How did historical cities get plumbing? And how to introduce plumbing to a fantasy ci

[Matinta]

How did historical cities get plumbing? And how to introduce plumbing to a fantasy city?

I often wondered that and I was unable to google an answer, some historical building are far too old so how did they change the entire historical city infrastructure without destroying priceless relics of the past?

And for my new game I want the alchemist guild to try to implement a plumbing system in the main city of the setting with the excuse of hygiene but they actually want to secretly gather "components" for their experiments.

Any tips on how to realistically do that?

[Honest Tiefling]

Define plumbing. Some ancient cities already had rudimentary systems in place, and could just be in need of repair to get going.

Through if they needed human waste, they could just buy it. Some cities had systems for 'nightsoil' collectors who would either dispose of it or sell it as fertilizer. So if you need it, why bother with a complex plan?

[Inchhighguy]

Well, they just added plumming to cities....and destroied everything in the way...even priceless relics to the past.

Of course, too, some places that date back to long, long ago have NO modern plumming.



Also, it's not like the old bulidings have not been rebulit over the last couple hundred years.....and adding pipes and such can be done while re building.

[jjordan]

They used the water disposal systems, mostly. So anywhere they had 'problems' with significant amounts of water they built systems to get rid of the excess water and people started emptying their sewage into that.

I say 'problems' because the Romans went to considerable effort to ensure they had a lot of water in their cities. Some cities paved over existing streams or canals that had become open sewage systems and some cities just made efforts to ensure the existing water system had enough flow to wash the excrement downstream. The pit system was common for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and provided a source of industrial chemicals to craftsmen of various stripes. And there are always those that will simply ignore the systems and use one of the open fields in early towns/cities or the sidewalks/streets of the later ones. Even in cities with well-developed sewer systems you still needed people to clean up after the horses and other livestock/animals wandering the streets with varying degrees of purpose/direction.

[Honest Tiefling]

Well, they just added plumming to cities....and destroied everything in the way...even priceless relics to the past.

Well, priceless back then wouldn't have the same meaning. What we consider ancient and irreplaceable today could be considered annoying or antiquated in another era. Hadrian's wall and the Great Pyramid of Giza were both looted for building supplies by the locals. Various historic sites are just layers of buildings built right on top of each other as it was prime real estate, and 'historic' buildings were just destroyed as the new owners wanted to put in something different. And that's assuming there is no political or religious reason to simply bulldoze an old building and try again.

And if that relic of the past is between you and not having to throw your poop out the window, well, someone is going to be in favor of destroying it. Actually living in old buildings can be an extreme pain in the butt.

Now, if you will all excuse me, I need to grind up an ancient mummy to snort because I have a cold.

[Imbalance]

Are your alchemists lumping public sanitation and residential potable water systems together? Because a lot of people who can imagine a world with magic can also envision a civilization where professional casters create, control, and purify water without any need for canals or piping, and it might matter for how you intend to realistically portray such a service in an unrealistic setting.

[Yanagi]

How did historical cities get plumbing? And how to introduce plumbing to a fantasy city?

I often wondered that and I was unable to google an answer, some historical building are far too old so how did they change the entire historical city infrastructure without destroying priceless relics of the past?

And for my new game I want the alchemist guild to try to implement a plumbing system in the main city of the setting with the excuse of hygiene but they actually want to secretly gather "components" for their experiments.

Any tips on how to realistically do that?

Okay, I'm guessing you mean the kind of catacomb sewers you see in films or that turn up in RPG adventures...not, like french drains other sewage history developments. Like at the end of "The Third Man." I mean, there's about six thousand years of history in keeping-turds-far-away technology to sort through.

I can't answer for every city, but the answer is quite often, "they ripped up stuff that was in their way and didn't stint themselves because of ancient structures." Most buildings weren't precious relics, and an ethos of preservation really only came into play with sites with ritual significance (or a very wealthy owner who could afford to keep something ancient viably maintenanced).

Most modern covered sewers--like Paris-- were massive infrastructure projects where either sections of road were ripped up (or just dug up, because roads used to be cobblestones and just tons of compacted waste) or an underground passage was bored and reinforced in a manner resembling mining. Individuals would then connect houses to sewers with smaller pipe systems.The underground works were done as part of larger transformation of urban spaces ordered top-down, such that old, non-viable buildings were seized and pulled down to create modern city layouts (with squares and boulevards, or a grid layout)...but the underground work was mostly about public health and safety. Stench wafting from open drains was a nuisance (and, when talking about the oldest sewer projects, stench was also thought to be a medium of disease because of the miasma theory) and effluent making its way into wells caused typhus.

I think the answer to your question would be more bureaucratic than technological. The alchemists would have to have clout, or a legal mandate, to install a closed sewer--which would mean a king/mayor/council giving them authority to, say, dig underneath private property or pull down a house of easement (public bathroom) because it was a contamination risk.

So maybe the alchemists use their natural philosophy to sell the town authorities on a hygiene project. If they're super evil, maybe they taint a few wells with typhus to make the point salient and threatening. Then, because they're the people that understand medicine (or medical magic) and raised the issue to start with, they're the natural individuals to direct the infrastructure project and make sure it's salubrious benefits are maximized...and conveniently no viscounts have to get too close to sewage.

Or, same thing but with an added layer, the alchemists introduce the idea of sanitation to launch the project, but conceal that they're directing the design of the sewer by creating a shell company (miners, or clay diggers or some such) who bid for and take on the infrastructure project, but actually incorporate into the underground works added details that service the ends of the alchemists rather than just the safe flow of effluent.

[halfeye]

The ancient romans had sewers. They found one in this country from that time made out of a hollowed out tree trunk a decade or three ago.

[The Library DM]

I’ll only add a fantasy novel example. In Joel Rosenberg’s The Sleeping Dragon (book one of the “Guardians of the Flame” series), the major trading city in the region uses a captured dragon to burn the city’s waste. So keep in mind that a fantasy setting can come up with unexpected solutions to problems; you just have to decide how prevalent or easy such solutions might be in your world. (Back in the day, I theorized on “sweetsand,” a magical chamberpot filling that instantly disposed of waste— really it was just a way to handwave away sanitation issues in an inhabited dungeon...)

[Ninja_Prawn]

the answer is quite often, "they ripped up stuff that was in their way and didn't stint themselves because of ancient structures." Most buildings weren't precious relics, and an ethos of preservation...

Certainly in the UK, public sewers were generally introduced in the Victoria era. Meanwhile, the whole idea that historic buildings should be preserved didn't really catch on here until the 1930s. It was pretty hit and miss even up to the '70s. Thus there was a large window of time in which people were generally happy to rip through whatever they needed to in order to install modern utilities.

I work in heritage conservation (as an M&E engineer, ironically), and the damage done to monuments during the industrial age is a constant bugbear for us. We deal with the fallout from this literally every day.

[halfeye]

Certainly in the UK, public sewers were generally introduced in the Victoria era.

Oh, for sure, most houses didn't have anything like sewerage disposal other than emptying pots. The big posh houses on the hills though? Many of the secret passages from stately homes or ex-stately homes are in fact drains.

[calam]

I agree with The Library DM, you should think about what fantasy options are available as well. For example gelatinous cubes are described as being able to eat any organic matter which should be all human waste. having the system be a septic tank filled with slimes that consume the waste would also have baked in chemical creation in the slimes themselves. Heck, play your cards right and you can get the head of the city to pay the alchemists to manage the gelatinous cube population even though that's where you're getting all your acid flask ingredients

[Bohandas]

How did historical cities get plumbing? And how to introduce plumbing to a fantasy city?

A D&D fantasy setting would simplify things immensely on the freshwater end provided the guild has 9000gp in capital (which is in the same price range as a large house; probably a price range they can afford if they're building city infrastructure in an established town). A decanter of endless water can produce 432000 gallons of water per day*, easily enough to fill a water tower. This would eliminate the need for infrastructure to bring in fresh water.


*30 gallons per round in geyser X 10 rounds per minute X 60 minutes per hour X 24 hours per day

[No brains]

The spells Move Earth and Wall of Stone would make installing a sewer system a little easier, just scoop and reinforce, even if it's only one spot a day.

Dwarves would probably love to build sewers, you might have to pay them not to dig underground, especially for engineering purposes.

Also, every sewer is just a dungeon. All it takes is for something that needs to be killed to move in. Rats and thieves guilds are such common problems in sewers at low levels, most parties would probably get their first jobs from waste management. "We got swarms of rats and oozes, write up a job for a scrub and give it to our cloaked stranger in the tavern."

[Yanagi]

Certainly in the UK, public sewers were generally introduced in the Victoria era. Meanwhile, the whole idea that historic buildings should be preserved didn't really catch on here until the 1930s. It was pretty hit and miss even up to the '70s. Thus there was a large window of time in which people were generally happy to rip through whatever they needed to in order to install modern utilities.

I work in heritage conservation (as an M&E engineer, ironically), and the damage done to monuments during the industrial age is a constant bugbear for us. We deal with the fallout from this literally every day.

Neat. I love how buildings are technology, and that there's a logic to making the best possible live-able closed space with available materials.

I have like...vague building science knowledge because I grew up in a 2 hundred year old country house. And a bit about urban sewers because I watch BBC history documentaries instead of sleep.

Glad my answer wasn't completely off.

[Beleriphon]

Neat. I love how buildings are technology, and that there's a logic to making the best possible live-able closed space with available materials.

I have like...vague building science knowledge because I grew up in a 2 hundred year old country house. And a bit about urban sewers because I watch BBC history documentaries instead of sleep.

Glad my answer wasn't completely off.

Funny bit is depending on how old a sewer is these days it might be considered ancient and valuable! The Cloaca Maxima is a good example, it's 2500 years old and was built early in the Roman Republic (possibly before the city state started to expand).

[Yanagi]

Funny bit is depending on how old a sewer is these days it might be considered ancient and valuable! The Cloaca Maxima is a good example, it's 2500 years old and was built early in the Roman Republic (possibly before the city state started to expand).

True that. I was just in Istanbul and got to descend into the Basilica Cistern.

[jjordan]

I agree with The Library DM, you should think about what fantasy options are available as well. For example gelatinous cubes are described as being able to eat any organic matter which should be all human waste. having the system be a septic tank filled with slimes that consume the waste would also have baked in chemical creation in the slimes themselves. Heck, play your cards right and you can get the head of the city to pay the alchemists to manage the gelatinous cube population even though that's where you're getting all your acid flask ingredients

Love this idea. Not sure where I'm going to use it, but I'm definitely going to use it.

[Jay R]

The most common rudimentary plumbing for a medieval city was the river it was built on.

Chamberpots are emptied into the streets, and eventually the rain washes the stuff down to the river. [Until then, it stinks and spreads disease.]


Of course, with magical items, there's always this approach:

Spoiler: Cartoon hidden inside

Show

[Torpin]

remember magic exists in dnd, and the spell stone shape exists

[hymer]

How did historical cities get plumbing?

Sewers tend to follow the streets, which helps with not knocking down buildings quite so often.