I'm currently DMing a game where the PCs are a bunch of dwarves who are going to go do dwarfy things. Right now they're heading to an abandoned dwarven city which has presented me with a problem. While dwarves are everywhere in fantasy, very rarely (at least in my experience) do we see what a dwarven city looks like. The two major ones I can think of are Moria and Ironforge. In Moria we never really see more than a couple of tunnels and nothing that looks like a city where large numbers of people would live. Ironforge is alright but I'd like to be a little more creative than copy-pasting it. So I was wondering what dwarven cities are like in other people's campaigns or if anyone could recommend other sources of inspiration.
i imagine dwarven cities to be a lot like the mines and cities of gorons from the legend of zelda series
isolated in the mountains, and most of it is uderground, and much of it leads to mines, you could draw inspiration from that
Probably a cave complex like the Ulgo caves from David Eddings. True they are not dwarves but live in a similar setting and have a lot in common with dwarves.
I'd go with something like ironforge (large cavern with houses in it) or a mine tunnel system as roads with houses hewn from the rock (only the interior of houses) left and right.
For ventilation you could use a system of smaller tunnels leading to the surface and creating some wind current. Or you could use some magic fresh air generation. Or a combination with one as the main thing and one as backup (the savest)
I myself would use a combination of the ironforge and the mine tunnel options and a combination of clever engeneering and magic for fresh air.
Add some rooms in which mushrooms might be grown and harvested so they don't need to go to the surface during a siege and you're done.
I think describing ways to get water and fresh air into the thing might help lessen the copy paste feel because ironforge lacks in that department. If you look at all those fires and the gigantic forge with molten metal or lava running around that'd propably suffocate in there and the little pond in one part is nice for fighing but I would not trust it to get all my drinking water from it.
So concentrate on the details and it will work out nice.
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Things any city will need, but you might have specialized dwarven versions:
Food supplies: can be combined with sewage disposal in giant mushroom vats, perhaps with some kind of wild or ravenous fungi run loose now that the dwarven gardeners are no longer there. Otyughs, violet fungi, mold patches, and an occasional rare variety of dwarven mushroom that's worth a LOT if you can figure out how to grow it -- in a big wild patch. Carefully tended by something that likes the taste.
Sewage disposal (may be combined with above, including gelatinous cubes or various varieties of puddings). Maybe just treatment works discharging into an underground river. Maybe it needs to be fixed or bad things will happen throughout the complex.
Living quarters: Dwarves probably have tight family cluster houses rather than individual barracks (though you might have some of those near the entrances for guards). Comfortable, well-made, and every home is a fortress that can be defended invidually. Maybe something has moved in and is using the dwarves' own defenses. Well-made doors, good locks, crushing stone traps (with careful off switches, and that DON'T trigger on dwarven children.) Much machinery and clockwork, and maybe fireworks, might be involved.
Industrial quarters: dwarven forges, ore refining chambers, treasure vaults (probably robbed, but maybe not, and certainly VERY well secured. It might be a big challenge to get in.) Could have some animated objects, golems, or bound elementals here (forgefire, earth miners). Or mephits hanging around causing havoc (one or more might have once been a familiar for a dwarven wizard and maybe knows something of the caverns; PCs can learn some useful things if they talk instead of fighting -- or maybe the mephit knew one of the PCs' ancestors, but wants a Secret Family Password before handing over the key it wears around its neck. Did the PC pay attention when Great-Uncle Dundar was droning drearily at dinner? Or maybe it wants the PC to swear an oath of vengeance -- it even has a sketched picture of the killer of his great-grandfather. All sorts of plot hooks abound here.)
A fire in a coal vein might still be burning, smoldering, giving off smoke. Can the PCs assure an adequate air supply if they venture into the area? And what about the small dragon hatchling that's finally gotten warm after crawling around and burrowing through the place? It might not want to leave. It might want to trade riddles with the PCs. It might just be hungry.
Temples: to Dwarven gods, of course. Maybe one of them has been desecrated by something evil moving in, or is guarded by the ghost of the last priest, who wants to possess somebody and make them go fix something somewhere. Might not be safe anymore.
Graveyards: Dwarves usually bury their dead in stone (according to Professor T), so you likely have a wide necropolis of sarcophagi with names and statues of famous dwarves. Or maybe each family is buried in its own cave. Maybe some of the dead will be angry if disturbed. Maybe nobody has breached the seals... yet. Maybe the grave of an ancient enemy of one of the PCs' families has a guardian.
Cave city stuff:
Ventilation shafts (air has to come from somewhere, unless you want magic). Maybe the PCs need to repair the fans, or replace the blowers, or something, before one of the lower levels is habitable. Hope somebody remembered to pump up Knowledge/engineering and a couple of craft skills...
Drainage shafts (so the water goes somewhere). You might be able to throw in an underwater adventure (PCs have to get through the flooded area to unblock the drains so they can get to the treasure vault). Is anything living in the water? Maybe something with lots of tentacles? "There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world." -- some anonymous burgalar-finding wizard)
Cave-ins (see environment rules in the CRB). All sorts of things might lie beyond, or have been opened up by a cave-in. Maybe something else came in through the cave-in. Or attacked through it. Maybe it's just a mess.
Sealed doors: what's on the other side? Maybe bad air, maybe some kind of monster trapped, maybe a valuable mine shaft just waiting to be re-opened, maybe a cache of provisions and weapons overlooked in the abandonment, maybe an obstacle course where Dwarven warriors proved their agility by dodging giant rolling boulders, their wits by detecting and disarming traps, and their wisdom by not opening the chest in the first room that the spider swarm came out of...
General notes: emphasize the high quality of the mining, the architecture, the mechanisms. Make the dwarves proud of their ancestors, and eager to emulate the craftsmanship. Maybe there are some lost secrets, or a huge metal tome granting them the secrets of a new dwarf-only prestige class tailored to fit one or two of your PCs? Maybe an ancient feat can be learned if they solve a riddle on the altar of an obscure Dwarven deity? Maybe there's a map to further mines or treasures farther along in the mountain range? (You know dwarves would have those!)
One thing I should mention is that we're using maptools so I actually have to build (at least a portion of) the city. If we were all sitting around a table I would just describe the basic idea and let their imaginations do the rest, but I've got to have maps for them to go to and do things otherwise they're just staring at a black screen.
look at the hobbit movie for an idea how the lonely mountain looked when it was a thriving dwarven city.
read the icewind dale trilogy (I think the second book) for some more description on mithral hall (similar story to moria)
I sort of remember there being an adventure in an old dungeon magazine that took place in an abandoned dwarven city, with it being completely mapped out. This could give you some inspiration as well
In my opinion the look of a dwarven city should depend on its location relative to the other races. A border town could have a significant number of above-ground building where they trade with foreigners.
The further you are from other races, the more underground the city becomes.
I saw the hobbit movie and while I did enjoy that part it never really showed more than a few room and a mine.
I don't think I'll have time to read the entire trilogy in a few days but I might be able to find an excerpt describing the city, thanks. That adventure path would definitely be something to look for as well.@tonyz
Those are actually some really helpful ideas. I'm no idea how long a coal fire like that would burn (the city has been abandoned for at least 500 years) but I really like the idea. I'll be building the city essentially piecemeal and that gives me some great focal points to start with. Thanks for all your input.
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How big is your city? And next - what is the purpose of the city.
By purpose I mean.. Why is it there? Is it a stronghold to defend againts something? Is it far behind in the country with alot of civilians? Is it a city with connection to other races?
Most cities in the real world is build around food and water. Other cities are build around ressources. Location location location.
Your city must have a location - but why did the dwarves choose it?
In at least one of the Bahzell books by David Weber, he describes the inside of the Dwarven city.
The first three books are near the bottom of the left column.
And they are free for distribution.
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I would look for help from the game Skyrim....Dwemer were dwarves in the Elder Scrolls series of games and they went missing thousands of years ago leaving behind all their cities.
Google "Dwemer Ruins" images for some ideas or look to the Skyrim city of Markath, it is a repopulated (by humans) Dwemer city. The imagery is awesome and inspiring.
My standard advice for anything Dwarf related: pick up "Races of Stone" by Wizards of the Coast. It is a really good book. The Dwarf chapter has detailed descriptions of life in a mine, and with a little bit of tweaking, you can use the rules from the book as well.
Don't forget to add plenty of halls with really high ceilings - you need those to maintain proper air circulation.
MERP put out a moria supplement that was really good for mapping a dwarven city.
Google images of the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland. It's as close to a real life Dwarf mine as you are likely to find.
I never understood why DWARF cities were always depicted as having ceilings tall enough for giants to have chicken fights in, but any human mine or mining camp Ive ever been too seems to me built be crouching lilliputians?
The Dwarven city of Orzammar from the Dragon Age game might help you a bit. Do a google image search on that and you will get a bunch of screen shots and probably a map or two.
In at least one of the Bahzell books by David Weber, he describes the inside of the Dwarven city.
The first three books are near the bottom of the left column.
And they are free for distribution.
"The War God's Own", chapters 14-15.
If you're looking for a variety of maps and layouts though, I'd suggest looking up the Dwarf Fortress game.
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Look into Dragonlance. The dragonlance atlas has a great map of the dwarven city of Thorbardin. If you really want to get into it, find the box set Dwarven Kingdoms of Krynn. Details quite a few dwarven cities, though annoyingly no actual depictions of the internal architecture.
They've got maps of 4 or 5 cities, from various periods of dwarven culture. The general premise on most of them is that they have 20 or so standardized neighboorhood layouts, about 100'x100' (iirc), and build their cities in chains of these neighboorhoods.
Expect everything dwarven to be stout and tough. There are no such things as rickety dwarven tunnels (unless perhaps you're looking at Droskar-era constructions); you can expect that the tunnels are sleek, uniform, with supports built to last long after a mine is no longer necessary.
With their living quarters, expect the same. There will be no frail pillars. They may have large open spaces in a few places, but if they do, they will be darn well-supported to compensated for the loss in structural integrity. Don't expect much in the way of fragile one-foot pillars or two-inch balcony fences; those are exactly the feeble human and elven constructions you see toppled and destroyed in every other Pathfinder battlemap.
Dwarves respect durability in all things, and art that doesn't live longer than the artist is hardly worth making. Expect to see fewer textiles and paintings in dwarven settlements; instead, you'll see lots more metalwork and stonework. Rather than fabrics that decay covered with tints that fade, dwarven monarchs are better depicted by chiseling art right into the walls, and best honored with funerary vaults that will lie undisturbed long after the dwarven race dies, if they ever do.
Of course, each settlement probably has its own celebrations of dwarven engineering. One was renowned for creating the Magmafall right in the middle of the city; even as far as the duergar have fallen, their capitol is known for the giant mechanical clock that ticks off the schedule of Droskar's forges. No doubt there are many more genius and monolithic challenges to nature lying dormant in lost dwarven holdings; statues of dwarven heroes that pour fresh clean water into the hands of the thirsty, and underground bridges that span chasms so long you can't see the other end in your bullseye lantern -- both functional without magic -- serve as some of the milder wonders you might come across.
I never understood why DWARF cities were always depicted as having ceilings tall enough for giants to have chicken fights in, but any human mine or mining camp Ive ever been too seems to me built be crouching lilliputians?
You work in a mine. You live in a city. That's all there is to it.
I imagine it would be fairly easy to base it off of real-life medieval era villages.
Roads become tunnels, buildings become caverns and open spaces become solid rock. By following the contours of the land you can have different levels and for larger areas you could combine two or more different villages and base them at different depths with tunnels connecting the two. Thinking whilst typing, you could vertically align the different villages on their town square, which would then be a massive multi-galleried open cavern.
Remember that roofs are more for privacy than anything else too.
We are a very straightforward, stoic people. Therefore, our homes are simple, yet highly functional. I believe we would be similar to Quaker/Shaker humans. Our architecture is built to be functional, and in that function, there is beauty. Our laneways and thouroughfares are straight, bisecting at angles. Our city centre probably looks something like the schematics for Versailles, another human city in France. Our major laneways are designed for troop movement.
Our buildings are likewise designed for functionality. Large, cavernous halls likely have walls that can be moved, rotated, or slid into position, something like cubicals, but of course much more stylish. As we are highly community orientated, this building is our community centre, and so it can be mildly morphic with stone shape or mechanical design. Gilding is a dwarven technology (don't let those elves tell you any different) and much of our buildings are designed with leaf that glints in dim lighting, creating a warm, glowing feeling in what topworlders consider cold, hard surroundings.
Back to the Shakers. The round barn is something we would consider ingenious. It's simple and designed so each animal has its own space and can be brought out to the middle to be milked. A round forge would be an excellent idea...
When i laid out a city for my Dwarves adventures some years back, I decided that it would be built in the 'original' areas of an enormous mining complex. Chambers devoted to residences, workshops, sewage/mushroom farms, etc. I actually nused the layout for one of the mines from Leadville, CO.
I wrote one for a setting awhile back that I referred to as "Cistern", essentially a hollowed out hill open on the top, concentric rings wide at the top narrowing to the bottom, with tiered gardens for farming, and a complex irrigation system to channel water from an entry up high, through the gardens down to the eponymous Cistern that collected the city's fresh drinking water supply.
From my perspective, Dwarves live long and plan long term, so a single dedicated priest with wall of stone spells could create miles of sturdy stone ramps and thoroughfares to support such an environment.
I have a massive dwarven city that is central to my campaign world. I drew up some pretty extensive maps of it a long time ago, but they are all on paper. Much of what tonyz says sounds like he was in my head while I was building my city, or vice versa. That's a very good basic set of principles.
If your dwarven society has levels, the highest classes will have the best living areas, meaning the areas with the freshest air, the largest rooms, the easiest access to the markets, etc. The lowest classes will live in the least desirable areas, close to the mines, or the mushroom farms, for example.
My dwarven rooms were mostly hexagonal because that's the most effective use of space with the strongest supports to hold up the mountain, but I'm perhaps a bit excessively concerned about things like engineering concerns.
My dwarven city is built partly by tunneling into the insides of a massive mountain and partly by building structures in a huge underground cavern. It has guard rooms and elevators to move vertically as easily as horizontally. The "king" and his family live in a "palace" which has a set of rooms with views of the valley outside the mountain.
The city is not compact, it's mostly a bunch of little clusters of chambers connected together with tunnels long enough to keep the mountain's strength from being compromised. If you've ever seen a termite nest, it's somewhat like that, but with all the tunnels and chambers built with a high degree of uniformity and precision.
There are a number of underground entrances to the city, some from the Underdark itself, and they all have guard rooms and defensible structures to keep the city from being invaded.
There is some pretty good fantasy art out there that may evoke your imagination; that's how I usually start brainstorming my game elements. Look up some art, put on some Tool and let your imagination go wild.
Remember, make no apologies. This is a culture very different from the real-world, but with elements that people can identify.
- Lava rivers that have been channeled and utilized for heat and protection
- Bridges and arches of grand size
- Whole estates carved out of the interior of caverns (look up "Petra" for some inspiration)
- A people's nature is reflected in their architecture. Use elements of great workmanship (no cheatin' with magic) and grand design.
I imagined the dwarves have a beloved game called "Ka-Bong!" and it's played like pool, but with huge metal balls, something like bowling balls, and everyone stands in the middle of a grand playing arena and drinks while they're doing it. It's incredibly noisy and a little dangerous too.
- Don't forget dwarves are a bit xenophobic, and may not let the adventurers through every door or gateway
- They're an honorable, hard-working people, but stoic too, and difficult to convince of anything
The supplement "Dwarves of Golarion" has some excellent cultural elements, as well as history and a detailed map of the Five Kings Mountains.
Forge of Fury (3.0e) had a small dwarfhold you could see about tracking down for a layout if desired.