Great Fantasy Cities (and what makes them so awesome)

[Melan]

Very good point, Shades of Green (and one cool avatar! ). What I especially liked in The City was the rampant overurbanisation - it was clear that Thief's mediaeval setting got hit by industrial advancement earlier than in our world (most likely due to the Order of the Hammer), and social change just couldn't keep up with technology and population growth. So what we have is a city of mazelike streets, shadowy inner courts, great machines belching soot and steam, rusting electrical equipment and so on. Inspiring.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

I'm a big fan of Ptolus.

Not only is it _really_ detailed, but it comes with built in bits that are enough to take people all the way up in levels.

Most things I like to be looser in terms of how it's laid out, but Ptolus is nice because there's _so_ much detail floating around, that I don't have to worry about actually doing a lot of work on it.

I know some folks are thrilled with the idea that the guards look at something like Web spells as an annoyance more than anything, but frankly I've been of the opinion for _years_ that a city's populace would be of a similar approach. Too many people in my opinion have way too much magic in their game for the average person to be as provincial and "medieval" in their outlook. Pet peeve of mine though.

The setting in the Thief games is pretty groovy too.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

So long as we're mentioning video game cities, I'll have to chime in with the Kaineng City, the capital of Cantha in Guild Wars. That place is just amazing. It's a subcontinent spanning urban sprawl, where the people didn't just build outwards, but upwards. At times the streets you are walking on are literally the rooftops of buildings below you. It is gorgeously rendered, and filled with all sorts of interesting venues and people.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Five Fingers is awesome, but I gotta say I LOVE both of the cities from the Gentlemen Bastards book, Camorr from The Lies of Locke Lamora and Tal Varrar from Red Seas under Red Skies. Camorr might as well be Five Fingers, feel-wise, for me.

 

[Pants]

Five Fingers is awesome, but I gotta say I LOVE both of the cities from the Gentlemen Bastards book, Camorr from The Lies of Locke Lamora and Tal Varrar from Red Seas under Red Skies. Camorr might as well be Five Fingers, feel-wise, for me.

Agreed. The added elder-glass structures give them an added eerie quality.

My list:
- The City (From the Thief games)
- New Crobuzon
- Sharn
- Camorr
- Scuttlecove

 

[Maldin]

The City of Greyhawk will always be #1 for me, but I admit to being a bit biased about that.
Sigil is the quintessential example of the utterly massive, equally fantasic city that could hold literally anything and is ultimately impossible to completely detail. Anything goes (which has advantages and disadvantages).

Ptolus, I hear is pretty massive in the amount of detail it provides, but alas I've never had a chance to check it out. Did someone say it is out-of-print already?

Denis, aka "Maldin"
Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Correct. Only 1000 copies printed. It's still available as a (massive) pdf download though.

 

[Dan Bell]

The CGI Website says:
Tashal: the largest city in the Kingdom of Kaldor, and second largest on Hârn. Constructed almost entirely of local granite and oak, shingled with weathered gray cedar, the "Gray Lady of the Kald" is appreciated more for her political and commercial significance than beauty. Beneath the city run extensive tunnels and sewers of ancient origin.

Also, this being Hârn there are several free fan-written city expansions available from Lythia.com.

And for one’s convenience here are the links:
Upper Eastside City Block
Eastside City Block and the
Caldeth Townhouse (a noble’s townhouse).

 

[jdrakeh]

Correct. Only 1000 copies printed. It's still available as a (massive) pdf download though.

Ooooooo. . . and there is a copy at my FLGS. I've been tempted to buy it for months, though I have the PDF (the buying and printing of which cost less than the hardcover) and I'm not 100% certain that I could ever use it as-written (since it comes attached to a pretty non-standard setting, from which spring many assumptions that I'm not really hot on).

 

[DragonBelow]

Correct. Only 1000 copies printed. It's still available as a (massive) pdf download though.

To quote Monte:

"As chance would have it, the final number of copies preordered through the website was almost exactly 1,000 (that's direct through us, not through retail, which is a much greater number). That means we numbered all signed copies as N/1000. That doesn't mean there are only 1,000 copies in existence, although I'm sure that rumor will get circulated anyway. (I, for one, am glad that the rise of the Internet hasn't quashed the time-honored tradition of the wild game-industry rumor-mongering that goes on at game tables across the country -- but that's a topic for another column...)" [1]

Let X being the number of copies of preordered trough website =~ 1000
Let Y be the number of copies preordered through retail

Since he says Y > X, then the total count is > 2000, and that's just preorders..., of course because of the price, I dare say most of the print run was preorders, but I am sure they left some wriggle room

Ptolus is out of stock from WW', but it can still be found in some stores.

[1] http://www.ptolus.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mc_los_156