Good city descriptions/atmosphere settings help

[NewJeffCT]

It might make the smell worse; rotting fish is an awful smell and most fishing ports I have been to really stink in the morning, after the fishing boats dump their rubbish.

Also, you might want to consider that a city of 50,000 would have to have a very large fishing fleet to feed that many people without any input from cattle.

If you really want to go with this, the city would be heaving with fishermen.

Thanks - they have fishing, plus I'm sure there are enough farms around to supply the city with sheep, chickens & cows. The city is not poor by common medieval standards, both monetarily and resource-wise.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Some excellent inspiration for me is playing Assassin's Creed. They fully rendered entire Medieval cities full of people coming and going, markets, churches, etc. If you dont have the game, check out some screenshots. It really hammers home what life in one of those cities would be like.

Thanks - will have to check out some screenshots. Sometimes, a few pictures really are worth a thousand words.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Major cities are also a key place for things unsavory. Slave trade, for example. And Prostitution. Don't kid yourself, slavery and prostitution have always been around "civilized" cultures (not just here in America, but worldwide), so if you don't have them in your Metropolis of 50,000, you're going to have to come up with a logical reason why not.

Don't forget other kinds of ugliness. Animals being butchered openly on the streets. Screaming kids being smacked brutally by their parents. Public hangings and ritual torture being attended by the masses as if they are baseball games.

Street food vendors everywhere. Seriously, don't forget that. That's an easy way to introduce flavor. Scam artists running games of three card Monty. Bring out yer dead. Strangely clad members of cults milling through the streets, perhaps with shaved heads, saffron robes, begging for loose change at the Ferry Terminal (like the Hare Krishnas in airports back in the 70s, kids).

Thanks, a lot of good ideas here.

 

[useridunavailable]

Some excellent inspiration for me is playing Assassin's Creed. They fully rendered entire Medieval cities full of people coming and going, markets, churches, etc. If you dont have the game, check out some screenshots. It really hammers home what life in one of those cities would be like.

"Aaaaaaaah! You almost killed me!"

"Has he lost his mind?!?"

"When will he stop acting like a child?"

I loved that game. The citizens had me cracking up the whole time.

 

[Armadillo]

Even though it is mid to late Spring, the climate is fairly warm (akin to South Carolina, I would guess) and it is a port city on the ocean. There will be ocean breezes and salty air, but I am sure some of the smells will be unpleasant as well.

Most likely, the PCs will be coming from inland, either by horse or by riverboat, not via the ocean.

Focus on what they see for their first impressions. Describe the crowds on the roads leading up to the gate and the crowded streets they find inside the walls. Think about what the PCs will want to do first do in the city (i.e. find an inn, go to the market, meet a contact, etc.).

 

[Clavis]

Some other medieval urban unpleasantness...

There are no flush toilets, so you have to use a chamberpot. It gets emptied every morning, usually by dumping it into the street. Walking under upper-story windows in the early morning morning is asking for trouble... In any event there will be a lot of human and animal waste around.

There are dogs, cats, and even pigs roaming everywhere. The pigs help clean up garbage and waste by eating it.

A large percentage of the inns will be infested with bedbugs. In a port town, there will be rats and roaches everywhere. Ratcather was an important medieval occupation.

There will be beggers, many of them diseased, some of them deliberately disfigured to make them look more pathetic.

Having water to wash or cook with means somebody has to fetch it from a nearby river, well, or a fountain (in wealthier cities). There will be a lot people on the street in the morning who are just carrying water.

 

[NewJeffCT]

thanks - that was very helpful

 

[NewJeffCT]

Some other medieval urban unpleasantness...

There are no flush toilets, so you have to use a chamberpot. It gets emptied every morning, usually by dumping it into the street. Walking under upper-story windows in the early morning morning is asking for trouble... In any event there will be a lot of human and animal waste around.

Just curious, was that level of sanitation (or lack of) also found in cities outside of Europe in that era - Japan, China, India, sub-Saharan Africa, South & Central America?

 

[fusangite]

If you're going for something a little more whimsical and less about replicating the real world, I must highly recommend Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities.

 

[taliesin15]

More on food. The cheapest meal at a tavern will be typical working class fare, i.e. gruel and maybe some stale bread. Or grilled rat on a stick. Take some time to think out depending on climate what the main alcoholic libation will be. Wine--must have suitable climate for grapes. Grains can be grown in many climes, but barley based ales are quite different from wheat-based. Most beer will be ale, lager (a relatively recent invention) takes cold fermentation. If there are apple or pear trees nearby, cider might be the ticket. Don't forget mead, libations from rice (sake), plums (plum wine & Slovakian brandy, assuming your campaign has distillation).

Further, local climate will determine available food. Inland mountains you'd have more goat and sheep, by the coast, more seafood, near forests more game like venison, and so on.

Also keep in mind that some foods sounding nasty to us modern humans were eaten (and still are in many parts of the world) with no problem. Insects are a major one--shrimp, crawfish and lobster are examples of water-dwelling insects. Also horse and dog. Gerbils and guinea pigs are considered delicacies in South America. In almost every other country (as opposed to the USA) of the world, eel and mutton are greatly relished. And then, dare I bring up, there's cannibalism. Though locals might have another name for manflesh. During the end of WWII, some Germans resorted to eating domestic cats (which reportedly tastes horrible, unlike most other cute looking animals), referring to them as "wolf-rabbit." The french film Delicattessan treats this topic, as does Jonathan Swift's brilliant essay "A Modest Proposal."