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City, Dungeons & Dragons, Fantasy, House Rules, Labyrinth Lord, OSR, Random Tables, RPG, Urban
As we set up for our next Dungeons & Dragons campaign, we sat down for session zero where character concepts were developed, relationships and important places settled, and the city where the campaign would be set was built.
And to build the city I tried something new. First we sat down and figured out the specifics of the city – climate (cold), environment (swampy bogs with rough highlands), nation (the as of yet unnamed nation that controls the Satrapy that has been the political villain or rival for the last two campaigns we played), and relationship to said nation (was once the political capital, but due to an over-abundance of gods and the horrible climate and geographic isolation, the capital has been moved away).
I printed out a bunch of half-pages each with a neighbourhood or district of the city we were considering. In turn, each player took one of these cards of their choice and either placed it on the map or destroyed it. When destroying a card, the choice was made as to whether that meant the district didn’t exist at all, or whether it was found everywhere within the city.
For example, the first two cards to be destroyed were the Temple District and Hive of Scum and Villainy. Both were determined to be everywhere in the city – you can’t turn a corner without running into a temple, shrine, church or cult, let alone a beggar, cultist, smuggler or thug. However, later the palace and city walls cards were destroyed and declared completely absent – so there is no castle or fort in the city that is used as the centre of the administration of government, and if the city ever had walls they were destroyed in the last war, overrun by the city sprawl, and generally fallen down and ignored.
In the set of cards there were also two “Unusual Feature” cards that allow the player to add something… unusual… to the city. In this case a lava cenote and a giant stone head that answers any question asked of it… roughly five years later.
You can download a quick-and-dirty PDF of the districts we used here [link].
If I were to do this again, I would hold back a few cards for the DM to place as the turns went around – a few more special features, the crashed dwarven earthship, and the elven ruins.
Dyson's Dodecahedron 
What do you see as the difference between the market and the bazzar?
Not sure yet. But many cities have multiple market districts, so this was to tell them apart. In the end they are side by side, so we’ll either have a massive market district, or actually figure out a difference.
Idea:
Market might be more formal with real stalls, ‘certified’ weights and measures, perhaps a real watch to run off the pros and riff-raff, etc. Perhaps it is even a small haven away from the ‘scum and villany’ – run by someone who could enforce it.
The bazaar would have more of a lower-class flea market feel… and perhaps be on those elven ruins. Periodically, the beggars guild fights the theives guild for supremacy, food riots, and (because of the elven ruins) sometimes weird stuff just happens (random person gets polymorphed, levitated out of sight, or the whole area gets carpeted in a random flower…. but it’s the only big open space that isn’t claimed and the beggars/thieves are good at discouraging development of the space.
Market as an ongoing, permanent district with fixed shops, stalls, etc. and the bazaar as a periodic event (weekly, monthly, etc.) or catering to itinerant sellers, caravans, and the like. The market has more mundane consumables and material, and the bazaar is where one finds more exotic, questionable, contraband, or alien goods.
Could be the difference between “wholesale” and “retail”. The market could be where the barges, caravans, ships, or what have you offload the produce, goods, and materials brought in from farms, fishermen, miners, lumbermills, etc., to sell to the merchants of the city, and the bazaar is where said merchants ply their trade to the public. A crew of adventurers bringing, say, a dragon carcass into town to sell would take it to the market, not the bazaar.
Just out of curiousity, what was the reason for half page? Why not quarter page? Or business sized cards? Index cards?
1. Quick and easy to do in the 15 minutes of prep time I had. I figured quarter page would be ideal, but I didn’t have the formatting time at that moment.
2. Room to write notes on each card about locations we’re locking down in it, who lives there, etc.
Will you be drawing the city, and will it be a “Release the Kraken”?
I’ll be drawing the city, but I expect it will go through a few redraws over the duration of the campaign. We’ll see which version(s) will be released commercially.
Is there any way I can get a copy of your campaign map?
There isn’t one for this campaign yet, it will be developed as the campaign progresses. For the last campaign, the map is here: https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2017/01/31/from-winterspire-to-yoon-suin/
Clever idea. I like the destruction of the cards to represent everywhere or nowhere. Though I think I would have given each player a Unusual Feature care to use (or not) as they wished.
Reblogged this on DDOCentral.
Gets the players involved in the story and the creative process, reduces the amount of GM prep and allows for something very unique!
I may be stealing this!
Neat idea! I think this would also make for a useful random table.