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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Daemon

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    Default What goes on a city map?

    Let's say you're mapping a city for a setting book[1] in a fantasy world. Two related questions:

    1. What resources have people found useful for deciding what kinds of normal businesses and other points of interest are generically found in various locations (probably based on town size)? Any good books on this matter?

    2. As a consumer of a setting book, what points of interest do you find useful to be marked on the map? And is there a limit beyond which it feels cluttered?
    a) district names? (possibly with a key in the text saying what's in each district)?
    b) shops? Similarly temples, barracks, and other "services"
    c) important NPCs residences?
    d) ??


    [1] so rather than doing it for a particular quest with a particular party or a pre-written adventure, where there are obviously going to be plot-specific places to mark in addition to/replacing some of these.
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  2. - Top - End - #2
    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: What goes on a city map?

    A lot of this is going to depend on scale, specifically, the size of the city itself. Medieval towns, generally, were very small and by modern standards extremely compact. The Cite de Carcassonne, an example that is exceedingly well-preserved, is in fact sufficiently small that you could conceivably map it down to individual buildings, as the whole fortified portion of the city occupies only around 11 hectares. More people lived outside the city proper, of course, but probably mostly in primarily residential tracks of limited interest to adventurers, since all the important stuff was kept inside the walls.

    This also means that, unless the town as a whole is going to be attacked, you don't actually need to map things out specifically, since everything is within a relatively short walk of everything else - Carcassonne's walls make a 3 km circuit, you can jog around the whole town in half an hour (well, in modern times its flooded with tourists, so you can't, but you get the idea). At anything other than tactical scale everything is 'close by.' Going by this approach, you only need to map out a generic town/city district that diagrams the kinds of buildings that exist and the rough ratio of residential/commercial/industrial/government structures and then you can assume that roughly every city looks mostly the same just with key functions in slightly different positions relative to each other. Ex. sometimes the keep is next to the church, sometimes its next to the market square, and so forth.

    For the most part every town/city district is going to have roughly the same list of points of interest as any other, plus/minus a local specialty or two, especially if you remain within the same cultural sphere, and potentially even beyond. Marco Polo notably described cities very briefly, focusing on who ruled, what religion the inhabitants followed, the general character of the local culture, and the major commercial products and specialties (he was a merchant), but rarely said anything about the built environment unless describing a notable anomaly like Kublai Khan's palace.
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  3. - Top - End - #3
    Bugbear in the Playground
    Join Date
    Oct 2016

    Default Re: What goes on a city map?

    Unless you are seeking to specifically emulate a particular town or city I don’t think there’s too much benefit from the historical record. There are so many exceptions and variations as to make generalizations fairly meaningless.

    Let geography determine the form of the city. Geography will determine where the trade routes are, what are the most defensible areas, areas that are desirable for residential and areas desirable for commercial activity.

    Let the in world history inform choices made. Did the city grow organically or was it started as a colony? Are military threats present?is there a history of peace or fighting in the area? Have trade routes moved or new trade routes opened. Is religious pilgrimage a thing?

    If I’m building a detailed city for a campaign I find working with the geography and history of the city since founding creates a more believable city rather than having a laundry list of things I need to put into the city.

    I find it a useful gaming convenience to have towns organized by districts of purpose (e.g. temple district, market district, docks district). There is sufficient historical justification for such districts to exist. I think it has become such an ingrained trope by now that most gamers will expect for the city to be organized in this way.

    A list of notable NPCs is handy. What I like as a GM is the freedom to create my own network of relationships in the city. So a description of the public face of the NPC, their role and personality is fine. Any hidden secrets like who is the cultist, who is a werewolf, who are rivals and who are allies are things I’d prefer to program myself. If at the end of the description of the public face there was space for the GM to write in secrets, allies, rivals that would make me very happy.

    A list of factions in the city is very helpful, as is information on local specialties and traditions..

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    BardGuy

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    Mar 2007
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    Default Re: What goes on a city map?

    How big is the city (both in population terms and in area)?
    How big is the map. An A4 page has a lot less room than a tablecloth
    Is the city just a place to shop, restock and meet important people or is is the campaign set here?

    Then start with the most important bits and go from there...

    You'll want a basic outline and the main transport corridors. They might be roads, rivers, trainlines, ports - whatever.

    Fill in the most important areas (these might be suburb names, or they might be things like "Elvish quarter" and "Tanners area" these will get less dense on the page, the bigger your physical map is, because as you have a bigger map you have more of the smaller details

    Put in the 6 to 12 most important landmarks. Universities, town halls, castles, wizards towers, great markets, permanent circuses. Things that people from outside the city know about and maybe come here for, or things everyone in the city know how to find an deal with.

    Fill in the broad strokes of what the city is there to provide. This could be shopping areas and inns (or inn districts) for a stopover city, or the factional dividing lines for a city where the campaign is about a thieves guild turf war, or the headquarters for each merchant prince if the PCs are mercenaries operating as merchant adventurers.

    Then, go down adding more details in a cycle of relevant, important, basic, interesting, adding 4 to 10 items each time until the map is a full as you want it to be.

    Sometimes you'll need more than one map, a "General purpose" and others that are more specialised.
    For example, in the thieves' guild war, the general map will be for letting the PCs live in the city and move around. But you might want a specific "Thieves map" with gang areas of influence, targets, fixers, fences and safe houses marked.
    Or maps a different scales. Say, the whole city, and then a zoom in on the neighborhood the party live in
    Last edited by Duff; 2023-05-17 at 03:19 AM.
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  5. - Top - End - #5
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Oct 2013

    Default Re: What goes on a city map?

    Bridges, walls, district names. You don't really need individual business beyond 'in this district', individual buildings can be left to 'prince's palace' 'agatha the witch's house' etc

  6. - Top - End - #6
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    PaladinGuy

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    Default Re: What goes on a city map?

    First of all, start with the knowledge that the size of any pre-Industrial Revolution city is dependant on how much food the city can draw towards itself. This means that cities that control a bigger share of the countryside get to be bigger, of course, but also general geographical factors influence size:

    - Is a lot of the territory rocky and uneven, or marshy - that is, is it hostile to farming? That means the city is smaller than its nominal controlled territory may suggest.
    - Is the city located on the coast, or on a major waterway? If yes, that means food can reach the city from further away before it spoils, helping it expand past what's expect (that's why most big cities are either port cities or built on riverbanks)
    - Is the city a major seat of power? If it is, not only can the city divert a disproportiante amount of resources toward itself, it'll likely expand a lot because people will want to move to the city to get closer to the power.
    - In general, keep in mind that "better" farming = more people = bigger cities (very simplified logic, but it generally holds up).

    In short, you cannot have a bustling large city in the middle of a featurless, infertile plain with no waterways, isolated from anyone else.

    I suggest reading this article by historian Bret Deveraux, and especially the second part as well, to get a good beginner's grasp on how cities before the advent of train and track and highways were dependent on farmland to actually exist and grow.

    Reading those posts will also help you answer the most important question: WHY IS THERE A CITY HERE AT ALL? Cities don't pop out in the middle of nowhere, of course. If your city is on the coast or along a river, that's all the answer you need - people build cities in those places all the time because it's convenient. If not, maybe your city rose around an easily defensible position that also lets you control the rest of the countryside more easily, such as on top of a hill or a small mountain. Or maybe this area started out as the market for a bunch of villages and communities to meet at, and eventually the market became a market town which the became a city. Maybe the terrain here is very fertile, or rich in some rare resources. In short, your city needs some favorable conditions that makes people want to build a city there.

    Once you have a rough idea of what the terrain the city is built on looks like, and what's around the city, and how many people live in it, we can get to answering a few more questions so that we know what's in there:

    - Who's in control? Is there a city council? A lord/governor? Is this city ruled by a prince-bishop of sorts? Whoever it is, they will need at least one building where they do Government Stuff. Bigger, more complex cities will likely have more governamental buildings, usually close by to each other, on account of a larger bureucracy.
    - What's the religion(s) here? Do they mandate any peculiar rules about how and where their temples/altars/churches/etc are built, or at the very least is there a traditional way of deciding where the temple gets built[1]? Do they usually build one temple, or multiples?
    - How many people live outside the walls? Are there laws mandating how close to the walls you can build?
    - Do those people bury their dead within the city, or outside? Maybe they don't bury people at all!
    - Where is the main square, or equivalent? Most cities have at least one big large space where people meet to do business, gossip and work, debate and show off stuff.
    - Where are the gates, and to what do they lead? Usually, roads will radiate from the main square towards the gates, and from those main roads will radiate other roads.
    - Was the city built according to any sort of plan[2], or did it evolve organically[3]?
    - Are there powerful guilds within the city? They need a guild hall, then, aso do any eventual universities or seats of knightly orders and the like.
    - Are there any important landmarks, monuments, or arenas and the like? Rome had the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus (among many other imposing buildings) being extremely noticeable for anyone who would've watched the city from above.

    Spoiler: Notes
    Show
    [1]: For example, in Ancient Greece temples would be built on an acropolis, separated from the rest of the city, whereas in the Middle Ages churches get built next to houses and shops, immersed with the rest of the city.
    [2]: For example, in the real world you can usually tell if a city was built by Romans because it will have a typical square-ish "chessboard pattern" look, with two main roads, one going north-south and the other east-west, meeting in the middle of the city.
    [3]: Such as Rome, which has a map that's fare more chaotic than Roman colonies because it wasn't built according to a plan.
    Last edited by Silly Name; 2023-05-19 at 09:49 AM.

  7. - Top - End - #7
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    GnomePirate

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    Default Re: What goes on a city map?

    I like to break a city into neighborhoods/districts with each neighborhood having its own feel. There might be a marketplace, a slum, a dwarven quarter, an area with townhouses owned by the wealthy, the docks, etc. I like this better than a map that's just a maze of streets and alleys.

  8. - Top - End - #8
    Librarian in the Playground Moderator
     
    LibraryOgre's Avatar

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    Default Re: What goes on a city map?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    1. What resources have people found useful for deciding what kinds of normal businesses and other points of interest are generically found in various locations (probably based on town size)? Any good books on this matter?

    2. As a consumer of a setting book, what points of interest do you find useful to be marked on the map? And is there a limit beyond which it feels cluttered?
    a) district names? (possibly with a key in the text saying what's in each district)?
    b) shops? Similarly temples, barracks, and other "services"
    c) important NPCs residences?
    d) ??
    In general, all of these are good... district names, temples, some shops (if the city is big enough, you won't get all of them, by any means), inns, and other places of note in the town (seat of government, where major NPCs live, that sort of thing). With a really small town, you might map EVERYTHING; Hommlet, in Temple of Elemental Evil, is a good example of this. But in something the scale of Waterdeep, trying to put a description on every point of the map is simply tedious.
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