City building is one of my favorite things about DMing. I'm happy to offer suggestions, if you're interested. And what are other peoples' favorite tricks and hints?
I'm probably not really good at city building... but then my favourite adventure environment is always the dungeon
So here are my own hints:
1) Do not bother explaining or planning out much of the city in advance, but only trace out a few notes about why the city is known. You don't need anything until the PC stumble upon there and see it, or until the PC are actively looking for something or something will be looking for them (you probably know this already from the story). Be prepared instead to improvise a lot on the spot.
2) Think like in real life: you're going to Seattle for a day or two, professional reasons. What do you know about Seattle? Assuming you have never been there, all you know is probably just a bunch of things the city is famous for: maybe it has 1-2 famous industry brands, a couple of famous monuments/places of interest, and some famous people. You don't know what are the city quarters or where are the important buildings, and most likely you will still not know when you leave the city unless you needed to get there. Some buildings and sites (railway stations, banks, hospitals) are trivial: it's obvious that there are some in the city, if you need them, you will ask for directions. IRL you can Google for more info, but in a D&D campaign you cannot
Even if books are common in your campaign, finding and reading them takes a very long time so probably there's no other way to know more about a city than going there and asking around.
3) After you've handed out a few lines about the city's bigger picture, focus on the details: what do the PC see, hear, smell while walking around, what do they get when interacting with the locals? Let them learn about the city "from the bottom". You know why the PC are in town, so you have planned the important encounters already, make sure you have pre-designed the details and description of them (and perhaps some connecting route), but wind up the rest.
4) Separate different city locales such as streets and squares to make life simpler to you running the adventure, and for the players to avoid getting lost (unless you want them to). This can be done by sharply changing some of the details, and by adding striking environmental features: maybe the market street is crowded, colorful and noisy with a herald trying to shout some news from a balcony, then they move to a side street with hanging laundry and a flooded walkway, then into a small square with a huge fountain, then another street with dark red walls and a strong smell of wine...
5) When you're improvising the details before, it may be very handy to have a set of tables or a stack of cards and pick something randomly instead of preplanned. This works best for
events or environmental features that stand out, and also for weather. Remember to just pick from 0 to 2 events and/or features per different locale, not more or it gets confusing.
6) Remember that you can always go back to your RL experience to help you. If you're in trouble when improvising, think about your hometown or another place familiar to yourself, and describe that (but obviously, change the names and remove modern elements and tech
). Can be anything from the overall city layout or the smallest detail. E.g. keep a couple of postcards or pictures of old cities behind the DM screen and look at them as you describe what do the PC see as they are approaching the city with their caravans, or when you have to describe e.g. a church, describe your own IRL but with some twists. There is no way they can tell you're bluffing.
