Best ways to make a city come to life?

[JusticeZero]

I'm feeling like my cities are, in play, not feeling so much like a city as a room with services. Does anyone have any advice on how to describe and make a city feel more real and interesting?

[JustSomeGuy]

Don't just have it exist to service the PC's needs (that reads dirty; i mean buy/sell stuff, cure etc)

Have random arguments break out in the street as a family feud comes to a head, have them witness pickpockets and drunken brawls, holy men preaching to crowds of peasants about unjust wealth until jackbooted thugs break up the gathering, merchants overseeing the transportation of fine art pieces and a family being evicted and other stuff that goes on in the daily life of the populace but isn't much of a plot hook as a flavour description to set the tone of whatever burg/ward they enter.


Otherwise, animate object ;)

[BWR]

Details details details..
Point out architectural styles, layout, smell, sounds, sights, weather, if constabulary is in sight, how many, how well-armed, how people react to them, the general welfare of the inhabitants, ethnicity, clothing styles, fashions, races, number and types of beasts of burden, amount of visible magic, technology level, temperature, prominent public punishment or not, the squelch of sewage under your boots or the pristine streets with hordes of cleaners keeping it that way, crowded streets that are a pick-pockets paradise or quiet people keeping a respectful distance from eachother. The towering figure of Fort Doom dominating the downtrodden masses or the glorious temple to Hieronyous whose influence keeps the town a paragon of law and order and goodness. the heavily armed thugs of the local mob who run extortion rackets on struggling merchants or the single whistling bobby whose greatest fear is not managing to catch a lowly purse-snatcher. The smell of the harbor and sound of waves or the constant breeze from the mountains, the wild wind on the plains or the humid, motionless air in the narrow and deep valley.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Build the city first, then decide where PCs' resources come from.

One good way might be to steal from the Dresden Files RPG. Their City Creation rules focus around creating major themes and issues of a City (important, since the city will be the focal point of the game, just as Chicago is the focal point of the book series) and then populating it with Faces--major NPCs who represent those themes and issues.

Know who a city is: you can give a city traits and attributes, like you would a character. Maybe it's Cramped, maybe it's Esoteric, maybe it's a Paranoid city. I'm sure you can see how those traits would manifest. Maybe it has High Population, or Special Resources, or Massive Industry or Poor Military; you can even translate the attributes into numbers, if you'd like.

Work from that end, and suddenly--the city becomes its own character.

[MtlGuy]

I'm feeling like my cities are, in play, not feeling so much like a city as a room with services. Does anyone have any advice on how to describe and make a city feel more real and interesting?

Think of some cities you may have travelled to, what are the first things that you notice? A little research and preparation goes a long way. Make a calendar, what day is it? A weekday/workday, a holiday? a festival day? Can PCs participate in games, are 'barkers' trying to usher them towards said games? What season? Is the city an idealized community like Mayberry or a cesspool of corruption like Montreal? Do they have local delicacies that you can smell coming off of food stalls and tavern kitchens? What do the people wear? What colour is it? Do they have banners? Sigils? Are the streets new and well kept or cracked and decaying. What are the buildings made out of? How tall are they? Do the inns have chairs so comfortable that you have to make a will save to get up? Is there a fountain in the town square, how about some statues or monuments? Do kids freely run around? Do women feel safe to venture out by themselves? After dark?

Some towns (hamlets) are basically a room with services, most of the activity is farming or fishing or some other resource extraction/cultivation and takes place away from the actual 'town'. Most days its' just a bunch of empty houses, then there's 'market day'. People come in for supplies, business, news and a drink. These a re just PC gas stations if you will. That's fine too if that's its purpose and PCs are just passing through, you can offer a few details to distinguish this rest stop from others they may encounter.

[valadil]

Make the city do things even when the players aren't looking.

This usually just means figuring out what the NPCs did when the PCs weren't in the session. If a quest giver can't find the PCs, he'll give his quests to an NPC. NPCs will talk to each other. Stuff will change between sessions when the players aren't in the city.

[Cheiromancer]

Keep track of a couple of NPC's, and have them interact with the PC's regularly. Nothing big; a fruit seller who wishes them a good day - conversation might reveal that the fruit seller suffers from arthritis and is worried about the suitability of the young man his daughter is seeing.

Or at least have recurring details; if there is a fountain nearby with kids playing around it, this should be mentioned occasionally. Likewise a street preacher. Or patrolling guards. Or whatever.

In addition to regular characters/scenes, there are occasional happenings of note.
Festivals - people talking about an upcoming festival, putting up decorations for the festival, having the festival, cleaning up after the festival, talking about the festival.
A funeral of somebody important. Like a festival, only people might be talking about the person's illness beforehand.
A wedding of someone important. (Like a festival)
Disease - a quarantined house, perhaps, or only an unusual number of people coughing and sneezing. People swap remedies and speculate on what is bringing it on.
A mugging/burglary/assault that people talk about.


Agricultural communities would talk about the weather and how the crops are doing. Trading cities would talk about bandits/pirates, tariffs, and weather. Heck, everyone would talk about the weather.

[jedipotter]

I'm feeling like my cities are, in play, not feeling so much like a city as a room with services. Does anyone have any advice on how to describe and make a city feel more real and interesting?

Design a city more like a character. Give it a history and personality and such.

I find it best to 'go to extremes' and not have cities be ''just like Earth''.

[Scow2]

Design a city more like a character. Give it a history and personality and such.

I find it best to 'go to extremes' and not have cities be ''just like Earth''.

But even "Just like Earth" cities have personalities, if you've ever been in one!

[Sith_Happens]

Darn, I thought this thread was going to be about Animate Objects.

[Iron Penguin]

If a city's going to play a major role in a campaign, I generally sketch out a map with several different districts, and note a few major landmarks in each. No city is one big homogeneous lump - for example, I might have an upper-class district where the houses are big and marble-fronted, and there are carriages in the streets and a big square with marble statues depicting conquering heroes. There might be a more lively market district where there are stalls in the streets and people selling hot snacks (extra points if these snacks are something unusual like grilled scorpion or spicy BBQ rust monster). If the city is on the sea, there might be a harbour district with wharfs and warehouses and seedy back-alleys where gangs beat up local merchants and sailors and menace them for protection money.

Or the districts can be racial - there might be a dwarf district with low-built houses and lots of cellars, or with houses carved out of cliff-faces, or an elf district with lots of parks and open spaces.

A few landmarks can also define a city's character. Maybe all the temples are in one long street (called something original like Temple Street); maybe there's a hilly district with a Street of a Thousand Steps; maybe there's a square where the petrified remains of criminals or the city's enemies are displayed like statues as a warning to others; maybe a wizard's tower looms over the city, or a forbidding fortress stands on an outscropping of black rock, or the Emperor's pleasure gardens fill the air near the river with the scent of exotic blossoms. Just a few landmarks that exist for themselves, not to meet the needs of the PCs, can make a city stand out.

[elliott20]

Build the city first, then decide where PCs' resources come from.

One good way might be to steal from the Dresden Files RPG. Their City Creation rules focus around creating major themes and issues of a City (important, since the city will be the focal point of the game, just as Chicago is the focal point of the book series) and then populating it with Faces--major NPCs who represent those themes and issues.

Know who a city is: you can give a city traits and attributes, like you would a character. Maybe it's Cramped, maybe it's Esoteric, maybe it's a Paranoid city. I'm sure you can see how those traits would manifest. Maybe it has High Population, or Special Resources, or Massive Industry or Poor Military; you can even translate the attributes into numbers, if you'd like.

Work from that end, and suddenly--the city becomes its own character.
This, I think, is definitely how I would go with it.

Use a city builder rule set to give you a rough idea on what the city looks/feels/smells like. Then, scatter a bunch of random events that are happening in the area like the other poster's have said.

If you need to, use a random event generator for seed ideas.

Heck, I just pulled up this one (http://www.trollmystic.com/pub/2012/03/03/event-generator/) from a google search and I just figured out like 10 things I can use for my next game.

[pteromath]

My advice comes from the same place much of my advice comes from, Firefly. When making Firefly, Joss and the crew perceived Serenity as the 10th member of the cast. The ship had its own personality, which was influenced by the characters living in it, and making it their home.

For example, the little flowers painted around the kitchen/dining area. It's easy to imagine Kaylee painting these flowers as they travel from one job to the next.

So my advice is to give your cities a personality, and then allow the PCs (or important NPCs) to color it accordingly.

One thing that helps with this is to give your city a nickname, or a title. My hometown, Portland, Oregon, has a few: The Rose City, Bridgetown, Beervana. Right away you get three pictures of Portland, which you can contrast with another city. Chicago, for example, The Windy City, the Second City. These words give you a totally different idea of the city. Sharn, the City of Towers, is an example of this that worked pretty well in D&D.

Just think about what feeling you want your city to exude... is it a scary place? The City of Ghosts, the Dread City? Is it very Lawful Neutral? The City of Granite. Stonetown. Is it a city of mages? The City of Wonder!

Then create your city accordingly.

[DigoDragon]

Keep track of a couple of NPC's, and have them interact with the PC's regularly. Nothing big; a fruit seller who wishes them a good day - conversation might reveal that the fruit seller suffers from arthritis and is worried about the suitability of the young man his daughter is seeing.

I find that having a few named NPCs that reoccur in the town does make the place seem more alive. One of the more fond cities my players liked to stop in was Tesla City. They went there often enough that many of the shops were fleshed out with named NPCs who worked there.
The PCs knew two barkeeps where they could get rumors of new work to be had (a perfect springboard for starting up the next adventure).

One of the more heartwarming moments was the half-dragon fighter playing tag with the kids in the city park.