7/27/2019 Building a City

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/building-a-city 1/5

City Building Tips: Give cities flavour with districts

By Johnn Four

1. Divide Your City Into Chunks

Cities are large beasts that can intimidate GMs trying to plan and design them. There are so many people,locations, and things to think about it makes a GM cry in his battlemat. However, a successful, time-testedapproach is ye old divide and conquer. Break your city into digestible chunks and plan one chunk at atime.

The obvious city chunk is the district. Grab your city map and divide the area into sections. These will beyour districts.

---- Sidebar ----

This planning method also provides great session structure for your city adventure or campaign. If you area typical game master who fleshes out the setting while the campaign is being played, then you will wantto keep the PCs interested in sticking around the parts of the city you've detailed so far.

So, when you sit down to plan next game, what should you do? Answer: design hooks and encounters

that play up the desired locations you want PCs to visit. Perfect planning guidance.

---- Sidebar ----

If you're looking for a new angle on districts, try this list for inspiration:

 Neighbourhoods

 Wards

 Burroughs

 Cantons

 Diocese

 Precincts

 Quarters

 Sectors

 Turf

 Zones

Return to Contents 

2. Give Each District A "Capital City"

Many worlds are divided into countries, and each country has a capital city. This location is theadministrative centre for its region. Laws, politics, budgets, policies, organization, and big decisions comeout of this place.

 A capital city is often a cultural and community epicentre as well. It will have a higher population densitythan other region locations, and leading trends, social issues, and ideas will emerge regularly to influenceother parts of the country and the world.

Most important, at least for gaming purposes, is that capital cities are power bases. They are naturalbreeding grounds for the biggest conflicts, toughest villains, and neediest victims. They attract wealth,challengers, ambition, and struggle.

7/27/2019 Building a City

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/building-a-city 2/5

If you give each of your districts some kind of capital, your city will inherit all these benefits as well - andnot just once, but for every district. This opens up all kinds of awesome plot and encounter possibilities, inaddition to great city design guidance.

Here are some example ways you can give your districts a capital city-type location:

 Multi-story building

 Underground hanger or cavern

 Huge warehouse

 Palace or castle

 Tower

 Section of the sewers

  An intersection (great example: Gangs of New York movie)

  An open square between buildings (great example: The Wire TV show)

  A park

  A maze-like section

 Large church

 Guild hall of a powerful guild

  A section of the docks

 Cemetery

 Hidden area

  A special inn

  A restaurant

 Tavern

Return to Contents 

3. Give Each District Personality

While thumbing through The DM Campaign Record from Goodman Games this week (an excellentproduct, btw), I spotted an NPC personality table with 20 entries. Instantly, I thought this chart would makea great tool for assigning a basic personality to each district in the city I'm building for my currentcampaign.

This leads to the tip of applying the methods you use for crafting great NPCs to build interesting districtsas well.

Give city sections:

 Quirks

 Goals, motives, and dreams

  Alignments

 Fears

 Loyalties

 Prejudices

 Jealousies

In addition, you can add personality to districts with:

7/27/2019 Building a City

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/building-a-city 3/5

 Terrain

  Age, history

 Weather

 Population density

  Architecture style

 Leadership type

 Conflict type(s)

---- Sidebar ----

If you think weather might be a far-fetched way to make city districts interesting and distinct, do not worry.When I lived in Vancouver, various sections of the city would have "signature" weather and differentweather all the time, even though Vancouver has much smaller land area than many other cities.

For example, the North Shore area receives about twice as much rain - as much as a rain forest someyears - as any other part of the city, and far less sun. Also, fog would regularly creep up the channel,sometimes climbing higher than office buildings downtown, though it would be clear and sunny in otherareas.

---- Sidebar ----

Goodman Games DM Campaign Record 

Return to Contents 

4. Create Distinct Encounter Tables For Each District

To further enhance and communicate the personality of your districts, craft custom random encountertables for each.

 Aim for a 7/2/1 ratio:

7 entries of regular folk who live and work in the area2 entries of visitors from other districts1 entry for something unusual

If the PCs see or meet the same types of folk over the course of a few sessions, the district's personalitywill soon take hold in players' minds. In addition, this becomes a handy tool players will use to orientthemselves and envision each district better.

 After awhile, these regular encounters can become pillars for your plots and encounters. For example, theunusual entries will stick out due to the high contrast - and you won't need to make a big deal of it to getthe players to notice. The regular folk become the baseline and player expectation, giving you anopportunity to play with that as an encounter design or NPC design opportunity.

The DM Campaign Record mentioned earlier has a chart for NPC Social Class/Occupation that workedwell for my campaign's district encounter charts.

 A twist on this idea is to create typical encounters based not just on who the NPCs are, but on what theNPCs are doing.

For example, a business district will have a lot of merchants. So, you craft a chart with 14 different typesof merchants the PCs will typically encounter, 4 visitor types from neighbouring districts, and 2 unusualNPCs (these entries actually point to a sub-chart of several unusual NPC options).

However, you realize you have three merchant areas in your city, and you decide that crafting threeseparate charts with 42 total merchant types is either unrealistic for your city, or a pain in the butt.

7/27/2019 Building a City

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/building-a-city 4/5

Instead, you design:

 Merchant district 1: merchants do business in a shared, open area, are aggressive, and yell outadvertisements and enticements.

 Merchant district 2: merchants dwell in separate buildings and shops, and quiet window shopping is thenorm.

 Merchant district 3: merchants are living infomercials, offering free demonstrations, free samples, andoperate out of demonstration booths in a trade show-like area.

Return to Contents 

5. Districts In My Campaign

The city I'm currently designing for my D&D campaign is called Carnus. It has 6 districts, each governedby a powerful warlord. Rather than dividing the city up according to function (i.e. merchants area, templesarea, law and administration area, slums, etc.) I'm putting all the typical city elements into each district.Each district is sort of like a mini city and fairly self-sufficient. District 1 has merchants, rich, poor,barracks, the warlord's base, and so on, as do Districts 2-6.

Oddly enough, I'm using the Trivial Pursuit board game as inspiration for Carnus. The city is roughly round

and districts are somewhat pie shaped. I'm using the board as a mapping of the political structure, but Ihaven't found a use yet for the player pie pieces (do you have any ideas?).

Each district's personality is based loosely on the categories of the Trivial Pursuit: Genus Edition:

 Geography: blue

 Entertainment: pink

 History: yellow

  Art & Literature: brown

 Knowledge and nature: green

 Sport & Leisure: orange

I'm basing the "capital city" of each district on the flavour of the category:

 Blue: Huge palace (multi-cultural)

 Pink: Theatre

 Yellow: Old, maze-like castle

 Brown: University

 Green: Park

 Orange: Gladiatorial arena

In each of these locations are open or secret areas where the elite of each district conduct their (un)lawfulbusiness. For example, the theatre is a large building over 100 years old. It is the pride and joy of localresidents and the focal point of the district's culture and social venues. However, in the back offices and in

a secret area high above in the rafters (known as The Heavens) the rich and powerful conduct theirbusiness and engage in deadly political manoeuvres.

Carnus has only one official capitol, but each district's "capital city" serves as interesting, conflict-ridden,local power bases sure to spawn numerous plots that will entangle the PCs.

For encounter tables, I'm using the table straight out of The DM Campaign Record from GoodmanGames, but tweaking results depending on what district the PCs are in:

 District colours theme clothing and buildings.

7/27/2019 Building a City

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/building-a-city 5/5

 District theme and leadership style tinges personality and interaction style/type.

Example: District 1 is nearly a police state, while District 2 has a strong code of honour. So, a lamplighterin District 1 will glare suspiciously at the PCs and report unusual behaviour unless discouraged.

 A lamplighter in District 2 will perform his job with pride and skill, and if his honour is questioned ortarnished by a PC, he'll immediately head to The Hall of Champions and hire a champion for one hour to

duel the offending PC.