I suck at describing cities

[Festivus]

I would love to hear some tips on how you impart the feel of a city. I tried a few things last night, e.g. you smell the fresh baked bread from the bakery as you pass by, the bustle of commonfolk going about thier daily life, etc.

But it felt to me like it was missing a lot of life. It felt very cardboard to me. I want it to be vibrant and alive... not cardboard.

So anyone have any suggestions for how to present this setting?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Secretly pick a real-life city or town for each game location. Then think of what that real-life location makes you think about, good or bad, and whether it's the people, the buildings, the smells, whatever, and convert them to a fantasy environment.

Change each settlement's real-life analogue and you'll be creating real life details for each location by simply stealing them.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Steal from books, aka travel guides and other resources. Also write out your descriptions, look at colorful phases and alternate words for what you want to tell the players. come up with a format.

Things to think about is the area of the city and ask questions:
Is it a well off or poor part of the city?
...building...street...lights...trash?
What group of people do you see on the streets?
...colors...working class...sailors...merchants....mixture...well off?
What smells are common to the area?
...food vendors...sweat of unwashed bodies...factory smells?
What do the players hear?
...laughter...general chat...music...yells...hammers banging...the lapping of waves?

See DM Advice link in my sig.

 

[bento]

There's a book, Bits of Boulevard by Tabletop Adventures aimed directly at this problem. Here's the link at the Game Store:

http://shop.enworld.org/index.php?productsid=924&source=Product Browsing

Here's most of the description:

Bits of the Boulevard" helps the GM answer the age-old question, “So what do we see as we walk down the street?” It provides short "bits" of description and colorful settings for any medieval fantasy city, regardless of the system. This is created to be an "on the go" product, which means you don’t need to read the entire work before you can use it. The descriptions are designed so that they can be randomly generated as you play or placed carefully ahead of time. It is written to be of use to both experienced and inexperienced Game Masters, particularly those who (for whatever reason) find themselves short on time or creativity.

This book includes 100 Bits of description, small pieces that can be stuck in anywhere a little description is needed, and are numbered so they can be used randomly. Each Bit is also provided in index card format for ease of use by Game Masters. In addition, there are 100+ other descriptions that may depict a particular place or event, or set a feel for an area. These additional descriptions include a special section on Walls and Gates, features often encountered by the visiting adventurer.

The material is indexed a number of ways to allow a GM to easily find a description to fit a particular circumstance. Also, an article on the location and organization of cities is presented to help the GM add a little realism to the fantasy city. Some descriptions are graphically depicted in the interior art by the Carmona Brothers and Christine Griffin.

 

[taliesin15]

I would love to hear some tips on how you impart the feel of a city. So anyone have any suggestions for how to present this setting?

there was a great thread a couple of years back where contributors to the thread populated a building, and it kind of built up a series of possible adventures

probably a standard suggestion would be to look at classic fantasy literature to see how they did it--there's the Thieves World series (which I enjoyed much more in high school than I did more recently), Fritz Leiber's excellent Fafhrd & Grey Mouser books, and for a real outside the box suggestion, Italo Calvino's superb novella Invisible Cities (which is a set up as a kind of dialogue between Marco Polo and Genghis Khan). Then there's all sorts of classic literature from The Iliad to Chaucer, Dickens, perhaps even some contemporary travel guides

the key I think is you want to bring some drama into your campaign--what is the architecture like? The weather? What sort of commerce is the city mainly engaged in? In cities I've been to these things tend to stand out. I noticed most old European cities have plazas of some sort--this is something noticeably missing in the USA. San Francisco has all that fog. Venice is dominated by water, and has a lot of shops selling decorative glass because of the glass factory nearby in the island of Murano. Marseilles is a wild mix of cultures and has a reputation for secrets, smuggling, and a sort of tough cosmopolitanism. New Orleans (pre-Katrina) was full of music, color and celebration. Ft. Worth is dominated by the stockyards in the old part of town, military elsewhere (most of the rest is like any other US city). Are there any major architectural features like the Eiffel Tower? Most of my cities I design have at least one lookout tower that can be seen from most of the city, and far from its walls, for obvious reasons. Some cities were originally fortresses, strong castles, and its keepers built smaller walls to keep the nearby citizenry safe from casual skirmishes. Some were trading crossroads located on conjunctions of rivers, mountain passes, or old roads.

I guess what I'm saying is start with the larger features then work down. That's one approach at least.

 

[reason]

...

I guess what I'm saying is start with the larger features then work down. That's one approach at least.

Better to start with the small stuff and work up. I think I'm succeeding in that approach with Port and Three Stones in the Enclave setting. Start with the details that make it different and interesting; the odd carvings on the cobbles, the unusual inn, the accent of the fisherfolk, the statue of a cat erected by a loathed merchant, a bridge where mercenaries wait to be hired. Throw as many details as you care into the hat, pour in the context of a city, and a memorable city will fall from it.

On a practical level, just write down every tiny idea for something different that you have. Pull them out at random during a session to use as descriptive flavor.

Reason
Principia Infecta

 

[taliesin15]

"Better to start with the small stuff and work up."

Its certainly *easier* to do it that way, but I suspect that's why our querent is in the quandary he is in. Starts with the dock, the inn, etc. and it all comes out mundane. Really, either way is fine, as long as you can try some approach that makes your urban areas have more flavor and excitement for the game.

Another suggestion: try watching HBO's series Rome. And, though its not a *city*, if you have the stomach for it, watch their series Deadwood. Talk about flavor.