I'm thinking for the Dungeons and Cthulhu's game I'm gonna run that I'll have big metropoli of importance in each of "corner" of the Great Wheel: Mt. Celestia, Baator, Ysgard and the Abyss. This will give me lots of reason to think about how different alignments might approach the building of cities and their reasons for doing so -- and definitely on a high fantasy sort of setting where the reason for the city being there, and how the city is sustained, is something I can play around with.
Where are the cities?
- Thread starter Jürgen Hubert
- Start date
Re: Great Cities
Very much so. Road transport is hundreds or thousands of times more expensive than water transport, and until modern times it was not faster. In practice pre-modern cities could not draw high-bulk low-value resources such as food and building materials from further than about half a day's travel away except by water. All large cities before 1900 were built near seaports or on navigable rivers.
Regards,
Agback
mythusmage said:
Very much so. Road transport is hundreds or thousands of times more expensive than water transport, and until modern times it was not faster. In practice pre-modern cities could not draw high-bulk low-value resources such as food and building materials from further than about half a day's travel away except by water. All large cities before 1900 were built near seaports or on navigable rivers.
Regards,
Agback
Dr. Strangemonkey
First Post
Metropoli
I don't know about demi-humans, but as far as I know you only get cities with a million or more inhabitants if are:
a.) industrialized or developing towards same with a pretty well established class of capitalists: London of the 18th century
b.) a city with a really complicated and affluent political system in a huge nation with a large and fairly mobile population: Rome and Tenochtitlan
c.) as above but with a really complicated situation which creates a wealthy and large class of merchants and artisans who either do not want large estates or cannot own them: most of the largest pre-modern Chinese and Japanese cities.
Large rivers and intersections of trade routes help but very few of the above examples are on the world's greatest trade routes, and of those most of them are the reasons for the trade route.
Now demi-humans I can see creating large cities simply because they tend to have many more generations living at the same time than humans do. This would mimic, albeit slowly, the industrial effect of people dying at a much slower rate than they are replaced. Plus good cavern complexes are hard to build. You'd expect crowding to save on expense and improve defense.
I don't know about demi-humans, but as far as I know you only get cities with a million or more inhabitants if are:
a.) industrialized or developing towards same with a pretty well established class of capitalists: London of the 18th century
b.) a city with a really complicated and affluent political system in a huge nation with a large and fairly mobile population: Rome and Tenochtitlan
c.) as above but with a really complicated situation which creates a wealthy and large class of merchants and artisans who either do not want large estates or cannot own them: most of the largest pre-modern Chinese and Japanese cities.
Large rivers and intersections of trade routes help but very few of the above examples are on the world's greatest trade routes, and of those most of them are the reasons for the trade route.
Now demi-humans I can see creating large cities simply because they tend to have many more generations living at the same time than humans do. This would mimic, albeit slowly, the industrial effect of people dying at a much slower rate than they are replaced. Plus good cavern complexes are hard to build. You'd expect crowding to save on expense and improve defense.
Jürgen Hubert
First Post
Re: Great Cities
Well, in my setting, the resources of a city are, in a very literal sense, its people. You see, one day certain wizards discovered how to build so-called "Nexus Towers", enchanted buildings that could draw life force from everyone around them and convert it to magical energies (how much energy depends on how greedy you are, and how well you plan the rest of the city - straight avenues will channel the streams of magical energies, while crooked alleys will impede it).
This caused most rulers to create cities with Nexus Towers, because if you don't have one, you will be gobbled up by a neighbor who has one and consequently has more magical resources. And when both of you have cities with Nexus Towers, the one with better city planning and more people in his city wins this magical arms race.
As a result, most rulers spend a lot of effort in making their cities bigger - finding ways how to increase crop yield (all that magical energy comes in handy here...), improving transportation networks, and so on... Whole realms have been restructured in ways that require most people to live in the cities.
Naturally, the people in my world look for large rivers to build their cities as well. Failing that, there's still primitive railways where the trains are pulled by stone golems (these can pull lots, especially if they are quadrupedal) or artificial channels (hey, there are tens of thousands of people in the cities whose sole purpose is to give their life energy. Better give them something to do to keep them busy... and unskilled labour is cheap.)
Oh, the clerics in my world know full well that they are indispensible for the functioning of the cities - but then again, so do others. And it's not like the clerics of all deities will form an union together... Still expect a few clerics to be a part of the local power structure, though not neccessarily on top...
Well, that's where those Nexus Towers come in handy...
In general, each city in my setting tends to have some kind of speciality. This isn't just done for realism, but so that each city is unique and interesting for adventurers.
Sure, thanks!
mythusmage said:
Well, in my setting, the resources of a city are, in a very literal sense, its people. You see, one day certain wizards discovered how to build so-called "Nexus Towers", enchanted buildings that could draw life force from everyone around them and convert it to magical energies (how much energy depends on how greedy you are, and how well you plan the rest of the city - straight avenues will channel the streams of magical energies, while crooked alleys will impede it).
This caused most rulers to create cities with Nexus Towers, because if you don't have one, you will be gobbled up by a neighbor who has one and consequently has more magical resources. And when both of you have cities with Nexus Towers, the one with better city planning and more people in his city wins this magical arms race.
As a result, most rulers spend a lot of effort in making their cities bigger - finding ways how to increase crop yield (all that magical energy comes in handy here...), improving transportation networks, and so on... Whole realms have been restructured in ways that require most people to live in the cities.
Naturally, the people in my world look for large rivers to build their cities as well. Failing that, there's still primitive railways where the trains are pulled by stone golems (these can pull lots, especially if they are quadrupedal) or artificial channels (hey, there are tens of thousands of people in the cities whose sole purpose is to give their life energy. Better give them something to do to keep them busy... and unskilled labour is cheap.)
Oh, the clerics in my world know full well that they are indispensible for the functioning of the cities - but then again, so do others. And it's not like the clerics of all deities will form an union together... Still expect a few clerics to be a part of the local power structure, though not neccessarily on top...
Well, that's where those Nexus Towers come in handy...
In general, each city in my setting tends to have some kind of speciality. This isn't just done for realism, but so that each city is unique and interesting for adventurers.
Sure, thanks!
Jürgen Hubert
First Post
Re: Re: Re: Great Cities
Cool idea, though I'm admittedly busy with creating a Neverwinter Nights module for it at the moment...
But perhaps a member of Electronic Arts is lurking somewhere on this board.
Destil said:Someone needs to make a 'sim' style game for this world
Cool idea, though I'm admittedly busy with creating a Neverwinter Nights module for it at the moment...
But perhaps a member of Electronic Arts is lurking somewhere on this board.
I am not a "big fantasy city" guy I am afraid. Most of the really big cities IMC are no more than 2-300,000 or so and there are about five of these
The only really large ones are in my Romanesque area and are 1,000,000 (Imcal) and 500,000 (Calrin) respectably. I have been over the years very tempted to down size them. I mean 1 Mega-person is big even by 21st century standards. Its unimaginably huge when all you have is feet or horses.
BTW JUrgen I wish you would write up this setting for GURPS. You and KD Ladage have been taunting me with the thoughts of GURPS compatible versions of your game worlds or at least the notes you originally had.
The only really large ones are in my Romanesque area and are 1,000,000 (Imcal) and 500,000 (Calrin) respectably. I have been over the years very tempted to down size them. I mean 1 Mega-person is big even by 21st century standards. Its unimaginably huge when all you have is feet or horses.
BTW JUrgen I wish you would write up this setting for GURPS. You and KD Ladage have been taunting me with the thoughts of GURPS compatible versions of your game worlds or at least the notes you originally had.
Jürgen Hubert
First Post
Ace said:
Writing up a GURPS conversion isn't a high priority at the moment. While I like GURPS as much as the next guy - hell, I'm even GMing a GURPS campaign right now - I intended Urbis to be for D&D from the start. In fact, the socio-economic results of common D&D magic was one of things I wanted to explore in this setting. And thinking about any conversions to other systems when I haven't even "completed" the setting for D&D would be premature. But if the interest is big enough, sure, maybe I'll write up a conversion someday...
Come to think of it, maybe I will write up a more generic variant of Nexus Towers for GURPS as a Pyramid magazine article. After all, the "Sacred Architecture" Ken Hite is always talking about in his Suppressed Transmission column was a big inspiration for them. Plus, I really want some more SJG vouchers...
SHARK
First Post
Greetings!
In my campaign world of Thandor, I have always had huge cities, many of which have populations in the millions. I have fully integrated magic into the campaign world, extrapolating the magical assumptions and presuppositions of the D&D magic system throughout.
I don't really see how if the magic of D&D exists in a campaign, one would still have an impoverished world that resembles 12th century Medieval Europe. Much of my world has more in common with the Ancient World, and with the civilizations of the Roman Empire, the Babylonian Empire, and the Chi'in Empire of China. Many cities are built on the sites of magical Nexus points, where magic energy is harnessed and used to augment the power of spell-casters in general, and magical energy is used throughout the city.
In my view, larger cities offer more scope for a dynamic, fantastic campaign, and also have the added benefit of supporting huge armies and epic wars of unimaginable ferocity and scope!
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
In my campaign world of Thandor, I have always had huge cities, many of which have populations in the millions. I have fully integrated magic into the campaign world, extrapolating the magical assumptions and presuppositions of the D&D magic system throughout.
I don't really see how if the magic of D&D exists in a campaign, one would still have an impoverished world that resembles 12th century Medieval Europe. Much of my world has more in common with the Ancient World, and with the civilizations of the Roman Empire, the Babylonian Empire, and the Chi'in Empire of China. Many cities are built on the sites of magical Nexus points, where magic energy is harnessed and used to augment the power of spell-casters in general, and magical energy is used throughout the city.
In my view, larger cities offer more scope for a dynamic, fantastic campaign, and also have the added benefit of supporting huge armies and epic wars of unimaginable ferocity and scope!
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Hey have you looked at Planescape they already have this idea. They are called gate towns. Each plane has a gate from the outlands to it. These gates have a town built around it on both sides of the gate. These towns are very influenced by the alignments of the planes they are hooked to. I don't believe any of them are metropolis sized, but that doesn't mean you couldn't make them that way.
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