Beginning setting for my swashbuckling campaign, Heroes of Westerwind.

The town of Cliffport isn't actually on a cliff. In reality, it is nestled beside a cliff, the fallacious namesake of which is actually host to a lighthouse tower. The town is not necessarily a smuggler's haven or other such unruly settlement, but it is certainly no Marinport. Further down the coast than its larger cousin, Cliffport attracts more of the unsavory crowd. Where Marinport has big-time merchants and oligarchic guilds, Cliffport has freelance traders, all competing with one another. Marinport attracts priests, solemn mages, and great warriors, while Cliffport is more likely to bring in mercenaries, wandering clerics, and adventuring wizards. Yes, Cliffport is certainly the haven of freelance adventurers for hire. Its taverns are many, outnumbering only its shops, which sell anything from rope and gin to bootknives and alchemist's fire.

Races of Cliffport
While humans dominate Cliffport as the majority, the city is a melting pot for races of all kinds. Lightfingered and lightfooted Halflings dart through the streets, avoiding tough-looking Half-Orcs. Half-Elves blend in with the crowd easily as Gnomes argue with Dwarves about a gem's value. Even Hadozee live here, and some Half-Goblins.

Adventurers and Cliffport
Cliffport is a haven for freelancers, smugglers, mercenaries, and treasure/glory-seekers. The most commonly encountered types of adventurers are rogues, fighters, and swashbucklers. Any wizards or sorcerers found in Cliffport are usually there to seek adventure, not study. Those clerics not seeking the same are there to cleanse the slums district of their disreputable ways.

The Warfs
Cliffport's warfs are of the varied type, ranging from shady smugglers' dens to reasonably respectable freelance or small-time merchants. Warehouses line the docks against a backdrop of ships that lay at anchor, but the most famous attractions of the warfs are their "visitor's centers." This euphemistic name is a catch-all for the innumerable taverns, taphouses, and brothels that line the warfs, beckoning for sailors just in at port to spend some of their hard-earned coin. The warfs have their dangers too, though. Kobolds and nasty urban Goblins skulk in old abandoned sewers, warehouses, and caves.

Administration District
The warden of Cliffport, a graying man named Trevor Northton, lives in his stone manor at the top of the city, surrounded by the parliament hall and various other administrative buildings. It is a nice enough district, with stone houses for richer merchants and tradesmen and fine cobbled streets.

The Slums
One of the largest areas on Cliffport are designated the slums. These consist of blocks of tall, closely-packed wooden houses, sometimes with one family on the first floor, another on the second. It is here that the infamous Thieves Guild is rumored to make its home. One can find many taverns and brothels in the slums, but few inns or any sort of place of business, as it is a residential area. Beggars, street urchins, pickpockets, thieves, cutthroats, and thugs; all find their way down to the slums eventually.

Market District
This is the center of the city. Here shops and stalls sell all sorts of goods, imported and native. It is here that most of the city's inns can be found, as well as merchants' offices, pawnbrokers, and various quack institutions such as fortune tellers. This district attracts most adventurers and treasure-seekers.

Tradesmens' District
This district of the city is home to carpenters, weavers, blacksmiths, tanners, dyers, lawyers, apothecaries, stone-cutters, coopers, barbers, and all the other various trades of the city. Most buildings are shops on the first floor with lodgings for their owners on the second. This district encircles the market district in a semicircle, while the side toward the sea (south) is taken up by warehouses, shipwrights, boatbuilders, ropemakers, sail menders, and other trades specifically related to ships.

Laws and Decrees
Cliffport's industry centers around two things: Trade and adventurers. Thus, exceptions are often made in rules for adventurers. All adventurers, in order to be considered adventurers, must first obtain a license from the immigration office. This license can be purchased for a small fee of a few silver pieces (it is assumed that, unless the players wish it, they all have purchased these beforehand). Average laws such as those prohibiting resisting arrest, murder, theft, etc. are mundane and not mentioned here. Many laws are ignored in the slums districts - weapons are common place, as is their application. In the richer districts, police forces patrol the streets, overcompensating in their jurisdictions in an attempt to make up for the lawlessness of the poorer areas and slums.

Using magical means to bargain with storekeepers is considered a form of extortion. Penalty: Returning of stolen goods plus 10% of their value.

Oddly enough for a city with slums such as Cliffport, quacks are quickly dealt with - arrested, exposed, etc. This is the result of a large epidemic that occurred some hundred and eight years ago, caused by a quack doctor's "medicine." The medicine turned out to be infected with a virus by mistake, and the disease spread, aided by the oblivious physician's opportunistic sales of even more of the garbage, claiming that it could cure the illness. Eventually, the virus was tracked back to its source and the physician was informed. Even though he was most likely ignorant of his medicine's lethal effects, he was arrested and expelled from the city. This is knowledge that anybody that has lived in Cliffport for a year or more would most likely know.

The World of Westerwind

Now let's talk a bit about Westerwind. It's modeled after a mid-1400s seafaring world. The subcontinent on which Cliffport is built is known as Nooblah, and is one of the closest things to a normal sword'n'sorcery D&D setting, home to clans of Dwarves, tribes of Elves, small principalities of men, Halfling caravans, Orcs, Goblins, Gnomes, the works. There are other subcontinents around the world, and besides these, the ocean is filled with islands.
To the south of Cliffport and west of Marinport lies the Sea of Sails, so named for its great traffic of trading vessels. East of Cliffport is the city-state of Kargeth, its capital city Daggerport. The closest subcontinent to Nooblah is Khalidor to the east, home to many great port cities which maintain a bitter rivalry with Cliffport, Daggerport, Marinport, and other such cities.

Rumors of other continents abound - jungle-blanketed swamps with strange inhabitants, deserts with ancient tombs filled with treasures beyond anyone's imagination, and the Sunken Continent, a legendary world that sank beneath the waves as the result of some great cataclysm - or so they say.

Half Goblin (Homebrew Race)

Half-Goblins are a common sight in many cities. Sewer Goblins may breed with humans, producing Half-Goblins, or Goblins may intermingle with humans, the result being Half-Goblins. Half-Goblins stand between 3-3/4 to 4-3/4 feet tall. Their skin is usually the same hue as humans, tending to be on the darker side, but sometimes it has a greenish tint. Their ears are quite large, and their eyes are dark and squinty. Half-Goblins are like their stooped ancestors in that they are often thieves, but unlike Goblins, they are far more charismatic, and so rather than outright thievery, many Half-Goblins work as con-men, racketeers, and so forth. In most societies, Half-Goblins are accepted into society as civilized, but still the victim of racial prejudice - some of it deserved. Some Half-Goblins become miners or alchemists.

Half-Goblin (Hoblin) characters possess the following racial traits.
+2 Dexterity, +2 Charisma (Str cap is like Gnomes and Halflings)
Small size: +1 bonus to AC, +1 bonus on attack rolls, +4 bonus on Hide Checks, -4 penalty on grapple checks, lifting and carying limits 3/4 those of medium characters.
A Hoblin's base land speed is 20 feet.
Low-light vision.
Racial Skills: +2 racial bonus on Profession (Miner), Bluff, and Craft (Alchemy) checks; +2 to Appraise checks to discern the wealth of valuable objects (gems, artifacts, etc.); +2 to Forgery checks to fake an artifact or such thing.
Automatic Languages: Common, Goblin. Bonus Languages: Giant, Gnoll, Elven, Draconic, Dwarvish, Gnome.

Hoblins are treated as Goblinoids for the sake of powers affecting said subtype, such as Dwarves' and Gnomes' bonuses in combat. Their favored class is the rogue.

Half-Hobgoblins: These differ from Half-Goblins in that they are medium, so gain no bonuses or penalties; have +2 Constitution in place of Goblin bonuses; instead of Goblin skills they have +2 to Knowledge (Engineering) and Craft (Weaponsmithing) checks to take care of weapons (repairs and so forth), and a speed of 30 feet.

I'd be careful about this. I can just see some adventurers coming in and starting trouble, and then the locals have no way to defend themselves. There's a Slums, strangers constantly coming off the waters, and fairly hardened travelers since this is not a place of study, but a place of action.

~SE++

Thanks a lot, Squinty. This is very true, and something I overlooked in my thought process. I'll definitely apply these suggestions.