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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gilladian" data-source="post: 4997971" data-attributes="member: 2093">I have a huge semi-ruined city in my campaign world that I've used several times, and will use again, I'm sure. I have an overall map, just like for a live city. It has major routes marked, and the largest landmarks labeled plainly. The PC's get a copy of it for their own use for planning their expeditions. This map is at about 400' per inch.I have done a few "region" maps of the city for areas I expect to get high reuse, but not street-level detail. This scale of map is at about 50' per inch. I can show individual buildings, but no real fine detail. This level is where I handle things like street chases, group movement, figuring out what can be seen from where, etc...Lastly, I have specific encounter areas done at my favorite 10' to the quarter inch scale. So far, I've done portions of the grand cathedral, palace gardens, and several sections of buildings.I do tend to rely a LOT on just verbal descriptions of the areas. I have numerous short descriptions of partly ruined buildings, totally smashed zones, and buildings that are mostly still standing but plainly unoccupied by much of anything.Loads of random charts help with that, too. Not just encounters, but tables of minor interesting finds in the rubble, minor accidents, little skill challenge-type scenarios where things go wrong, etc... (like "you're climbing over a pile of rubble and it begins to slide").  Knowing what group(s) of NPCs/monsters control each region of the city helps, and having a list of potential NPC encounters (even if it is just "you see a patrol of yuan-ti coming from several blocks away. Do you hide?") can really make the whole city seem alive.</blockquote>

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