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Hi!
I'm working on a new homebrew campaign, and the homebase is going to be a big gaslight Victorianesque steampunk city. The rest of the campaign is going to be big jungles filled with Cthuluesque cultists and dinosaurs, surrounded by a big Dying Earth/Mad Max desert where barbarians race megafauna instead of jalopies.
What major geographical features should it have?
What major sociological features should it have?
It's definitely going to have airships and clocktowers.
Thanks!
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Are you looking for something more along the lines of Dunwall from Dishonored (which is what I imagine when you say that) or Columbia from Bioshock Infinite (more fantasy-tech oriented)?
I'll assume Dishonored for now.
Factories everywhere. Industrial-style smokestacks on random buildings.
An entrenched, powerful oligarchy upper-class and a massive lower class, with very little in the middle.
Unsafe chemical plants.
Have a powerful church that's not necessarily evil, but is focused on progress before everything (Abadar meets Asmodeus)?
Sooty, dirty streets.
At least one society like what people imagine the Freemasons are. Could be related to the oligarchy or just powerful.
Several labor-based gangs (competing industries, maybe).
There needs to be an industrial reason for the city to be there. Is it sitting on/near a massive coal seam, or an iron deposit? Is there a strong river for transporting large quantities of (insert export here)? Is it in a strategically important place? Etc.
EDIT: If you run this as a PbP, please let me know.
I'm unfamiliar with the novels you are referencing. I'll have to check them out.
It's basically the last civilized city on the continent. It's kind of a Dying Earth/Planetary Romance pastiche, without actually dealing with planetary travel.
I like the idea of competing industries. I don't want it to get too much into the nitty-gritty of the day to day dealings of industry. It's supposed to be a fun fantasy, after all.
There is going to be a clock goddess-based church as one of the main powers in town. There is going to be quite a bit of trade with other continents via airships, aerial octopter, airwhales, pegasi, flying carpets, dragons, talaria, etc.
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I'm unfamiliar with the novels you are referencing. I'll have to check them out.
They're actually videogames, but there should be youtube clips and images of the two cities.
I like the idea of competing industries. I don't want it to get too much into the nitty-gritty of the day to day dealings of industry. It's supposed to be a fun fantasy, after all.
I wouldn't dive too much into it either, but it's important that the factories be there. Industry is core to Steampunk, in my opinion, and active factories can make really cool places for firefights/combat. Lots of hazards, from explosions as attacks go awry to moving machinery to barrels of chemicals.
There is going to be a clock goddess-based church as one of the main powers in town. There is going to be quite a bit of trade with other continents via airships, aerial octopter, airwhales, pegasi, flying carpets, dragons, talaria, etc.
Sounds like a cool plan. My ideas were definitely all just things to consider.
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Hi!
I'm working on a new homebrew campaign, and the homebase is going to be a big gaslight Victorianesque steampunk city. The rest of the campaign is going to be big jungles filled with Cthuluesque cultists and dinosaurs, surrounded by a big Dying Earth/Mad Max desert where barbarians race megafauna instead of jalopies.
What major geographical features should it have?
What major sociological features should it have?
It's definitely going to have airships and clocktowers.
Thanks!
Have the city by the sea - this will tie in well with any Lovecraftian themes you might want to invoke later, particularly if you have a very old region of reefs home to something like the locathahs. I'd also have it where the region is surrounded by mountains on all other sides.
I'd suggest that instead of a desert per se you have it be a fairly barren (but far from lifeless) countryside dotted with remains of old roads and old towns and cities that are now crumbling apart. You can have the area being reclaimed slowly by nature, including barbarian races and megafauna. It might be wracked by mage storms which can't get over the mountains protecting the last city.
You could have it where jungle/swamp is slowly creeping out as well, perhaps helped by a mix of the Cthulhuesque cultists and mage storms. You might even want to consider making the jungle area like something out of Skull Island (and there might even be a few actual islands on the coast).
Sociologically you're going to need a way for there to be both male and female adventurers without the females always ending up being bashed for not being "womanly" or chided for not staying at home (as would be expected in real life Victorian times). You're also likely looking at a society which might not technically have a caste system certainly is very well-aware of their standings socially and discourages intermingling.
Speaking of a clock goddess...
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The city is going to be based on top of a giant beanstalk, about a dozen miles above the surface of a floating continent. The base of the beanstalk is going to be surrounded by a giant jungle. The jungle will be surrounded by arid pampas (megafauna gotta eat!).
A massive storm rages just below the top of the beanstalk. It acts as a barrier of sorts between the Last City and the New Wilds below. That, and the giant barking beanstalk!
The floating continents float over the Abyssal Ocean, which is filled with abeyant abyssal aberrations.
I'll probably deal with any issues of femininity with humor, as in the Parasol Protectorate by Gail Calliger. And since the primary deity is feminine, I imagine there will be a lot less sexism in that society. It's definitely not something I was going to emphasize.
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Ever considered the idea of also having Some towns or smaller cities being structured around a massive train that travels across the continents and passes through some of the Megacities and smaller 'stations', spreading its technology in excange for vital supplies(like food, water, coal, and metal ores to keep the train running for as long as possible). i personally like the idea, since it creates a number of questions of how it is structured, how it functions, what life is like in the train, as well as what constitutes as a crime and how are the criminals punished.
Also a detail is what kind of wars are waged. Some details like a defensive war against the old gods, using powerful magical and technological weapons to beat back the uncroaching tide of lovecraftian horrors(though not actually truely lovecraftian, since it would be impossible then). Maybe even civil(or class war if we are talking revolutions here) war scale rioting and rebellion, with some turning to a mixture of lovecraftian powers and experimental industrial technologies to gain some kind of advantage.
Piracy is probably still a thing, with technologies like airships being difficult to maintain once in the air, especially when talking of the older powers starts to turn minds to mutiny. while military class airships do police the skies, even they cannot protect every cargo ship and passenger transport in the skies. and even some of the military airships become yet another spoil of airborne piracy.
But the biggest feature of the world is the giant sparking anomaly in time, space, dimension and magic, that hangs in the sky like a giant tear into the eldritch malestrom of the old ones.Not many people know when or how it got there, only that shortly after, the lovecraftian horrors started showing up, as did the magical aether start getting all tangeled up. There are those that would harness the power locked within the anomaly, but it is said that to gaze into it is to risk losing your mind and soul to the powers that made it, and fall under the sway of the Eldrich powers.
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Thanks for all the suggestions, but we're getting a little bit off track here.
I'm looking for Ideas about city features. The city is basically a fantasy version of Victorian London, but for D&D adventurers. The city will primarily be a home base, with most of the adventures happening elsewhere.
The iconic image of this campaign is Sherlock Holmes fencing on an airship, battling pterodon-riding yuan-ti above a dinosaur-filled jungle.
ErisAcolyte-Chaos jester: One of the floating continents is based on a combination of Railsea, The Half-Made World, and Snowpiercer. So lots of trains.
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I just finished the Leviathan series by Scott Westerfeld, and in it, the two main factions are the Clankers, that use diesel-powered mechanical walkers and planes and zeppelins, and Darwinists, that use genetically engineered animals and plants, like airwhales, war bears, perspecicious lorises, memory frogs, etc. There are also the Monkey Luddites who don't like all that new fangled technological mumbo jumbo.
Do you think technological factions might be an interesting way to go?
Alchemists vs. Steam Power vs. Clockwork Spring Power vs. the Botanical Gardens vs. the Zoological Gardens vs. the Antescandents (pre-climbers). There might even be factions that are pro-manufactories and pro-artisanal craftsmen. And guilds and labor unions and bosses. Skilled labor vs. unskilled labor vs. owners.
And of course, I'll want fluid allegiances and conflicts. Alchemists might make fuel for the Steam Powers, the Zoos might have giant elephants wind up giant springs to power the Clockworks, and everyone who isn't sick of beans will eat food grown by the Botanical Gardens.
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Powering a civilisation like this one also leads into some interesting sources of potential power. The Magic storms, for example, could be tapped into by specially designed ships that have the dangerous task of flying into the storm and catching the errant energy to charge massive batteries. The risks of such missions are numerous, from errant polymorphism, to frostbite, burns of numerous varieties or even outright disintegration.
Another source of power could be the orbit runs of certain anomalies, skimming some of the massive eldrich energy flow to fuel the batteries of both the massive airships and filling extra batteries for the cities. Risks include potential insanity, mutation and being exposed to the full effects of the anomaly by running into the thing(never a good idea, since no one really knows what that thing is).
Outside of those exotic energy sources, there is still the more conventional sources of energy. The alchemists experiments with both conventional fuels and exotic fuels has help push the technology in this world to new heights. This is a double edged sword sometimes, since anarchists can sometimes refit the fuel cells made into incredibly potent explosives and weapons to turn against the government. An full large eldrich cell detonation can take a good 3/4 of a continent with it, with a survival chance of less than 0%.
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It's really just the one city, even if it is a big city. There might be small villages clinging to the side of the giant beanstalk, braving the torrential downpours and constant lightning. But it's essentially the last city on its continent. The rest of the continent has been taken over by barbarian tribes, roving bands of savages, and cabals of mad cultists.
The city itself mostly ignores the jungles and pampas below, maintaining trade with the more civilized floating continents via teleportation circles, living dirigibles, and the Pegasus Express.
Indeed, the city primarily focuses on itself. There is a lot going on there. Lots of pubs, philosophical clubs, and competing branches of government. Great Houses, an hidden monarchy, and a city council.
But I'm looking for inspiration for city structures and institutions.
The Great Clock Tower
The Fountain
The Obsidian Obelisk
The Ivory Tower
The Airship Ports
The Asylum
The Prison
The Manufactory District
Tenements
Row Houses
Water Towers
Parks
Zoo
Libraries
Schools
Circus
Bridges
Lake or River?
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Thief (video game series) had a good city breakdown.
Victorian-esque city, with a rapid development due to the church of the Builder God, with a clockwork faction split off later on. Some medieval, to later electrical stuff even.
There's also this Pagan faction, followers of a Trickster god of chaos and nature. And then "wizards from afar" that dealt in elemental summons and magic, as well as ancient almost Aztecan ruins below the city, and a sub-water Atlantian ruins (but with fish people) off the coast.
The city had older districts that were more medieval from a less developed time, some completely destroyed and blocked off from back in the "undead surge" days (includes the old cemetery). Old churches with ancient relics, etc.
Underground catacombs that are used as quick ways to travel between places in the city, unseen by the normal folks (so used by the unsavory types).
Not sure how that would play on a beanstalk though.
Since you have jungle around the place, you could have step pyramids, sacrificial altars, etc. So old that no one remembers, though maybe a university has a archaeology department looking into them.
There can be varied types of desert landscape as well. Salt flats, shifting dunes, tundra in northern areas, mountain ranges devoid of all vegetation. Possibly hazards in the form of earthquakes opening up and closing gaps in the ground as land is shifting drastically.
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If you are making this a "last of a dying earth" type of thing, you can fit in a lot of neat unknown/unknowable stuff.
Like a structure made of unknown metal and all jagged like it was broken, but all one piece, in the middle of a mile diameter field of glass. Anyone that walks through that field, dies within a week (cancer? radiation poisoning?).
(Taken at least partially from Wheel of Time).
Bright lights in the skies that can be seen at night, but move far too quickly to be planets or stars. Found old technology that only half work start making sounds when certain lights are overhead.
A hole in the ground. Clearly man-made, it has "stone" (cement?) in a smooth circle, and it goes so deep that no one has ever been able to find the bottom (can't seem to get a rope long enough, a telescope aimed down it sees only darkness, lights dropped seem to scrap against one side and eventually disappear). Occasional grinding sounds can be heard on quiet nights..
Lots of fun and weird stuff.
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But I'm looking for inspiration for city structures and institutions.
Got some more...
An old insane/criminal asylum, abandoned, then turned into an orphanage, and subsequently abandoned again.
Cemeteries. Or do these people not plant their dead? Then crematorium?
Hospitals, or other care giving places. This could double with the "disposal of the dead". Maybe call it a Recycling plant? The place where the dead are disposed of, and birthing is facilitated?
Emergency and protective services? Both public and purchased. Is this handled by the governing body, or has it be thrown to capitalism, so it's paid for guardianship and mercenaries.
Blackmarket, fences, or any other organized levels of criminal activities.
The government buildings, plus the ones for "those that truly control things" of which most are unaware.
How do people correspond? Is hand-written mail still in fashion, or are their speakerphones and holo-projector communication. Is this done at a location, or do people have this in their homes?
Where does the food come from and distribute to the populace? This gives a whole list of things to add to your city (livestock and agriculture locations, processing, market, etc).
Decide on "what's this city's starch"... is it similar to wheat (fields and fields of it to feed the populace), rice (grown in strips of water laden land), or perhaps even something unique (some edible seed-like things that come from the beanstalk itself)?
Entertainment? Any large place of congregation like a coliseum? Districts devoted to entertainment, both legal and not-quite-so-legal?
If people don't have TVs in their homes, it's likely they will "go places" to do things in their spare time.
And a Victorian style of city implies less "peons tilling the earth 18 hours a day to feed the mass of living" and more "industrialized enough such that people have free time to burn on *doing things*".
If you are "above the clouds", sort of thing.. is water gathered in some airship/scooping of clouds kind of thing, while daytime is mostly sunny (unless there's industrial smog)?
Water collection may be another type of thing to add to the city (plants.. literally, it's a beanstalk... or maybe part of the air-docks).
A "visitors" region, so the general townfolk can remain protected from people who come to trade or "taste of civilization". Could be more "rough around the edges" in this area.
Probably also where the derelicts of society live as well (orphans, poor, or those suffering from whatever inflictions exist in this world).
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Just double checked "Gaslight" (Gaslamp fantasy?) to make sure I was thinking of the right thing, and I suspect The City from Thief would give great inspiration.
Some pictures:
-1- -2- -3- -full view- -district map- (with names of points of interest even, some ideas!)
Thanks!
I just realized there could be structures dangling from beneath the city. Like giant pods, bat-folk, vampire nests, etc.
I'm going to try to stay mostly steampunk and keep away from Sci-Fi stuff. For the most part. I kind of like the Helmsmen from "A Land Fit For Heroes." Creepy, construct AIs.
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plus with the lovecraftian mixed in with it, the amount people might actually know about some of the inner workings of the clock tower, or the obsidian obelisk is probably very limited. The obsidian obelisk might not even be made of obsidian, but be some kind of 'tamed' anomaly that is studied by a wide variety of scientists and theologians.
The ivory tower could be the holdings of the most powerful noble families, who have built the tower as a means of isolating themselves from the rest of the city, and also tapping into the reguvinating powers of the eldrich structure. Overtime, they have evolved(or devolved in the eyes of some) into entities that border on the supernatural, with influence on a dimsional or planer scale, but their mortal bodies having become virtually been catatonic for weeks, months, or even years at a time. But they never die. They don't age either.
The manufacturing district(or more locally known as the gears) are a multitude of massive factories, workshops, and immense clockwork mechanisms, that is the beating heart of the city. It supplies the majority of the devices, weapons, armour, and enforcement to the city, from the poorest dregs to the most opulent nobles and the members of high society. Life in the gears is often hard, full of risk, and brutally short or grindingly long depending on your luck. Crime is a critical factor, paticularly smuggling of prototypes and weapons tech to other criminal groups and rival manufacturers for money or a chance at better living.
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Sigil is also a big inspiration for this city. I plan on having half a dozen different wards. I want there to be about a dozen factions. I want a mysterious ruler, and also a bunch of proxies who form a shadow government.
It's going to be a lot like Mark Hodder's The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack and the later novels in the series, where the main characters are based out of London, but travel to Africa for adventures.
It's kind of like an onion: The city at the center, the jungle around that core, the pampas around the jungle, and the floating island flying above the tentacle-filled ocean.
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Sigil is also a big inspiration for this city. I plan on having half a dozen different wards. I want there to be about a dozen factions. I want a mysterious ruler, and also a bunch of proxies who form a shadow government.
It's going to be a lot like Mark Hodder's The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack and the later novels in the series, where the main characters are based out of London, but travel to Africa for adventures.
It's kind of like an onion: The city at the center, the jungle around that core, the pampas around the jungle, and the floating island flying above the tentacle-filled ocean.
Which makes falling off the floating island continent all kinds of unpleasant, even if you do survive a massive height drop and subsequent impact of the water.
In the best Harrison Ford voice
"Why des it always have to have tentacles."
Gricks, grells, and displacer beasts, oh my!
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China Mieville's New Corbuzon (from "Perdido Street Station") is pretty weird/steampunky.
• Trains, train stations, subways, trolleys, aerial trams.
• Massive government buildings, prisons, remaking factories (where criminals and political dissidents are flesh=crafted into living golems).
• A portion of the city rests under a titanic rib cage from some beast so old no one remembers what it is/was (there are a couple of scenes like this in Pacific Rims when cities rebuild after the kaiju attacks, but the bodies are too big to remove sio they just rebuild around them)
• Docks, lots of docks, canal locks, shipyards
• Filthy overcrowded tenements and ethnic ghettos, beautiful lush parks with fountains in other parts of town, massive metal and glass domed greenhouses and botanical gardens
• Universities, libraries, charities that help the less fortunate
• Walls, an old city from which the modern city grew, aqueducts
• An undercity where the dirtiest work (and workers) are kept
• Cranes, an overcity on the roofs and in ropes and nets strung from building to building, tower to tower, populated by thieves and bird-people
• A destroyed part of the city that has never been rebuilt (riots? earthquake? explosion?), debris field
• Uncontrolled building with shacks built on rooftops and towers built on towers (google Kowloon's Walled City)
Okay, by the end there I drifted away from New Corbuzon, but it's still worth looking into.
Yeah, China Mieville is a big inspiration.
Maybe one of the trains can go through a portal/wormhole/some kind of fancy magical tunnel that leads to my Railsea/Half-Made World/Snowpiercer inspired land...