Vyndurvoht is just so tight. This is a culture where destroying books is strictly forbidden. Thus, if a book is too dangerous, you seal it in this sort of “dwarven book prison.” I’ve used Vyndurvoht in my own campaigns in a classic way: the party needs information, and that information can only be gleaned by breaking into the vaults. DO THIS. It’s a very fun twist on the classic “whelp, we better go study this magical topic at a library” quest trope.

tl;dr: break into the vaults when your party needs some specific piece of lore

Crabwell

The City of the Eternal Voice

Keywords: laws, generic fantasy, government, status quo politics

The very first session I GM’d started in a small tavern in Crabwell. I think the central hook of this setting is great, namely that a giant megaphone in the center of town blurts out new laws every night. I was definitely inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics Advance when coming up with that system, but it proved quite fun in my sessions! Crabwell is a flexible enough city that you can really throw it into any campaign. Yes, it’s meant to be a parable about the follies of political centrism, but it’s also just a classic-ass fantasy town with walls, towers, a bank, a prison, a stable, and so forth. If you just need some sort of town to plop into your campaign, this can be an easy default!

tl;dr: slot Crabwell in whenever you need a mid-sized fantasy city

Thestwick

The Haunted Fen City

Keywords: monster-of-the-week, climate change, industrialization,

Monster-of-the-week. That’s it. This setting comes with 4 supernatural villains to confront and the asshole duke and duchess to deal with. Each session can see your party tackling one of the “monsters” (each of which is deeply sympathetic, and most of whom can be "beaten" without violence) before deciding how to handle the duke and duchess. You can also just pick your favorite of the villains and use Thestwick for a one-shot. We’ve got collaborator maps for each of the lairs and 5e statblocks for each of the monster, so you really do have everything you need.

tl;dr: use it as a home base for monster hunts

Muc-Mhara

The Underwater Fae City

Keywords: fae/fey, underwater, titan, sky whale, lost treasure

We tried to make Muc-Mhara as convenient as possible. Yes, it’s underwater, but there are magical justifications for why your players can breathe, why they sink to the bottom, and why they can’t just stay there. The best reason to add Muc-Mhara to an adventure is if you have some other plot reason to send your players underwater. “Oh, there’s an important MacGuffin at the bottom of the ocean… I guess you’ll have to stop by Muc-Mhara first.” Boom, now you can perfectly break up the pacing of your underwater quest.

tl;dr: make this your go-to underwater city

Gruuk Jit’Jit

The Flying Goblin City

Keywords: goblins, hijinks, factional politics, sky pirates, dieselpunk

Push comes to shove, I’d probably say this is my all-around favorite borough we’ve created. I love goblins, I love factional politics, and I love outrageous dieselpunk nonsense. If I were running this setting, I probably wouldn’t include the factional favor mechanic (i.e. I don’t like assigning a number to how much a given faction likes the party), but I would let the party get a chance to meet the various factions and decide who they’ll work with. Gruuk Jit’Jit can be a sort of homebase for adventurers in any campaign featuring airships. They can regularly dock at GJJ regardless of where they are in the world, because the flying city moves around. Maybe they hire a goblin mechanic to upgrade their ship and regularly check in on the complex political scenario in town.

Damn, writing all that really makes me want to run an airship campaign with GJJ as the party’s base.

tl;dr: home base for aerial adventures

Sootwyn Barrow

The Accursed Village

Keywords: Gothic, roguelike, vampire, necromancer, skeletons

I’ve run Sootwyn Barrow twice as a GM and once as a player. Each time, it was exactly by the book. This is a roguelike-inspired adventure you can run in two or three sessions. If you just run the adventure as I describe in the guide, I think you’ll have a great time. In each instance, my party was regularly surprised by both the mechanics and the narrative twists. The main suggestion I have is to streamline as necessary. If your friends are losing steam, try to make sure they finish the adventure on this go-around. Make sure you tease some of the bigger mysteries ahead of time, too! That is: it shouldn’t totally come out of left field that Vasile Albescu is not actually a vampire.

tl;dr: run it as a spooky adventure over two or three sessions

Falthringor

The Mighty Mountaintop Fortress

Keywords: castle, giants, alchemy, mountain

We haven’t yet created a lot of castles. I do think Falthringor is one of our best maps for large scale tactical encounters, though. Yes, I love the guild politics and the succession crisis plotline, but the most fun way to run Falthringor is repelling a siege of invading giants. There’s lot of info in the guide that will help you run that sort of combat, so there’s no reason to be intimidated! Have your party work alongside Falthringor’s soldiers, and maybe add some mechanics for commanding the fort’s troops around.

tl;dr: GM a siege defense

Zahuatil Ruins

The False Jungle Temple

Keywords: temple, dungeon, mimics, dragon, kobolds, anti-imperialism

This is another setting where the borough guide outlines an adventure you can slot into any campaign. The specific “lore” content is very flexible. You absolutely do not need to run this setting with all of the specific NPCs and location names we use. Instead, put this in any old campaign world, and then run it straight! Just be careful with how you handle the trickier themes. This is meant to be a deconstruction and critique of standard TTRPG tropes that so often rely upon looting and exploitation of indigenous land. Don’t run Zahuatil Ruins with players who are unwilling to grapple with those topics. This is explicitly NOT just a dungeon-delving romp.

tl;dr: run it as is… but only with the right party

Ithivellia

The Enchanted Archfae Glade

Keywords: fae/fey, mushrooms, capital, masquerade, mystery

We’ve made a lot a of fae stuff over the years. Ithivellia—as the “capital” of our version of the Feywild—can easily slot in as a “beautiful royal city for the fae” in any campaign. If you’re running a standard D&D campaign with the standard D&D multiverse, use Ithivellia for Feywild encounters. Some of our patrons have inserted it directly into their Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaigns. I’m fond of the central narrative for this setting (the missing archfae, the psychic mushroom invasion, and the undecided fate of Diadne Bluemoon), but that can be as much of the focus of your adventure as you want it to be.

tl;dr: insert as necessary into any fae realm

Yllmourne

The Boom Town Port

Keywords: port, plague, pirates, eldritch, crime

This borough was plucked right out of our art director James’s home campaign, and most of the lore in the setting guide comes right from his campaign. My biggest contribution to the setting was adding in the Secret Dispatch system. This system allows you to tweak the narrative of the setting to lean more toward genre tropes for pirate adventure, dark fantasy, or political intrigue. If I were running Yllmourne, I’d pick one of those three archetypes before the start of the campaign and then lean in hard. Of the three, I think dark fantasy works best. Creepy witches, misunderstood leviathans, and monsters under the mountain just seem like a perfect aesthetic fit for this town.

tl;dr: pick a sub-genre and then lean in

Brimspur

The Infernal Crossroads

Keywords: wild west, weird west, hell, demons, devils, carnival

Brimspur is a silly-ass setting. You can absolutely use it in serious campaigns, but so much of the concept is intentionally goofy. Why do devils and demons love carnival games so much? Because it’s silly, that’s why. I ran a Gunless Gauchos one-shot in Brimspur that was 100% stupid and goofy the whole way through, and it was one of the most fun RPG sessions I can recall in recent memory. Do a silly Western accent and roleplay a bunch of bizarre monsters. Have fun.

tl;dr: keep it silly

The LIMINARC

The Modular Airship Fleet

Keywords: couriers, airships, multiverse, bureaucracy

There are LIMINA NPCs and bits of LIMINA lore throughout our settings, but The LIMINARC is the single biggest and most comprehensive piece of LIMINA content we’ve created. I ran a mid-length LIMINA campaign a few years ago in which the party worked for the Department of Chance and Loops. I’m quite proud of how I’ve written this faction, as you can so easily let them be weird interlopers that occasionally pop into your campaigns just to deliver letters, or they can serve as the central faction for the entire campaign. My one piece of advice: the more multiversal your campaign becomes, the more you need to manage the focus in other aspects. If your players can go anywhere across the cosmos, you better make sure there’s a very clear theming and narrative through line. Otherwise, it’ll be very easy to throw up more plates than you can keep spinning.

tl;dr: make LIMINA the dominant faction in a campaign or keep them as oddball NPCs

Elseridge Academy

The Magic School at the Edge of the World

Keywords: magic school, Hogwarts, university, salt flats

Elseridge is our largest and most popular setting, and I totally understand why. It is, as far as I can tell, the most fully fleshed out magic school TTRPG setting. Period. I have yet to come across any resource as comprehensive for a tabletop magic school anywhere. Yeah, Hogwarts exists, but screw J.K. Rowling. If you want to run a magic school campaign, I say do the whole dang thing at Elseridge. Pick up Kids on Brooms, use our lore, follow our guidance on how to structure a magic school campaign, and go nuts. This is the definitive way to run a magic school adventure.

tl;dr: run a multi-year magic school campaign

Pelgrut Hideaway

The Modular Bandit Camp

Keywords: bandits, tents, palisade, crime, modular

We designed Pelgrut Hideaway to be as modular as possible. The way to incorporate this into a campaign is by “stitching it” to another city that your players are exploring. For example, say your party is exploring Crabwell. Have the Pelgrut Pack (i.e. the bandits) set up camp in the Arkun Woods nearby, and let your players uncover what’s going on with the sudden influx of bandits in town. Alternatively, start a campaign by having your players escape from the camp. I love the trope of beginning a campaign by putting a bunch of players in jail together.

tl;dr: attach Pelgrut Hideaway to another city

The Other Side

The Spectral Purgatory Realm

Keywords: Southern Gothic, Lousiana, bayou, spectral, limbo

Each of our releases for the Other Side consists of a single one-shot: either a murder mystery on a riverboat, a haunted house, or a cultist-themed monster hunt. While you can absolutely retool the lore of your campaign world to add a weird Louisiana-inspired spiritual limbo realm, you can also just pick one of these three one-shots to run whenever you feel like GMing a quick little Gothic adventure.

tl;dr: run one of the three one-shots

Wresyck Junction

The Jazzy District that Powers Svarnahelm

Keywords: jazz, noir, neon, metropolis, alchemy, magitech

Svarahelm is our arcane megacity which consists of a handful of distinct districts. It’s another setting that has such rich and complex lore that my main suggestion would be to essentially run an entire Svarnahelm campaign. Have your players explore each of the districts throughout their adventure. Svarnahelm is our most ambitious setting for dense, high fantasy, urban, magical adventures.

If you’re specifically talking about Wresyck Junction, ya gotta do some noir detective stuff with Zurker & Associates. This is the perfect setting to roleplay as a team of private eyes.

tl;dr: keep the Svarnahelm lore and run a detective adventure

Ruvatello

The Luxury Lakeside Resort

Keywords: paradise, resort, hotel, dragons, Mediterranean, peaceful, idyllic

There’s a whole section of the Ruvatello borough guide where I list what you can and should do with the setting. I give a bunch of potential suggestions—a climactic summit, a mini-arc for a non-violent RPG system, a beach episode, etc.—but my main suggestion is to simply not do any combat here. In all of our other boroughs, I try to make sure there are some variety of monsters or bandits or villains for your party to fight, just for the sake of pacing. For Ruvatello, I really think the resort vibes will feel more impactful if you nix the combat altogether. Personally, I love social dungeons, so I’d try to run some sort of quest at Ruvatello where the players desperately need some favor from one of the resort’s guests but need to jump through a bunch of hoops first.

tl;dr: whatever you do, skip the combat

Hauthell

The Evolving Countryside Hamlet

Keywords: nonmagical, historical, medieval, passing time, rural

It probably won’t come as a surprise that I was strongly inspired by Pentiment when writing Hauthell. This setting is quasi-historical and magic-free by default, but it’s also super easy to plop into any fantasy campaign world. Simply adjust the lore accordingly. Y’know, put it into the Forgotten Realms and add a handful of elves and all that. Ideally, you can start your adventure here—I tried to make it the ideal starter town!—and then revisit it occasionally throughout the adventure. As time passes for your adventurers, the town grows with them.

tl;dr: start your campaign here and then return periodically

Nulvarith

The Shattered World

Keywords: aliens, asteroids, space, mine, crystals, archmage

Two main options for this one. Option #1 is that your party gets hired by the archmage at the start of the adventure, and then it becomes their mission to figure out how to flee this broken planet. Option #2 is that Nulvarith is a stop for the party on a fantasy spacefaring adventure, something Spelljammer or Planescape adjacent. This is a zany place, but there is also plenty of questing to be done. There are three distinct potential climactic boss battles, and some light factional politics to deal with. Focus on the elements that make sense for your story, but make sure you keep the setting weird. This is meant to be a bizarre fantasy setting, not a logical sci-fi realm.

tl;dr: keep the lore zany, and adjust based on what role your party plays in the narrative

Demlin

The Corporate Heart of Svarnahelm

Keywords: Manhattan, corporate, skyscrapers, monopolies, clean

I’m not very subtle with my critiques of capitalism or the American dream. Luckily, that means the themes of corporate hegemony should be easily copied-and-pasted into your Svarnahelm adventures. As with Wresyck Junction, I’d say it’d be fairly tough to transpose Demlin into non-Svarnahelm adventures unless all you want is a map that looks like fantasy Manhattan. In either case, the best use of Demlin is having your players decide whether they’re going to ally themselves with one of the megacorps, if only as a means to an end. Ultimately, your party should end up back in Demlinfor the end of the campaign, likely to finally stick it to one of the city’s archons.

tl;dr: focus on the megacorp HQs