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[Vorthon]

More advice: Don't bother with delving too deeply into something. Players will inevitably do something else and ignore your wonderful city.

If you think you can invent an entire world with amazing attention to detail and nothing will ever go wrong...

They'll invent space travel or go to another dimension.

The city would fill the province of New Brunswick, and then some. 110,155.5 square kilometers.

[Pathos v2]

You... Don't understand players.

Go read DM of the Rings, Darths and Droids or any other P&P gaming comics. You'll understand the kind of crap you deal with constantly.

[Sowelu]

Do not underestimate the trouble that players can get into. 

[Taricus]

And don't underestimate your sneakiness potential...

[Captain Mayday]

Give them a reason to stay in the city, rather than run off elsewhere.

[Vorthon]

Getting out of the city could be an adventure in and of itself...

[GlyphGryph]

My advice:

1. Good notes. Seriously, you'll need this to keep everything straight.
2. Don't be afraid to fudge, kludge, or blatantly ignore things that will stop the game from being fun.
3. Keep some tension. They don't have to be on the verge of death every second, but include some real risk.
4. Give some meaning. They don't have to be saving the world, but they often like to know their actions mean something to someone else, either a PC or an NPC.
5. Spice it up. Don't make everything about dungeon crawls or strict RP. Throw in some mini-games. I've found many players like management mini-games - give them a house somewhere to fill with trophies and spend their money improving, let them invest in local businesses or hire retainers to take care of things back home, just a series of choices with some sort of effect on the world without going much into mechanics. You can and should often completely ignore the actual rules for this bit, treat it like a break from normal mechanics and dice rolling.
6. Give the players a home. Some place they can return to between adventures, some place they value, some place that can get attacked and ransacked if they ever need some motivation. Doesn't have to be a proper house, but can even be an inn or a city or something. Just some recurring set-piece.
7. Don't railroad. If your players are having fun, let them enjoy themselves. If they stop having fun, though, don't worry if your attempts at reintroducing the plot (or even a new plot) seem a bit heavyhanded or hard to believe - they'll often simply be glad to have something to do again.

[Vorthon]

My advice:

1. Good notes. Seriously, you'll need this to keep everything straight.
2. Don't be afraid to fudge, kludge, or blatantly ignore things that will stop the game from being fun.
3. Keep some tension. They don't have to be on the verge of death every second, but include some real risk.
4. Give some meaning. They don't have to be saving the world, but they often like to know their actions mean something to someone else, either a PC or an NPC.
5. Spice it up. Don't make everything about dungeon crawls or strict RP. Throw in some mini-games. I've found many players like management mini-games - give them a house somewhere to fill with trophies and spend their money improving, let them invest in local businesses or hire retainers to take care of things back home, just a series of choices with some sort of effect on the world without going much into mechanics. You can and should often completely ignore the actual rules for this bit, treat it like a break from normal mechanics and dice rolling.
6. Give the players a home. Some place they can return to between adventures, some place they value, some place that can get attacked and ransacked if they ever need some motivation. Doesn't have to be a proper house, but can even be an inn or a city or something. Just some recurring set-piece.
7. Don't railroad. If your players are having fun, let them enjoy themselves. If they stop having fun, though, don't worry if your attempts at reintroducing the plot (or even a new plot) seem a bit heavyhanded or hard to believe - they'll often simply be glad to have something to do again.

Well, since the majority of the campaign is in a city, I've got #6  covered. And I'm a bit OCD when it comes to worldbuilding, so I've got #1 covered, as well.

And I've learned about #7 from a rpg I ran here on the forums a while ago (My only one so far that's lasted past page 1 or 2.)

But still, thanks. I'll keep these things in mind.

[Sowelu]

Figure out some cosmology and stuff like how magic impacts everyday life.  It's 3rd Edition D&D.  Healing spells and resurrection are fairly common, and in the setting as written, heroes are quite wealthy while commoners are...not.  The basic setting has a ridiculously broken economy, and it's also pretty interesting to think of what magic like healing and resurrection would do to civilian life.

(Sorry your mom died.  But we just can't afford the expensive diamond the clerics would need to bring her back.  So I guess it's just you and me now, son.  Or I could sell myself into service to this wizard to pay for it...  I'm sure he's legit...)

Yeah, the setting is REALLY full of Unfortunate Implications.  Especially when you consider that a moderately wealthy character could go around raising orphans' parents from the dead.  And they don't, those bastards.  But then, people aren't really afraid to die either, because they know for sure that the afterlife exists and some of them have seen it.  Makes evil characters kind of scarier because they know just how horrible of a place they'll go...they have to be deluded.  Or maybe those orcish barbarians go to an entire OTHER set of afterlives, that are absolutely real and relevant to them.  Think about it...or actively choose to make it not a part of your campaign.  Just don't let the moral issues sneak up on you unprepared!

And yeah magic really helps the megacities work at all, since if magic is prevalent, there's very little disease and plenty of food.

The DMG has some tables on how many people of what classes and levels you should expect in a city of X size.  It absolutely won't apply to your megacity, but maybe you could apply it to a ward or a neighborhood or a city block or...well, maybe you'd just better figure out for yourself how many level 20 wizards there are romping around, and just how many clerics there are, and what they do for a living.  And yeah, remember that in 3rd Ed., an awful lot of commoners are above level 1.

[Captain Mayday]

Yeah, the most important thing is to keep things moving. Have a general idea of where you want to take things, and keep many notes.
GMing by the seat of your pants may seem difficult, but it's much less of a bother preparing everything ahead of time and have it go unused. It also allows you to be flexible, and to allow you to change the plot as you see fit if the idea strikes you.

Finally, another possible motivation is, once you've got NPCs your players like, you can have them be targeted by their own enemies, or by the enemies of the players if they wish to cause them harm through their friends.

[Sowelu]

Finally, another possible motivation is, once you've got NPCs your players like, you can have them be targeted by their own enemies, or by the enemies of the players if they wish to cause them harm through their friends.

Yeah, abusing the players' buddies can be a great tool.  Just make sure you don't go too far in the direction of "Everyone we like dies horribly".  Saving the day is more satisfying than getting revenge, most of the time, especially when they know full well that the stakes are high.  Of course, you can still get some good mileage out of permanently maiming their friends instead of outright killing them.

[GlyphGryph]

Well, since the majority of the campaign is in a city, I've got #6  covered.

The smaller the setting of your campaign, the more personal this set piece needs to be. In a megacity, I'd reccomend some sort of personal hangout or home rather than the city as a whole - the key is it needs to be something that is theirs, something in which any enemy appearing can be seen as an intrusion into their own personal safe space. Since your campaign is set in the city, the city will provide enemies and challenges and thus is no good for this, so you'll have to go smaller. Of course, the danger here is that character's can quickly leave some place like this behind and then it will lose its meaning, so its good to tie it into the mini-game bit with improvements somehow (and also, they don't need to start with it. A diverse part usually benefits from starting up such a thing together. Maybe one of your characters gets the opportunity to purchase (or inherits) a tavern, and even if you hire other NPCs to run it, you know it will always be a "safe" place to retreat to)

[Willfor]

The comparisons to New Brunswick may not do well to keeping them there. As someone currently living in New Brunswick, I can tell you that our nickname for the province is the "drive-thru province". Because most tourists are simply driving through on their way to Nova Scotia or PEI.

[Vorthon]

The comparisons to New Brunswick may not do well to keeping them there. As someone currently living in New Brunswick, I can tell you that our nickname for the province is the "drive-thru province". Because most tourists are simply driving through on their way to Nova Scotia or PEI.

It's just that N. B. is the closest thing in size.

[Lord Shonus]

Practice making shit up at high speeds. When your party decides to sneak attack the town guard for no reason, you will not have a plan for the scenario.