Mythic City Crafter

Mythic Magazine #61

I had a wonderful time creating a fantasy world with Mythic Magazine #60, and my article depicting that was well received. So I was pleased to see Tana Pigeon of Word Mill Games release Mythic Magazine #61 with the topic City Crafter. I decided to build a future site for my Old School Essentials characters to visit that has something interesting to do.

Similar to how the Fantasy World crafter worked, Tana laid out a procedure to follow with some new custom tables to roll on to identify aspects of your burgeoning city. Of course, a worksheet is included as well to document your craft.

City Identity

First, we identify the City Identity. When you roll on the provided d100 City Identity Focus table, you should have the question in your mind, “What is the first thing this City makes you think of?”

I rolled: Holistic from the table. This City’s growth has embraced harmony with nature, weaving itself around natural elements instead of paving over them.

I then rolled 2 keywords from the City descriptor tables within Mythic GME. Power + River. This worked out perfectly for me, because I had intended for my characters to use this as a jump off point to travel up the Amethyst River to their next destination. Sometimes, the oracle rolls just work out like magic!

This is the City Identity I constructed from these rolls:
Janla is an ancient city. It looks to have been grown more than built. Though it is now mostly populated by humans, many wonder if the original founders were of a more magical race. The oldest buildings are literal works of art shaped or maybe grown from stone. Many are formed to resemble breaking waves, towering trees, or craggy cliffs. Tourists travel to Janla just to see the architectural wonders.

Districts

Next, we have to develop the districts within our city. We are instructed to start with five, but you can have more or fewer as befits your city. Similar to the Identity, we have a d100 District Focus table with ideas and descriptions for different types of districts.

For District 1, I rolled Domestic on the focus table. This district is home to many people and is known for its neighborhoods.

I then rolled 2 keywords from the City descriptor tables within Mythic GME. Interesting + Work.

This is the description of the Domestic district from these rolls: The housing in this district is some of the most fanciful buildings in the city. The affluent people of the city all live in this area. Many find work just acting as tour guides for the visiting tourists coming to Janla. They get many travelers from neighboring Cova and architecture-admiring dwarves from Karn Buldahr.

For District 2, I rolled “Roll additional Keyword from City Descriptors.” So, I added it to the 2 keywords I rolled. Suffering + Bleak + Impressive

This is the description of the district I derived from these rolls: The so-called Medical district centers around a massive building shaped like a gull in flight. There, and in the buildings around it, numerous shrines, apothecaries, and healers live and work. They treat the ill of Janla, and people who come here from afar for treatment.

For District 3, I rolled Food. Food is made here, either grown and farmed, harvested in vats, fished from rivers, or however this world sustains people. For my 2 City Descriptor keywords, I rolled Developed + Hills.

This is the description of the Food district I crafted: The outlying district encompassing the surrounding hills is home to the city’s extensive farmland. Due to the fertile floodplain soil, the harvests are usually quite lucrative.

For District 4, I rolled Food again. For my 2 keywords, I rolled Lacking + Illness.

Here is the description for the second Food district: The city of course has numerous fisheries along the river. In addition, the lucrative trade from the river ensures the citizens always have an abundance of food. With the encroaching unending winter, (see my World Crafting article) places like Janla will be highly contested.

For my last District 5, I rolled Economic. This district is a haven for business interests of one sort or another. This could be commercial, such as marketplaces where people buy things, or headquarters for business entities…anything that touches on economics. For this district, my City Descriptor keywords were Sparse + History.

Using those prompts, here is the description for my Economic district: This portion of the city is the youngest, lacking any of the fanciful construction from times past. Instead the buildings here are all wood with slate or thatch roofs. This is where the majority of the city’s shops, markets, and merchants thrive. In addition, there is a whole street of nothing but inns and taverns to cater to the visiting merchants and tourists. The locals call it Tavern Row.

Placing Districts

Now for the part I found just a bit tedious, creating a map of your city. A LOT of creative people will likely really enjoy this portion, but by the time I had finished, I was really ready to be DONE. Tana provides us with a 12 x 12 grid on the worksheet. We then take 2d12 dice and roll for the vertical and horizontal position for our districts on this grid.

I rolled a location for all 5 districts and then marked them on my map grid.

District 1: 12,2
District 2: 3,3
District 3: 4,9
District 4: 6,12
District 5: 12,4

You then start at point 6,7 and roll on the provided d12 Features table. That will determine, along with your marked districts above, what is located at that location in your city. The Features are: Route, Residential, Commerce, Infrastructure, Natural, Happy,and Sprawl. You then roll a d4 and spiral out from 6,7 drawing that number of features on the map.

This took a tremendous amount of time, but once it was complete, it did look quite neat (it would have been neater coming from a more talented artist).

Once you are done, you can then draw boundaries around your districts, I did not feel the need to do that. I felt like the icons were enough to differentiate the locations. And like real cities, the districts bleed together some. In addition, a naturally occurring Entertainment district arose for me in the center of the city, which was really cool.

City Event Table

Like with the World Crafter edition, we now take the keywords we derived for our city identity and districts, and create a Meaning table called City Events. We can roll on this table, along with other meaning tables in Mythic GME to derive city specific locations or events. The remaining open slots can be populated from the Action Meaning tables.

1. Power

2. River

3. Interesting

4. Work

5. Suffering

6. Bleak

7. Impressive

8. Developed

9. Hills

10. Lacking

11. Illness

12. Sparse

13. History

14. Start

15. Disadvantage

16. Environment

17. Information

18. Deny

19. Trap

20. Continue

Rolling on the Table twice along with an NPC Identifier, we get Public + Power + Information. I gather from these rolls, this NPC acts as the guild leader of the Tourist Guides. You can see how this table gives our city flavor to other rolls we might need to make.

Landmarks

Lastly, we create our landmarks for the city. These should be unique locations our city is known for. Since we established the fanciful architecture earlier, our landmarks will all be based on that idea. To make the landmark, you roll 2d12 for the coordinates + a keyword from the City Event table + a keyword from the Locations meaning table.

I had the following:

5,5 A volcano shaped theater in the entertainment district.
7,2 Fish Shaped fisheries along the riverside in the Food district
1,5 A shrine on a cliff shaped building within the Medical district
3,3 A gull shaped hospital in the medical district (this was also from my narrative)

Conclusion

With that, the city is now complete! For a fun conclusion, I rolled up a city festival with two rolls on my City Events table: Continue + Hills

They are holding a musical festival called “The Sound of Music.”

”The hills are alive…with the sound of music…”