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Thread: The City of Opal Island

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  1. #1
    Guild Journeyer thebax2k's Avatar
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    Jul 2007
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    Thanks for the additional background info Katerek and the nicely handcolored map. I didn't know if the city was on potentially hostile seas like Freeport or Fogdown or otherwise. Given that its in the middle of a lake that is controlled by the kingdom the city is the capital of, I would still have towers around the lower areas (and perhaps a few on the heights) that are easily accesible to the water to keep an eye out for smuggling and help enforce an evening curfew (curfews were common in cities in the middle ages, given the high level of banditry that existed, people were not out after dark unless they had to be).

    I suspected that you were using the procedural program to generate streets, the communities it creates have a distinct "look" to them. That isn't a bad thing, but the program tends to create lots of cul de sacs and wavy streets on what is flat terrain. Certainly roads and trails have followed the terrain throughout most of history, but don't go overboard with it. The island your city is on is relatively small and unless each of the levels of it somehow resembles a bmx course with moguls that we can't see , then it is likely that a grid has formed on each level as the city expanded and grew.

    I again echo Gandwarf, in that if this is the capital of a kingdom, unless its a petty kingdom with a very small population, most of that island is going to be absolutely crammed with buildings (at least the lower parts--I see your city as, in a sense, a smaller version of Ptolus, which is also on multiple levels). I don't know if there is an FLGS near where you live, but if there is, head on over and see if you can find a book from Privateer Press called Five Fingers. Its a major city spread out over several islands at the end of a delta, and nearly every island is crammed with buildings. If you have a population of 20,000 or more for your city (and most fantasy capitals I've seen (City of Greyhawk, Lankhmar, etc.) have at least 30-60,000 people), your island is going to be crammed with buildings.

    I know that's a lot of work for one map, but if this is a city your adventurers return to again and again, I'd say its worth it. One good way that you can capture the disparate communities that were settled and then merged to form the larger city is having neighborhood "clusters" with their own distinct road grid within the city. For instance, most of the city could be loosely square like (similar to Fogdown) but one small neighborhood could have a circular grid, another on a hill could be akin to a corkscrew, a humanoid ghetto could have lots of dead ends and blind alleys (the better to ambush enemies foolish enough to follow the humanoids in), a dwarven section could be almost modern appearing with a rigid adherence to a grid of equally sized blocks, and so on.

    In any event, I have been impressed with your maps and hope you keep drawing and posting them. Keep up the good work.
    Last edited by thebax2k; 05-06-2009 at 11:53 PM.

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