Mapping cities

lmrye · April 2019

Hi all, just getting back into CC after over a decade away and really enjoying it. Now doing my first city map in a long time, a fairly small city with 7,000 people, but I have a question. Do most gamemasters find it best to do the full city in one map, and then zoom into the different wards as needed and then export those maps as handouts to players, or do you find it easier to only do the terrain, walls, wards, and roads on the full map, and then do ward maps for all the details? I can see advantages to both - having everything on the one map makes it easier to zoom to text all over the place fast, and see buildings by building type all over the map, but it does slow it down. So what does everyone else do, and why?

LadieStorm · April 2019

Well, I've ever only completed one city... though I have done a lot of towns and villages. What I'm doing, is printing out 1 large copy of my city map, that I can put on the table, or hang up on the wall, for all of my players to see at once. And then I will create battle maps for key areas, or areas where there will be encounters. I will print a table top map for these, with a grid, so that each of my player's markers can set on the battle map, to show locations.

I am working on a way to turn a small HD TV we have into a monitor, that I can plug into my computer, so that I can turn that around to face my players, so that they can see what I see... and I can zoom into locations and things... but I haven't figured out how to sync them up so that they have the same screen configuration, yet.

[Deleted User] · April 2019

I have done both. Stromphe (in the Community Atlas) is a city of over 80,000, so I did it as a broadstroke map, and separate ares zoomed in (1 completed so far, see Atlas) then various buildings and blocks.
Other cities are smaller and I have done them in detail from the beginning. All are in the Atlas, with buildings or separate districts done. They are Vertshusen (pop ~ 6000), Monsein (pop ` 4000), Khelaphet (pop ~ 40,000), and Torstan (pop ~ 40,000). I am working on another city with pop ` 60,000. and it will be the largest city I can do in detail. Progress is ongoing, see this Forum)

Summary: Big cities - your second method; medium cities - take your pick; small cities, your first method.

Hope this helps.

Wyvern · April 2019

It depends very heavily on what purpose the city serves in the ongoing campaign. If the players are to make it their main base, you'll at least need to know where the key places are they'll want to visit regularly (like supply shops, markets, places to eat and pick up news, etc.), and map in whatever detail seems appropriate to maintain consistency between sessions for those. If it's somewhere they may only visit occasionally, then you probably don't need to worry about any details except for those few places they mean to visit. As for player maps, I've not usually found them to be appropriate beyond a very basic sketch of the main routes (or something like a battle map for encounters). As a GM, I really would never wish to provide players with the kind of detailed maps I might be using, because that's too much of a giveaway - aside from meaning I have to map a lot more stuff in more detail than may ever be needed (when, say, the party never visits most of those spots...).

All of this though is heavily dependent on the type of playing style you and your group prefer for RPGs; most of mine in recent decades have concentrated heavily on the narrative/story elements and far less on the miniature battle/where-is-everybody-standing type, which often needs a far greater degree of mapping precision.

lmrye · April 2019

Thank you all, very helpful. I like having all the information I need as a DM, but it does slow the map up considerably unfortunately. Oh well, can't have everything :)

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Mapping cities

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