Where are the cities?

[Jürgen Hubert]

You know, I've had a certain fondness for large, fantastic metropolises ever since I have stumbled across a guide to the Obscure Cities. Somehow, giant cities with architecture that looks like it was planned by a megalomaniac are just plain cool. And the genre of "urban fantasy" shows that some powerful stories can be told in cities

Yet vast cities seem to be rare in RPGs outside of the confines of contemporary and SF settings. In the various D&D worlds, the largest cities rarely have more than one or two hundred thousand inhabitants (with the obvious exception of Planescape's Sigil with its three million souls - yet another reason why I like the setting so much...). This is usually explained with a medieval technology base that won't support much more people.

Yet this is fantasy we are talking about! We can have spellcasters supplementing and improving harvests, or creating buildings larger than any seen in the real world - we don't need to restrain our imaginations here!

One of the reasons for creating my setting proposal was that I wanted to explore all these themes and issues surrounding cities. But I was wondering: What other settings have large, or in any other way remarkable cities? In which settings do city planners dare to create a fantasy equivalent of New York, or build a new Tower of Babel?

Any suggestions?

 

[Drawmack]

My dwarves usually live in a New York Esque metropolis. Instead of having an individual hollowed out mountain the dwarves will have five or six cities close to one another, usually in adjoining mountains, that all fall under the same government. It just makes sence to me as a race that does not often venture out of it's hill side hovels is not going to move far when it is time to expand, they'll just go to the mountain next door.

For my current campaign (world undefined working from city books Freeport and Bluffside and filling in the gaps) I am working on an elvin empire. The capital of the elvin empire is a huge city built into a shear cliff face in the middle of a jungle.

I generally keep the human cities small because I portray the humans as being more short sighted, displaying a greater urgency in their behaviour then the other races because of their lifespan. Therefore rather then attempting to expand the borders of an over populated city a colony of them will strike out to start their own city.

 

[Sulimo]

This is usually explained with a medieval technology base that won't support much more people.

Yet this is fantasy we are talking about! We can have spellcasters supplementing and improving harvests, or creating buildings larger than any seen in the real world - we don't need to restrain our imaginations here!

Well, with alot of settings magic use doesn't flow through the whole societies in ways which this would make sense. Magic is mainly only available to the more wealthy citizens.

One of the reasons for creating my setting proposal was that I wanted to explore all these themes and issues surrounding cities. But I was wondering: What other settings have large, or in any other way remarkable cities? In which settings do city planners dare to create a fantasy equivalent of New York, or build a new Tower of Babel?

Any suggestions?

Well, the city of Eidolon in Shadow World , is an interesting one imo having part of the city that is built on a artificial construct (a magical metal) which floats half a mile above the rest of the city. This floating section contains all the rich parts you'd normally expect of a city (government, palaces, rich merchants, nobles, etc) as well as docks for floating ships etc.

Rather interesting city I must say, although I havent used it much.

Yeah, I know its not a 3e/d20 world but thought I'd mention it anyway.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Re: Re: Where are the cities?

Well, with alot of settings magic use doesn't flow through the whole societies in ways which this would make sense. Magic is mainly only available to the more wealthy citizens.

Which is why I introduced a rationale in my setting why the rich and powerful would want to use magic to support large populations in the cities...

Rather interesting city I must say, although I havent used it much.

Yeah, I know its not a 3e/d20 world but thought I'd mention it anyway.

Eh, who cares? It's still fantasy...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I generally keep the human cities small because I portray the humans as being more short sighted, displaying a greater urgency in their behaviour then the other races because of their lifespan. Therefore rather then attempting to expand the borders of an over populated city a colony of them will strike out to start their own city.

Hmmm... When I take a look at American urban planning, I get the impression that "short-sightedness" and "sprawling cities" fit quite well together, actually...

 

[Shadowdancer]

The Forgotten Realms have at least two cities with more than 1 million inhabitans: Waterdeep and Calimport. There are probably others in the oriental area.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

The Forgotten Realms have at least two cities with more than 1 million inhabitans: Waterdeep and Calimport. There are probably others in the oriental area.

(Checks FRCS)

Nope on both counts. The population of Waterdeep is listed as 132,661, and the population of Calimport is 192,795.

Sure, both cities probably control regions with more than one million inhabitants (and it says so outright in the case of Waterdeep), but the cities themselves are much smaller.

 

[Chrisling]

I love big cities for RPGs. I'm currently running a Planescape game, so of course I have Sigil, but I'm thinking of the possibility for planar metropoli, not to mention since I'm running a Dungeons and Cthulhus game I have such cities as R'lyeh and Carcosa to consider the alternate possibilities.

In the game I ran before this one, it had a South Asian and Chinese feel to it and the whole continent had just come off of being run by, well, an incredibly powerful wizard who ruled for 4,000 years who was, in fact, a power-hungry SOB. So there were fantasy cities with multi-million person populations on land in otherwise improbable locations, underwater and underground (half of the Undying Emperor's subjects were non-humans).

But I'm fully in favor of big cities playing a part in games. I think my favorite aspect is the role-playing -- as a GM, I find it easier to have character interaction. In ruins, dungeons and on wilderness quests, I find the PCs don't stop to get to know anyone. ;p

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I love big cities for RPGs. I'm currently running a Planescape game, so of course I have Sigil, but I'm thinking of the possibility for planar metropoli, not to mention since I'm running a Dungeons and Cthulhus game I have such cities as R'lyeh and Carcosa to consider the alternate possibilities.

Well, in that case, you might like the following excerpt from my setting. It details a very strange deity, and the people who worship it...

"Shaprat

Unknown
The Last City, the End of All Things, the Lost
Symbol: varies
Alignment: NE (?)
Portfolio: Unknown, possibly including entropy
Domains: Destruction, Evil, Travel, Trickery
Favored Weapon: Net

Little is known about this strange entity. It lives on the demiplane of the same name, a realm full of slowly decaying buildings and mostly devoid of people. Or possibly it is the demiplane as a whole. What is known is that Shaprat seems to feed on cities existing in the real world. Its worshippers hold strange rituals and ceremonies in various locales of a city, and their purpose seems to be to allow Shaprat access to this world. It then draws material - people, buildings, entire city blocks - into itself, making the demiplane of Shaprat ever larger. Few people who visit Shaprat ever return, and the adults simply seem to vanish into its urban wastes after a time. Those who don't vanish invariably become insane and begin to utter strange words with a prophetic quality to them. Children seem to be able to resist this, and even survive for many years there, but once they are turning into adults, they too seem to slowly fade away...
So far, all the recorded appearances of Shaprat on the Material Plane have been in cities with nexus towers, leading some to speculate that the rituals of its worshippers are designed to draw power from them (thereallyparanoid wonder just where the Atalan mages got the idea for the nexus towers from...). Yet some of those who have visited Shaprat and come back report buildings built in styles that predate the Atalan Empire...
Its cults scuttle in the corners of the city. Few of Shaprat's clerics seem to be fully aware of they are doing - there are even good-aligned clerics of Shaprat who believe that the rituals are some kind of blessing. Many clerics are completely insane, and delight in sowing chaos and confusion."

And yes, Carcosa is an inspiration for this...

In the game I ran before this one, it had a South Asian and Chinese feel to it and the whole continent had just come off of being run by, well, an incredibly powerful wizard who ruled for 4,000 years who was, in fact, a power-hungry SOB. So there were fantasy cities with multi-million person populations on land in otherwise improbable locations, underwater and underground (half of the Undying Emperor's subjects were non-humans).

Well, the largest city detailed in my setting has 5,643,730 inhabitants...

But I'm fully in favor of big cities playing a part in games. I think my favorite aspect is the role-playing -- as a GM, I find it easier to have character interaction. In ruins, dungeons and on wilderness quests, I find the PCs don't stop to get to know anyone. ;p

Though it could be argued that some areas of cities could qualify as "wilderness areas"...

 

[mythusmage]

Great Cities

To borrow a term from the late Isaac Asimov. To him a great city was any metropolis with a population of 1 million plus.

Now where would a great city be located?

Where are the resources? Where is a good place for people to come together in great numbers. What sort of location would have that sort of draw?

No one resource can do it. Gold and silver mines in the American West gave rise to small towns, but nothing larger. When a city resulted (Carson City in Nevada for example), it was usually because the location was where a number of routes came together.

In other words, larger settlements typically arise at focal points. Places where trade routes come together. New York, New York is a prime example of this. Originally it was the place where farm goods from Dutch colonies along the Hudson River came for shipment to English and Swedish colonies up and down the Atlantic Coast, and transhipment overseas to Europe. As time went by, and the English came to control the Atlantic Coast, New York City's trade expanded to include much of the goods shipping across the Atlantic and along the coast.

The services a city can provide are another resource. Again, NYC serves as an example. Lots of business was being done back in the 17th and 18th centuries, so businessmen came to do business. They attracted food and clothing establishments to set up shop. For much the same reason financial services came to attend to the needs of the business community. Less reputable endeavours were attracted as well, Bawdy houses, taverns, and theaters.

Success breeds success. A city that does well, and has the resources necessary to draw people, will draw more. By the time of the American Revolution New York, New York was the place to go to conduct trade, do business, live, work, dine at fine establishments, and be entertained. A condition that holds to this day.

So where do you put your great city?

Where are the resources?

Where is the transportation good? At the meeting of two major rivers is a good place (St. Louis, Missour). Major roads are almost as good, but in a medieval technology rivers are better. The mouth of a river is another good place.

Where is the farmland good? Where can food be produced in great quantity? A great city requires a lot of food. Even with magic to produce comestibles, farmland, grazing, and fishing is needed to satisdy the hunger. You need good farmland at the very least to supplement what the clerics can produce, and to keep the priests from starting to think they're indispensable, and so get ideas about their position and power.

What other resources are there? Lumber, mineral (stone and metal). Are there magical resources? Substances that can be endweomered more easily than others. Is it a place where magical energy is more abundant/available. Does magic tend to "pool" there or do magical lines of energy converge on the spot?

When you have primary resources coming together you'll get secondary resources. Tradesmen, merchants, craftsmen. Government is often attracted to great cities. Rulers choosing the spot as the location of their court. Bureaucracies setting up shop to regulate affairs. London, England and Paris, France are good examples of this. In turn, the presence of government can, and often will, draw even more people. Folks who see a need to be where the government is, the better to do with business with the government.

So there you have an incomplete look at where great cities arise, and why. There is more that could be said on the subject, but I've run out of material. Hope this helps