Question: How to make a Fantasy City feel BIG

[HurinSmite]

How do I make a city of 25.000+ people seem big?
Magical items such as +1 weapons are obviously available in such a weapon so they don't get weird looks if they ask for magic weapons, compared to a hamlet where they would.

But I don't really feel I'm getting across that this place is where people come and can live out their whole lives without ever leaving the city.

What are some ways other GMs/players here have used to make a city feel bigger?

Is there some size to get from developing districts?
Do you name your districts and mention the names when the party moves from one to the other?

Make note of how long it takes to go from one side of the town to another?
Disallow "teleporting players" as they can't just FIND each other when they forget to say something?

That is just me spitballing ideas how I could possibly get across that this isn't just a 25k population city with only the points you've visited personally.
I'd like to hear your tricks and ideas :)

[kyoryu]

I've generally noticed that things "feel" big based on how many obvious separations/boundaries there are. Making interesting, distinct, districts is a good way to do this. Just saying "oh, you crossed three districts" won't do anything. Making a city where they can go to ten or more areas, all of which have a unique feel, will do a lot more.

[Tiadoppler]

How do I make a city of 25.000+ people seem big?

My campaign is heading for a big city, so I've been thinking a lot about this.


Districts are a great idea, so are organizations with multiple buildings spread out over the city. Have a map of the city, with major streets labelled. Track where each PC is and enforce time to travel across the city. If the city's fairly lawless/chaotic/in the midst of a crisis, a random Bandit/Gang/Mob encounter might occur as the PCs are going from one safe spot to another.

Have place names for major building complexes, parks, companies, neighborhoods.

Have different NPCs responsible for different areas. The captain of the guard of The Morning District will be a very different character than the captain of the guard of The Rose District or The Dockyards.

Make it clear that the primary way to find a place is having a map and knowing the address. Wandering the streets or asking directions to Mr Borque's House is not going to get results.

Have a list of taverns, a list of restaurants with different cuisine, a bunch of different stores.

If players split up, they have to agree when and where to meet up unless they have magical communication.

Have adventures within the city. A little church wants their basement cleared of ghouls quietly and quickly, without anyone alerting the guard.

Limit information flow. Someone in The Rose District might not find out about a riot in Industry Square for hours. An assassination attempt at the Palace might not be generally known until the next day's Town Criers shout it out a breakfast time.

[jayem]

I've generally noticed that things "feel" big based on how many obvious separations/boundaries there are. Making interesting, distinct, districts is a good way to do this. Just saying "oh, you crossed three districts" won't do anything. Making a city where they can go to ten or more areas, all of which have a unique feel, will do a lot more.

Make people who've clearly not let the area. Campdon Market is where you go if Borough Market isn't exotic enough and a DAY OUT.
So as well as making each district 'different' also make each district similar

That said in modern terms 25,000 isn't that massive.
You are probably talking about an hour to walk from edge to edge. (And for that matter the Circle Line is walk roundable in a Afternoon). But things change quickly as well. A modern town that size perhaps contains 2 core 'sub-towns' and 5 connected original villages and infill? So I'd imagine it would be similar then (except as the villages would then have been towns etc) give the 'villages' some town features and each 'town' some city features.

[FreddyNoNose]

How do I make a city of 25.000+ people seem big?
Magical items such as +1 weapons are obviously available in such a weapon so they don't get weird looks if they ask for magic weapons, compared to a hamlet where they would.

But I don't really feel I'm getting across that this place is where people come and can live out their whole lives without ever leaving the city.

What are some ways other GMs/players here have used to make a city feel bigger?

Is there some size to get from developing districts?
Do you name your districts and mention the names when the party moves from one to the other?

Make note of how long it takes to go from one side of the town to another?
Disallow "teleporting players" as they can't just FIND each other when they forget to say something?

That is just me spitballing ideas how I could possibly get across that this isn't just a 25k population city with only the points you've visited personally.
I'd like to hear your tricks and ideas :)
when I read the thread title about how to make a fantasy city feel big, +1 magic items didn't hit the list.

You need to decompose the situation. Break it down into smaller parts. Then solve each part and if you can't solve a part, break it up into smaller parts and repeat.

first, is this a real problem or are you just unhappy that the players don't want to feel the way you want to feel. Suppose you are excited about this "feeling" but they really could care less. Does this feeling, if they had it, satisfy a game play need of theirs or advance their game experience/character progression? You wanting them to feel a specific way might be unreasonable or unrealistic.

Do you have a detailed map of the city? Instead of them saying we leave the Inn district for the market and poof they are there, run it as if it were a dungeon. I don't mean fight and kill everything on the way, but the entire walk and various things they might see, hear, experience and such that might make it seem more real. Time and exposure to the things that make it interesting.

So, ask yourself how the city is organized if any. If they walk around the various locations, what might they see, hear, experience. What will they learn as they go about exploring this place? IF they ask about a +1 sword, will the guy on the street say go to seven blocks down and enter the building on the NW corner. If they go, will they find Crazy Steve's Sword Shop where he won't be undersold or a bar called The Plus One Sword?

[Cespenar]

My campaign is heading for a big city, so I've been thinking a lot about this.


Districts are a great idea, so are organizations with multiple buildings spread out over the city. Have a map of the city, with major streets labelled. Track where each PC is and enforce time to travel across the city. If the city's fairly lawless/chaotic/in the midst of a crisis, a random Bandit/Gang/Mob encounter might occur as the PCs are going from one safe spot to another.

Have place names for major building complexes, parks, companies, neighborhoods.

Have different NPCs responsible for different areas. The captain of the guard of The Morning District will be a very different character than the captain of the guard of The Rose District or The Dockyards.

Make it clear that the primary way to find a place is having a map and knowing the address. Wandering the streets or asking directions to Mr Borque's House is not going to get results.

Have a list of taverns, a list of restaurants with different cuisine, a bunch of different stores.

If players split up, they have to agree when and where to meet up unless they have magical communication.

Have adventures within the city. A little church wants their basement cleared of ghouls quietly and quickly, without anyone alerting the guard.

Limit information flow. Someone in The Rose District might not find out about a riot in Industry Square for hours. An assassination attempt at the Palace might not be generally known until the next day's Town Criers shout it out a breakfast time.

Go with these. I'd tried the module Murder in Baldur's Gate (a city adventure) and the setting had very similar points to this list, which worked pretty well at the end.

[Beneath]

Make it possible to get lost in the crowd. In a village, every time you come by, you'll find the same people. In a city, unless you're looking for someone specific, or they're looking for you, or you build up a routine, or you're talking to the upper crust, best of the best, or experts in a narrow field, you might see a completely new set of faces on each visit. Maintaining relationships with specific people is an active choice.

Unfortunately, DM-side this is extra work if you want to keep track of all these NPCs. Fortunately most of them will probably end up forgotten, but still.

[Martin Greywolf]

When it comes to medieval cities, there's a lot of tthings you can describe that get the scale across that are also pretty obscure. I'd recommend finding books of the Time traveller's guide to medieval England type, they help a lot. To offer some points of interest.

Building height

Unless you have some sort of magic materials, majority of houses will have 2 stories (ground floor, possibly for shop, and floor above that for sleeping) in the nice part of town, and poor areas will often be limited to ground floor only. Higher buildings will top of at 3-4 floors max, and probably only in areas where the expense of building up is smaller than land costs. The one exception are major centres of power, like cathedrals, palaces, castles, universities and so on. That means you'll not only be able to travel across the rooftops, but that those high buildings will be used to orient yourself - if the cathedral is that far to the left from the castle, it menas you are near the docks.

The smell, oh god, the smell

You don't have sanitation, not even cities with sewers have modern sanitation. Lots of... everything will end up dumped inot the local river or the back alleys. The odor in alrge cities can be very pungent, and that can lead to all sorts of things, like perfumes being very popular, or air magic being used to solve this.

Oh, and that river I mentioned? Go and look at Terry Pratchett and his description of Ank Morporkh's river - that's pretty close to reality, if you extract the hyperbole - well, okay, no the Disc, the hyperbole is reality, too, and it may very well be in your world as well, those wizards have to pour out their elixir experiments somewhere.

All this may be fought by the city rulers via laws prohibiting from all sorts of things, from littering to fines for pouring potions into rivers. That right there is an adventure hook for the characters that directly ties into the scale of the city, especially if they find out everyone is doing it and bribing the guards.

Markets

Cities universally had markets, most of them open every day, with some larger ones at specific points in time. Bakers and grocers sell their stuff every day, but every saturday, all the farmers from surropunding villages come in to sell the produce, and every fall, winemakers sell their stuff right after their harvest - this tradition is still alive in some places in Europe, where I'm from, it's called Winetaking.

These markets happen in city squares specifically designed for it, and boy can the disputes over place get heated.

What's important for you here is to - once per in game week or so - tell your players that today is market day and there's a lot of people out.

City laws

Only a knight can carry a sword and wear armor. Only a citizen can carry a weapon above a given length. Only abjuration spells are permitted within city limits. All sorts of laws like these are in place, and cities, unlike most of the countryside, have enough guardsmen per square kilometer to enforce them with some competence. And that leads to bribery.

Some of these laws can be pretty petty and grating, like unmarried women having to always be in a presence of their relative, certain professions wearing certain items of clothing to be identified (prostitutes and red clothes was popular) and so on. Making your players fall afoul of a few of these and paying a fine is in order - just don't go overboard.

[Nifft]

How do I make a city of 25.000+ people seem big? 25k people is not that big... so, maybe add more people?


But I don't really feel I'm getting across that this place is where people come and can live out their whole lives without ever leaving the city. Staying in one small area isn't an indicator of "bigness" nor "cityness" -- you could get the same experience from rural folks who "can live out their whole lives without ever leaving" some rural area. In my experience, that's more common of rural folks.


What are some ways other GMs/players here have used to make a city feel bigger? Treat each neighborhood as a different smaller city. If you're comfortable with hamlets, then perhaps each street block is a different hamlet. The different neighborhoods each have their own local unofficial government, their own social hierarchy, and relations with adjacent neighborhoods.

Unlike different hamlets, it should be easy to travel between neighborhoods, but most people tend to not do this. Why? Because when you visit a new area where you don't know people, you get treated like an outsider. That might mean nothing more than being slightly cheated on price (in a mercantile area), or it might mean you're a mugging target (in a poor area), or it might mean you need to bribe a guard to avoid harassment (in a rich area).

If you have a contact in an area, or you take the time to get to know the power-structure in that small area, then you're not treated as an outsider anymore.

In a city, you're still in a dangerous environment. The difference is that the danger is made of people.

[Martin Greywolf]

25k people is not that big... so, maybe add more people?

No, that's the size of a major city. To cut a very long story short, before about 1500 you have about 3 cities in the world with populations just short of a milion (Constantinople, Hangzhou and Baghdad) as a very rare exception. Most major cities, like capitals or internationally important trade hubs have about 60 000 - 100 000 people in them (Venice, Genoa, Paris), most "largest in kingdom" cities top off at about 40 000 (London, Budapest).

The average city had about 4 000 to 8 000 people in it.

25 000 people is actually the lower estimate of late medieval population of London.

Even in fantasy, you can't bypass this easily, to have larger cities you need a way to store and transport food quickly and efficiently, and unless you go Tippyverse, you don't really have that.

[Florian]

But I don't really feel I'm getting across that this place is where people come and can live out their whole lives without ever leaving the city.

That is your problem put to the point: People, more often than not, didn't.

Medieval cities had a highly complex relationship with the local lords, surrounding peasants and serfs.
They were more often than not both trade hubs, centers of industry as well as centers of learning, especially the one that managed to host an University.

Do yourself a favor and grab a copy of Machiavellis account on how Florence was run and managed at his time, it´s pretty inspiring.

Drop the notion of a central government and unified laws and authority, that's a pretty recent thing.
The Guild quarter might be entirely different than the Church quarter and the Market might be run entirely different than the Night Market or the Bridge Market.

[Blondie Jo]

I find myself in the same situation as well and being a 1st time DM i was scared i was duing all wrong, I was in fact working on districts and bunderies and thank to you now i know that was not wrong.

Make it possible to get lost in the crowd I wasn't though about that! Also maybe telling the player the have to wait in line at the counter of a market (like an old lady that doesn't shut up about her cat).

Make it clear that the primary way to find a place is having a map and knowing the address. Wandering the streets or asking directions to Mr Borque's House is not going to get results. How detail should be the map? Like a drawing or a note-list of the district and market can be enough

[jayem]

I find myself in the same situation as well and being a 1st time DM i was scared i was duing all wrong, I was in fact working on districts and bunderies and thank to you now i know that was not wrong.
I wasn't though about that! Also maybe telling the player the have to wait in line at the counter of a market (like an old lady that doesn't shut up about her cat).
How detail should be the map? Like a drawing or a note-list of the district and market can be enough

I think you want the main roads marked out, with enough detail to see where things could be confusing.
(e.g. with two roads in a Y shap, the net effect is what's straight on coming down, requires a decision coming back. Is X a road or not). A crescent means you get to see things twice but from a different perspective. While conversely, other buildings could be false friends. Or broken crescents, that then diverge.
For some districts the main road will be the boundary, for others it will be the heart. Perhaps two inked in roads per district? With a generic scribble as to what the 'offmain' road bits are like.

[Beleriphon]

No, that's the size of a major city. To cut a very long story short, before about 1500 you have about 3 cities in the world with populations just short of a milion (Constantinople, Hangzhou and Baghdad) as a very rare exception. Most major cities, like capitals or internationally important trade hubs have about 60 000 - 100 000 people in them (Venice, Genoa, Paris), most "largest in kingdom" cities top off at about 40 000 (London, Budapest).

As point of comparison to today, London was the first modern city to reach 1 million residents. That was in the early 19th century. So for the roughly 2000 year of its history London was a smallish city.

The biggest ancient city in the world was probably Rome, at its height it reached easily 1 million residents. But it was also the biggest city on the continent and the capital of a massive empire. It was absolutely and abnormality, and as noted other huge cities afterwards very rarely reached 100000 residents. York in the 1500 had a population around 15000 and it was considered a big city.

[jayem]

What I'm not sure about is how much of the population growth is via absorbing other places.
Even today the 'City' of London only has a population of 10,000, 1/4 of the size of other districts*. So it's not a trivial answer.
(I guess you also have to decide how to categorize the growth of say Fulham)

Another point that came up was (despite the young population) how low the birthrate was (and high the deathrate) so the cities depended on Richard (D*) Wittingtons to sustain themselves (hence the young population).

*It's also 1% of the size.

[HurinSmite]

So many great ideas to pick and choose from! The population number was merely picked in the pathfinder settlement rules as the top of the category: 10,001–25,000 Large City.

Any book suggestions are great and very welcome ofcourse! When I find the time I read in a cityplanning book. Some interesting notes from it:

The Muslim cityplanner would (among other things) put dead ends into the city to fight the "Evil Eye"- curse
Greeks and math. Have your city consist of three district. They should represent Pythagoras' Theorem.
South american indians (can't remember which) built their city in the shape of a panther.
Old Chinese cityplanners put city gates in each compass direction.
A general consensus that early cities should have winding roads to make attacks harder for enemies to attack.

All very interesting points. But as I've read somewhere else and something the book doesn't bring up is that old cities, european cities for example, tend to have a more organic developement. Where people walk, roads come. Not everything is designed by the city planner.

This might be diverging from the "how do I make the city experience feel big" and into "city worldbuilding", but have any of you thought how cities could develop as magic is used? As IRL cities couldn't rely on classic walls when gunpowder and canons came into the picture, they made ditches and angled walls to better fight this new threat.
Would fantasy cities (and their defenses) develop differently when singular beasts and men could wield as much destructive power?



How detail should be the map? Like a drawing or a note-list of the district and market can be enough

I've made some small sketches of how I imagine the city in general developed according to how this youtuber proposes: How to Draw Medieval Cities: Fantasy Mapmaking Tutorial for DnD (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQgRU2Kq_zc)
Emphasis on general. I wouldn't draw the city in its entirety. That'd be too much work and the more important part:
Don't quote me on this but I've heard/read that cities back then didn't like accurate maps being available to just anyone. They saw it as a tactical weakness to have the city laid out for possible attackers.

Definetly using the Districts ideas. Also strongly considering coming up with a law system of some sort.

Please keep bringing great ideas and thoughts. i'm sure others will enjoy reading them too!

PS. Oh yeah. Florian. This Machiavelli book. Does it have a name? Is it "The Prince" ?

[VoxRationis]

Provide hints of the primordial history of the city. Have particular neighborhoods named for streams have have been paved over or industries that are no longer practiced there, recalling times when they were independent communities. Having demographic distinctions among the citizens (like the tribes of Rome) will help achieve a similar purpose.

Note that while many cities might have lower buildings, higher ones are more than possible. The insulae of Rome are the most famous example, and those could get to 7 stories, which is enough to provide a real canyon effect at ground level, depending on the width of the street. I can't remember if they used their famous concrete in such structures, but as many of them were cheap tenements, I somewhat doubt it. There's a city in Yemen almost wholly built from pre-industrial multi-story housing. The nobility of medieval and renaissance Italy built tower houses inside towns; Bologna still has some significant ones. The primary question is, with the architectural expertise and materials available to builders in this city, is it cheaper and more practical to add another floor to a building, or buy a larger lot? Remember that concepts like "people don't like climbing 10 flights of stairs" apply as much as concerns of structural integrity. Of course, since it's your own fantasy setting, you can play around with the economy to get the answer you want. (I myself love tall buildings and would be strongly inclined to state conditions that favor them.)

[Florian]

@HurinSmite:

The english title should be "History of Florence and the affairs of Italy".

Most german cities had a mix of organic growth, followed by a spurt of planned growth. While most had city walls as a defensive feature, they were not build to withstand sieges and nearly none ever included some kind of castle. Practically every city was build around one or more market places, always on a major trade route and around features like ferries, bridges or in narrow mountain valleys, to collect tolls and taxes.

Some interesting cities to google map/street view:

Erfurt: Look at the central marketplace and the cathedral. The cathedral sits on an artificial cliff and was a deliberate "tourist attraction" for pilgrims. Also look at the Händlerbrücke (merchant bridge). Merchants trying to evade taxes build their shops/homes on the toll bridge itself. As pedestrian, you don't even notice that you're crossing a bridge.

Potsdam: Look up the Holländerviertel (dutchmen quarter) as a template for any kind of "guild quarter" in a fantasy city. The whole four city blocks were build by and for dutch craftsman and their families, with 4 houses being connected, storefronts on the street side, owners home above that, manufactory in the yard and employees flats above that.

St. Martin and Roth: Too small to have markets on their own, they're right in the middle of a massive wine region and the vintners there developed a style of "micro manufactory", similar to the dutch in Potsdam, so some streets looking pretty uniform, with 3 story L-shaped houses that sport high walls and very large wooden gates around a rather big yard. Note the "flowers" tradition that's still ongoing: Vintners may only serve food and wine a certain limited number of days a year, they announce those by hanging a bunch of flowers at their gate the day before, then convert their yard to an outdoor eatery.

Munich: An example for different marketplaces and how those shaped the rest. The Viktualienmarkt (Vegetables market) is smack in the center, the Rindermarkt (cow market) is right next to the Slaughterhouse Quarter and so on (there used to be wood, chicken and pig markets, but they've been lost in time). Also look at the Odeonsplatz and Königplatz for something interesting: replicas of ancient greek temples - because that was a fad for a while.

Berlin: Example of a "forced" city. Historically, Potsdam was the main city of that region, a king got into an argument with them and decided to just outdo them in a game of one-upmanship. Berlin was actually just a bunch of villages in a swampy area. Dorf means village in german, so you'll see a lot of city quarters with the ending of -dorf, like Wilmersdorf. A Damm doubles as an earthen wall to block floods, but also as a elevated road system. Looking at the map, you'll find a lot major street names similar to "Wilmersdorfer Damm". This is how the villages got connected and what was used to drain the swamp area, alongside building a canal network.

So, I think there's a vast difference to the "fantasy towns" we often tend to see, that are based on the earlier roman frontier model, quite common on Tuscany, looking at things like Massa Maritima, versus most of the rest of what actually existed and how it developed.

That will also cover the topic of monsters and magic, I think.

[Blondie Jo]

First my idea: having two or more shops selling similar but differt stuff, like : "Oh, i'm sorry we don't have that item you are looking for. You can try to the other magic shop, is at the TOTAL OPPOSITE PART OF THE CITY! have a nice walk :smallbiggrin:"


I think you want the main roads marked out, with enough detail to see where things could be confusing.
(e.g. with two roads in a Y shap, the net effect is what's straight on coming down, requires a decision coming back. Is X a road or not). A crescent means you get to see things twice but from a different perspective. While conversely, other buildings could be false friends. Or broken crescents, that then diverge.
For some districts the main road will be the boundary, for others it will be the heart. Perhaps two inked in roads per district? With a generic scribble as to what the 'offmain' road bits are like. Ok for Y and X roads (definitly going to use this!), and ok for streets as boundaries or the core of the district but i don't think i get what you mean by "crescent"...


The Muslim cityplanner would (among other things) put dead ends into the city to fight the "Evil Eye"- curse
Greeks and math. Have your city consist of three district. They should represent Pythagoras' Theorem.
South american indians (can't remember which) built their city in the shape of a panther.
Old Chinese cityplanners put city gates in each compass direction.
A general consensus that early cities should have winding roads to make attacks harder for enemies to attack.All of this sound great! Thanks!


I've made some small sketches of how I imagine the city in general developed according to how this youtuber proposes: How to Draw Medieval Cities: Fantasy Mapmaking Tutorial for DnDAgain thanks!


Having demographic distinctions among the citizens (like the tribes of Rome) will help achieve a similar purpose i was thinking that more to enstablish differents beetween kingdoms/country rather than cities.

[ross]

I just look at real cities in the same population ballpark (when we're not using the fullsim and I actually have to do the work, obv)

[jayem]

Ok for Y and X roads (definitly going to use this!), and ok for streets as boundaries or the core of the district but i don't think i get what you mean by "crescent"...

I'm thinking of a particular local town where the way the road bends makes it look a lot bigger than it is.
In it you have a triangle formed by the main road and two side roads (with the main road carrying on along the same line of each of the side roads.).
The net effect as you go along the main road, you look slightly to the left (after making the turn onto the diagonal) and see a line of shops with (in this case a middle sized tesco) at the end. You look continue past some more stuff on the main road. A bit later you look rather heavily to the left (before finishing the second turn). You see a line of shops with something at the end.

But trying to describe it is a bit pointless. I'm sure there's some road illusions that you know from your area.

You possibly get the same effect in Rouen to the East of the Abbey. Where you might see Rue St Hillare twice, once down R St Vivian and once down R Orbe