Let's build something on a wiki.

My idea is either a science-fantasy or fantasy city adventure setting with locations, NPCs and encounters. But system-neutral, and then anyone who wants to can link system-specific versions of the encounters on seperate pages.

But like.. the whole deal. Maps, encounter areas, encounters, and all of that.

It shall have magic! And ray guns! And zombies! And giant robots! And lizard-people!



We will be as GODS!





...but seriously, whaddaya wanna put in this city, exactly?

Nothing specific, but in general- everything. Like it could have a sewer system, a thieves guild, a museum, a marketplace. And it could have a monster zoo, where the monsters escape from every once in a while. And about 12 different taverns ranging from the really seedy and violent, to the really expensive and classy. And then detailed NPCs of all sorts.

I mean, it's supposed to be a wiki, so we could just keep adding little details here and there, and make it publicly available.

Ok, I 'll go set it up and post a few updates. Anyone else want to try it out/contribute, I'll put a link here.

You do that, Abyssal Maw.  I'm down with this.

Sounds interesting. I'd be happy to contribute.

This sounds like a fun project, if a newbie can contribute I'd be happy to.

Some suggestions on a fantasy city;

 - Place it in the world first, so it has a reason for being. If you want to start small, a trade intersection like ancient Palmyra (where the Roman and Parthian worlds met) gives you a cool entrepot feel. A bit more ambitious is a port city, which can be as small as Hull in England to as Huge as Venice in the Adriatic.

 - Do the terrain first. I was a surveyor for a long time, and I can promise you that large scale earthmoving is a phenomenon of the late 20th century. This means the people in your city are going to have to live and work with the terrain they're given.

 - Sketch up a few prior settlements. Burn them. Sack them. Flood them or give them an earthquake. Then build your city on top of them. Some mediaeval cities had inner town walls inside the outer town walls that the city had grown out of. Often these are where the 'quarters' are, as they're sealable by the old gates. You can have an old watchtower right in the centre of town, a hangover from the days when that was the edge of the city.

 - Sewers follow the lay of the land, and most are simply encased creeks. So rather than the dubious straight lines you see in fantasy cities, they tend to follow the low lying areas and wiggle a lot.

 - Settle on the city's history first. If it was once a republic, it would have had an old forum and assembly that fell into disuse when the monarchy was imposed, or vice versa. Old temples and shrines from out of favour gods might dot out of the way areas, or new temples built over their foundations.

Just some stuff off the top of my head.

Quote from: ChalkLineThis sounds like a fun project, if a newbie can contribute I'd be happy to.

*awesomeness snipped*

Okay, I vote we keep this guy.

I propose it be built on rock 'n' roll.

I would also like to contribute.

Can we have an official cartographer?  I'll volunteer to do floorplans as my loving fiancee is an interior designer with access to CAD.

Basically, I think we should structure the thread a bit.  We have a cartographer who can do the maps, a floorplan person who can do specific buildings, and everyone else contributes the content.  

I'd be happy to host the maps at //www.joewolz.com.

Also gotta detail the stuff under the city. Sewers. Subway. Fungus-farms (hooray for urban agriculture). The remains of a previous city below all that. Yeah.

I love this idea.  Count me in!

Where do we stick this stuff?  I'm sure the gaming world needs to read all about The Randy Priestess Tavern & Drinkery on the corner of Hunt Street and Eagle's Wing Street...

I have a basic wiki setup.

http://paravail.pbwiki.com

It has a password : 'rpgsite'

Any images, (maps and such) I'll host personally and you can use an inline link. This  is just to keep the storage space low and we can have perpetual 'free status'. If that changes and this is really cool, I'll spring for hosting. It's cheap.  

Ok, as the project starter, I picked the named 'Paravail', inspired by the Narnian 'Cair Paravel'. But this could be a city with a thousand names, and little sub-boroughs and places. So get creative. Feel free to edit my work and anyone else's work, and if anyone else edits your work, try to take it in a collaborative spirit, or at least discuss it.

I had conceived it as a bit of an extraplanar fantasy city with some sci-fi and steam-punk type areas. The reason for this is so that everyone can play. If you have an idea for a more or less fantasy area, put it up! If you want to do a straight historical section.. do it! I think we'll eventually divide it up into sections.

"We built this city on Rock and Roll"

I <3 Yamo.

OK, so just to let you know, even if you haven't posted here yet: ALL of your contributions and ideas are very, very welcome! Go there and check it out. I'll be glad to help out in any way, and I'm going to be adding to some areas as well.

In concept I'm presenting kind of a mish-mash type deal, but that's just so we have the sandbox as wide as possible. If someone wants to do something more Palmyra and Rome, and someone else wants to do something more bizarre.. this way we can do both. The Take-Away is that in use -- you could just ignore the parts that you don't quite agree with. For example, I'm going to build some taverns I plan on using in my D&D campaign, and detail a couple of criminal gangs and a sewer network. But we can have multiple, mulitples of those things.

So thing of it as a piece-by-piece thing for your own use, for sharing your genius, and then lastly, as a whole sort of interdimensional mish-mash city-setting. It can be all of those things and each of them seperately.

I'm in. I know, I don't say much, but rewriting W:tA to be mystic hypernatural killing machine blood opera instead of big furry hippies smashing up fast food joints is a big job. That said, urban fantasy-style is one of those things I've got a head full of.

Just a suggestion, given the toolbox nature of this particular interdimensional city; possibly a "Links, rumors, and outright lies" section should be included on individual entries, suggesting ways they might be combined with other disparate elements?