Forums of the Megaverse®

Earth or Three Galaxies.

I got to thinking about this when I was watching Boba Fett. According to the aerial shot Mos Espa is huge. And for that matter so is Mos Eisley. Some people have even tried mapping them out but its a big project. I remember I used to have mapping software called Map Mage that would auto generate all kinds of towns, with a random seed. You could also customize the random generation. Havent used it in a while cuz eventually I realized I wanted to make cities that had a natural flow to them.

I think in rifts most GM's just have a general idea of what their towns look like and only make detailed maps of areas where they plan to have encounters. I've been setting up a smuggling campaign in Chi-town and its forced me to make some city block and street maps. I never made a major town from scratch, not even a small one. Too much work and I dont even know what kind of software would do it effectively. I'm too lazy to make one on paper.

It is somewhat abstract, but you can generate layouts with this online tool:
https://watabou.itch.io/
Hmm, that is the overall site. The city generator is shown there, and I meant to post the direct link: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator
Obviously, it is intended for fantasy, but just for street/block layout, it should still be fine once you mess with the various filters.

I haven't detailed anything large that was totally my own creation so far. I have done several small places, but nothing at all close to a city. As far as the mapping itself, I mostly use a piece of software called Wonderdraft. You can use pretty much any png as an asset, add custom fonts, etc. I use GIMP for any edits I make to individual assets, and then Wonderdraft to create the maps. I tend to use assets from artists like Gabriel Pickard or Meditating Munky depending on the look I am going for... Just as examples, I have used those programs to make color maps of Aracho (probably not nearly as large as what you would be doing) and Tanith (just a small town) from the fantasy Book II: The Old Ones black and white maps.

Generally I tend to be more abstract with general layout and focus on key zones of interest for players in towns. So the stores will be in X area and the stores will be mapped out on map but are not worth the time and effort to map every thing out.

I would say at some point a large town turns into a city.
I believe the largest city I have had in a game was an astral domain that was used by millions of inhabitants it was about 200 mile radius of pure city. But only a few keys areas got mapped out.

Detailed, building-by-building maps get impractical quickly once you get to the town+ level of population. The biggest such map I’ve ever seen could fit maybe 20K people, and that was enormous and incredibly detailed.

Kraynic wrote:It is somewhat abstract, but you can generate layouts with this online tool:
https://watabou.itch.io/
Hmm, that is the overall site. The city generator is shown there, and I meant to post the direct link: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator
Obviously, it is intended for fantasy, but just for street/block layout, it should still be fine once you mess with the various filters.

I haven't detailed anything large that was totally my own creation so far. I have done several small places, but nothing at all close to a city. As far as the mapping itself, I mostly use a piece of software called Wonderdraft. You can use pretty much any png as an asset, add custom fonts, etc. I use GIMP for any edits I make to individual assets, and then Wonderdraft to create the maps. I tend to use assets from artists like Gabriel Pickard or Meditating Munky depending on the look I am going for... Just as examples, I have used those programs to make color maps of Aracho (probably not nearly as large as what you would be doing) and Tanith (just a small town) from the fantasy Book II: The Old Ones black and white maps.

Actually that neighborhood generator looks really damn good. Thank you.
In fact all of those tools look better than the Map Mage programs I downloaded years ago.