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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 2370799" data-attributes="member: 8835">towns happen at crossroads.  Those crossroads might be actual roads, or rivers and such.  Basically, they happen where the most people would likely pass, on their way to somewhere else.For water, they happen where the best port location would be to receive ships AND have goods delivered overland to the town (to get on the boat).  Thus, a crossroad of water path, and dirt path.For roads, they happen where you'll have the most people passing through with supplies, or needing supplies.  Sure, you could plop a town in the middle of a long road, but you'd get half as much business than if you plopped it down where 2 roads cross.If you doubt that, go watch a real road that is slowly getting urbanized (FM1960 and FM2920 in Houston is a good example of this).  First, the gas stations move in, at INTERSECTIONS.  Then strip malls, restaurants and shops get put it, adjacent to the intersections, which, as they sprawl, they spread out along the road.  Like most small towns, they form a line along the road(s).  Houses and homes fill in on the spaces, usually behind the businesses along the road (which also segregates the locals' houses from the main road and visitors traffic, which they don't need).Thus, and unplanned town will always look like - or a + with businesses along the main street (ever wonder why they call it main street), with houses filling in the gaps.Now a planned town or city might evolve a bit differently, due to a city planner's guidelines for where key buildings and roads WILL be.  But even then, the pattern I described above will still take over in all the empty spaces.Now a good question would be, how many houses/buildings based on population.  You could assume a medieval setting family lives in the shop (probably upstairs) in a town.  There's probably some normal housing and apartments (renting is not a new concept).  If you assumed the average family size of 5, you could guesstimate a building count of 5 people per building.  It would be close enough, and some buildings would hold more, some less, but it averages out, and gives you a good sized city for the population.there are lots of population generating tools out there:<a href="http://www.aarg.net/~minam/towns.cgi" target="_blank">http://www.aarg.net/~minam/towns.cgi</a><a href="http://www.irony.com/mkcity.html" target="_blank">http://www.irony.com/mkcity.html</a><a href="http://www.irony.com/village.html" target="_blank">http://www.irony.com/village.html</a>Once you got your population and building count, you don't need to actually define WHERE everything is right away (a rule of DungeonCraft, don't make more than you need).  But if you do draw a city, you'll know how many buildings to roughly put down.At best, you really just need to know WHAT common shops are present, such as:jewelry, gemsmitharmorerweapons smithblacksmithsawmillgeneral storeeclectic items shop (ie. used and/or stolen oddities)magic shop (potions, scrolls, spell components, real magic items)Though in real life, there may be competing shops, initially, you only really need to invent one of each (or leave out ones that don't apply or are unavailable).Janx</blockquote>

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