GM’s Toolbox by Caleb G. Building Cities, pt. 2

In my last article, we talked about the concepts behind building cities for your game. You have an infinite amount of options available to you when it comes to what is in your city and who inhabits it. No-matter what choices you make for the content of your city, you will still need a geographical foundation to frame the city in. In short, you need a map.

There are many different styles and approaches to mapping out portions of your game. Above anything else, this choice depends on your style and comfort level as GM and what your players have come to expect at the table. In future articles, we will talk about using maps in combat and creating larger maps of your game world. For now, let’s focus on maps of your cities.

Some GMs don’t use maps at all. When their players enter a city, the GM simply describes the setting in detail and answers questions as they arise. Utilizing good description and relying on the imagination (and suspension of disbelief) of your players is a crucial aspect of DnD. Players come to the table expecting to be given details that they will use to paint pictures in their minds. Given this context, you may decide you don’t need an actual map of your cities for your game. You can have notes that provide the important details such as population, race, unique city laws, available goods and services, and whatever else makes the city special. Maybe if there is a dungeon to explore or a combat encounter, you can create a smaller map for that specific purpose. It is not necessary to provide a map. DnD is a game that is all about using your imagination.

But on the other hand, it’s really fun to make a map. I like drawing up a scale map of a city for my players to pass around at the table. I feel it gives them an anchor to what I am describing and helps them become more immersed in the game. Plus, it’s something I truly enjoy drawing.

I always make use of graph paper when drawing a map. I like putting things on grids and keeping everything to the correct scale. If the city is smaller, like a farming or fishing village, I may use a 5 foot grid scale. For larger cities, the scale may translate to 20, 50, or even 100 feet to a square on my map. It all depends on how detailed I want the map to be.

For those smaller, more detailed maps, I can draw out each building, label roads, and really get into the guts of the city, so to speak. This is more useful for a city that I plan to have my PCs spend a long time in. For larger cities, this level of detail would take far too long to define, so I usually draw these maps by district. I will outline city areas for markets, shipping, temples, aristocrats, and so on.

Here is an example of one of my smaller maps of fishing village. It’s drawn to a 5′ scale. I have  specific buildings labeled, such as the Limping Hydra inn/tavern and the blacksmith’s workshop.

Here is an example of a larger map drawn with districts. It’s drawn to a 30′ scale. I still have some specific buildings labeled, like the temples and the Wizard’s guild, but I simply outlined the districts for larger more general areas like the docks, warehouses, and housing districts.

Having a scale map for your city is useful when it comes to determining how long it takes to get from one place to another. If your party splits up for whatever reason, you can more easily see where they are within the city, how long it will take for them to re-unite, or how large scale events will play out for longer combat encounters. I remember one game I played where we were attempting to infiltrate a certain temple. The GM had an incredibly detailed map prepared for us. The party had split up to accomplish various tasks. There was a festival with a parade occurring, and we were using that to cover our actions. Using the map and treating everything we did like one long encounter, the GM traced the parade through the city streets and monitored all of our PCs’ actions and interactions with NPCs. In this case, having a map is absolutely necessary

But there is another way to approach city building. I call this a “near/far” concept. You don’t need a detailed map for this. Instead, you need a list of all the important buildings and districts in your city. You may choose to identify specific temples, merchants, taverns, government buildings, libraries, and so on. For the districts, you could identify the docks, housing, commercial areas, territory controlled by a specific gang or guild, and so on. Then, you establish in generic terms how long it takes to get from one location to another. I use “near”, “far”, and “very far” just to keep things simple. As your PCs explore the city and move from one area to another, the generic terms define how long their travel time is. A “near” trip may take a few minutes while a “very far” trip may take half an hour. This depends on the size and scale of your city.

And then, to keep things interesting, you need to make a list of encounters to roll for based on the length of travel. These don’t have to be combat encounters. These could involve meeting the city guard, stumbling across an NPC in need, being pick-pocketed, and so on. Basically, things that might happen to keep the game interesting. You can even have some triggering events for side quests on the list. Or if your plot requires the PCs to search for a specific person, item, or place in the city, you can put their goal on the list with a lower probability of finding it so that they will truly have to explore the city to accomplish their tasks. Here are a few examples.

To use the chart, start on the left column (the one in grey). Pick where the PCs currently are in that column, then follow that row over to the PCs’ destination as identified in the top row (the green row). The distance identified were the column and row meet defines how long it takes for the travel to take place. So if the PCs are at the Raging Bugbear Tavern and they want to go to the Wizard Guild Tower, they start on a Very Far trip. The next chart defines travel time and what might happen during the trip.

This chart defines possible things that happen during travel. Once you’ve determined your travel time, roll a d20 and see what happens. In the above example, the PCs are on a Very Far trip, so you will roll twice, getting a 3, 16, and 11. Now you’ve got a fight with street thugs, a pick pocket attempt, and an NPC asking for help to play out. Maybe you combine these into one larger encounter where the PCs find thugs attacking an NPC and intervene to help. During the fight, one of the thugs tries to steal an important item from one of the PCs. Or whatever you want. This is just an extremely simple idea. For your chart, add as many possible happenings as you like and assign whatever probability you want for their results. Maybe some of the options become more probable after other events happen (like after helping an NPC, it’s more likely to be attacked by thugs). Or if you use this idea for a city-wide search for an item or person, you could make a separate chart that you roll on just for that quest.

This idea takes some time to set up, but it’s really fun to use. I kept the travel option chart much more simple than I usually do for the sake of making this example easy to explain. In all honesty, this is just a random encounter chart that I’ve customized for city use. If you want more options than a d20 gives you, feel free to use percentile dice instead.

As with everything I write in these GM Toolbox articles, this is only an idea for you to use. When you are building a city for your campaign, do whatever makes sense for you and whatever is easiest for you to use during the gaming session.

Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy.
Comments and Feedback are always welcome.

Thanks!!
~Michael
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