D&D General How would you do a fantasy mall?

[Paul Farquhar]

Plans for the Crystal Palace are easily available on line, so I thought I would post some, as they could be repurposed for D&D.

The original design was much cooler than the finished building. It's also more like the Red Nails city.

They didn't manage the dome, instead ending up with a half cylinder central roof.

This is nice and clear and could be used as is.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

Yes, GURPS and the Traveller setting were a good fit.

I do have a minor aesthetic regret that SJG put the original "Beowolf calling for help" on the cover rather than the ad text of a ship replying "Hang in there Beowolf. Help is on the way."

I'd model it on the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul. So a covered market in a big city - the largest city in the region if not the world. Shops, lots of shops, with any 'adventure' arising from mercantile interests and/or the criminal underworld.

It's easy to find the shops the Grand Bazaar has today, but for a typical medievaloid or at least pre-industrial-revolution fantasy setting, I'd try for a deep dive into the history of what was being sold there 300-500 years ago.

Istanbul/Constantinople/Byzantium/and at least 2 other names is truely one of the great cities of the world. It's like a real life Waterdeep, complete with an undermountain.

Legendary Underground Cities of Istanbul - Kasifiz

Istanbul, for which many wars have been fought throughout history, literally keeps another city alive. Almost every street has galleries, tunnels and dungeons stretching hundreds of meters below the ground. Some of these are structures that were built on them because they got old over time...

kasifiz.com

more concepts:

The Adventurers’ Outlet
Outlet mall for slightly defective magic items. “Wand of Fireballs – one fireball left, maybe.”

Customer Service Desk
Staffed by a minor god of Bureaucracy. Returns require three forms and a sacrifice of patience.

Lost & Found A maze-like repository of every lost object ever misplaced in the multiverse. Adventuring hook central.

Security Office The mall cops are paladins who take their Oaths very seriously. Possibly too seriously. Oath of the Mallcop!

now some plot hooks

The Black Friday Siege: The gates open to another realm of shoppers. The paladins of Customer Service are overwhelmed.

Mallrats of the Multiverse: A group of teens accidentally unleash an ancient sale-golem from the Discount Catacombs.

The Escalator of Ascension: It only goes up. Always. No one knows where.

The Great Return: Someone tries to return a cursed item that’s rewriting reality, but the receipt has faded from time itself.

Expansion Project: The mall begins to consume nearby villages. Is it an economic miracle or a spatial infection?

 

[Marc17]

Have a large basilica. Take the original St. Peter's or Trajan's Forum and market as visual examples. Large front gate with buildings that have the market offices. Just inside is a large open area that is rented out plot by plot, now filled with non-permanent stalls acting like a farmer's market, carrying food and other common goods. The major paths including the one from the gate to the covered shops on the other end being the busiest and most desired spots. The side areas are not rented out except day to day on a first come, first served basis. Here will be people with a blanket covered with the goods they wish to sell like flea market. There will also be old women with the collection of herbs, insects, and bones ready to make potions, holy men that will do blessings for alms; and other people looking to sell things that the normal shops will not buy, at least for the money the seller wants. IN the back is a larger multistoried building filled with shops that sell clothes, goods, brokers, and services that warrant a prestigious shop in the city market. At night everything is locked up and under guard.

Out to one side is a large collection of shops and stalls that sell goods after the market closes and all through the night. The entire block is not a single building, but more like a cluster of buildings that have all been built on top of each other. Inside are shops and even some residences laid out in no orderly pattern and a maze of corridors, ramps and stairs. Children wait for somebody to look confused so they can lead them to the shop they trying to get to for a few coppers. Here are the shops that do not need the prestige, security, or rules of the main market building. Everybody that works or lives here knows everybody else and recognise those who don't as such.

Is there something you want to buy. Somebody here either has it or a way to get it. Have something to sell, somebody will give you something for it. Have money? Somebody will convince you that there is something you want. Need money? Somebody here knows how you can make that money, perhaps by aquiring something somebody else wants.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

A slightly adjacent topic, but I recently reread REH's Red Nails, and I was stuck by how his lost city resembled an abandoned shopping mall. A large low rectangular building, lots of glass in the roof for light, a closed environment, wide east-west and north-south boulevards surrounded by dwellings (some called out as shops) on two levels, a large central atrium under a glass dome, an underground level infested with undead monsters, ornamental turrets and cupolas on the outside, etc.

The problem is, the novella was written 20 years before shopping malls were invented. So I got to thinking what else it resembled, and I thought of the Crystal Palace. I'm pretty sure REH never visited it in London, but it burned down the same year the novella was written, so he may have read descriptions in the newspapers. In addition, there were several copies built in the late 19th century, including a short-lived one in New York. REH couldn't have seen that either. But my research dried up when it came to copies of copies. I suspect there were quite a number built, and furthermore went on to become the architectural inspiration for the original shopping malls.

Doing a bit of necromancy, but I stumbled across more info on this whilst researching the Crystal Palace Park dinosaurs for some art. The wiki entry had this image:

A very romanticised view of the dinosaur exhibit with the Crystal Palace in the background painted by George Baxter in 1854. For those of you familiar with Red Nails, you will know that Conan and Valaria take refuge in the city after fighting a "dragon". However, the description of the dragon very closely resembles the dinosaur statues pictured here - lumbering and reptilian, no wings or fire breath. The city dwellers fear to leave because they think the monsters still lurk outside. As well as being an artist, Baxter was a pioneer of colour printing, and copies of this image were distributed far and wide (yay advertising!), so there is a very good chance REH could have seen it.

 

[rgoodbb]

A MALL, YOU SAY?

One word...…..ZOMBIES!!!!

Dawn of the Dead Zombie defence. It's what malls were made for.

 

[Corinnguard]

1. How would you do a fantasy mall?
2. What would you see there?
3. How would you use it to drive stories?
4. Where would you put it? Is it like a mega dungeon or is it a location like a massive store complex in waterdeep?

Probably a fantasy version of that mall seen in the movie, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. The one that existed in an alternate dimension that could only be experienced through special tech.