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I am building a large multi leveled City campaign. Any ideas how to represent a large City with multiple levels?
I am thinking of using dungeon tiles within a 3D grid system that I'd build out of long thin skewers, but that's a lot of work. Does anyone have any simpler ideas?
What are you planning to do with this? Will PCs be free to wander into any room of any building?
For most urban adventures, all you need is an overall map showing the locations of major streets and landmarks, a few street geomorphs, and maps of key buildings that feature in the adventure. Trying to completely map even a small city would be a truly enormous undertaking.
Yes. Don't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drache64
Large, complex maps are useless and pointless. Use 'conceptual maps'. For reference, find maps of Sigil, look how those are made. The vast majority of the city of Sigil are unmapped, and only points of interest are fleshed out.
Yea, don't map or build/model an entire city.
You can use Campaign Cartographer 3+ with the City Designer 3 & Dungeon Designer 3 add-ons and create a city map and then use the Floorplan command to create maps for each level of the interesting buildings. Depending upon the style of city, you might do one or two city blocks with full multi-level floorplans for each building in that block. But otherwise I would just map a couple of stores, inns, taverns and temples, etc.
I plan on it being open world and I want my PCs to be inspired by the map and drawn into the idea of a large metropolis. I would like combat and movement to be dynamic and multi leveled.
You're talking about thousands of buildings for a small city, tens of thousands for a large metropolis of the ancient world. A million or more for a large modern or future city. Mapping every building is not practical unless you have years to devote to the project.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drache64
Be that as it may, however, my question was not what you want to use the city for, but what you want to use the map for. A battle map for miniatures play is quite a different thing than a map that shows the layout of the whole city. I'd start by deciding the purpose of the map, then use that to help determine what scale the map should be, and how large of an area I need to represent.
To actually draw my maps I use Graphic because it's a lot cheaper and easier to use than Illustrator and still has all the functionality that I need. I have a Wacom Bamboo tablet that I use for drawing. I'm also a big fan of using relabled maps of the real world wherever possible.
I have a personal fascination with very vertical terrain - propably akin to what you call multi leveled, perhaps with added falling to your death. I can't map it out, though, having platforms and walkways and ropes across and chains hanging down is just ... too much for my mind to succesfully juggle. Instead, I can fluff it out, describe it in catchy prose, and wing the rest.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drache64
That works for me, but that's in part because my players are such kind and understanding people =)
Hand sketch a rough section view of the "multi-layers" to give an idea to your players, and just do the rest by descriptions. Will be much easier.
Similarly, do a couple of top-down views, very roughly annotate the districts and the places of interest, and boom, you have something solid on hand. You don't need anything fancy. Should take you about half an hour tops.
Well, I don't plan on mapping the entire city, that would be madness. But I plan on having a map like everyone suggested, but when the player gets to the specific block of the city he wants to be in, I wanted to map the block of the city using the scaffolding I described.
This is specifically for battle purposes. It sounds like no one really has a way to do 3D multi leveled battle maps (at least in this scale). I think my idea is pretty good then, when I complete my scaffolding I'll show you guys what I'm doing.
Basically I'll have a structure that I can slide 8x8 dungeon tiles into. It will have probably 4 layers separated by 3" to give miniatures room to fit. So it will be 12" tall.
I can set 4 of these structures close to each other on top of a sewer map. Then I can use my 2x8 tiles in between the structures to provide a sense of Bridges and etc.
Yeah, there is a way to do multi-level battle areas at 1"=5' scale. It's just that your wallet won't like it. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Drache64
I've seen some really nice terrain made out of thin laser cut plywood.
I construct 3d terrain for my games out of blocks. I have a set of keva blocks that work really well for building structures.