[World Building] City & Setting design - best resources

I'm sure this question has been asked a thousand times, and I've certainly asked it in various ways a few times over the years--I admittedly have a tendency to ask the question again and again, in different ways (right, [MENTION=22260]TerraDave[/MENTION]?)--but in addition to doing some searches, I thought I'd go to the Source of All Wisdom and see what I came up with.

Basically I'm looking for the best resources, either online (i.e. free) or in book form for world building, in particular settlement (village-town-city) design. There is a lot of stuff out there, and I have a few books, but I'm especially looking for guidelines for building a village/town/city, and for what you consider "the best." The book that seems to have the best reputation is Expeditious Retreat's Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe 2nd Edition, which I just ordered from Noble Knight. But I'd also especially like pointers to online resources for city design.

Feel free to throw in your own suggestions, as well! In short, I'm designing a small town of approximately 1,000 inhabitants, which will be the hub of a new 5E campaign I'm starting in January. I want to design it with a good degree of detail, complete with maps, shops, NPCs, history, rumors, all that fun stuff. I feel like I can do that without any more resources than I already have, but am also open to tips and online resources, and would love some kind of template or step-by-step guide that helps the process.

Thanks!

Mercurius said:

....

Expeditious Retreat's Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe 2nd Edition, ...

Click to expand...

Yep, thats it. Something else would just be examples...Village of Hommlet, Keep on the Borderland (oh wait, I mentioned those in your other thread), the Green Ronin (I think) d20 Sanctuary book, or one of the old Lankmar products. 3.5 DMG II had saltmarsh, which was OK (the original module does not have much on the town). I am sure others will name some. For 5E NPCs we have one source, the MM, which is actually nice for a start, hopefully the DMG has something on customization.

TerraDave said:

Yep, thats it. Something else would just be examples...Village of Hommlet, Keep on the Borderland (oh wait, I mentioned those in your other thread), the Green Ronin (I think) d20 Sanctuary book, or one of the old Lankmar products. 3.5 DMG II had saltmarsh, which was OK (the original module does not have much on the town). I am sure others will name some. For 5E NPCs we have one source, the MM, which is actually nice for a start, hopefully the DMG has something on customization.

Click to expand...

Thanks, TerraDave. I feel vindicated that the $30 with shipping I dropped on MMS: WE 2ed was well spent (it usually goes for more than that, as it is OOP and seems to have a bit of a cult reputation).

I actually never ran or played in Hommlet, so maybe I can use that for ideas.

To partially answer my own question, I came across this site: S. John Ross' Medieval Demographics Made Easy. Pretty useful.

Mercurius said:

To partially answer my own question, I came across this site: S. John Ross' Medieval Demographics Made Easy. Pretty useful.

Click to expand...

For historical reference, Life in a Medieval City and the other "Life in a Medieval" books are worth looking at (and should be available used, in the library, in some e version...).

You are looking at it. Look at the bottom of the screen, you will see a number of threads on the subject but some links:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-dming-advice-links-fixed-july-20-2008-a.html

http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/dnd/dungeoncraft/