How to Map/Pace a Ruined City?

[Gilladian]

Here's a direct link to my campaign's ruined city with the bits I've done: Vishteer Campaign / Escruag

It isn't too complete, but it gives an idea of how I chose to do things.

 

[dougmander]

I would argue treating it as a dungeon rather than as a wilderness -- come to think of it, I treat wildernesses as dungeons too. When you're mapping the city, think of each neighborhood, district, or quarter as conceptually equivalent of a room in a dungeon. There are one or more ways in and out. There's a block of descriptive text you read to the players when they first enter the area. There may be bad guys waiting there, or an NPC encounter. There may be hidden stuff you have to actively search for to discover. There may be several skill challenges available that each lead to an opportunity or reward if passed. Without this conceptual rigor, everything tends to feel the same for me and for the players.

I would never think about mapping every single dwelling, any more than I'd write a life story for each goblin in the mob that the PCs are about to hack through. Just a representative building layout or two, and leave the mapping to major structures like monuments, fortifications, marketplaces, and so on.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

WWFOD? (What would Fallout do?)
-blarg

Block avenues with piles of rubble that the players can't get over, even though a man with no legs and only one arm could climb over them? (My only real gripe with Fallout - if you are going to block routes of exploration then block them! Having an invisible wall suddenly stop me on top of the pile of rubble is just annoying. )

The Auld Grump

 

[Pbartender]

I would argue treating it as a dungeon rather than as a wilderness -- come to think of it, I treat wildernesses as dungeons too. When you're mapping the city, think of each neighborhood, district, or quarter as conceptually equivalent of a room in a dungeon. There are one or more ways in and out. There's a block of descriptive text you read to the players when they first enter the area. There may be bad guys waiting there, or an NPC encounter. There may be hidden stuff you have to actively search for to discover. There may be several skill challenges available that each lead to an opportunity or reward if passed. Without this conceptual rigor, everything tends to feel the same for me and for the players.

I would never think about mapping every single dwelling, any more than I'd write a life story for each goblin in the mob that the PCs are about to hack through. Just a representative building layout or two, and leave the mapping to major structures like monuments, fortifications, marketplaces, and so on.

In other words, ZORK it.

Don't actually map the city, but block diagram it. Each area of interest gets a block, and connections between blocks indicate avenues of travel between them. At a minimum, each block and each connection should have its description. Add further detail, either ahead of time or on the fly, where necessary.

 

[dougmander]

In other words, ZORK it.

Don't actually map the city, but block diagram it. Each area of interest gets a block, and connections between blocks indicate avenues of travel between them. At a minimum, each block and each connection should have its description. Add further detail, either ahead of time or on the fly, where necessary.

Yes. Funny, I was just playing the original Zork last week.

 

[howandwhy99]

A ruined city dungeon is just like a normal city dungeon, but with far more empty buildings. They are both more akin to the wilderness dungeon surrounding it than a traditional underground dungeon. I would start by drawing out the levels of the dungeon with the "deeper" or more difficult to reach quarters as higher level dungeons areas (i.e. 1st level monsters, 2nd level monsters, etc.) Then populate each region/city quarter with treasure and monsters. By your description this once was an actual ordered and civilized city, so I'd let that influence the design on all levels. As with any dungeon, the whole of it should tell a story, a history of the place and what happened there. From the very beginnings of the city to current time.

I assume there will be far fewer rooms to explore too because their is a much smaller population and no real sustainability for living creatures. But that is an assumption. You could go heavy into non-living monsters, but the more you put in, then the more we are talking about a BIG dungeon and more of a need for mapping by the Players. You could also go the route of having dozens or even hundreds of empty buildings/dungeon rooms, but I would stay away from that. It would be like running Dragon Mountain as published. Almost all empty rooms gets boring really fast. I'd go fewer empty buildings and more building debris in the overland room.

So hypothetically, in abstract form this is going to look a lot like a normal city dungeon, but smaller. Just think of the Chaos Caves from B2, which is a classic monstertown dungeon design. Most of those rooms/monster homes are connected even though they don't appear so from outside. In your case, just paint a different description for those connections sensible for your city. Say underground sewers or lofted bridges, which invite their own difficulties for passing through. And don't forget the stuff within them or rooms connected influence each other too.