PDA

View Full Version : What does every major City State need.



Cerlis
2013-01-14, 08:56 AM
I making a detailed map of a major city state that is in the center of the continent in between the various realms. I'm using various Assassin's Creed maps and meshing them together to create one large city with districts separated by parks, canals and maybe a river.

Luckily the maps are full of numbers (suppose to be the locations of the various flags you get in the game) which i can use to signify what building is what.

I was wondering though what all a major city in a mid magic (Arcane and Divine casters are more uncommon than rare, but magic still takes up your life) would have.

I imagine that a majority of the buildings would be residences, followed by a smaller amount of shops, probably all clustered in groups.

My main concern is things i wouldn't think of and things like a reasonable amount of barracks and Warehouses in the city.

I could just imagine a scenario where we end up doing a siege and we decide we just need to hold em off for 2 weeks when one of the players asks where do they keep all the ration food stores and not having an answer...

hymer
2013-01-14, 09:03 AM
I'm not sure how helpful this is, but here it is: The obvious solution is not to make it very detailed. Put in the sites and buildings you know you'll need, and maybe make overall notes for what different districts are and what you can expect to find in them. Then you can add details as needed later. Saves a lot of headaches and redundant work.

ArcturusV
2013-01-14, 09:09 AM
Well, part of it depends on the culture and government of the city as well.

Since it's a central location it's likely to be a major trade hub. As such it should have certain things that some towns wouldn't normally have, a larger Inn/Temporary Lodging allotment, stables, warehouses, larger than average Bazaars, Auction Houses, and so forth. Don't forget the possibility of things fitting the "Convention Center" ideal. Centralized locations like that are great meeting places for large, expansive organizations and they need places where they can gather people and get stuff done, be it Trade Guilds to the annual Fighter-Con and what not.

Entertainment is one thing I often see people miss outside of "Place to get booze". It's such a basic human requirement but you often find there just isn't really a lot in the ways of recreation in most DnD cities. Again this also plays into culture, but even the most dour, oppressed culture will have things like vacant lots where kids play pick up games of Kick the Kobold or whatever.

Government Services are one thing I also usually see missing. Sure most people include barracks, jails, guard houses, etc. But forget about things maybe a Mail Service (Hey, trusted couriers backed by the government is usually just a good idea that should pop up more), the dreaded Tax Men and their vaults, assayers, etc.

Speaking of Barracks and such. Depending on how your local culture deals with Law and Order you might need things like blockhouses near various trouble spots. If your culture is one that is likely to do things like jail someone overnight if he's drunk and rowdy rather than just beat him over the head and leave him in the gutter.

But really so much is culturally dependent that it's hard to say with any certainty what you should try to hit for various numbers. And most things end up getting skipped in the nature of "No one will care" until suddenly one of your players asks something like "Hey, I have this ore sample I found in the goblin's cave, can I take it to someone to find out what it is and if it's worth anything?" and you realize you don't have a trusted Assayer or anything.

Alejandro
2013-01-14, 10:23 AM
I making a detailed map of a major city state that is in the center of the continent in between the various realms. I'm using various Assassin's Creed maps and meshing them together to create one large city with districts separated by parks, canals and maybe a river.

Luckily the maps are full of numbers (suppose to be the locations of the various flags you get in the game) which i can use to signify what building is what.

I was wondering though what all a major city in a mid magic (Arcane and Divine casters are more uncommon than rare, but magic still takes up your life) would have.

I imagine that a majority of the buildings would be residences, followed by a smaller amount of shops, probably all clustered in groups.

My main concern is things i wouldn't think of and things like a reasonable amount of barracks and Warehouses in the city.

I could just imagine a scenario where we end up doing a siege and we decide we just need to hold em off for 2 weeks when one of the players asks where do they keep all the ration food stores and not having an answer...

Much has already been answered, but one extra point: If they are land locked, they are entirely dependent on the surrounding countries for trade, and the use of their roads. This means they probably avoid antagonizing any of their neighbors, even if they want to.

Cerlis
2013-01-14, 10:25 AM
well I actually thing part of it was wanting to brainstorm to cause potential ideas. For instance though i've never DMed more than a few games I have brainstormed a lot. And it never occurred to me to have part of a quest or issue involve intercepting mail.

By simply recognizing what SHOULD be in a city (or what CAN be) leaves great potential for creating an environment that could seem more natural.

And yes creating to much detail will be to much and things like Residential areas and farmer's markets will pretty much just be a blob of certain buildings colored a certain color to indicate they are such.

But I think a lot of the focus is going to be here. From black markets, politics, hate crimes and a siege will likely all be involved here.

ArcturusV
2013-01-14, 10:47 AM
Well, as you said, you never think these things up... until something happens. And players are really good at making sure something happens.

One thing I try to avoid though (Mostly because it's massively overused), is a Sewer System. Players get a bit too attached to them, try to weasel their way to use them as basically free, unguarded entrances to any location in a city, etc. And it's just cliched enough that unless you really have a pressing need to incorporate sewers, I wouldn't do it. If you really need some underground city locations for evil creatures to be in, there's always Catacombs and Crypts (Also cliched a bit, but not abused).

Might want to consider Racial mixes and how welcome they are in your city. Such as a typically Elvish enclave in your city might have more public gardens, more of a winding, artistic layout to their section of the city (If they designed it), homes that are open and bright with lots of windows, a lack of industrial buildings nearby, etc. Where as the Dwarven Quarter might see no issue mixing Forges with Residential housing, have a very utilitarian look, etc.

It's not something you always have to do, particularly if races in your setting do not have any particularly strong standard cultures. But again, something to consider in design.

BlckDv
2013-01-14, 12:59 PM
Some thoughts for a major landlocked city in a magic world:

1) Towers. The city would need to have a commanding view in all directions to provide awareness of both merchant traffic and possible threats.

2) Warehousing, lots of it. In addition to stores of food, building materials, and other sundries like twine wax, etc. A major land city is almost by definition a trade hub, existing in a location where merchants would want to offload commodities from home and buy commodities from afar. In a magical world, some of these should surely be enchanted to provide cold storage, hot storage, wet storage. etc.

3. Relating to the merchant item above, a large bazaar or other market that allows for merchants who will be here today gone tomorrow to do business.

4. Services for travelers. Lots of taverns and inns, shops that provide services of need to caravans such as guard rental, wheel repair, barrel making, horse/camel draft animal sales, farriers, blacksmiths, etc. Many of these will likely live above their shops. Also the supplies the people/animals will need while they travel will need, bulk grain sales, dried meats, fruits, etc.

5. Basic city needs. It is still a city, so you will have tutors, city guard, jail, moneylenders/changers, government officials, craftsmen for daily needs, etc. You also need to answer where they get food... do farmers dwell at the edges of the city and farm fields all around the city walls? Do farmers live in home scattered outside the city and bring food to town to sell? etc.

6. Fantasy elements. Perhaps a magical academy with a reputation for travel magics or weather magics that have demand among the merchants. Temples to Gods, likely with major ones for Commerce/Civilization gods, possibly War as well if the city is subject to frequent siege or raids. A Thieves' Guild or similar organized crime HQ popular in fantasy tropes, etc. Racial enclaves for species that would pass through the area in sizable enough numbers to have settled in, in classic D&D some examples would be: Halflings running a number of taverns/inns would seem an obvious fit, perhaps a Dwarven smiths district, to go more exotic maybe a ghetto of half-orcs that work as day labour and guards for hire, etc.

Not a comprehensive list, but maybe it will give you ideas to work from.

Slipperychicken
2013-01-14, 01:05 PM
Hired transportation, which includes everything from rickshaws to horse-drawn carriages to hedge-wizards ready to cast flight spells on people. They tend to wait on the streets in busy areas, where they can be bought for a slightly-faster and more comfortable means to get around.

In a world with Flight, large buildings (or ones which house powerful magicians) will want some way to accommodate fliers. Some kind of "landing balconies" seems reasonable to allow these high officials to reach their offices without trouble. They may have doormen, or even be guarded if the building is somehow important or wealthy enough.

Entertainment: you could definitely have formal sports stadiums, racetracks, muddy fields where the town's men play soccer and rugby-equivalents, coliseums if the city-state is into that, and the underground. Somewhere in the slums or industrial district, you can wander down a staircase and find rooms crowded with bodies, and tiny circles for both man and beast (usually chickens, dogs, and other common fauna) to pommel each other while shouting hands pass money around them. Don't forget crack-houses and other dens of illicit vice and criminal scum.

Government Services: Regulatory agencies for everything under the sun. Food, transport, agriculture, culture and music, religion, morality, immigration, health (they needn't provide healthcare, just monitor it and advise the government on matters concerning public health), espionage, urban development/planning, firemen, police, and so on. Of course, the central administrative building which holds bustling offices for the city's leadership.

Construction companies will need somewhere to house their tools. Across the city, there will also be buildings under construction, or undergoing renovations, building improvements, demolishing old structures, and so on.

You could designate "shopping districts", which contain all the weird specialty stores the PCs can ask for. Things like arts shops, musical instrument makers and sellers, clothes-makers, shoe-shops, hat-sellers, carpenters, and so on.

People need places to eat, too. Coffee shops, restaurants, bars, cheap food-vendors, and so on. There are upper-class, middle-class, and lower-class, of course. Elven vegetarian places, and cannibal restaurants might illicit a chuckle. This will also wind up including weird things like Dwarven and Kobold cuisines, where they probably do interesting things with mushroom, cave-fungus, insects, and horseflesh. There will probably be at least two or three restaurants for even the smallest cultures in the setting.

You also can want somewhere for the rich to live, where they can be relatively unmolested by the common rabble. This can help them become decadent and snobbish, ignorant of the common man's plight. Or, much more likely, they can go through the same streets, see the commoners, and just sort of laugh at them.

Nobody's mentioned hospitals yet, so I'll throw that out there. There's got to be some designated place for people to go when they get sick, even if it's poorly-equipped and going there doesn't help much. Considering the nature of healing magic in D&D, it will definitely be strongly affiliated with the church, even if it's not directly controlled by religious authority. Who knows, maybe the government even funds such facilities.

Gavinfoxx
2013-01-14, 04:40 PM
Farms. Lots and lots and lots of farms!

Hopeless
2013-01-14, 05:04 PM
Actually a sewer system would be necessary if this is going to be a city, the point thats been ignored is that its not just the PCs who can use them to get around the city and then there's the fact you can have hidden crypts and dungeons down there to draw the unwary.

After all someone's going to have to patrol down there if they want to avoid people getting into places they'd rather be kept sealed, private or just plain too dangerous to leave alone!:smallbiggrin:

Its just as easy to use a newly discovered catacomb to get rid of those pesky interlopers you don't want messing around your city and if they survive well at least they've proven themselves useful... and there's always the next time they need a group of volunteers right?:smallwink:

Thats one way to get adventuring immediately!

Dr.Epic
2013-01-14, 05:14 PM
A water source: stream, river, lake, etc.

You don't have a body of water to drink from, your population isn't going to last 48 hours.

Bacon Elemental
2013-01-14, 05:38 PM
Brothels.
Brothels and Magic Item shops.



Otherwise all the wandering murder hobos bold adventurers have to do is discover The Joye of Arson.

ngilop
2013-01-14, 05:48 PM
Look for a map or plan of anceint Athens or Thebes or Knossos

that will give you a pretty good idea I would think

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-01-14, 05:50 PM
A lot of it can be deduced from the basic needs of humans.

Food: there has to be a way for people to get a reliable source of sustenance (and hydration)

Protection: there has to be a system to keep bad stuff from getting in

Diversion: there have to be entertainments

Edification: there ought to be ways to enlighten the mind and soul

Then you just start asking yourself what solutions the culture gives for those things.

Gavinfoxx
2013-01-14, 05:50 PM
Yea, all pre-industrial cities are built near or on freshwater, and have lots of farms near them, generally. Remember they are all basically self sufficient, with very rare exceptions!

ArcturusV
2013-01-14, 07:09 PM
Well, if you're going with the pseudo medieval world sewers are more of a modern invention to shoehorn in anyway. So it doesn't really "fit". I find most sewers are used less for what their intended purpose might have been, but instead for just Easy Access Shortcuts anyway. So barring a reason to actually have them I tend to ignore them. Such as one of my settings had the Capital of the now defunct empire having an extensive underground. Originally created as basically a citywide "Fallout Shelter" for plot reasons, it existed there due to a need for Lore and fodder for preplanned adventuring, not just because every city needs a tunnel system under it in the modern way of thinking.


One thing I kinda remembered while sleeping and forgot to mention: When looking at City-State design and what you need to put into it, try to take stock of how said City naturally evolved.

To take a real world example: Mercer Island in Washington State, USA. In the turn of the 20th Century Mercer Island was all farmland. Slowly developed into a small suburban community, eventually evolving into a high class neighborhood where the well to do lived.

Except it still had signs of being farmland at one point, including having a working family owned farm smack dab in the middle of a well to do neighborhood.

Probably one of the faults in most Fantasy Cities I see is they are crafted too logically. Most of them are built up as if they were new construction (Even if the city is ancient), meaning it is built into a logical split of districts, with modern ideals in it, very few signs of the "Old City" except for flavoring like buildings described as ancient (But functionally built/laid out like any modern city in the setting would be).

So you might want to consider including throwbacks inside the city. Things that, if the city is aged but didn't just spring up overnight in it's finished form might exist (Despite having no real reason to exist), like Farms inside city walls, protected wild shrines where more opulent temples might otherwise exist, old and outdated defensive fortifications that have been rendered meaningless necessarily, and other throwbacks.

If your city was recently built, this isn't something you should do. It also includes rebuilding in the wake of devastation as such an event is usually used as a free excuse to modernize and remove those archaic ideas, etc. That and rebuilding a city on it's ruins gives you a perfectly logical and good reason to have an "under city" like a sewer system effect which smacks true to life and is more interesting.

raspberrybadger
2013-01-14, 07:10 PM
Apologies if someone mentioned these and I missed it.

Temples.

Statues or other ways of commemorating things and using architecture as semi-permanent propaganda.

Slums.

Places to keep livestock, fantastical and otherwise. There's animals for slaughterhouses, for transportation, for power, for magic related stuff, for religion related stuff.

Places to bury people, though that might be done outside the city.

TheThan
2013-01-14, 07:18 PM
On sewers.

Sewers by definition are pretty disgusting places. If the PCs try to use them as their own personal highway, that’s fine just make them reap the consequences.

They’re not going to smell or look too great (their clothing/armor is going to be pretty much ruined) after they wade through a river of diarrhea. This isn’t even getting into the variety of diseases that can be picked up down there.
Now they won’t want to take the sewers unless they really have to.

Another idea is to make them labyrinthine in design so they can get lost and/or take longer to get to their destination. And who said the sewers reach all portions of the city, and open up right where the PCs need to go?

Cerlis
2013-01-15, 02:26 AM
On sewers.

Sewers by definition are pretty disgusting places. If the PCs try to use them as their own personal highway, that’s fine just make them reap the consequences.

They’re not going to smell or look too great (their clothing/armor is going to be pretty much ruined) after they wade through a river of diarrhea. This isn’t even getting into the variety of diseases that can be picked up down there.
Now they won’t want to take the sewers unless they really have to.



That is precisly what i was thinking when i recently watched an episode of X-men in which wolverine, storm and Beast where wadding waist deep in ....crap (it was green :X), espessially since beast pretty much only wears just underwear.


Lots of great ideas. I was going to quote and bold the ones i was definately going to use but there are too many. Now I am worried I might not have enough space. lol

Since the different pictuers of the cities i put together didn't fit like a puzzle there are indeed many large gaps in there. But looks like i can fill em with parks, slums, and i think off hand one might be big enough for a small arena haha.
-------

In this world the Dwarves are actually a pretty noble (read: Victorian with stuck up nobility) race with an empire that spans almost across all the other countries although underground. I'm still working on it but I'm thinking they finally worked their way up to the surface a few hundred years ago. By this time the great trade city had reached its full potential (indeed essentially several nearby towns that turned into a large city) and in the various peace trades between the two powers one of the things the dwarves granted was to use their master of making completely stable tunnels to build a post defacto sewer system for the city. I dont intend for this to be a sewer labrynth. After all such a long standing Empire would have artisans that would go to great strides to prevent any unfinished tunnels and accidents (which is what i usually hear is the cause for labrynth sewers).

However, this will have made the city THAT much cleaner, as now the gutters and such are for rain water, not piss and filth. Which increased trade and travel within the city immensly.

Incorrect
2013-01-15, 06:25 AM
Some cinematic locations could include:

Foundry
Large scale distillery
Landfill
Colosseum
Museum of natural history (necromancers dream)
Basket Weavers Guild


When I made my city map, I only outlined Quarters ( Wealthy merchants quarters, Halfling quarters and so on). Inside these boxes I then placed specific buildings if I needed to. It makes a fine looking map without being too detailed, and leaves you the opportunity to change it later.


EDIT:
Districts with warehouses are great for "what-ever-you-need".
Everything can be hidden in a warehouse. You can even store stuff in them!

Kelb_Panthera
2013-01-15, 06:52 AM
You've almost certainly thought of this but for completeness' sake; if trade is a major thing in your city (and it almost always is if we're talking independent city state) then where commerce and government meat you get guilds. Large guilds need a place to meet and thus we have guild halls as a common fixture.

One guild hall of special note, because it's got the potential to be the ground-zero site for some impressive disasters, is the mage's guild. It may or may not be appropriate for one to even exist in any given city, government and public opinion of the arcane being major factors, but it might be worth considering how mundane or magical the building itself is, if the city has one.

Ashtagon
2013-01-15, 06:57 AM
People have weird ideas about sewers.

Medieval cities typically did not have sewers (Paris being a notable exception). London didn't get a proper sewer until the mid-19th century. Prior to that, there were a vast array (reportedly 200,000 in active use) cesspits scattered throughout the city. Richer people might have sewerage carried off by servants to be disposed of in a river. Poorer areas might throw it out of an upstairs window (one reason why older style architecture had upper floors overhanging lower ones).

Modern sewers separate storm drains from body waste ("sanitary") sewers. Sanitary sewers are generally too small to allow human entry, but are housed in larger corridors for maintenance access. Larger storm drains may be accessible. Traditional sewers (such as the old Paris sewer) were combined use, and could be entered.

http://www.sewerhistory.org/chronos/middle_ages.htm

Not surprisingly, the life expectancy of city inhabitants was notably lower than that of their rural cousins. It is no coincidence that the rapid growth of European urbanisation was simultaneous with effective sewer systems.

Andreaz
2013-01-15, 07:08 AM
Actually a sewer system would be necessary if this is going to be a citySewers as we know them, mostly where it relates to plumbing, are one of the greatest inventions of the 19th or 20th century.

nedz
2013-01-15, 07:52 AM
Well the Romans built sewers. York still has a Roman sewer which is in use, as does Rome itself for that matter.

You also need waste disposal. Garbage and night-soil wagons. Horses produce quite a lot of the latter.

You also need stables, large municipal stables, probably near each of the gates.

You need wells or cisterns, possible aqueducts too.

You could also have lost structures, depending upon the age of the city. Istanbul has a huge underground cistern, built in the Roman period, but then lost until the 19th century. It was officially rediscovered because locals had wells in their basements, some of them were even catching fish in their basements.

Ashtagon
2013-01-15, 10:23 AM
Well the Romans built sewers. York still has a Roman sewer which is in use, as does Rome itself for that matter.

www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=1137

Not quite true. Roman York certainly had a sewer, but the link suggests it fell into disuse, and was rediscovered in the 1970s. If it has any use at all today, it is as an archaeological site and museum, not a working sewer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_in_ancient_Rome#Sewer_system

Ancient Rome had aqueducts to bring clean water in, but their systems for removing waste from the city varied from "decent plumbing" for the rich to "throw it out the window" for the poor.

The "Cloaca Maxima" of ancient Rome was originally a combined sewer, but today is used purely as a storm drain. There is some question as to how effective it was, according to wikipedia.

ArcturusV
2013-01-15, 10:43 AM
Then again, if you're talking about a DnD world, simple level zero/one spells like Magehand, Prestidigitation, Invisible Servant, etc, might also make sanitation duties a lot easier than it should be and running more efficiently without the need for sewers. I could see that as a government sponsored program, in a city of 100,000 or so just hiring a hundred hedge mages who can cast such simple spells to take care of things that honestly would be logistical nightmares without either more modern ideas or magic.

I don't usually favor the "magic as technology" thing but it's something any level 1 wizard could do, and frankly considering most European medieval type settings can't really be done effectively any other way.

Ashtagon
2013-01-15, 11:53 AM
I don't usually favor the "magic as technology" thing but it's something any level 1 wizard could do, and frankly considering most European medieval type settings can't really be done effectively any other way.

They can't? Maybe "sanitised European" settings can't, but I rather enjoy sending my PCs through the muck that is a medieval city. It's the one environment they hate more than the dungeons. Real medieval cities were quite "earthy".

ArcturusV
2013-01-15, 12:07 PM
It'd be more fun if my players had a bit more imagination more often. :smallbiggrin: Like the Swordmage (Who was kind of a goober anyway) in my 4th Edition Campaign who somehow though that after crawling around in the sewers all night he could just bluff his way past guards to get into the Noble Quarter of the city. Without taking a bath or anything, all he tried to do was "Air out my clothes for 5 minutes".

But I mean in that the typical european medieval setting doesn't really have any way to have effective sanitation and waste removal in a city setting. Rural areas are a bit different due to lots of open space and what not. But short of "A wizard did it" or making a technological breakthrough there's just not really a way you'll end up with even a halfway clean city.

Andreaz
2013-01-15, 12:16 PM
And that's why everyone gets a pet gelatinous cube in their homes! You just need to get your slice at the mayor house and burn off the excess weekly!

Gavinfoxx
2013-01-15, 04:40 PM
Make a sewer system...

but don't make it underground. Make it open to air. ;) ;)

Slipperychicken
2013-01-15, 07:18 PM
Make a sewer system...

but don't make it underground. Make it open to air. ;) ;)

You mean aqueducts?

Gavinfoxx
2013-01-15, 07:45 PM
You mean aqueducts?

Aqueducts + Open sewers going to the river, yea.

kitep
2013-01-15, 09:13 PM
Vomitoriums! What kind of major city doesn't have vomitoriums?

The people need water. There are several different ways you could do this.
- indoor plumbing. It doesn't take high tech to get water to flow downhill. Getting the water to the top of the hill/water tower is a little harder, but can be done thru magic, or a windmill/watermill that lifts the water, or by human/horse/animal muscle.
- wells. Have wells in each neighborhood and people can fetch it by the bucketful themselves
- water delivery system. Some guy comes up and down the streets each day with a horse drawn water tank, and the people buy it from him.
- cisterns/water collection. Everybody captures the water that falls on their houses.
- weather control magic. In a MAJOR city state with magic, there should be someone with a weather control spell. Probably under a government contract to make sure the farms are bountiful, but it could also produce regularily scheduled rain, and people put out their buckets at the right time.

The people need to get rid of waste. Let's start with bodily waste.
- sewers are one way.
- outhouses are another. But then you'll need a service to muck out the outhouse. And you'll have a smell.
- going in chamber pots is another. Have a daily/weekly service to empty them
- if the townies have horses, what about their droppings? You'll need street cleaners.
- where does the waste go? Dumped in the river? If so, do it downstream from town. Put in a dump? Put it downwind and that's where the slums will be. Most likely, it'll be sold to the farmers and used as fertilizer.
- in a D&D world, you could also have garbage eating monsters. Eg, otyughs.

Other waste, eg normal garbage
- you'll need some kind of garbage collection. Or make the people responsible for getting it to the dump themselves.

If my years of tv watching and comic book reading mean anything, you'll need warehouses. *Abandoned* warehouses. That's where the action is at. :)

kitep
2013-01-15, 09:24 PM
Most major cities are along some kind of water way to make for shipping by boat. Since you mentioned it's inland, that means the city is probably along a river. Maybe where two rivers meet to make a third. Perhaps a large lake.(not saying your city has to do this, but it's likely).

What this means of course, is that you'll need docks. Probably warehouses near the docks. And restuarants for the workers to eat at.

And since this is a city-state, probably customs. Someone to search incoming ships to make sure their not bringing in illegal contraband, but mostly to make sure they pay appropiate taxes.

And dock security. Where there's stuff, there's thieves. And you don't want a boatload of pirates coming into dock pretending to be merchants. I would suggest the docks be outside the city walls, but I could also see the city being on both sides of the river.

A way to cross the river. If there's a bridge, there needs to be a way for ships to get by, which either means a high bridge or a drawbridge (or magic). There could also simply be a ferry. Of course in a D&D world, there could also be flying across or tunnels going underneath.

kitep
2013-01-15, 09:31 PM
City defenses. Think about how you would attack the city. Then make defenses for it.

As someone said, you'll want towers to see a ways out. You could also put towers far outside the city that could signal if there's a problem approaching.

This being D&D, you'll need extra special defenses to fight against
- invisible intruders
- flying intruders
- burrowing intruders
- dragons
- teleport and kill tactics
- scrying
- mind control
- shapeshifting
- plane shifting intruders

Slipperychicken
2013-01-15, 10:12 PM
- in a D&D world, you could also have garbage eating monsters. Eg, otyughs.


I never understood this one. You're just replacing one problem (garbage) with an even bigger, more difficult one (CR 4 monsters).

Tvtyrant
2013-01-15, 10:16 PM
A couple of aqueducts. Some draining dirty water, some pumping in clean water.

Kelb_Panthera
2013-01-15, 11:30 PM
I never understood this one. You're just replacing one problem (garbage) with an even bigger, more difficult one (CR 4 monsters).

Otyughs aren't evil and they're both intelligent and even speak common.

To them the waste disposal site is just a really crappy neighborhood.


........ I'm so sorry for the pun.

Slipperychicken
2013-01-16, 12:58 AM
Otyughs aren't evil and they're both intelligent and even speak common.

To them the waste disposal site is just a really crappy neighborhood.


........ I'm so sorry for the pun.

I think the quoted text below might clarify things a little.


An otyugh attacks living creatures if it feels threatened or if it is hungry; otherwise it is content to remain hidden. Otyughs slash and squeeze opponents with their tentacles, which they also use to drag prey into their mouths.

They attack the living for food, no matter what. They do not negotiate, they do not have restraint. They are monsters, long-term peaceful coexistence with them is impossible.

Kelb_Panthera
2013-01-16, 01:55 AM
I think the quoted text below might clarify things a little.



They attack the living for food, no matter what. They do not negotiate, they do not have restraint. They are monsters, long-term peaceful coexistence with them is impossible.

I disagree. If you approach in a non-threatening manner when it's not hungry then there's no reason it shouldn't at least listen to a proposal that ends with it having a safe place to stay with all the food it could ever eat.

You'd definitely wanna keep people away from the dump, but I could easily see it working out amicably for both parties.

ArcturusV
2013-01-16, 02:51 AM
I'd see it as being no worse (To them) than say a stray dog population would be in most cities (Which they do have). Just because the typical junkyard dog can rip apart most men doesn't mean we say it's too dangerous to allow Dogs in cities after all. Particularly when they can serve a useful purpose.

Ashtagon
2013-01-16, 03:20 AM
Way back as far as the Basic Set from 1978, a monster known as a black pudding was proposed as the denizen of the town's garbage disposal system.