Help With a City setting

[Shirt Guy John]

I'm going to be starting an urban D&D campaign within two weeks, and I have set before myself (before I knew the timeframe we were looking to play in) the goal of having a city that is at least fleshed out enough that I can be confident that when a player says "I wanna know where the nearest tavern is" I'm not just pullin' shtuff outta my boot on the fly (I'm not extremely good at that, and I wanna focus on other things). So i'm looking for as much help as I can get with making shops, bussinesses, taverns, or inns to populate my city with. It's the biggest kind of city, so I'm in need of as much as possible. Mostly it's names that I'm havin' a hard time with... and what kind of shops would be in a big city in the standard D&D settings with moderately high magic. I'm using the three core books, Manual of the Planes (not for a while, but it's there), Psionics Handbook, Savage Speicies, Monster Manual II, Book of Vile Darkness, and other stuff. Anything is helpful. Thanks.

 

[MEG Hal]

Don't want to toot my own toot , but look HERE .

Also Streets of Silver by Living Imagination, and Freeport by Green Ronin would be two more excellent choices. Good luck and enjoy.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

The problem for gamers is that, historically, people used to speicalize. "Caps" and "Hats" where two entirely different industries in Shakespeare's time (The Bard's uncle got in trouble for wearing a cap instead of a hat, the town was trying to support the local hat maknig industry and the thought that was incredibly stupid ... as do I).

However, this is rather usless to adventurers because they don't care about that kind of stuff and because D&D is rather abstract. That being said ....

This link will get you part of the way there:
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

And these should help you also:
http://www.paper-dragon.com/fantasyland/tavernnamegen.html
http://3ednd.com/popgen.html

Craftsfolk were often known by name/locality/reputation. People didn't typically have last/family names unless they were nobility or rich. So you really need a bunch of first names.

Gaelic: http://www.medievalscotland.org/scotnames/hng16gaelic/
Random/fantasy: http://rinkworks.com/namegen/


Good luck!

 

[jgbrowning]

Check out The Magical Medieval City Guide. Its a free PDF about building quasi-medieval cities. It's very helpful in understanding what's in a city and how they work.

joe b.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

The Magical Medieval City Guide. Its a free

Oh wow! I didn't know about that.

::drool::

-BG

PS As long as I'm drooling, I should mention that Bluffside is also a good product, but it obviously requires that your city be at the edge of a cliff.

 

[jgbrowning]

Oh wow! I didn't know about that.

::drool::

-BG

PS As long as I'm drooling, I should mention that Bluffside is also a good product, but it obviously requires that your city be at the edge of a cliff.

Don't get too excited BG! The Magical Medieval City Guide is chapters 3 and 4 from MMS:WE. The two chapters that deal with city building.

Not to say thats not something to be happy about (the FREE part that is...), but since you've already got MMS:WE........

joe b.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

True, but now I can freely distribute that link and tell my dispersed gaming friends "yo dudes, the first hits' free!"

 

[Drawmack]

Bluffside or Freeport can be used for this. Additionally both Cities are port to the hunt rise of evil setting so if you're players want to leave the city you're ready for that too.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Bluffside is fantastic and is on my 'must have items' but you may also want to check out AEG's Toolbox for fleshing out even more.

 

[Tonguez]

How I do cities

1. Determine the city Type (Merchant, Religious center, military etc) and size
2. Divide the city into 'Districts' (Wards) - Temple, merchant, craftsmen, administration, gates, docks, odiferous business, military, market, Slums
3. Give a description for each Ward -eg The Foulburg, the city slums is a collection of low huts clustered along the outer walls. Populated by goblins and poor humans. The streets are narrow and dark and an thick veil of despair hangs in the air
4. List the main buildings/sites - hovels, a small pub, Muck Ponds, River leading to Outer swamp, Eastbridge, Eastgate
5. List the Places of Interest - eg The Muck Ponds - A series of large ponds lying between the Foulburg and the outer swamps and used for sewerage and rubbish disposal. The muckponds are run by Pommy Muckraker (Hobgoblin) and his goblin workers
6. List main NPCs - eg Pommy Muckraker, Fat Nelly the Witch, Thieves
7. place some plothooks - fire, corpse in the muckponds, Otyugh out of the Swamp

If the PCs go into an area I will give them the overview description and then ad lib based on what they want to do/find/know. If they want to find a place they usually get something like "you follow the direction you recieved from the goblin and after crossing the Eastbridge it isn't hard to find the Muck Ponds by the stench lingering above them..."

In otherwords no maps all description and only whats required...