How to Flesh out a City

[Trit One-Ear]

Haven't posted in a while asking for help. Here's where I'm at with my players.

They ended last session entering Lesdon, a large capitol city, and the center of post of the plot action for the next while. While they have a direct lead forward with their adventure(s), my players are acting overly cautious and paranoid. So I expect them do to a little exploring around town to get a feel for local events/personalities etc.

While I have some improvising skills, I'm not quite comfortable enough to create a whole city as they tromp through it. Do you all have any advice/tricks you use when creating interesting and convincing cities/towns for backdrops and home bases?

Trit

 

[Quickleaf]

Not knowing anything about Lesdon, I can't offer specific advice, but I have found that the more prepared you are to improvise the better. In addition to the usual suspects - random NPC generators, random taverns, "back pocket" encounters, etc. - I use the approach outlined by Mike Mearls in the old supplement Cityworks. He suggests painting the city in broadstrokes according to district, then filling in the details as needed. Actually I'd forgotten how good that supplement is, though it's OOP definitely is worth a look.

Also, I like to identify one defining characteristic of each city and play that to the hilt. Does Lesdon have a defining feature?

 

[Trit One-Ear]

Lesdon is the trade-city of my little kingdom, built where the main river meets a large bay.

I've got my lovely donjon; RPG Tools with random npcs, taverns (already used when my paranoid players refused to follow a city guard's advice and go to a nice inn), etc. Pocket encounters are something I should prepare, but I have at least some idea where to go with that.

Thanks for suggesting Cityworks. I found a run through of someone designing their city using it and it looks pretty excellent. Now to try and find a free/cheap copy online!

Trit

Ps. Any other tips or tricks are always welcome!

 

[Grandpa]

I also begged for some city help awhile back and you might find something useful buried in the thread. A user named Gilladian was extremely helpful to me there.

I like Quickleaf's advice -- divide up the city into districts and throw out some notable features that a tourist is likely to discover. I'd also build the city up through a few phases of history in your head to decide how it got to the point it's in, since it helps with improvisation.

I'll be keeping an eye out on this thread since I can still use more help for my campaign.

 

[Quickleaf]

Lesdon is the trade-city of my little kingdom, built where the main river meets a large bay.

I've got my lovely donjon; RPG Tools with random npcs, taverns (already used when my paranoid players refused to follow a city guard's advice and go to a nice inn), etc. Pocket encounters are something I should prepare, but I have at least some idea where to go with that.

Thanks for suggesting Cityworks. I found a run through of someone designing their city using it and it looks pretty excellent. Now to try and find a free/cheap copy online!

Trit

Ps. Any other tips or tricks are always welcome!

If you want online resources you'd be hard pressed to find one better than City Generator, which is based on Magical Medieval Society free PDF released by Expeditious Retreat Press. Good stuff.

 

[drow]

if you look at a lot of large medieval cities, its apparent that they're really just a lot of small villages smashed together, and its much easier to approach it that way.

 

[Colmarr]

There's an old 3.5 DMG excerpt that deals with constructing cities using generalized districts. It's pretty good, and should still be in the archives on the D&D site.

Here:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20030719a

 

[Jack99]

If you want online resources you'd be hard pressed to find one better than City Generator, which is based on Magical Medieval Society free PDF released by Expeditious Retreat Press. Good stuff.

I had never seen this one before. Great. Thanks.

 

[SensoryThought]

When my PCs come to a new town I try to (a) think of 1-3 cool things in terms of appearance, layout, or things to see. Then I (b) come up with 1-3 keywords or tidbits to keep in mind with the town. Things like 'super-tidy' or 'xenophobic' or 'heavily guarded'. This allows me a theme to throw stuff at the players.

For example, they just visited a new dwarves city that I had carved out from the top of a mountain. It was well known for a grand temple the pcs were going to visit. Due to a royal wedding I noted the mood was festive and busy (for the general public) and but tense for those involve (the wedding was between two rival clans and they had security issues).

 

[Ryujin]

The districts concept is an excellent one, and one that appears to be used by the majority of published works. You just have to decide what your city is all about, then consider what districts would exist in such a place. As a trade centre, on a river, you would have both docks and a warehousing centre for example.

City government would have its own section, which would likely be adjoined by both the wealthy sector and the artisans sector. This does not mean that you won't find artisans, perhaps even excellent ones in other areas of the city, but the largest concentration would be in the artisan sector.

And that's true for most areas. There would be an open air market for example, where food, clothing, etc. could be purchased on market day, but bakers, butchers, and other vendors would have shops in all areas of the city. Specialty shops, that have specific things that the character might want to find, should be placed in various parts of the city. The best might be in a given sector, or might have to be hunted down by those with a good Streetwise.

And as in any city, you have the outsiders. The outer town, where animal husbandry and farming happen. The downtrodden and dregs of society, who live on the scraps that are tossed over the wall under the wealthy and merchant sectors. The 'untouchables.' Even the brightest light has its shadows.