New homebrew help needed.

[OzDragon]

Hello there I have an idea for my next campaign but need some assistance. Mostly in the world/city map, area/design.

The world has just been through the Upheaval. This is an enormous war between the giants and dragons that raged for a century. In the end the humanoid races joined together and defeated both factions. During this war of course most cities and towns have been damaged or destroyed completely.

The campaign will start roughly 5 years after the Upheaval. New alliances are made while others are vying for leadership and or domination. I have what I want the world to be but am at a loss as to what it will look like. I don't know how to design towns under major reconstruction map wise. The world itself will be very different from the starting one.

Any Ideas and help is appreciated.

If you want more info I am happy to provide it.

[Spectrulus]

You haven't really provided anything gig what you're looking for, else I'd help more.

Do you need a map editor? Inspiration on how to describe terrain? What are you looking for?

[ImproperJustice]

A few thoughts:

Start small, pick a small region and put in a body of water or two and a few towns surrounding.

One of the resources I love is the Tag system promoted by Kevin Crawford in his Stars without number and Other Dust (PA setting) games.
SWN is available for free so you try it out.
A lot of the tags are sci fi oriented but with a little imagination those themes can be easily converted with magic origins.

The idea is for worlds (planets) but you could use them for cities.

You roll for two tags, put them together and let your imagination fill in the details. Each tag comes with NPCs, plot hooks, and locations for adventure.

One example could be the tags of:
Zombies and Religious Schism

So applying a little imagination, maybe this city rose from the ashes by using Zombies as a labor force. However, there is a growing sense of unease from the populace about whether thai right or just in the eyes of the Gods, and some may care less as they felt abandoned.....

Locations of interest include: the place they are created, an abandoned site infested with Rogue Undead, a hidden library with knowledge tgat could sway the masses, a headquarters for militant zealots in the coming debate.

Friendly NPCs: A kindly priest, a Necromancer dedicated to science and in need of help, a family that recently lost loved ones and don’t want them entering the labor pool.

Adversaries: A Necromancer needing to meet labor quotas. A young demagogue looking to start a violent movement for selfish ends, etc....

Complications: the process requires a rare resource, the process isn’t perfect and there have been accidents, a third party wants a civil war to break out.



So yeah. I highly recommend a download of the SWN rules and give tge GM toolkit in the back a look. Everything above was generated with two dice rolls.

[Tiadoppler]

I don't know how to design towns under major reconstruction map wise. The world itself will be very different from the starting one.

I'd suggest you start with a rough map of an undamaged town, and scribble all over the bits that got destroyed or damaged. Was there a big explosion in the center of town? A fire that started in a poor district? An invading army that smashed neighborhoods all along the East side?

Then erase the whole damaged section and fill in the blanks with a new district that isn't designed the same way as the old one.

Maybe the old city has expensive stone buildings and tiny meandering streets, but the new section is built on a grid of wide avenues, using big, cheap, wooden structures. There's a defined border between "old town" and "new town". Is the new area prosperous (large homes, businesses, people looking for opportunities) or is the new area a tangle of tenements, set up as cheaply as possible, and already beginning to decay from use.

Is the reconstruction already complete, or is it in progress? If there's massive construction under way, the city will be shipping in huge loads of lumber and stone from far away to keep up with the demand.

[OzDragon]

First of all thank you for the replies. What I am looking for is basically a map of Faerun after an apocalyptic type of clash. Major cities ruined, terrain destroyed and such.

My idea is to have the PCs be family members of refugees that traveled across the sea to Ancorome. They are traveling back after the world seems to have settled to assess and report back on what happened to the world.

[Tolkin]

First of all thank you for the replies. What I am looking for is basically a map of Faerun after an apocalyptic type of clash. Major cities ruined, terrain destroyed and such.

My idea is to have the PCs be family members of refugees that traveled across the sea to Ancorome. They are traveling back after the world seems to have settled to assess and report back on what happened to the world.

]

I would probably start of by having some sort of direction of where my players are going, I would probably do this by pulling up the picture that is on the Storm Kings Thunder DM screen and using that to know what places my PC's pass on there adventure. O would then use smaller maps of the areas that they come across and modify them to fit the campaign by using some simple dnd map editor online. (Pyromancers Dungeon Editor)