Suggestions for regionalised city map
Bromdon
Newcomer
I use CC3+ and CD3 to help me visualise places which are used in stories I write, mostly for my own amusement.
As part of a current project of mine I am trying to develop a map for a large coastal port city, with various areas of the city known by different names. I am therefore looking at developing a city map, but not one which needs details for the streets and buildings apart from the occasional landmark. but rather named areas.
Any suggestions where to start? I'm normally an overland kind of cartographer, so a city is something new for me and I'm just beginning to dig into CD3.
FWIW I have all the annuals if there is a template there I should be looking at working from.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
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Hi Bromdon :)
Do you also have the Tome of Ultimate Mapping?
If you do, there is a detailed but concise tutorial on Creating a City in the City Designer 3 section that may answer many questions relatively quickly without having to read whole books written in a more general fashion that are available online.
If you have a pretty good idea of the layout already and it is only the mapping that is holding you back, you won't need the following two links at all, but there just happens to be a really good random city generator here:
https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator
And a Cartographer's Annual issue designed to convert these randomly generated cities to usable CC3 maps here:
https://www.profantasy.com/annual/2020/2020-cartographers-annual.asp#January
Thanks LoopySue - I always forget about the TUM and how much awesome content there is in it. Time to dive in.
You're welcome :)
Hi Bromdon. I did something very much like what you're describing with the Free City of Courvile.
Once I had the general size and shape of the city and surroundings laid out, I went hunting through the symbol catalogues for buildings of different styles, and made each area of the city a slightly different style of building to help set them apart from each other.
For ideas, there is a super-basic one like you describe, of Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms Atlas:
There's another I came across that is a little less basic, but I have no idea yet where the original is.
There's a few others out there - do a search for 'waterdeep wards map'.