Logic never HAS to apply, but it helps, especially for a game based in a specific city. Even if you don't want to spend a lot of time working out the city's evolution, developing the city's character can help create it from scratch. Gotham, Metropolis, Central City, San Fransokyo all have their own character: the mood, the architectural style, the collective personality of the population. Based on these things, the city should have certain areas, buildings, and a style that compliments them which can be used for the campaign. Run down slums, warehouse districts, gambling zones, high-tech industrial areas. The map and layout can end up looking random, depending on how you make it, but there will usually be centers of activity for specific businesses. For example, you will generally not have a major university in the middle of the dock warehouse district, or a big casino in the midst of a middle-calls suburb. Even if you don't want to give a lot of thought to the history and layout over time, you should at least make sure that the placement of key locales and buildings make sense.

Campaign Cartographer is a tool you can use to create you're own maps.  https://www.profantasy.com/

There are options for other map styles pre-built for you. They do these in back issues called annuals or month-by-month as a subscription in the current year.

Modern Political style ->  https://www.profantasy.com/annual/2010/june10.html
Modern Road style -> https://www.profantasy.com/annual/2011/may11.html

Also, the aforementioned Cartogrpaher's Guild has a forum for those seeking to hire cartographers. You could inquire there with your specifications and get some bids. In the case you would rather not do it yourself. :-D

Quote from: Redforce;1025576Sorry I haven't been on here in a while...
I am working on a project to create a map for a fictional modern city.  It's not for an RPG, but I figured you guys could help me out anyway.
I know what features it will have and the general topography, and I know enough to base it at lease loosely on real cities.
However, I don't know how to go about making a map.  Any suggestions?

YouTube has tons of videos showing how to make exactly those maps.

Quote from: The Black Ferret;1027610Logic never HAS to apply, but it helps, especially for a game based in a specific city. Even if you don't want to spend a lot of time working out the city's evolution, developing the city's character can help create it from scratch. Gotham, Metropolis, Central City, San Fransokyo all have their own character: the mood, the architectural style, the collective personality of the population. Based on these things, the city should have certain areas, buildings, and a style that compliments them which can be used for the campaign. Run down slums, warehouse districts, gambling zones, high-tech industrial areas. The map and layout can end up looking random, depending on how you make it, but there will usually be centers of activity for specific businesses. For example, you will generally not have a major university in the middle of the dock warehouse district, or a big casino in the midst of a middle-calls suburb. Even if you don't want to give a lot of thought to the history and layout over time, you should at least make sure that the placement of key locales and buildings make sense.

Exactly.  I envision a city that is split in two halves, basically- one Metropolis, one Gotham.  Metropolis is where the gleaming, hi-tech skyscrapers are, and Gotham has the neo-gothic architecture and crime-ridden areas.  Metropolis is where the S.T.A.R. Labs - type mutated monster experiments escape and wreak havoc, and where the laser-gun armed thugs rob the high-end museums and jewelry exchanges.  Gotham is where the street-level heroes patrol, and has the mob-infested businesses, slums, and lower-tier villains have their abandoned warehouse hideouts.  Occasionally mixing the two could lead to good story-fodder as well.  It's the only solution I can think of for the fictionopolis of a Justice-League type team.

Quote from: Redforce;1027749Exactly.  I envision a city that is split in two halves, basically- one Metropolis, one Gotham.  Metropolis is where the gleaming, hi-tech skyscrapers are, and Gotham has the neo-gothic architecture and crime-ridden areas.  Metropolis is where the S.T.A.R. Labs - type mutated monster experiments escape and wreak havoc, and where the laser-gun armed thugs rob the high-end museums and jewelry exchanges.  Gotham is where the street-level heroes patrol, and has the mob-infested businesses, slums, and lower-tier villains have their abandoned warehouse hideouts.  Occasionally mixing the two could lead to good story-fodder as well.  It's the only solution I can think of for the fictionopolis of a Justice-League type team.

Well, in that case, you could do it a few different ways. The core of the city could be the Gotham-esque part and the outer areas between the city center and the outlying suburbs can be the Metropolis area. The Gotham-like center would look old because its the older part of the city and never got beyond it. It could be that way because, say, the old families and businesses that control it are too corrupt and set in their ways to loosen their grip, while the newer, outer regions of the city were more open to new arrivals. So, the old city center fell by the wayside amide its own stodginess, while the rest of the city has moved on and grown around it.

The other possibility is the opposite. The city could have been a major economic power years ago, maybe around the time of the Industrial  Revolution, and grew fast. Eventually, that ended and most of the city lost its polish and became run down. Recently, however, drawn to the cheap real estate prices, newer businesses have begun to buy up the metropolitan areas and turn them into advanced, modernized districts, having torn down the old buildings and replaced them with new architecture, creating a new localized boom. Kind of like New Detroit in Robocop, I suppose. So, you have your Metropolis on the inside and Gotham on the outer areas.

A third is to, basically, have two connected cities. It's a variation on the first suggestion, but more extreme. The old city never gave an inch and so all the modernization took place in open real estate right outside the old city borders, essentially building a new city right on the old one's border. I think this is the least realistic of the three, because it basically creates a "Two-Face" city, but if you want to have an equal sized area for both your four-color and Iron-Age type heroes to work with, it does balance the square-foot playing field more than the other two.

Quote from: Redforce;1027749I envision a city that is split in two halves, basically- one Metropolis, one Gotham.  Metropolis is where the gleaming, hi-tech skyscrapers are, and Gotham has the neo-gothic architecture and crime-ridden areas.

"Gotham is Manhattan below Fourteenth Street at 3 a.m., November 28 in a cold year.  Metropolis is Manhattan between Fourteenth and One Hundred and Tenth Streets on the brightest, sunniest July day of the year." - Denny O'Neil.

Quote from: Redforce;1027516Does this logic apply to superhero fictional cities?  Because, to me, those seem to evolve with the needs of the hero's stories and the convenience of the plot - maps are almost always an afterthought.

Possibly not. Though for my Golden Age campaign I used New York as the home base and made ample use of it's different features (as they were in the 1940s!).