My most recent campaign is a city! My recommendations to any fellow dms building a city is to not make a bunch of specific locations-let your players fill out the map! You should focus on making factions and characters. You can never make every building that your players are going to enter, but you can put interesting characters in their way.
this is so true, my players are in a city as well. After every session i read out a little recap of their adventure flavored as a story on a newspaper, with a sneak peek into future event. My players figured that if they go to the editorial and find the author they’d get more answers on their killer😅😂. So i had to make a whole location, new npcs, etc. It made for one of the most tense set pieces we’ve had so far.
If there's one thing I can advise to you world builders out there: Connect your cities to the larger world! If you have something unique in your city, why is it unique to this place? How does this city get resources? How is trading going? Do they have any alliances? The best thing you can do to connect your city to the rest of the world is to have a few factions from outside the city inside it! Maybe splinters and offshoots of those places, or ambassadors or even spies... TLDR: just a few references to other places in the world just makes a city feel so much more alive and realized. It's a good way to add detail without overwhelming yourself by creating 30 new factions. So... Yeah!
I strongly agree with this! I’ve found that things like foreign embassies, imported goods stores, and maybe even racially-divided districts can help the players determine what goes on beyond the walls and how the city fits into the bigger world.
The agromancer is such a dope idea hahaha. I imagine that their thralls would also make good compost. Once they've run out of steam/lost control of a zombie (idk how necromancy works in d&d) it just collapses where it was working, providing one last contribution to the farm.
Man I'm in love with your channel. I think a building better demiliches would be really awesome, right now they just feel like a watered down version of the lich but have soo much potential.
@@mapcrow You could play on the etymology of demi and have it be literally half of a lich's body that can symbiotically attach itself to hosts as a kind of conjoined caster chimaera or something like that- I always go to the word itself's characteristics/history when looking for new takes
Your interpretation of the city as an organism with its own metabolism is wonderful. I will make great use of it probably every single time i develop a permanently-inhabited location from now on.
I love the little information that is crucial for a city like where the junk goes, or where the material comes from, Also definitely going add dinning cult on my next campaign (love the idea of rich nobles having an appetite. Like a side quest in zelda botw 😅)
I too am just getting to the cities of my little worldbuilding project -- your timing is wonderful, so either you're reading the SEO tea leaves perfectly or just all of us are on the same wavelength right now.
I've been stuck trying to create a fantasy metropolis for a new campaign idea I had (where the players will be the actual police solving the crimes, rather than vice versa for once!) for so long, so this is extremely well-timed!
I’m conscripting a few friends of mine to help me write my book, but I’m doing it through the lense of a DND campaign to help add some randomness and break writers block. It will probably spend a hot minute in a massive city, so this video is a big help. Thanks for the informative videos!
Always happy to see someone bringing up Blades. I'm in the process of writing for the next Blades session and I like this client/resource way of mapping factions, so I'm using that this afternoon. Cheers!
I found your channel In the middle of making my campaign and continent for the game and your vids have helped me get an idea of how it is going to work out so I wanted to say thanks
Love this worldbuilding series. For building better monsters, I'd like to see your take on a classic monster, like a griffin or a vampire. I love what you did with dragons where you took a familiar, almost overdone monster and did something new with it
I had the same problem of my players wanting to stick to 5e instead of a Blades hack, so I feel you. I forced their hands, and after two rocky first sessions ("Please don't make me think about my character" / "Rolls aren't fun unless I'm killing shit" / "So I only get xp for acting like my character?!?") I doubled the amount of pure action and dice rolling in the third and it seems like they'll be willing to meet me halfway (as long as I don't expect much actual roleplay, lol).
I really love your channel, and this is the first advertised product I've actually used based on a channel recommendation/ad, so I'm actually doubly grateful!
I’m so happy you mentioned Dael and the Monarch’s Factory! I feel her work is fantastic but she doesn’t get as much call out as people like Colville. The city video is my template for city’s now
Great introduction to organic, emergent city design. Amazing how relevant Wolman still is. It would be nice to have a follow up/debrief for this campaign and some of your others (maybe I just haven't found them) talking through the successes and lessons learned. As a fellow game designer once (once) fortunate enough to teach an intro to game design course, I know you've got the playtest debrief in your curriculum... Also, the illustrious John Harper seems quite open to interviews, and wouldn't it be a joy to interview him on city design or that moment when art splices into mechanics or pretty much anything else? It would be an amazing conversation.
I ran a couple of Urban/Underdark campaign centered around the PC's building a kind of company in a crime-dominated city for a few years during the pandemic (I ran online of course). That campaign is one of my favorites but I never mapped the city in a visual way 'cause I wasn't confident in my drawing skills. Blades in the Dark and Veins of the Earth mashed up very well but I used FateCore to run the game 'cause I wanted to keep the mechanics simple. That said, I came up with LOADS of NPCs, factions and stuff and I LOVe the city as it developed over the course of two campaigns in a sequence that took roughly 3-5 years of in-world time and included a major industrial shift due to the PCs essentially starting a magical-oil firm and developing a system for trading it. Gosh, I get excited just typing about that city. It can be super rewarding, so good luck!
I'm building something very similar with a hacked (very hacked) version of blades. the PCs start by getting a small business of their choice, and get slowly into the criminal underbelly as their business faces more and more criminal threats. looking forward to playing with PC business owners, and seeing what schemes they come up with.
I'm glad you worked with World Anvil- I found them years ago and thought that was an amazing site, but i forgot the name of it. So thank you for reminding me!
This is awesome. Been struggling figuring out the machinations of how a big monolithic xenophobic society can lead people outside to be on their own, etc cetera. Your video really helped with the big city problem.
Regarding your agrimancer: If one is looking for artwork, other inspiration or possible some mechanics in that line, I'd recommend looking into the Golgari guild in MTG's Ravnica setting. There's some considerable overlap and Ravnica isn't just full of fascinating factions, there's also an official 5e supplement for it
If you put together everything you've ever written for or drawn on this channel, and slapped it all into a book with some descriptions and examples, I would Kickstart the hell out of it. Just sayin. Loving the work and I hope you stay well.
Ha! Thank you! I think there is a big difference between, talking about things in a 10 minute video and printing them in a book for use at a table. It's a very different craft, and I'd want to team up with a designer who can really bring their own skills too! It's something I'm thinking about, but probably not super soon.
Great content. For the city layout itself i copy old maps of cities. Like I'll find a map of manchester in the 1400s and copy the streets and rivers. I try to keep with the layout of churches, castles, the market street, etc. It works well.
I was going to ask why people aren't eating monster meat if there are so many of them outside the walls. Maybe beast meat is for the rich and monster meat is all the poor could afford. Or maybe they don't know it's monster meat and it keeps causing salt-in-wounds still mutations.
Hey can you do Teifling for the monster video, please? I thought of the idea that teiflings as ancestors of people who broke a deal with a demon or devil. I thought you might like that Idea.
Great video. I really like your world building series. You said that you would start Building Better Monsters, up again. I would really like it if you built better Flumphs or Liches. Very excited for what is coming up next.
Love the channel! This is a selfish request but I love mountains and mountainous regions and I’d love to hear your take on them! Particularly recently I’m having trouble figuring out how to map a regional area with a lot of emphasis on the vertical (think cities carved into cliffs, that sort of thing).
If you look up my video on Cross Hatching or the Reverse Dungeon, that'll be a good demonstration of how I handle verticality with isometric maps! Cheers!!
Necro-farmers? Cool! I have a similar mining guild in my setting. Necromancers are it's only living "employees". All others are zombies and skeletons working down in the mines :D
Love this idea, a campaign in one setting. I wonder how it could be modified to be like a private school setting to go even smaller and change things from just stealing valuables.
Yeah! I think you could easily take what I've done and tweak it to be an investigation game. I think I would really change the setting entirely to be about a private school, but that's just me.
I really enjoy the city-building game Ex Novo by Martin Nerukar and Konstantinos Dimopoulos. It's particularly good for generating histories and timelines. When you talked about your city not getting much meat, my first thought was insect-farming. Urban factory-farming of crickets and grasshoppers is something people have tried in the real world, and it would be another way of dealing with waste, beyond throwing stuff in the river.
I see it, comparing a city to a living organism. In ancient Rome the sewer was called the cloaca. That is also the name given to the end of the digestive system of a frog in my biology textbook.
this is an old video so i severely doubt anyone will see this, but i’m currently building a campaign that takes place within a prison city where the king ships all the undesirable people and basically forces them into labor, does anyone have any tips?
I mean a "boring" thing 5e offers for the question on how to feed a city in a self-sustainable way is the Plant Growth spell. All you need are enough spellcasters capable of casting this 3rd-level spell to cover the entirety of the farmlands within the outer walls in a reasonable time and presto, the agricultural yield of the farms has been doubled. The area covered by that spell is a circle with a radius of 1/2 mile, so with an area of roughly 0,78 sq miles or 2 km², which is around 202 hectares or 499 acres... I checked some sources on how much space a person needs to be fed for a year with a non-vegetarian diet of MODERN STANDARDS is slightly less than an acre (which includes storage space, pathways, etc). To achieve genuine food security, let's double that amount and say that it takes two acres instead. A single farmer can easily take care of four acres of land without help. Now Plant Growth would double the yield, of course, so one acre would then actually suffice (and for simplicity's sake the fact that the area needed was originally just under an acre, we now round up to accomodate that extra yield and the storage necessary). In 1328 Paris had a population of ~200k inhabitants and its city wall covered an area of 439 hectares/1085 acres/4.39 km²/1.695 sq miles. Paris was incredibly dense in terms of its population, with multi-story buildings being common around the time. So let's presume half the population, which is about the population of Waterdeep proper. To safely feed 100k people, you need 100000 acres of land, or 405 km²/156 sq miles. That is about a quarter of the area of Greater London and it will take a single Lvl 5 druid using two castings of Plant Growth per day 200 days to cover that area to produce these yields. Now presuming a predominantly potato-based diet, like how 1840s Irish farmers had to deal with, where they ate around 14 pounds of potatoes per day... That means roughly 2.5 short tons of potatoes per year, and an acre of potatoes can easily produce 25 tons with modern methods, so an acre is enough to feed 10 people using this method. So assuming a high yield, nutrition-rich base crop like the potato serving as the foundation of the city's diet, then the area can be reduced noticably, maybe even to half that area. That way even feeding Paris with its actual 1328 population would only require not THAT much extra land. Please note that I did some BAD math in an earlier version of this comment, sorry about that!
I think a building better fiends/celestials could be cool, I just feel like the possibilities to make such interesting characters, whether they’re friends or foes, is just endless
I personally would love to see some more unique giants, something detached from the heavenly forces they represent. My idea would be to base it off the 7 deadly sins as I feel it adds a bit of a folklore feel to them, but interested in seeing what your take would be on these big sacks of hit points.
I've been running a game in a city for going on three years. I feel like playing on social dynamics and status has been quite fun, but not a game for people that want combat every few sessions. It's that odd feeling of only now feeling prepared once it's all almost done.
This is amazing! Very helpfull indeed and I will put this into practice, but... With what video of yours should I start? There are many! And I'm kinda new here and I feel a bit lost
Look through the playlists and pick one that sounds interesting. Very few of my videos rely on previous videos to make sense (I hope). The earlier videos tend be less-to-the-point.
I’ll write do the idea! But there is a big difference between making a video and making an adventure. A video takes a day and adventures take weeks to make.
@@demongustavditters7150 Oh I think I see. Are you stuck with starting to write an rpg adventure to publish for other folks? I could do a video about that!
@@mapcrow I have thought a little about publishing it. If I can keep the inspiration alive. Tbh It started out as a home brew world. And still is currently. I’ve worked out some history and the size of the place, but I’m also trying to run other games to get a better feel of what exact size, mechanics, and feel I wanna have. It’s main non mechanical inspirations are Beserk, Elden Ring, and I’m having trouble remembering the third one atm, it’s been a looong process with a lot of me sleeping on things, so to speak. Heavy emphasis on gritty survival and environmental barriers, hence the Elden Ring inspiration. Edit- third inspiration is the Witcher. I like the idea that there’s THE (insert x creature), and unique ways to deal with them.
@@demongustavditters7150 Sounds like some cool stuff! I when I make things, I try to start by taking a close look at the resources and books that I actually use first, then try to design around that. Though a bunch of my design is done in these videos and not in a zine or pdf. But I try to keep each step of my work bite-sized and module, so I can show off each part as its finish, and I don't have to wait until a giant 100 page book is completed to share it. That keeps me going on longer things!
Bodies going into tombs is a waste of a resource for a magical city under siege. Build a Necromancer Officer Corps that takes the dead and leads them against the monsters outside as soldiers that don't fear death and aren't missed when they are slain as they are already dead.
Building better beholders could be fun! I love them but they always just seem so cartoonish to use, would love something experimenting with their more alien nature. Also: kobolds!
Hey Kyle, what are your opinions on soft worldbuilding in RPGs? How might you let go of historical, political and cultural detail in your game to instead create an experience that explores emotion more than immersion- without it feeling ill-thought out? Think Ghibli, as opposed to Tolkein.
Well, I'm not really sure I buy in to the idea that Soft and Hard Worldbuilding is a useful distinction, but I'm not super familiar with the concept. I think all Worldbuilding, just like any art element, needs to spring from design constrains. If you want an experience that focuses on interpersonal relationships, then you need to make sure that everything you put into your work points back to the central design outcome.
Little bit of a nitpick at 5:25. Pig meat wouldn't be rare at all in the city. In the medieval period, there were more pigs in the cities than in the countryside. The pigs ate the trash humans didn't want to eat, and essentially turned into meat.
I'd love to see your take on my traditional animals as enemies. I am running my first campaign in a swamp and I am trying to think of ways to make crocodiles or other beginner friendly enemies more interesting.
A couple things you missed that I think can be really interesting: 1-Think in Boroughs!!! Boroughs are VITAL for medieval cities, even for relatively small tows! Come to the Pueblos Blancos here in the mountainrange of Cadiz Province and you'll see most were cut in half by 2 distinct boroughs even back during the middle ages. Why is this so vital? well, you see, medieval cities aren't cities like modern people understand them, they're more like a federated collection of boroughs, each of which is kind of its own separate city which all just so happened to get mushed together by virtue of being on the same place. Kind of like a colonial organism. So how do boroughs work? It's simple really! Boroughs are like eukariotic cells. And cells primarily have 2 things, a NUCLEUS and a MITOCHONDRIA. That is, something that TAKES DECISSIONS (a BRAIN of sorts) and something that TURNS NUTRIENTS INTO FOOD (a STOMACH so to speak), in the middle ages the BRAIN was a PARISH, and the STOMACH was the PLAZA. (Using all caps for key words to keep track.) It's simple really! Every borough had 1 PLAZA where you could find a market, or inn, or food shop (it depends on how much food was imported and producef, how much people lived there, and how close they were to a borough with a bigger market. For example: Small 1 borough villages typically produced their owm food, so they only had an inn for travelers and people who didn't cook, a highly populous borough typically had a commercial main streat or proper market, while a highly industrial one usually only had taverns for the workers while depending on neighboring borough's markets for proper food intake), and 1 PARISH (which not only served a religious function, but also served as the place where Assemblys were called, the stairs where rulers' messangers came to scream the changes in legislation or new orders, etc. Again depending on borough you could get something as impressive as a cathedral or monastery, or something as small as a local altar. Also to note, non-religious equivalents are pretty much nonexistent (people claim Greek Agoras would fit, but they usually had altars in them, so they,re still religious) but for fantasy you could make one, like using a town hall or hero's statue if the town is atheistic, it's weird as hell but yknow, not any weirder than firebreathing wheel shaped bone golems with wheel tentacles, and I for one won't let "it's weird" from stopping me. Now this composition may look needless. But when dealing with local factions it can be vital. Not only do Boroughs let you divide the regions, but they let you start mapping how factions interact with the town. For example, lets say you have a town like my hometown, Cadiz Capital, which has one "sea gate" (docks) divided amongst "El Muelle" (commerical docks) and "Astilleros" (industrial docks), a "land gate" (the literal land bridge connecting it to the rest of Cadiz Province) which back in the middle ages sported massive Glacis (defensive structures) the "extramuros" area where people who live outside the walls reside, "la viña" (a literal vineyard, well now it's been urbanized but back then it was a vineyard), "el populo" (the place where the lower classes that worked on other boroughs reside), and "Santa Maria", which lets say is the central borough because that's where the Cathedrals are (yes, plural, Cadiz has 2, tho the Old Cathedral is technically a parish now... that's a long story), also note if this looks long... Cadiz actually has 31 Boroughs in total. I'm ABRIDGING THE HELL OUT OF THIS. Well... If we got this few selection of boroughs to form a fantast city on their own. How would it work? -El Muelle would DECIDEDLY be the rich area. It has not only the commercial docks but also the warehouses and markets where trade is decided. It is full of houses which have towers for burgers to find incoming vessels and brimming with life at almost all times of the day. It's unlikely a single faction has managed to get a hold here, instead being more of a battleground, the Burger's private thugs would beat the shit out of anyone who gets in their way, so unless they have unified under a single banner, this is where other factions send you to raid, and any job you get from here comes from the burgers or port authority. -Astilleros on the othet hand is a lot more industrial, Burgers care about their boats, of course, and so does the navy, but aside from that workers are kind of on their own, and not exactly happy about it. This IS one where the ruling faction is easier to spot. You either have Criminals, or Collectives, so let's focuse on the second: Irl it was the Cofradias (basically the medieval spanish equivalent to labor unions), but you can change it for any equivalent. Either way, whatever faction rules here does so by feeding off the workers' need for collective bargain, and as such unlikely to be liked by literally anyone, even criminals, they're a wart on EVERYONE's ass, smugglers can't threaten workers if they're there, burgers can't press gang if they risk having their ships sabotaged by the union, the army can't push them too hard without fear of them retaliating with a very poorly timed strike in the middle of a war, etc. But if they exist it's probably because they learned to adapt. In the case of the Spanish Cofradias, they used certain laws regarding religious practices to meet legally and allied with the Santas Hermandades (peasant's militias which also used religious law to legitimate their existance and later would become Spain's police force... And indeed the first state police force in European History) for protection. -Puerta Tierra: The Glacis themselves are of course highly militarized, so just treat them as a massive castle, while the rest is more interesting. It is a commercial area much like El Muelle as land trade comes through here, but far less important as the business area is El Muelle, so criminality is also considerably higher (in our case the Cuevas de Maria Moco were a warring zone between multiple Gypsy clans vying for control of the area, tho none managed to succeed), and some industrial expansion is done towards this area, namely the kind of industry people DON'T want near, which just exhacerbates the poverty. This area really only has 2 possible factions controling it. Either a police force cracked down on it, or the thieve's/smuggler's guild took over. -Santa Maria (the central borough), this is where you find the nominal powers, be it old nobiliary houses or religious entities, usually both. In Cadiz's case, the religious had more influence than the nobles due to (will continue later gtg)
Yep! This is all good stuff! But there is only so much I can put into a 10 minute video. Please don't think that when I make a video, I believe I'm saying all there is to say on the subject.
@@mapcrow Oh I know that well, don't worry, I know well how time limits feel, just felt like adding stuff for those who might read the comments because if someone is reading the comments chances are that's exactly what they want and I love this topic! Also I just realized I added way too many examples (and way too long winded) so jumping to the other points: 2-Preparing buildings: Trying to prepare every place players will go to is insanity and probably only possible through massive railroading. But maps are really useful specially for RPGs that depend on grids, and most of us aren't gods of improv. Solution? Welcome to McDonalds! We clone burgers... I mean buildings. Yeah turns out looking at historical buildings from specific regions and with certain uses, their layout tended to be almost the same. Decorations and size change. But wether an administrative building is organizing the wharfs of a set of docks, armies of the royal corps, or dragon breeding for the riders of mount firesnake, it's gonna need roughly the same ratio of offices, big cheeses, clerks, etc. It can be simply stretched by copypaste. Similarly when planning a rich guy's home, sure things will change, but they all have very similar areas for serfs, private rooms, work rooms, area for the hall, etc. Sure, say, Cadiz's Casas Palacio have their roof changed for a lookout tower and open ceiling access, while the Beeshops of the Hexagon Cult might have that area used for a larva nursery and Warchief Grondax of the Lava-Ogres probably just stuck the biggest, coolest skull totem he could up there. Similarly, the study of one of our Cargadores de Indias would be straight out of your list of seafarer studies, with plenty of charts, books, a globe, probably some obscure trinket for flavor like a mummified finger he bought from the bat-elves of the gloomy coast. But it's the same. Meanwhile the honorable Beeshop's comes from the list of religious places, with some holy hexagons, a prayer bench and some obligatory self-torture devices, and Warchief Grondax can have something out of the tribal list with his bigol lootpile or maybe you wanna show they're more intelligent than they seem by having a proper military officer's room, but probably changing all the books for stone tablets, as the "lava" part of "lava-ogres" would make organic material hard to deal with. Point is, you can keep lists of generic places and generic traits, and then combine both along a list of small specific details from the culture you're in right now and wind up pulling very impressive locations in very short amounts of time. The "borough" system also helps here, as it helps you classify how the culture sees social interaction and establish a smaller list of kinds of buildings players would go to. It works pretty well for me and I SUCK at improv so really recommend it to rookies. 3-Finally, and to go further on point 2. Don't be scared of pulling a Pokemon and having Nurse Joy and Officer Jane runing around. I swear newbies waste so much time thinking about innkeepers, guards, etc. Look guys I know you want the city to feel like it's not just NPCs. But my god you will GO INSANE before you finish even 1 street. Just make a general stereotype of how guards will be, add a mood modifier, like guards in the shite boroughs are probably on edge while guards on noble homes are probably snobby, and wing it. Focus on the important characters. For 1 campaign I had every single innkeeper be a balding 40yo buff white dude with a thick bri'ish accent, which just so happens to be an accent I SUCK at, I even named them all Chuck just to see if it mattered. And I swear they didn't even notice until they tried to return to the 5th town, and when I told them they were banned from the inn after last time's mess they tried recalling what they had done. THAT is what got them to realize I was copy-pasting people. You can make this work waaaaay easier than you think.
Oh and I forgot #4 most importantly: Historical/Cultural PARALLELS (which not COPIES) Are a great way to add personality!!! For example, those suuuuper long roofs of disney castles are very typical of northern europe. Why? Because they protect from snow, and keep ir from blocking roof access. Meanwhile mediterranean forts rarely have any roof at all, because we don't see much snow over here. So if your culture lives on these regions, knowing what roofs to use can be really good if you're doing any illustrations or deeper descriptions. Another one that may be more relevant, Andalusian Patios are a modification or roman home layout which grew on this area because of necesity. Arid climate and poor comunication meant the potted plants typical of them were great at making the otherwise scarce food tollerable due to spices, and the more communal living conditions made them ideal for gatherings, plus the central well they all have is again due to heat and arid conditions. If say your culture lives in caves, then there's probably no need for the wells nor for the roof opening for light to enter, but you can copy the other aspects if you have a communal people with low food variations. Yknow, things like that.
Basically everything in the video works for Modern cities too. What do you want your game to be about, what resources come in, what biproducts result, and who is involved with those.
How come your pencil is always so stubby? I tend to sharpen my pencil into a deadly point. I like to play around and draw, but my line work really sucks. I'm just curious if there is a logic behind it.
Sure thing! Firstly, I just like a thicker line weight. Secondly, it helps the drawing show up on camera better. Thirdly, I push down pretty hard in general, so a sharp point doesn’t last long. Fourthly, it it’s a finished piece for a published work, I’ll probably ink it with a micron.
My most recent campaign is a city! My recommendations to any fellow dms building a city is to not make a bunch of specific locations-let your players fill out the map! You should focus on making factions and characters. You can never make every building that your players are going to enter, but you can put interesting characters in their way.
I agree! I think collective world building is the way to go for groups that would enjoy it!!
this is so true, my players are in a city as well. After every session i read out a little recap of their adventure flavored as a story on a newspaper, with a sneak peek into future event. My players figured that if they go to the editorial and find the author they’d get more answers on their killer😅😂. So i had to make a whole location, new npcs, etc. It made for one of the most tense set pieces we’ve had so far.
If there's one thing I can advise to you world builders out there:
Connect your cities to the larger world!
If you have something unique in your city, why is it unique to this place? How does this city get resources? How is trading going? Do they have any alliances?
The best thing you can do to connect your city to the rest of the world is to have a few factions from outside the city inside it! Maybe splinters and offshoots of those places, or ambassadors or even spies...
TLDR: just a few references to other places in the world just makes a city feel so much more alive and realized. It's a good way to add detail without overwhelming yourself by creating 30 new factions.
So... Yeah!
I strongly agree with this!
I’ve found that things like foreign embassies, imported goods stores, and maybe even racially-divided districts can help the players determine what goes on beyond the walls and how the city fits into the bigger world.
The agromancer is such a dope idea hahaha. I imagine that their thralls would also make good compost. Once they've run out of steam/lost control of a zombie (idk how necromancy works in d&d) it just collapses where it was working, providing one last contribution to the farm.
Man I'm in love with your channel. I think a building better demiliches would be really awesome, right now they just feel like a watered down version of the lich but have soo much potential.
Oh! I'll add it to the list, but it sounds like I'll have to really puzzle out a new take on them! haha
@@mapcrow You could play on the etymology of demi and have it be literally half of a lich's body that can symbiotically attach itself to hosts as a kind of conjoined caster chimaera or something like that- I always go to the word itself's characteristics/history when looking for new takes
Your interpretation of the city as an organism with its own metabolism is wonderful.
I will make great use of it probably every single time i develop a permanently-inhabited location from now on.
Heck yeah!! I first heard about that idea from a Grant Morrison comic called the Invicibles!
I’m literally building the next city my players are heading to right now and this video was perfect! Thanks for the tips!
Glad I could help!
I love the little information that is crucial for a city like where the junk goes, or where the material comes from, Also definitely going add dinning cult on my next campaign (love the idea of rich nobles having an appetite. Like a side quest in zelda botw 😅)
Ha! Yeah! I think that kinda BotW sidequest NPC design is great at the table!
I don't know if I'm ever going to use any of these tutorials, but my god are they soothing to watch and listen to
I too am just getting to the cities of my little worldbuilding project -- your timing is wonderful, so either you're reading the SEO tea leaves perfectly or just all of us are on the same wavelength right now.
Ha! Just lucky timing!! Good luck with your project!!
I am literally prepping my blades inspired 5e game for this weekend, and despite the weeks of work so far, you've given me even more to think about!
Ha! Happy to help! What a coincidence!!
I've been stuck trying to create a fantasy metropolis for a new campaign idea I had (where the players will be the actual police solving the crimes, rather than vice versa for once!) for so long, so this is extremely well-timed!
I ADORE your resources. Thank you so much! Your experience and love for the craft really shows.
Thank you so much! I'm so glad that comes across!!
I’m conscripting a few friends of mine to help me write my book, but I’m doing it through the lense of a DND campaign to help add some randomness and break writers block. It will probably spend a hot minute in a massive city, so this video is a big help. Thanks for the informative videos!
Always happy to see someone bringing up Blades. I'm in the process of writing for the next Blades session and I like this client/resource way of mapping factions, so I'm using that this afternoon. Cheers!
Right on! Blades is great!!
Magical Industrial Revolution and Genial Jack are both incredible. Thanks for this video.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Cities can get pretty intense for Worldbuilders. They're able to be their own micro-worlds themselves if they're big enough. 🙂
~ Adam
I found your channel In the middle of making my campaign and continent for the game and your vids have helped me get an idea of how it is going to work out so I wanted to say thanks
Love this worldbuilding series. For building better monsters, I'd like to see your take on a classic monster, like a griffin or a vampire. I love what you did with dragons where you took a familiar, almost overdone monster and did something new with it
Right on! I'll add those to the list!
I had the same problem of my players wanting to stick to 5e instead of a Blades hack, so I feel you. I forced their hands, and after two rocky first sessions ("Please don't make me think about my character" / "Rolls aren't fun unless I'm killing shit" / "So I only get xp for acting like my character?!?") I doubled the amount of pure action and dice rolling in the third and it seems like they'll be willing to meet me halfway (as long as I don't expect much actual roleplay, lol).
I really love your channel, and this is the first advertised product I've actually used based on a channel recommendation/ad, so I'm actually doubly grateful!
Damn, I stumbled upon this just as I am beginning to plan a city campaign inspired by blades in the dark! What a helpful coincidence
I’m so happy you mentioned Dael and the Monarch’s Factory! I feel her work is fantastic but she doesn’t get as much call out as people like Colville. The city video is my template for city’s now
Great introduction to organic, emergent city design. Amazing how relevant Wolman still is. It would be nice to have a follow up/debrief for this campaign and some of your others (maybe I just haven't found them) talking through the successes and lessons learned. As a fellow game designer once (once) fortunate enough to teach an intro to game design course, I know you've got the playtest debrief in your curriculum...
Also, the illustrious John Harper seems quite open to interviews, and wouldn't it be a joy to interview him on city design or that moment when art splices into mechanics or pretty much anything else? It would be an amazing conversation.
I ran a couple of Urban/Underdark campaign centered around the PC's building a kind of company in a crime-dominated city for a few years during the pandemic (I ran online of course). That campaign is one of my favorites but I never mapped the city in a visual way 'cause I wasn't confident in my drawing skills. Blades in the Dark and Veins of the Earth mashed up very well but I used FateCore to run the game 'cause I wanted to keep the mechanics simple. That said, I came up with LOADS of NPCs, factions and stuff and I LOVe the city as it developed over the course of two campaigns in a sequence that took roughly 3-5 years of in-world time and included a major industrial shift due to the PCs essentially starting a magical-oil firm and developing a system for trading it. Gosh, I get excited just typing about that city. It can be super rewarding, so good luck!
I'm building something very similar with a hacked (very hacked) version of blades. the PCs start by getting a small business of their choice, and get slowly into the criminal underbelly as their business faces more and more criminal threats.
looking forward to playing with PC business owners, and seeing what schemes they come up with.
Man!! That campaign sounds awesome!! Veins of the Earth is an awesome book too!!
Sounds like a cool premise!!
You are very well spoken and do a great job of explaining things!!! Your videos give me a lot of comfort and inspiration! Thank you!
Where was this video three years ago when I was planning my campaign?
Seriously, love your work and will certainly be stealing this
That's what it's there for! Cheers!
Your videos have been a great inspiration so far. Today I've started making my own prompts and creating factions. It's going smoothly. Thank you.
That's wonderful to hear! Cheers!!
I discovered your channel recently and I wanted to say I absolutely love the content, and I really appreciate how digestible it is!
I'm glad you worked with World Anvil- I found them years ago and thought that was an amazing site, but i forgot the name of it. So thank you for reminding me!
HA! What a coincidence!!
Loved this! This reminded me a lot of one of my fav D&D streams, Shadow of Drakkkenheim by the Dungeon Dudes
Great video! It would be really nice to see you expand upon the mapping for cities.
Thanks!! I'll keep that in mind! In the meantime, you might check out my video on Village Crawls.
MAAN your work is so inspiring! It feels like you are immune to the blank canvas syndrome!!!
Yo love your stuff so far. I’ve only seen two or three vids but I like the simplicity.
Great idea to share about City Metabolism. Plenty to Digest about that
Glad it was helpful!
This is awesome.
Been struggling figuring out the machinations of how a big monolithic xenophobic society can lead people outside to be on their own, etc cetera.
Your video really helped with the big city problem.
Great minds think a like, I'm running a urban campain in the summer for a group and this will really help me plan thank you
Glad it was helpful! Good luck with your game!!
Yooooo Johnathan Newell
Personally my favorite city of his is still Hex, the gazetteer is gonna be insane when it comes out
Heck yeah it is!!
Awesome my dude. I'm starting to really love your channel! Keep up the great content.
Under a minute into the video and just subscribed since I heard mention of Blades in the Dark 😀
Regarding your agrimancer: If one is looking for artwork, other inspiration or possible some mechanics in that line, I'd recommend looking into the Golgari guild in MTG's Ravnica setting. There's some considerable overlap and Ravnica isn't just full of fascinating factions, there's also an official 5e supplement for it
Love these thank you
Glad you like them! Thanks for watching!
If you put together everything you've ever written for or drawn on this channel, and slapped it all into a book with some descriptions and examples, I would Kickstart the hell out of it.
Just sayin. Loving the work and I hope you stay well.
Ha! Thank you! I think there is a big difference between, talking about things in a 10 minute video and printing them in a book for use at a table. It's a very different craft, and I'd want to team up with a designer who can really bring their own skills too! It's something I'm thinking about, but probably not super soon.
Amazing video, thanks! The city metabolism idea is really useful.
This is gonna help me develop a few cities.
Thank you! 😊
Great content. For the city layout itself i copy old maps of cities. Like I'll find a map of manchester in the 1400s and copy the streets and rivers. I try to keep with the layout of churches, castles, the market street, etc.
It works well.
this video came at the perfect time :)
Ha! Awesome!! Happy to help!!
Would love to see how you would do a constant/region map, a la I only have vague location ideas but nothing else
Judge Dredd megacity, but fantasy. nice idea
also i love your simplistic drawing style
Dude, really great conversation!! Could you more deities from building patheons? I really loved the last video
Possibly! I would want to make sure I have something else to say about them or a new approach to drawing them, but I'll keep it in mind!
I'd love to see your take on Gibbering Mouthers, or Squamous Spewers.
Right on! I'll add em to the list!
I was going to ask why people aren't eating monster meat if there are so many of them outside the walls. Maybe beast meat is for the rich and monster meat is all the poor could afford. Or maybe they don't know it's monster meat and it keeps causing salt-in-wounds still mutations.
Hey can you do Teifling for the monster video, please? I thought of the idea that teiflings as ancestors of people who broke a deal with a demon or devil. I thought you might like that Idea.
I'll add them to the list! Cheers!!
This reminds me how much I love Blades in the Dark as a setting (well, Doskvol).
Please continue with your videos 🤩
Thank you! New one today!
Great video. I really like your world building series. You said that you would start Building Better Monsters, up again. I would really like it if you built better Flumphs or Liches. Very excited for what is coming up next.
Thanks for the idea! Cheers!
World building cosmology/planes? Great vid, thanks!
Great suggestion!
Love the channel! This is a selfish request but I love mountains and mountainous regions and I’d love to hear your take on them! Particularly recently I’m having trouble figuring out how to map a regional area with a lot of emphasis on the vertical (think cities carved into cliffs, that sort of thing).
If you look up my video on Cross Hatching or the Reverse Dungeon, that'll be a good demonstration of how I handle verticality with isometric maps! Cheers!!
My go to for cities is Judges Guild.
Great video as usual! i'd love to see a better sphinxes video
Thanks for the idea! I'll add it to the list!!
That typo on the card is real awkward :P
Necro-farmers? Cool!
I have a similar mining guild in my setting. Necromancers are it's only living "employees". All others are zombies and skeletons working down in the mines :D
*agro-mancers!
Heck yeah! I think the undead make for an interesting metaphor for labor practices, kinda like robots.
@@mapcrow I develop software (ro)bots for a living and my train of thought was the same :D
The dinner cult reminds me of the church of dragon communion from Elden Ring
Love this idea, a campaign in one setting. I wonder how it could be modified to be like a private school setting to go even smaller and change things from just stealing valuables.
Yeah! I think you could easily take what I've done and tweak it to be an investigation game. I think I would really change the setting entirely to be about a private school, but that's just me.
I really enjoy the city-building game Ex Novo by Martin Nerukar and Konstantinos Dimopoulos. It's particularly good for generating histories and timelines.
When you talked about your city not getting much meat, my first thought was insect-farming. Urban factory-farming of crickets and grasshoppers is something people have tried in the real world, and it would be another way of dealing with waste, beyond throwing stuff in the river.
"I really want to try this other, super interesting system, but my players have made it clear they only want to play 5e". That really is how it be.
I see it, comparing a city to a living organism.
In ancient Rome the sewer was called the cloaca. That is also the name given to the end of the digestive system of a frog in my biology textbook.
this is an old video so i severely doubt anyone will see this, but i’m currently building a campaign that takes place within a prison city where the king ships all the undesirable people and basically forces them into labor, does anyone have any tips?
I mean a "boring" thing 5e offers for the question on how to feed a city in a self-sustainable way is the Plant Growth spell. All you need are enough spellcasters capable of casting this 3rd-level spell to cover the entirety of the farmlands within the outer walls in a reasonable time and presto, the agricultural yield of the farms has been doubled.
The area covered by that spell is a circle with a radius of 1/2 mile, so with an area of roughly 0,78 sq miles or 2 km², which is around 202 hectares or 499 acres... I checked some sources on how much space a person needs to be fed for a year with a non-vegetarian diet of MODERN STANDARDS is slightly less than an acre (which includes storage space, pathways, etc). To achieve genuine food security, let's double that amount and say that it takes two acres instead. A single farmer can easily take care of four acres of land without help. Now Plant Growth would double the yield, of course, so one acre would then actually suffice (and for simplicity's sake the fact that the area needed was originally just under an acre, we now round up to accomodate that extra yield and the storage necessary).
In 1328 Paris had a population of ~200k inhabitants and its city wall covered an area of 439 hectares/1085 acres/4.39 km²/1.695 sq miles. Paris was incredibly dense in terms of its population, with multi-story buildings being common around the time. So let's presume half the population, which is about the population of Waterdeep proper. To safely feed 100k people, you need 100000 acres of land, or 405 km²/156 sq miles. That is about a quarter of the area of Greater London and it will take a single Lvl 5 druid using two castings of Plant Growth per day 200 days to cover that area to produce these yields.
Now presuming a predominantly potato-based diet, like how 1840s Irish farmers had to deal with, where they ate around 14 pounds of potatoes per day... That means roughly 2.5 short tons of potatoes per year, and an acre of potatoes can easily produce 25 tons with modern methods, so an acre is enough to feed 10 people using this method. So assuming a high yield, nutrition-rich base crop like the potato serving as the foundation of the city's diet, then the area can be reduced noticably, maybe even to half that area. That way even feeding Paris with its actual 1328 population would only require not THAT much extra land.
Please note that I did some BAD math in an earlier version of this comment, sorry about that!
love this video thanks
I think a building better fiends/celestials could be cool, I just feel like the possibilities to make such interesting characters, whether they’re friends or foes, is just endless
Better monsters idea: better grim reapers
Hmmmm!!! How does one fight a grim reaper....
I personally would love to see some more unique giants, something detached from the heavenly forces they represent.
My idea would be to base it off the 7 deadly sins as I feel it adds a bit of a folklore feel to them, but interested in seeing what your take would be on these big sacks of hit points.
Thanks! Yeah, Giants are on the list!
Waterdeep Dragon Heist is just “the caper for the sack of gold” but in italics
They could also send hunting parties outside of the city walls to "harvest" the edible monsters.
I've been running a game in a city for going on three years. I feel like playing on social dynamics and status has been quite fun, but not a game for people that want combat every few sessions. It's that odd feeling of only now feeling prepared once it's all almost done.
Ha! When I feel too prepared, I get bored. Haha
This is timely
Ha! Happy to help!
This is amazing!
Very helpfull indeed and I will put this into practice, but...
With what video of yours should I start? There are many! And I'm kinda new here and I feel a bit lost
Look through the playlists and pick one that sounds interesting. Very few of my videos rely on previous videos to make sense (I hope). The earlier videos tend be less-to-the-point.
The dinner cult could have the motto 'Miror quid ad prandium'.
@Map Crow can you do Soemthing cool for a city in the sky? Like lore wise and maybe even a dungeon/adventure to go with it?
I’ll write do the idea! But there is a big difference between making a video and making an adventure. A video takes a day and adventures take weeks to make.
@@mapcrow I understand. I have loved the idea for a long time but having trouble implementing it. To be honest I’m not even sure where to start.
@@demongustavditters7150 Oh I think I see. Are you stuck with starting to write an rpg adventure to publish for other folks? I could do a video about that!
@@mapcrow I have thought a little about publishing it. If I can keep the inspiration alive. Tbh It started out as a home brew world. And still is currently. I’ve worked out some history and the size of the place, but I’m also trying to run other games to get a better feel of what exact size, mechanics, and feel I wanna have. It’s main non mechanical inspirations are Beserk, Elden Ring, and I’m having trouble remembering the third one atm, it’s been a looong process with a lot of me sleeping on things, so to speak. Heavy emphasis on gritty survival and environmental barriers, hence the Elden Ring inspiration.
Edit- third inspiration is the Witcher. I like the idea that there’s THE (insert x creature), and unique ways to deal with them.
@@demongustavditters7150 Sounds like some cool stuff! I when I make things, I try to start by taking a close look at the resources and books that I actually use first, then try to design around that. Though a bunch of my design is done in these videos and not in a zine or pdf. But I try to keep each step of my work bite-sized and module, so I can show off each part as its finish, and I don't have to wait until a giant 100 page book is completed to share it. That keeps me going on longer things!
At the very beginning g of the video I’m just thinking ok Paris nice
Bodies going into tombs is a waste of a resource for a magical city under siege. Build a Necromancer Officer Corps that takes the dead and leads them against the monsters outside as soldiers that don't fear death and aren't missed when they are slain as they are already dead.
Only the nobles are buried. The poor go to work as undead.
I believe this is the first time when the vlogger honestly describes the reasons for the integration.
Yeah, I stopped doing it after this run. Didn’t fit my vision for the channel.
Building better beholders could be fun! I love them but they always just seem so cartoonish to use, would love something experimenting with their more alien nature. Also: kobolds!
Hey Kyle, what are your opinions on soft worldbuilding in RPGs? How might you let go of historical, political and cultural detail in your game to instead create an experience that explores emotion more than immersion- without it feeling ill-thought out? Think Ghibli, as opposed to Tolkein.
Well, I'm not really sure I buy in to the idea that Soft and Hard Worldbuilding is a useful distinction, but I'm not super familiar with the concept. I think all Worldbuilding, just like any art element, needs to spring from design constrains. If you want an experience that focuses on interpersonal relationships, then you need to make sure that everything you put into your work points back to the central design outcome.
Little bit of a nitpick at 5:25. Pig meat wouldn't be rare at all in the city. In the medieval period, there were more pigs in the cities than in the countryside. The pigs ate the trash humans didn't want to eat, and essentially turned into meat.
I'd love to see your take on my traditional animals as enemies. I am running my first campaign in a swamp and I am trying to think of ways to make crocodiles or other beginner friendly enemies more interesting.
Hmmm!! I'll add it to the list! Depending on the game, that could be really rad!!
9:40 You should read Dungeon Meshi.
I have! One of my favorites!
I recommend becoming a writer since you can do perfect fantasy. (I'd definitely read it if you did). 😁
I did write and draw a graphic novel called The Savage Beard of She Dwarf, it was published in 2020 by Oni Press!!
@@mapcrowThat's cool; I have been learning to write, but I still haven't gotten the hang of it.
I have a whole class based around eating monsters to get their traits lol
A couple things you missed that I think can be really interesting:
1-Think in Boroughs!!! Boroughs are VITAL for medieval cities, even for relatively small tows! Come to the Pueblos Blancos here in the mountainrange of Cadiz Province and you'll see most were cut in half by 2 distinct boroughs even back during the middle ages.
Why is this so vital? well, you see, medieval cities aren't cities like modern people understand them, they're more like a federated collection of boroughs, each of which is kind of its own separate city which all just so happened to get mushed together by virtue of being on the same place. Kind of like a colonial organism.
So how do boroughs work? It's simple really! Boroughs are like eukariotic cells. And cells primarily have 2 things, a NUCLEUS and a MITOCHONDRIA. That is, something that TAKES DECISSIONS (a BRAIN of sorts) and something that TURNS NUTRIENTS INTO FOOD (a STOMACH so to speak), in the middle ages the BRAIN was a PARISH, and the STOMACH was the PLAZA. (Using all caps for key words to keep track.) It's simple really! Every borough had 1 PLAZA where you could find a market, or inn, or food shop (it depends on how much food was imported and producef, how much people lived there, and how close they were to a borough with a bigger market. For example: Small 1 borough villages typically produced their owm food, so they only had an inn for travelers and people who didn't cook, a highly populous borough typically had a commercial main streat or proper market, while a highly industrial one usually only had taverns for the workers while depending on neighboring borough's markets for proper food intake), and 1 PARISH (which not only served a religious function, but also served as the place where Assemblys were called, the stairs where rulers' messangers came to scream the changes in legislation or new orders, etc. Again depending on borough you could get something as impressive as a cathedral or monastery, or something as small as a local altar. Also to note, non-religious equivalents are pretty much nonexistent (people claim Greek Agoras would fit, but they usually had altars in them, so they,re still religious) but for fantasy you could make one, like using a town hall or hero's statue if the town is atheistic, it's weird as hell but yknow, not any weirder than firebreathing wheel shaped bone golems with wheel tentacles, and I for one won't let "it's weird" from stopping me.
Now this composition may look needless. But when dealing with local factions it can be vital. Not only do Boroughs let you divide the regions, but they let you start mapping how factions interact with the town. For example, lets say you have a town like my hometown, Cadiz Capital, which has one "sea gate" (docks) divided amongst "El Muelle" (commerical docks) and "Astilleros" (industrial docks), a "land gate" (the literal land bridge connecting it to the rest of Cadiz Province) which back in the middle ages sported massive Glacis (defensive structures) the "extramuros" area where people who live outside the walls reside, "la viña" (a literal vineyard, well now it's been urbanized but back then it was a vineyard), "el populo" (the place where the lower classes that worked on other boroughs reside), and "Santa Maria", which lets say is the central borough because that's where the Cathedrals are (yes, plural, Cadiz has 2, tho the Old Cathedral is technically a parish now... that's a long story), also note if this looks long... Cadiz actually has 31 Boroughs in total. I'm ABRIDGING THE HELL OUT OF THIS. Well... If we got this few selection of boroughs to form a fantast city on their own. How would it work?
-El Muelle would DECIDEDLY be the rich area. It has not only the commercial docks but also the warehouses and markets where trade is decided. It is full of houses which have towers for burgers to find incoming vessels and brimming with life at almost all times of the day. It's unlikely a single faction has managed to get a hold here, instead being more of a battleground, the Burger's private thugs would beat the shit out of anyone who gets in their way, so unless they have unified under a single banner, this is where other factions send you to raid, and any job you get from here comes from the burgers or port authority.
-Astilleros on the othet hand is a lot more industrial, Burgers care about their boats, of course, and so does the navy, but aside from that workers are kind of on their own, and not exactly happy about it. This IS one where the ruling faction is easier to spot. You either have Criminals, or Collectives, so let's focuse on the second: Irl it was the Cofradias (basically the medieval spanish equivalent to labor unions), but you can change it for any equivalent. Either way, whatever faction rules here does so by feeding off the workers' need for collective bargain, and as such unlikely to be liked by literally anyone, even criminals, they're a wart on EVERYONE's ass, smugglers can't threaten workers if they're there, burgers can't press gang if they risk having their ships sabotaged by the union, the army can't push them too hard without fear of them retaliating with a very poorly timed strike in the middle of a war, etc. But if they exist it's probably because they learned to adapt. In the case of the Spanish Cofradias, they used certain laws regarding religious practices to meet legally and allied with the Santas Hermandades (peasant's militias which also used religious law to legitimate their existance and later would become Spain's police force... And indeed the first state police force in European History) for protection.
-Puerta Tierra: The Glacis themselves are of course highly militarized, so just treat them as a massive castle, while the rest is more interesting. It is a commercial area much like El Muelle as land trade comes through here, but far less important as the business area is El Muelle, so criminality is also considerably higher (in our case the Cuevas de Maria Moco were a warring zone between multiple Gypsy clans vying for control of the area, tho none managed to succeed), and some industrial expansion is done towards this area, namely the kind of industry people DON'T want near, which just exhacerbates the poverty. This area really only has 2 possible factions controling it. Either a police force cracked down on it, or the thieve's/smuggler's guild took over.
-Santa Maria (the central borough), this is where you find the nominal powers, be it old nobiliary houses or religious entities, usually both. In Cadiz's case, the religious had more influence than the nobles due to (will continue later gtg)
Yep! This is all good stuff! But there is only so much I can put into a 10 minute video. Please don't think that when I make a video, I believe I'm saying all there is to say on the subject.
@@mapcrow Oh I know that well, don't worry, I know well how time limits feel, just felt like adding stuff for those who might read the comments because if someone is reading the comments chances are that's exactly what they want and I love this topic!
Also I just realized I added way too many examples (and way too long winded) so jumping to the other points:
2-Preparing buildings: Trying to prepare every place players will go to is insanity and probably only possible through massive railroading. But maps are really useful specially for RPGs that depend on grids, and most of us aren't gods of improv. Solution?
Welcome to McDonalds! We clone burgers... I mean buildings. Yeah turns out looking at historical buildings from specific regions and with certain uses, their layout tended to be almost the same. Decorations and size change. But wether an administrative building is organizing the wharfs of a set of docks, armies of the royal corps, or dragon breeding for the riders of mount firesnake, it's gonna need roughly the same ratio of offices, big cheeses, clerks, etc. It can be simply stretched by copypaste.
Similarly when planning a rich guy's home, sure things will change, but they all have very similar areas for serfs, private rooms, work rooms, area for the hall, etc. Sure, say, Cadiz's Casas Palacio have their roof changed for a lookout tower and open ceiling access, while the Beeshops of the Hexagon Cult might have that area used for a larva nursery and Warchief Grondax of the Lava-Ogres probably just stuck the biggest, coolest skull totem he could up there.
Similarly, the study of one of our Cargadores de Indias would be straight out of your list of seafarer studies, with plenty of charts, books, a globe, probably some obscure trinket for flavor like a mummified finger he bought from the bat-elves of the gloomy coast. But it's the same. Meanwhile the honorable Beeshop's comes from the list of religious places, with some holy hexagons, a prayer bench and some obligatory self-torture devices, and Warchief Grondax can have something out of the tribal list with his bigol lootpile or maybe you wanna show they're more intelligent than they seem by having a proper military officer's room, but probably changing all the books for stone tablets, as the "lava" part of "lava-ogres" would make organic material hard to deal with.
Point is, you can keep lists of generic places and generic traits, and then combine both along a list of small specific details from the culture you're in right now and wind up pulling very impressive locations in very short amounts of time. The "borough" system also helps here, as it helps you classify how the culture sees social interaction and establish a smaller list of kinds of buildings players would go to. It works pretty well for me and I SUCK at improv so really recommend it to rookies.
3-Finally, and to go further on point 2. Don't be scared of pulling a Pokemon and having Nurse Joy and Officer Jane runing around. I swear newbies waste so much time thinking about innkeepers, guards, etc. Look guys I know you want the city to feel like it's not just NPCs. But my god you will GO INSANE before you finish even 1 street. Just make a general stereotype of how guards will be, add a mood modifier, like guards in the shite boroughs are probably on edge while guards on noble homes are probably snobby, and wing it. Focus on the important characters.
For 1 campaign I had every single innkeeper be a balding 40yo buff white dude with a thick bri'ish accent, which just so happens to be an accent I SUCK at, I even named them all Chuck just to see if it mattered. And I swear they didn't even notice until they tried to return to the 5th town, and when I told them they were banned from the inn after last time's mess they tried recalling what they had done. THAT is what got them to realize I was copy-pasting people. You can make this work waaaaay easier than you think.
Oh and I forgot #4 most importantly: Historical/Cultural PARALLELS (which not COPIES) Are a great way to add personality!!!
For example, those suuuuper long roofs of disney castles are very typical of northern europe. Why? Because they protect from snow, and keep ir from blocking roof access. Meanwhile mediterranean forts rarely have any roof at all, because we don't see much snow over here. So if your culture lives on these regions, knowing what roofs to use can be really good if you're doing any illustrations or deeper descriptions.
Another one that may be more relevant, Andalusian Patios are a modification or roman home layout which grew on this area because of necesity. Arid climate and poor comunication meant the potted plants typical of them were great at making the otherwise scarce food tollerable due to spices, and the more communal living conditions made them ideal for gatherings, plus the central well they all have is again due to heat and arid conditions. If say your culture lives in caves, then there's probably no need for the wells nor for the roof opening for light to enter, but you can copy the other aspects if you have a communal people with low food variations. Yknow, things like that.
Been working an a new fantasy Blades hack of you're interested ;)
Am I missing Dael's video? I don't see it here, not a problem the search bar works, I'm just curious
Shoot, I forgot it in the description. I just added it. Thanks fore pointing that out!!
Hey I wanna do more a modern city any ideas.
Basically everything in the video works for Modern cities too. What do you want your game to be about, what resources come in, what biproducts result, and who is involved with those.
How come your pencil is always so stubby? I tend to sharpen my pencil into a deadly point. I like to play around and draw, but my line work really sucks. I'm just curious if there is a logic behind it.
Sure thing! Firstly, I just like a thicker line weight. Secondly, it helps the drawing show up on camera better. Thirdly, I push down pretty hard in general, so a sharp point doesn’t last long. Fourthly, it it’s a finished piece for a published work, I’ll probably ink it with a micron.
@@mapcrow Thanks for the reply. I really like your art style.
Casually drew the "Attack on Titan" world as a City..
This is based on Paris.
Building a better Dwarf; Building a better Bugbear.
Thanks! I'll add them to the list!
Five years is not very long.
Druid
"sorry for the long runtime."
No, make your videos longer