Member Discussions

I think when you're creating a city it's important to keep in mind what you'd expect to be inside it. A city feels a lot more coherent and real when it's full of places to visit and things to do, and even when there's places to go that serve no real purpose than fluff. For instance, this is the list of places in the new city I'm making:

-Guard Office
-Court
-Jail
-Mayor's Office

All of those comprise the places in the city that keep the government running. They don't serve much real purpose (other than prosecuting players that break laws), but they give it that much more depth.

-Power Plant (what keeps the lanterns lit? in this case it's coal power from the huge mine the city's built around. this room doesn't do anything, but it's important fluff)
-Tailor
-Inn
-Pub (different! one's for drinking, one's for sleeping)
-Fighter's Guild
-Nightclub (a different sort of partying than the pub)
-Jeweler
-General Store
-Alchemy Shop
-Library (for scrolls)
-Wand Shop
-Bakery
-Butcher (fish and meat)
-Produce Store (fruits and vegetables)
-Bath House
-Comedy Club (basically the third bar in the city)
-Coffee Parlor (for non-alcoholic beverages)
-Blacksmith
-News Stand (who informs the populace of recent events?)
-Unemployment Office (where players can get hired hands)
-Pet Store
-Bank
-Post Office
-Player-buyable forge rooms (since there is a mine nearby)
-Player-buyable mansions (because it's a rich mining city)
-Local Game Store (a bit of an anachronism but also fluff, that sells a little game for characters to play)

And even with ALL of these places to go, I still have empty spots on the sides of my streets, and no idea what to fill them with. What do you guys put in your cities?

My City of Alexandria:
Castle
Gem Shop
Armor Shop
Weapon Shop
Crystal Shop
Cartography Shop
Magic Shop
Cloth Shop
Item Shop
Hide Shop
Brothel
Wine Bar
Bank
Waste Disposal
Temple of Light
Coliseum
Port
Houses

The city also has an intricate sewer system and a lot of room left for future additions, some of which I already have
planned out (Knights Academy, Mage Tower, Engineering Shop, Pet Shop, etc).

Coliseum
pvp arena
residential housing
government offices
church
altar
gambling parlours
secret back room stuff
towers
slum housing
parks

And even with ALL of these places to go, I still have empty spots on the sides of my streets, and no idea what to fill them with. What do you guys put in your cities?

Fill the empty spots with the homes of the citizens.
That's what most cities consist of.

Also it allows you to show the different kinds of people that live in your city. It's always interesting to get a chance to peek into someone's private space - and maybe nick a few items from the drawers...

The way that I generally build a new city/planet/whatever is that I just get the streets in place, then with the
remaining rooms I will build in any shops.. things that are local to the zone. After that, I create new zones to
get in the flesh of the rest of the place. So instead of creating the Museum as part of the City, I create the city
and then link the Museum to it later.

There are two advantages to this style that I can think of off the top of my head:
1) Your areas can reset differently making it so that your city stays super-populated while your museum is calmer.
2) You are producing areas more often... sure they could have been the same area, but since they are seperate it
appears that you're doing a lot more work. Also, areas that players can access are more important than big massive
things that you may not finish due to the scope of the project.

What you put in a city depends on what kind of city it is,
both in the era aspect and what the place is like. A "clean"
city should not have rampant gambling dens or prostitutes,
except perhaps in sectioned off corner where they "never can
quite get rid of them". If you have a sort of Steampunk
society, then there are probably steam pipes hidden away in
all sorts of places and tunnels to provide access to them.
Some of these places you almost have to have for flavor even
if the "pipes" don't need actual player or npc maintenance
(although it would be an interesting mechanic indeed if they
did).

Cities in all times and places need various kinds of stores
and entertainment venues as well as places to live, places
to be, place to scheme while planning world domination or
just control of a chunk of land. For this you have to
imagine (imagination is key) what is actually going on, and
what society would be doing minus the players of this game.
The players by definition are but individual members of this
society.

It also helps to have a notion of the size of a place to
begin with. A medieval city, for instance, might have a
walled center that is older than the surrounding city.
Modern cities suffer from urban sprawl: houses, stores, and
more wherever. Ancient cities are more compact, at least at
their center, if there was ever any government. Future
cities might be very, very spread out in the sense of anyone
living and working wherever they want: in the sky,
underground, floating on the water.


Once you have a few locations in mind, then you can decide
what should or could be next to them. For instance, it makes
sense for a coffee shop (in modern terms) to be near a
bookstore, since they attract some of the same kind of
people. Taverns/pubs/bars (depending on their clientele and
what you call the) on the other hand tend to be wherever
people are likely to wander by or where everyone will
inevitably pass them.

Cultures who value knowledge invariably have some kind of
library or a place where people can get together and talk
about things. Even in a high-tech society face to face
communication is easier and faster for long, drawn out
discussion.

I think there's two ways to consider this, kind of.

For some muds, the world is more important than the experience. I'm probably not saying this right, but it's the closest I can come. Some mud admins focus on world consistency (the world, assuming all rooms are the same size, must never have an overlapping room, the city must have houses wherever there's space for them), while others focus on the player experience (overlap is OK, empty streets are OK). Both of these are perfectly workable and both have their advantages and disadvantages (and some players actually prefer a spacially possible/super-realistic world with 5 thousand houses a city, each individually built, but that's in the minority these days if you ask me).

It is my opinion, however, that you should only add living spaces if they serve a purpose. You could, technically, build 50 houses and put cultural information in each of your 50 unique descriptions, but I have difficulty seeing the point--you're going to spend forever getting this right; most players won't even notice anyway. Instead, build 5 houses of important people, make them all part of a quest or something, and leave the rest empty.

If I, as a player, see houses everywhere with only slightly different descriptions, I'm going to stop checking them fairly quickly; it's one thing to have a bunch of houses and another entirely to mention a bunch of houses. I would think it's sufficient to merely say that there are houses; they don't need to be enterable.

Here's the approach I would take. Choose a street layout that you're happy with, describing the houses as though they're a backdrop, filling in shops where necessary.

Now, you've got plenty of space to expand. Choose a spot where there are only houses, add a shop, and change the description of the street. Then, make a huge rp event out of it. When you start running out of room (i.e. it becomes impractical for this to be a city because there's no more houses), add suburbs. Make an event of some sort out of this too. Repeat every time you have a brainstorm moment for a new shop, library, gambling den, or pretty much anything in jodah's list (Yes, jodah and good idea in the same sentence...). If you're going to do some of the bigger locations, I'd change the descriptions of more of the streets to reflect it.

This way, you actually get done in a reasonable time, and there's less possibility for getting bored, etc.