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Greetings all. I have a question for all you cartographers and history buffs out there. I love city maps and I get all warm and fuzzy whenever either Dungeon or Dragon publishes a good one - Crimmor, Istivin, Diamond Lake, Alhaster, now Sasserine. I especially like dense walled-in cities that have an old-world feel to them. As beautiful as the maps in the magazines are, they seem to have a lot of empty space within the city walls. Granted that one can do whatever one wants in a fantasy game, but are big spaces inside walled cities realistic?
Also, the area outside the walls of most of these cities is completely empty. Is that "right"? I feel like there should be some buildings outside the wall, especially around the gates. Or shanty towns. Land inside the walls strikes me as too valuable for slums. Maybe not in a war-torn country, but in peaceful lands, I imagine the city spilling out the gates and into the surrounding countryside.
I guess when I think of cities like this I think of Sanctuary from the old Thieves' World books. That map had several farms and villas right outside the city walls and the red light district was too. Or Rome that grew so big that they had to keep adding more and more walls to encompass it all.
Anyway, just curious what folks more knowledgible than I can add to the discussion.
Thanks
Empty spaces within the town seem OK: Squares, markets, wells, open space the church wants out front, a square that burnt down and hasn't been rebuilt yet, ground unsuitable for building.
As for things outside the walls, that would depend entirely on how safe things are outside the town. Yes, safe countryside would have lots of buildings outside the walls. Dangerous countryside, not so much. Though there has to be *something* outside the city gates - a few farms at least to feed all those people.
I think you're bang on, Mosaic. Its always been a pet peeve of mine (ok, stronger then "pet peeve"). I've not only made the same observations on my RPG Mapping Guide webpage ( http://melkot.com/mechanics/map-guide.html ), but have put that opinion into practice when making my own maps.
Denis, aka "Maldin"
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Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com
Loads of edition-independent Greyhawk goodness... maps, magic, mysteries, mechanics, and more!
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Inside: As DMFTodd noted, there would be open spaces in the city. But in most walled cities there would be nearly no unused space if the city is similar to historical cities. Cities were quite crowded, and any unused space would be rapidly filled in by housing and businesses.
Outside: If there is enough threat for the walls to be maintained, there would be few buildings outside the walls. The area near the city was kept clear for use as a defensive zone and to reduce the building materials available to besiegers. In a world of magic, this would be even more important. I'd expect a cleared zone out to at least long range for a mid- to high-level mage (probably 800 - 1500 feet out all the way around the city). The cleared space would probably used for grazing and practice grounds.
In such a world, I'd also expect defenses more akin to a Vauban-style star fort rather than the more medieval style curtain wall, but that might interfere too much with the iconic fatasy appearance of medieval-style cities.
generally, one would expect there to be more intense crowding inside city walls than one sometimes sees. There will be the occasional park or plaza, and the richer people will have progressively larger 'space' inside their estate walls. But usually the interior space of a city will be compact.
In my campaigns, the general trend is for there to be very little if any 'open' area inside city walls, and what there is, is usually maintained by considerable effort and/or wealth
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I think you're bang on, Mosaic. Its always been a pet peeve of mine (ok, stronger then "pet peeve"). I've not only made the same observations on my RPG Mapping Guide webpage ( http://melkot.com/mechanics/map-guide.html ), but have put that opinion into practice when making my own maps.
My personal preference mirrors Maldin's, which is why I used him to create the most important city map I've ever published, the poster that came with Living Greyhawk Journal #2. It takes a lot of time (and, frankly, a lot of money) to publish something with such great precision and detail, and the monthly pace of the magazines makes it very difficult to work this way all the time.
The city maps of today are, in my opinion, about a million times better than the ones in Dungeon 10 or even 5 years ago, but the city maps still aren't perfect, because perfect takes too long and is too expensive.
Should Paizo ever publish campaign setting material outside the framework of the magazine schedule, it is likely that the city maps would become more complex.
--Erik
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Creative Director
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City maps are, by far, the toughest maps to do in D&D. They're just so dang complex. Personally, I think that there SHOULD be stuff outside those walls; Alhaster's a good example of this with Eel Town to the north. Sasserine's a good example of why there wouldn't be much outside the city walls; the ground beyond the walls is swamp. Not the best land to build on. There's probably some nasty swamper shacks out there in the muck, I supoose, but they'd probably go away whenever there's a big storm.
As for empty spaces inside the walls... Erik's spot on. It takes a LOT of time to fill up a city map. And a lot of money. The map turnover of Sasserine took me several weeks of after-work toil to complete, and then Lazz got to translate it into something awesome that I'm sure took him quite a while as well. But we've got more than one map to do each month...
My personal preference mirrors Maldin's, which is why I used him to create the most important city map I've ever published,
And a fun time that was! Can't wait for the next time. ;-)
That I'll also agree with! Keep up the hard work! The magazines continue to get better and better.Denis, aka "Maldin"
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Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com
First of all, James, I LOVED the map of Sasserine! It felt "right" when it came to the spacing of the buildings and such. That was actually the very first thing I noticed about it when I opened it up.
No offense to Erik, but the map of Diamond Lake got the exact opposite reaction from me. Not initially, as that was the first time I'd ever gotten such a big city map, but upon looking closer, I realized there was an awfully large amount of open space in town.
Now, when it comes to maps in the magazine, I suppose urban environments such as Istivin were a little sparse... but I hardly even think about it. I've tried drawing maps of several small and large towns in my homebrew, and it takes a lot of time to fill up all that blank space with what boils down to just urban sprawl background. In my mind, I realize that the city is denser in buildings than shown on the map; the little squares actually drawn there are just to give the idea that "this area is just generally developed buildings." So, no real complaints there.
Keep up the good work; I love maps!
Typically, the only reason there were "empty spots" in a city would be for trade gatherings, traveling merchants and the sort - and that's not really empty. :)
that's true, too. most city maps don't go much beyond the city walls, and most of those don't show the 'outbuildings', the growth outside the city walls. some have logical reasons for nothing to be there, some don't. In my current campaign, there are three primary cities inside the campaign area. One of them is situated on an island in a narrow rivers, so most of this outgrowth is actually a bit away from the city...shantytowns as it were a bit upriver and downriver, but actually outside the scope of the normal city map becuase the rich folk's estates are closer to the city itself, and the narrows where the city was formed has steep slopes (the story behind the selection of that site for the city is interesting, but hasn't been put down on paper yet) one of the others has grown outside of its original walls twice now, and currently has almost as many buildings scattered in an arc around the city as are inside the city, more spread out....of course, that's what happened before, and if a new wall surrounds this outgrowth...the space considerations will begin to press in until it's as packed as the part of the city it currently surrounds
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Creative Director
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No offense to Erik, but the map of Diamond Lake got the exact opposite reaction from me. Not initially, as that was the first time I'd ever gotten such a big city map, but upon looking closer, I realized there was an awfully large amount of open space in town.
Diamond Lake is supposed to be sparse, though. It's a dying town, and it's one that doesn't have a wall so people don't need to build their homes and shops crammed together.
No offense to Erik, but the map of Diamond Lake got the exact opposite reaction from me... I realized there was an awfully large amount of open space in town.
Diamond Lake isn't a walled city. So long as it's easy, communities will spread out -- tightly packed communities are not deliberate decisions, but come from necessity.
Even in very dangerous areas, most of the city will generally be outside the walls...
For the sake of discussion, I think this not always so true in D&D. The environment is potentially far more threatening than the real world (depending on the campaign and local geography). Ravening werewolves and roaming bands of orcs would certainly change principles of city planning.
Sasserine is probably a good example of this.
Despite this, I agree with you. I was very pleased to see the updated City of Greyhawk map place significantly more building (though still a small percentage) beyond the city walls.
My two cents :)
Jack
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Director of Narrative
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As Mona mentioned the maps have been getting considerably better over time, and yes, perfect is a hard thing to fit into dealines.
Cities that have no real civil engineering grow organically. Sometimes the clutch of buildings that happened to be situated in the city as walls were being built are none to happy with the smell of a tanner nearby, so later building gives that and the slaughterhouse a wide berth. Often times the terrain around a city is not the best land to build on so only shanties find themselves in the muck and mire. A modern example is Central Park in New York. The bedrock drops too low for skyscrapers to have been anchored properly in that portion of the island, so that's why you have such a wide open space in the middle of a congested city. Geography, socio-political instances and geology are most certainly contributing factors to the shape and growth of a city.
My largest cartography endeavor lately has been working on a city map of the Great Port of Gradsul with one of my players, and in that there are shantytowns outside each of the two major land gates. There also are multiple rings of walls in the city from the city growing out of itself. The Old City located in the center of town serves as the main governing offices and just north of that is a large noble residential section.
I'm all for logical and realistic city maps, so keep 'em coming. Also, as with everything else in D&D, add to the published material to make it your own. There's nothing wrong with placing a military training ground outside the walls, a smaller gate somewhere along the walls where the livery takes the horses out to trot and graze from time to time or the ever-popular slums.
Hmm A couple thoughts with the wall issue.
First, sometimes a city would develop where there might be an outer wall to protect the general populace of the city, but then there would be stronger walls to protect the nobility in the centre of a city. The Forbidden City in Beijing kept the peasants away from the nobility. Also, in that circumstance, the outer portions of a city could act as walls ... of people slowing invaders down to allow the nobles time to get reinforcements.
Another thought is that, yes, the city expands beyond ONE set of walls and then another is built to protect resources that are deemed valuable, eventually several rings of walls could be built up and encompass various parts of the city.
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Quite a lot of my urban maps fail on the "not crowded enough" point. It truly isn't realistic for a medieval city to have a lot of space between buildings, but it is much easier (relatively) to map them that way, and much more playable in game terms because the boundaries of buildings, streets, and alleys are more clearly defined.
It's quite true that medieval cities were densely packed affairs...moreso than most of the critics of fantasy city maps probably even realize. I've walked through the oldest sections of Paris and other European cities, and the streets are barely wide enough for a modern car to pass between the rows of crammed-together buildings...forget about two-lane traffic.
A classic medieval city street typically features buildings built right up to the narrow road at the ground level (no real sidewalks), with the upper stories of those buildings actually built larger than the floor below it, so they overshadow the street below. A realistic overhead map of such a city would be little more than a field of rooftops and chimneys with the occasional open "town square" peeking out. The only buildings with space around them are palaces, temples, official buildings...that sort of thing. Private manors would generally be far outside of the city, instead of taking up space within.
For the most part, though, the above would not make for a fun or useful game map (if you can barely see the roads between the buildings, it's really hard to figure out what the landscape of the city is really like underneath the overhanging buildings), so it would require a lot more effort on the part of the cartographer to create something of arguably reduced value.
That being said, I think I can and should make some of my city maps more crowded, and include areas where the buildings are built in solid rows instead of featuring alleys between each. That would be a fun challenge and should produce a map quite different from some of those I've made in the past.
And that, really, is the most significant reason to mix it up a bit: Different cities in a medieval fantasy world should have distinctly different flavors; no two should be alike. If cartographers build maps with this in mind, everbody wins. :)
Has anyone ever developed guidelines (maybe even historically based) on how many buildings and how much area would be expected for a city of a given population and density?
Seems like the kind of thing that would've made a great article in Dragon Magazine of the type that was typical around issues #50 to 100 or so. I'd still be quite interested in a 'constructing a city' article in the Campaign Workbook which gave some quick and dirty guidelines for this. If it doesn't exist already.
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I'd start with something like 1 person per 100 square feet of ground area in the city. This includes space for roads and alleys and assumes most of the city is 4-story buildings. The space could easily vary quite a lot from that starting point.
I'd expect most buildings to have frontages of 10-20 feet and be about 30-50 feet deep. If you've ever seen 19th century brownstone row houses, that's the sort of thing that the upper class would live in. Each such house would probably have 4-12 family members and 2-8 servants. Working-class housing would be similar in size, but with much higher population density.
Shops would normally be on the ground floors of buildings with residential area above.