A D20 shaped city

[Macbubble]

After playing the latest beta of guild wars 2 as an Asura, I have finally found a solution to my previous problem, of how to design a swarm like city. The solution I found is a city shaped like a D20.

So what I'm looking for is a picture of a D20 shaped city, or the closest thing to it. I would also appreciate your ideas on the subject, of how to design a city inside of 1 big building.

Chesty La Rue

[Ravens_cry]

Well, a flat representation would be simple enough, a hexagon with some dividing walls breaking the city into ten triangular sections.
If you want it to be a 3d representation, your task is much trickier. Still, some of the early-mid twentieth century mega structure ideas might give some inspiration.

[EccentricCircle]

Get a High Resolution image of a D20 (Or any Icosahedron) and a High Resolution satelite image or aerial photograph of the right sort of city, then photoshop the city onto the faces of the Icosahedron I guess. it would be a bit complicated as you would need to stretch the city image to make it look as though its growing outwards from the face of the icosahedron. It can be done in photoshop or similar but would be very fiddly.

another way would be to build it in reality, by printing a city plan onto a flat surface divided into the Net of an Icosahedron. then assembling it from card and photographing that, then tidy it up on the computer, photoshop the back ground as space or something like that.

I did something similar to this for a spelljammer game when they went to a city built on a mobius strip. I printed off the map of the city on card and then assembled it into a small 3d model of the city for them to refer to during the game. It worked really well, and prevented the players getting confused by the structure of the city. i've often thought that an inside out map of Sigil would be a similarly useful tool for planescape games.

[The Dark Fiddler]

I think the problem with a city built inside of a Icosahedron is... well, there's a lot of them, but one of the large ones is that you're not going to be able to use all of the faces, at least not with today's technology level. If this is for a non-current day/real life setting, then I'd suggest making each face have gravity relative to the face as a surface. Otherwise, eyeballing it, the incline on even the faces surrounding the face that's flat on the ground would be too steep to build and live on. If you can only build on the face on the bottom, the one where gravity is actually perpendicular to the face, then you're only utilizing 1/20th of the surface area, which is horribly inefficient.

Of course, there's also the option of not building on the faces at all (though I'd ask why you were building inside of an icosahedron in the first place if you're not using the shape in some way). In this case, I'd suggest building layers inside of the thing, spanning across the interior, and building on those. Connect them with elevators and such and you have a pretty standard layered city... inside of an icosahedron.

The last option I can think of is having the icosahedron be half underground, so it's more like a domed city.

Do you want this city to be self-sufficient? Because that raises issues of how you're going to farm things, generate food, and other such things.

[Jay R]

The last option I can think of is having the icosahedron be half underground, so it's more like a domed city.

Or raise the whole thing in the air like the EPCOT Geosphere.

Do you want this city to be self-sufficient? Because that raises issues of how you're going to farm things, generate food, and other such things.

Farming and food production happens outside the city in virtually all cities in the world, for as long as there have been cities.

[Macbubble]

Thank you all for the help, but I was just looking for a picture to show the players. I don't think I will make it myself for a scale or something but thanks anyway.

On the matter of actually living inside of the city, I was thinking of living inside, and not on the sides so I don't think there wont be a problem of space although I could always make the city fly.

Chesty

[Jay R]

Thank you all for the help, but I was just looking for a picture to show the players.

It's not quite a d20, but you could just google "EPCOT Geosphere" (in images).

More generally, google "geodesic dome".

[mattsdelf]

I agree with Jay R, A geodesic dome is what you are looking for.

Spoiler

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That Epcot center is about the size of a shopping mall, but you could go bigger, especially if partly underground. One thing to think about is ventilation and sanitation in a city complex like that.

[Gavinfoxx]

Be sure to not describe is at a D20 shape; describe it as an Icosahedron, describing it as a polyhedron sided with equilateral triangles, an Icosahedron, with five triangular faces meeting at each vertex... in other words... talk around it, so that you don't actually tell them it is 'D20 shaped' until the last possible moment...