Urban Development!

[SHARK]

Greetings!

In designing settlements for the game, there is only the bare bones of assistance supplied in the DMG. Now, as you go about developing adventures for your campaign, and you set out to create new settlements, whether they are a frontier village, busy riverside town, or an enormous, sparkling city, what kind of steps and routines or thought processes do you go through to lay out the details and character of such an urban development?

For example:

In my campaign, I often develop a village like this; I will visualise the environment, and, oftentimes almost on a whim, ask myself who founded the village? Boom-a successful trapper. Brugan the Trapper. He was bearded, sang a lot, preferred whiskey, and liked dark haired women. He trapped in the area for over 24 years, before a gradual gathering of fellow trappers, hunters, loggers, riverboat men, and their families, began to look to him for leadership, and several of the more wealthy, responsible ones suggested that a village be formed. Soon, the village of Pine River was created. The village has a population of some 380 people, about 1/5 being children, 2/5 being women, and the remaining 3/5 being men. Most of the men are simple, rustic folks, involved with making a living in the midst of this harsh, unforgiving wilderness. Hunters, trappers, loggers, prospectors, rivermen, a few merchants, and recently, increasing numbers of miners have moved into the area to break in a promising silver mine that was discovered by a group of young prospectors some three months ago.

Thus, quickly in just moments, the manner of the village begins to form, and there is a potentially interesting place to visit, with an interesting group of npc's. Towns and cities can be developed in a similar fashion.

These are generally quick-techniques that I use to draw up a settlement quickly, almost naturally. Larger settlements, of course, usually take far more planning. Still, what skills and techniques do you follow to make interesting urban settlements?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Napftor]

Greetings SHARK. Good to see you posting again.

When it comes to the urban jungle, there is one primary thing I need to determine--why is this city/village/town here? Urban environments spring up because the place was established for a reason, be it a good port, mining town, a well-traveled crossroads area, etc. This purpose determines the type of citizens and their attitude. Beyond this, I think what makes a community memorable are the NPCs and not the services/business offered (although that's a part of it). By giving the important NPCs at least one memorable trait in terms of physical appearance or mannerism, you get the players to remember the community better.

And the urban landscape is the perfect breeding ground for these intriquing NPCs. Let the imagination run wild, no matter the community's size. I guess that's what I do when designing a town. Never really thought about it analytically.

 

[Buttercup]

Well, I'll be interested to see what other people have to add to this thread, because I don't think I'm that good at developing communities. I do think along the same lines Shark does, but just from his brief discription, his sound more interesting.

Lately I've been thinking about the settlements that might dot a trans-desert caravan route. Obviously oases will be where most or all of the settlements form in the real world, but this is fantasy, so I'm contemplating subterranean communities also. Maybe even a secret underground river. The caravans and other strangers traverse the desert on the surface, clawing their way from tiny oasis outpost to tinier oasis outpost. But the real life of the region is underground. But then I get stuck.

Well, I've done a pretty good job of rambling, haven't I? Sorry. To make a long story short, I tend to think about a whole region rather than just a single settlement. That might be a mistake, since it seems to be so hard for me.

 

[ced1106]

Well, I'll be interested to see what other people have to add to this thread, because I don't think I'm that good at developing communities.

My thoughts are that a village or city has a **much** lower suspension of disbelief than your typical dungeon or even wilderness adventure. Players have a pretty implicit understanding of what a village or city should be, and any violations of it stick out pretty obviously.

I bet this is why we see few village and city supplements. (They're there, they're just not as common as adventures and optional rules.) Is there a supplement that advises **how** to create a village? **Many** years ago, Midkemia Press (owned by Chaosium) put out a supplement that helped you build a city, as well as include random encounters. Not perfect, but very good.

Edit: Found it! http://www.midkemia.com/

Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

 

[Buttercup]

My thoughts are that a village or city has a **much** lower suspension of disbelief than your typical dungeon or even wilderness adventure. Players have a pretty implicit understanding of what a village or city should be, and any violations of it stick out pretty obviously.

I agree 100%. This is why I won't put a magic shop in any locale other than a city. Or six taverns in a village. I also wonder about the villages in so many modules that have 200 humans, two dwarves, three halflings, a gnome and an elf. I mean, wouldn't the various D&D races want to congregate with more of their own kind?

 

[jgbrowning]

Well to shill my upcoming product..

I have a city generation system... you guys will like it. Promise.

Hopefully i'll have a web site up in a week, so i can post a preview or two, and we hope to have the book out in a month.

it's called A Magical Medival Society: Western Europe. It's going to be all OGC, and we're toying with the option of putting it out as a PDF on RPGNow as well as the standard print copy at your FLGS.

So far i've gotten feed-back from one of my readers... He liked it so much he wanted to keep the loose-leaf, unbound bubble-jet printed copy so he could use it in his campaign right away!

that 'bout made me cry.. *sniff*


joe b. *who's pretty excited*
expeditious reatreat press

***ok sorry to highjack!***

 

[Storminator]

Any settlement forces you to ask "why are people here?" But, and SHARK hit on this with the silver mine, you also have to ask "why is everyone else here?" Most towns, and all cities, have more than one reason for being, and it's the DM's job to fit them all together.

I read a great book long ago, The Economy of Cities by Jane Jacobs

Amazon link(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...102-5649909-7271319?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)

that goes into great detail on how and why cities work. I strongly recommend the book to all DMs. The chapter on New Obsidian is absolutely mindblowing.

PS

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

My first question is generally Who lives here?

Establishing exactly what the dominant culture(s) is in the community slants the answers to all other questions.

My second question is generally, why would the PCs care about this place? I find that also slants. But if I'm just world creating this question may be answered very indirectly. Something along the lines of, my campaign needs a really chaotic empire of strife and that empire will need... ...a port through which the forces of concerned nations might send interventionary forces. That sort of thing.

These days I find myself playing in large urban campaigns exclusively. While this often makes the larger questions more or less irrelevant either through their being previously answered or too huge to have a single answer. But the challenge of creating interesting neighborhoods and complicated internal geography is often worse.

All those little communities have to react to each other and the PCs.

 

[mythusmage]

"1/5th+2/5th+3/5th" What happens to the surplus?

Getting serious here...

Consider the land. What is the land like? How has it shaped the people who lived there? How has it shaped their way of life, their beliefs? A mountainous land will produce a much different people and community than open woodland or a great swamp.

Consider the neighbors. What are they like? How has their land shaped them?

A river valley running east/west. To the north is wooded hill, to the south veldt (a mix of grass and brush with some trees) giving out to steppe a few miles further on. The village sits by a river ford, with the crops grown to the east. To the west is pasture, the soil being too chalky for vegetables and grain.

The woodland people are nomads hunting deer, small mammals, birds, and lizards. On occasion they come down to the village, sometimes to raid, other times to trade. The veldt is home to more nomads, with pastoralists living in the steppe beyond. The veldt people stay out of everybody's way. The steppe people think they own everything, and that other people are merely caretakers for their stuff.

So, what sort of people would the villagers be? What would their village be like? What sort of trade do they engage in with their neighbors? How do they view their neighbors? Answer these questions and you'll go a long way to determining the sort of adventures possible in this location. Dealing with a raid from the hills. Or a visit from those snooty pastoralists. Perhaps rescuing a veldtman's child from some misguided do-gooder (it's a hardscrabble life on the veldt).

Keep the land in mind when designing your village, town, and city, it will have an impact.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Post it in one of your other threads but I look at the city/town by resources, being either food, textiles, natural (minerals, furs, wood), or man-made goods. I then assign a rank from -5 to +5 to each of those. From that I build that I see the town to look like. Buildings trend to support the higher ranks, so if a town has a high food number, you would find grainaries, mills, and it would be exported, most of the people would be farmers or fishermen and those that support them, sail makers, boat builders, blacksmith, doctor, temple, taverns and more than likely have a lawful feel to it, due to cycle of harvest.

I seem to have lost my copy of Raymond Fiest's city book that had everything to build a city or town in it but I would use it to come up with numbers.