I Need My City To Do More Than Just "Be A City"

[DragonBaneDM]

Hey y'all.

So I'm working on a module, and writing the setting has proven fun, but challenging. I'm trying to capture a fun urban adventure by having a diverse plateau that features four distinct wards: a farmland in the footholds, a dwarven production and trading colony within the plateau's innards, a floating earthmote hovering high above the plateau, and finally a towering cityscape on the top of the plateaus.

The famlands provide food, the dwarves provide engineering and resources, the earthmote is mostly indepenedent but has a conclave of druids and mage's school on it. Each serves a function. Now I'm trying to figure out the city it's all based around. My idea was that it's supposed to provide law, communication with the outside world, and a way for this city to protect itself from/negotiate with outside threats, but is that really enough? Shouldn't it do something as unique as the other wards?

[Beleriphon]

The famlands provide food, the dwarves provide engineering and resources, the earthmote is mostly indepenedent but has a conclave of druids and mage's school on it. Each serves a function. Now I'm trying to figure out the city it's all based around. My idea was that it's supposed to provide law, communication with the outside world, and a way for this city to protect itself from/negotiate with outside threats, but is that really enough? Shouldn't it do something as unique as the other wards?

Why is there a city on top of a butte? Or is the plateau a sheered off mountain top? Maybe the earth mote is the top of the mountain flipped over? If you have a mining colony under the city, maybe the city is largely dedicated to refining and using the extracted ore and other materials either as raw export or actually making stuff out of it. If you have a bunch of massive foundries and the attendant faculties to turn ore into usable metal into usable goods then you're going to need people to feed the labourers in the mines, and the other facilities. Then you need somebody to make clothes, houses, things to put in houses, etc.

So I'd say the city proper is export end of the dwarven mines. It expanded and expanded until its self sustaining rather than a boom town.

[Jama7301]

What's the government like for the city and things surrounding it? Is it a representation sort of thing where the farmers, the people on the Earth Mote, The Dwarves and the City proper get a say, or are they ruled over by a central group in the city? Does the city have any big festivals, events, attractions, or shops that can bring in people from all of the other wards? Is the view from the plateau good enough for tourists? Is there any reason why people from outside this plateau would want to come to your city, such as a monument or as part of a pilgrimage?

I'm curious, are each of the wards self contained, sort of like an RTS "This area generates ore for building, this one generates food" sort of thing, or do they have other interactions as well? Are most of the shops in the city, or can the Farmers survive well enough without ever setting foot in there for years? Do the Dwarves go up there for drink, or are they capable of getting their own, or do they get it from the farmers directly?

[Beneath]

Cities are hubs, where people from all the outlying areas meet to trade

Therefore cities are where artisans (smiths, carpenters, apothecaries) tend to be, because they need supplies from all the outlying areas (a smith needs ore from the mines, charcoal made from wood from the forests, food from the fields, and more) and it's easier to get that at the place where all of them go to sell their goods.

A city in an inaccessible location is probably also a military bastion; a city built primarily as a trade hub might be down in the plains, straddling a river. A city on a plateau looking out over a cliff would more likely have been put there as a stronghold and grown. Whether this means it's a refuge where all the other groups (or at least the farmers, and maybe the miners) flee when attack comes, or a stronghold from which the local government rides out to reconquer those areas after attacks depends on the specific policies of that government.

[Herobizkit]

The whole thing is built around/inside a (presently dormant) super-golem?

The top area/communication could be lodged in the golem's head as it's the activity centre of the body.

Something like this from Macross/Mospedia:

Spoiler

Show

[sktarq]

The main city could do some of the following

Be a military hub for a wide area. The elevated position says this is likely.

Could be a major hub for various industries that are not focused on the dwarven enclave. Things like pottery, glassware, carpets, clothing, woodworking, alchemy (including dyes), and also foodstuffs like pickled food, alcohol, salted meat/fish etc

If there is a lot of trade both the city itself and the dwarven enclave beneath it a large amount of logistics support will be necessary but this could be far more if the city is on a major trade route. The last major city before a major dangerous region (which is why it needs the stout walls and elevated position for when the dangers come out to it instead)

A site of pilgrimage. A temple well known to aid disease or curse lifting. The blesses something like fortune or marriage.

[GungHo]

Yeah, I wouldn't want to live under a giant floating mountain top. Sounds like it'd hurt when it inevitably comes down during some silly crisis created by stupid adventurers.

[Thinker]

Separate out real-world functions from the in-game function. Make each place important in some way (Monster of the Week had great advice on this). A location needs the following:

• A name.
• A description.
• Location type and motivation.
• Optionally, a map.
• Optionally, one or more custom moves (things that can happen at the location).

Location types (location types can change depending on their use in the current adventure):

• Crossroads (motivation: to bring people, and things, together); examples: a tavern, a marketplace
• Deathtrap (motivation: to harm intruders); examples: the mines under the city, a dilapidated building, the secret headquarters of a cult
• Den (motivation: to harbour monsters); examples: a gladiator arena, The Black Forest
• Fortress (motivation: to deny entry); examples: a gatehouse, a secret passage into the castle
• Hellgate (motivation: to create evil); examples: a portal to the nether realm; the breeding grounds of the Fungus Monsters
• Hub (motivation: to reveal information); examples: a tavern, the town crier's office
• Lab (motivation: to create weirdness); examples: the tinker shack; the wizard's office
• Maze (motivation: to confuse and separate); examples: the mines under the city, The Black Forest
• Prison (motivation: to constrain and prevent exit); examples: the dungeon, the gatehouse, the mines under the city
• Wilds (motivation: to contain hidden things); the entrance to the slums the vault at the bank, the sewers

[FreddyNoNose]

Hey y'all.

So I'm working on a module, and writing the setting has proven fun, but challenging. I'm trying to capture a fun urban adventure by having a diverse plateau that features four distinct wards: a farmland in the footholds, a dwarven production and trading colony within the plateau's innards, a floating earthmote hovering high above the plateau, and finally a towering cityscape on the top of the plateaus.

The famlands provide food, the dwarves provide engineering and resources, the earthmote is mostly indepenedent but has a conclave of druids and mage's school on it. Each serves a function. Now I'm trying to figure out the city it's all based around. My idea was that it's supposed to provide law, communication with the outside world, and a way for this city to protect itself from/negotiate with outside threats, but is that really enough? Shouldn't it do something as unique as the other wards?

Rather than thinking it needs to be more than just a city, ask yourself, what do I need this to do? When you have a list of things you need it to do, build from that. Also, that list isn't written in stone so as you build you might think of new things that go against the list or are not on the list.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Generally speaking, cities do not exist 'for' something. They exist because circumstances allow people to concentrate in 'good' places, being those places with steady food, water, protection, nice people, pretty views, convenient commute, reduced incidence of falling dragon excrement, and so on.

So, what makes this city a good place to settle? The farms are fertile enough, I'm thinking, and the dwarves do useful work in the mines, so the area has potential. That earthmote likely has some spiritual significance, too. But why settle on top of the hill? It may be defensible, but is there easy access to water? Is it worth carrying all that stuff up there?

Water may flow down from the earthmote, creating some spectacular waterfalls, especially with the sunlight behind them. That would be a good reason to live up there: it's magical druid water^(c) that your enemy can't poison, so you're all but impossible to siege, and it's really convenient to distribute (build tower under waterfall > distribute by gravity).

Maybe the dwarves use cranes to haul goods up, making the height less of a burden. Maybe airships dock at the plateau, and the starting height is a big advantage for taking off?

[Beleriphon]

So, what makes this city a good place to settle? The farms are fertile enough, I'm thinking, and the dwarves do useful work in the mines, so the area has potential. That earthmote likely has some spiritual significance, too. But why settle on top of the hill? It may be defensible, but is there easy access to water? Is it worth carrying all that stuff up there?

As a thought many cities are built around hills for a reason, because the local fort was on top of the hill and the people settled around the fort slowly pushing the boundaries of the city outwards.

[Beneath]

If the city's going to be built around a military stronghold, and it needs something magical to zest it up, which I think, on rereading, might be what this is about, maybe the magical thing has to do with its use as a stronghold?

Obviously, though, we want it to be more interesting than just "oh, yeah, the government has a scrying nexus/can control the weather/there's some magical doohickey in the castle that does something"; we want it to affect wider than that.

Maybe this particular hill magically draws hippogriffs to it (maybe they're like salmon and return to the aeries of their birth to foal), and hippogriffs are a common sight as beasts of burden and mounts, especially for the military, for instance. That also plays nicely with there being an earthmote; now there's another answer (other than portals) for how people get up there.

Or maybe there's some new religion taking hold there, which has some important teaching that has been set into law; it could support or conflict with the warlord governing it (or perhaps a religious pacifism took hold after the warlady was succeeded by her son, who has never swung a sword in anger in his life)

Or perhaps it's ruled by a thieves' guild who the warlord doesn't care about as long as they don't touch his armies.