How would you make a canal city work as a fantasy RPG setting?

[Hand of Evil]

Take the halflings from Warhammer, the city and land around it becomes the "Moot", the halflings a green mafia. They control food production and prices. They build canal to move the goods.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I often considered that since Plato got his description of Atlantis second-hand (he never witnessed Atlantis, himself), what if Atlantis was an orbiting space station, and he just misunderstood the original explanation of it, since he had no context to understanding to know it correctly, and it generally looks like the photo in this post (above) this is a reply to, but a spinning torus in space, instead. And the sinking of Atlantis, is rather it falling out of orbit and crashing into the sea (I came up with this idea before Stargate Atlantis, so no infuence there...) Every time I see a rendering of Atlantis - I think 'space station'...

Someone has been watching Stargate: Atlantis

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Which aquatic groups are included makes a big difference. If they can't walk on land, that gives them a tremendous power in the water but allows PCs to run away from them, and it means the water-dwellers have to have specific land-walking agents.

You could have some Innsmouth-type interaction here where the aquatic/'fishmen' grab people, or even better find ways to seduce and indoctrinate minions, leading to their followers developing an 'Innsmouth' look of their own

 

[gamerprinter]

You could have some Innsmouth-type interaction here where the aquatic/'fishmen' grab people, or even better find ways to seduce and indoctrinate minions, leading to their followers developing an 'Innsmouth' look of their own

Who? This guy? I had some assets I wanted to play with, but had no use for - even calling this 'weekend at Innsmouth and all I got was this weird rash...'

 

[Ulfgeir]

Not canals per se, but it is water-related.

Ever since I first saw it I have been thinking of using an expanded version of the old Industrial landscape in the Swedish city Norrköping (fun fact, the city is sometimes referred to as Peking. Both names mean The Northern City) as a basis for some kind of steampunk-story. You have lots of roaring waterfalls, even some small man-made dams, to utilize the water better combined with late 19th/early 20th century buildings and factories.. If I understand it correctly, used to be lots of textile industry there. So one just need to add more waterways, more narrow streets and walkways...

Link - Tripadvisor (lots of pictures): The Industrial Landscape (Norrkoping) - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go




There is a great TV-series from BBC, where an elderly couple of British actors (Timothy West and Prunella Scales) travel along various canals called "Great Canal Journeys". Each epsiode is about one specific canal. Very soothing.