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Thread: Wydmoor 1400

  1. #1
    Guild Journeyer msa's Avatar
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    Default Wydmoor 1400

    Hi, it's been about a decade since I last posted here. I've got a city map I've been working on for a number of years off and on. I've got a break between jobs and I have been and expecting to work on it more. This is an important city for me as a player in my childhood DM's long-time homebrew.

    This is a pretty typical walled city in a relative flatland. It's bordered on the west with mountain foothills and on the northwest through southeast with an enormous swamp. There is a large river and a significant vassal river-town to the south. Its a city-state that is broadly autonomous, although it at times has been claimed/conquered by larger neighboring countries. It's difficult to access the city because of swamps/rivers/mountains and it's an area of high cultural significance, so it's remained a relatively powerful city. The city itself has been destroyed a few times, and has rebuilt from a siege in the last 60 years.

    The key is that grey structures are stone, brown structures are wood unpaved. Roads follow the same pattern for paved and unpaved. The purple structures/areas are tents that need to be more defined. The land is dark green for forested, light green for grass/dirt, and gold for farm.

    The city walls and buildings are done (open to feedback), and maybe I'll post some earlier versions that show it in more detail (like areas of town, social classes, etc). The developed area outside of town to the west is done.

    Here are my next steps:
    • building expansion: significantly more in the Southside and southern road (S) of 4-6x what's there (?), development in Sigilkenning the same size as Hubtown (W)
    • fortification expansion: add a new barricade to the south, near the stone building, defensive/wall tower structures on the northern barricade
    • farmland expansion: smaller fields around the city inside the barricades (started in the western part of town), larger fields outside the barricades
    • define the tent areas in purple (started near the main gate)
    • add more complexity/depth to the wooded, grassy, dirt, and paved sections of the city, probably autogen more detailed wooded/scrubby areas


    I'm interested in advice/critical feedback on the layout of the city and whether it makes sense. I'm not sure if there are common sense guidelines I'm missing (like river policing for city design). I've thought through a number of parts of it and discussed with my DM but I don't want to wall of text the first post so I'll share it if its relevant.

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    Last edited by msa; 02-26-2023 at 06:27 PM.

  2. #2
    Guild Master Falconius's Avatar
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    Looks great so far. Lots of work. I think you did a great job on the buildings.

    Those wall towers are absolutely gigantic, like as big as the cathedral. Which seems excessive to me. And there might also be smaller towers also interspersed along the wall (or not, there are plenty of city walls without, but this looks well fortified so they'd probably opt for more). For the pavement inside the city I'm assuming that all the slightly darker grey is paved too? For the avenues you could add bits and bobs to it to read more realistic, things like adding thicknesses to it in places or filling in town squares, or cutting/round the corners of some of the turns (like where you have a building doing that but not the pavement, I see a few instances where the buildings do it but not the pavement around Marketplace and to the left of Mead Estate and one on the NW corner of Pilgrims Place). I do think it's kind of odd to have all inner roads simply terminating at the walls, I'd think one or two swing around and follow the wall to meet up with others on the edge, but that may just be a bias of my own.

    Regarding the laying of smaller roads like outside the city, you may find it helpful to switch it up by placing buildings before making some of the roads. I found it really helps me make some parts look like they grew more naturally. You have to use a mixture of course, some roads need to be layed first, but some can be done after. As for paved roads i think there would be far less use of them in the countryside, paving is pretty expensive, so keep that in mind. I think in many cases they'd be the last thing to be built up when people were so annoyed with the mud they finally decided it was worth the cost.

    I think the fields look pretty good, and I know they really add a lot to the realism of a map. You might consider varying the colours a bit to indicate different crops which also adds a bit of realism, but it's not necessary, and I know they take a hell of a lot of work to put in at all. It sounds like this is a pretty low lying flatland area, so the farmers (or rulers using forced labour) might have built irrigation canals.

    Edit: It may not matter but you described a rather wet area it seems to me, quarrying stone might be an issue, meaning it has to be imported, if that were the case they'd probably opt for brick or more use of wood. Not sure if that's relevant at all or not.
    Last edited by Falconius; 02-27-2023 at 06:07 AM.

  3. #3
    Guild Journeyer msa's Avatar
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    Thanks, this feedback is super helpful! On all the points regarding color and textures and other finishing details, I agree with that. Right now I'm more focused on defining all the geometries as paths. I'll probably do some prototyping of designs and colors once I have them all in place, then I'll scale up the image and re-render everything at a higher definition. So now this is too low in priority to mention but it is on my mind.

    Quote Originally Posted by Falconius View Post
    Those wall towers are absolutely gigantic, like as big as the cathedral. Which seems excessive to me. And there might also be smaller towers also interspersed along the wall (or not, there are plenty of city walls without, but this looks well fortified so they'd probably opt for more).
    Yeah, looking at them again they look absolutely huge. I'll scale them down.

    Quote Originally Posted by Falconius View Post
    Edit: It may not matter but you described a rather wet area it seems to me, quarrying stone might be an issue, meaning it has to be imported, if that were the case they'd probably opt for brick or more use of wood. Not sure if that's relevant at all or not.
    For the reasons you mentioned, I tried to make stone less common. That's why a lot of the city buildings are wood, and mostly only the older/richer parts of the city that are stone. I also assumed the older stone walls were cannibalized for buildings and repairs, so that's why there is only an outer wall and not any older inner walls.

    There is a set of mountains to the west and the city does have a lot of iron mining interests, so there is access to (high cost) stone there. And there is also a dwarven religious order active in the area that obsessively makes roads. So I think there are some story reasons that the city uses more stone than makes sense for the terrain. Also, because magic* the cost transporting stone is probably more sane. Let me take this to my DM and consider it, though, it would be good to move forward with this consciously or reduce the amount of stone in the city.

  4. #4
    Guild Journeyer msa's Avatar
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    Map

    Ok, I made the city walls smaller, standardized their look with the rest of the buildings, and fixed a bunch of building issues where they used to overlap walls. I did some minor work on the streets, pulling them away from the walls, I adjusted the houses some but could do more. I did a small amount of other tidying as well.

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