''Necropolis'' - Help me fill out this city

[CrazyCrab]

Hi everyone,
for the last couple of months I've been working on a new setting and I've got a lot of it down - cosmology, main story-line, factions, etc.
I've also been hand-drawing a map of the main city and I'm currently decorating and coloring it in digitally.
Here's my progress so far - warning, large.

Spoiler

Show

Now, I have a bunch of locations ready, but I figured it could be fun to have the community chip in.
The setting is vaguely cold war / early modern, ''Earth''. So, if you have any cool ideas or real places (like let's say your favorite pizza place) that you'd be happy to throw in, please let me know, anything goes - from horror to comedy. I'll make sure to add you to the credits should I finish this massive thing one day.

Thanks!

[Lleban]

Auntie Chen's Noodles 10 minutes west of the first street bridge lies a largely forgotten hole in the wall, famous among its customers for high quality noodles for a cheap price. For 2 decades Auntie Chen's Noodles has been a home away from home for dock workers, white collar employees, and adventurous college students.

[sktarq]

Book Delve

An independent and rare book store. The owners have a deep interest in the "occult" or at least the appearance of it. Their ideas of the occult are of the dark and sanity breaking varieties but mostly involve partaking in black clothing, halucinagenic drugs, and the writings of troubled poets and essayists.

The owners also buy up the writing of the local troubled poets and sponsor poetry nights. In their main open space. The stacks are in short lengths and placed in purposely convoluted way and with minimal space across the aisle. The secret room that contains the most rare, valued, and strange works. The rumours of what is in the room is far greater than what is actually found there except for deep fans of genre work.

As a place to drop red herrings, wannabes, and patsies it should fun.

[CrazyCrab]

Thanks for the suggestions, Ive added both of them to the list.

By the way, I finished the first draft of the map.
Thoughts? (LARGE)

Spoiler

Show

[Lleban]

The art is nice and I like the general layout of the city, but its hard for me to tell whats where. What are the 5 most important places in the city and where are they?

[MrZJunior]

How many people live in this city? And what's that large tan ring in the center?

[jqavins]

Why is it called Necropolis? That seems like the sort of name that carries a history which affect what's in the place now.

Anyway, Greasy Tony's, the original in New Brunswick, not the Arizona stores. Best cheese steaks I ever had, and Philadelphia can suck it. (Although, you really can't beat Philly's hot pretzels. But I digress. Often. Especially where food is concerned.) It wasn't too clean, but oh, it was good. There were always rumors about unsavory things, like drug dealing or prostitution run out of the back. I don't know if there was ever any truth to the rumors; I doubt Tony was involved in that stuff or overtly condoned it - his food business was too good to put at risk that way - but I wouldn't be surprised if he turned a blind eye to it.

Across Somerset street on the same side of Easton Ave. was a restaurant storefront that closed up and was reopened by new owners every few years. It was Boardwalk Foods (the first place I ever had potato skins and mozzarella sticks.) And it was Panda's, a run of the mill Chinese place. And it was a Mexican place for a while. Etc.

These were both regularly frequented by Rutgers students. Now I'm not saying that in game they need to have the same situation, but I guess there's likely to be a college or university if this is the main city, and it couldn't hurt.

[sktarq]

The Presses. Years back when town's newpaper was young this space held the unglamourus presses and stored ink and other smelly work. While the newpaper has long left their old art Deco building next door to be filled with apartments of the new smart set the old press room was converted into a brewpub. The old paper racks and ink tanks now hold stills (which the better off next door will claim is dark from old ink and not to be trusted- it is libel but the owner wouldn't want them as customers anyway). The presses left to make room for the bar and eating areas. Due to the heavy machinery and when it had to do its work the property had a noise licence that allowed it, when bought by the new owners, allowed the bar to stay open until basically dawn. This left what is essentially a large shed brewing it's own beer and serving it to the poor in the heart of the city centre. It is large space with high celings but poor lighting-and lots of tables and booths. A small stage and dance area sits across from the bar but is only semi-regularly used. It draws a surprisingly quiet crowd-workers who serve as clerks, teamsters, secretaries etc come here to unwind between the slums and their work shifts. Parties and large revels are less common than a quick brawl-which the overall crowd generally puts down quickly.

It makes a good place to find information on local bowerbrokers via "the help", provides quick and stark contrasts between the have and have nots in the city-their different accents, sports/hobbies, etc. Find guides to more funky parts of town etc. It is also place of refuge for its regulars-they protect each other here.

[jqavins]

Sorry, sktarq, but I can't help myself when it comes to picking nits. I can try, but it will bug me all day.

The old paper racks and ink tanks now hold stills...

Only if they're making their own liquor. You only mentioned beer. The racks could be holding fermenters, small ones by commercial standards unless those ink tanks are a whole lot bigger than I think (which is entirely possible.)

[sktarq]

Yeah those fermentation tanks are right about the size of industrial ink tanks-particularly old ones.

And the paper racks could easily hold the 6'Diax 15'H ones I see in local brewpubs.

And when I said it was converted into a brewpub I ment exactly that, a pub that brews it's own beer at minimum. And saying they make they own gin would be appropriate too, as long as was something that didn't have to be aged.

I knew people who worked at the local paper and asked why the old ink tanks from their old location where still in the parking lot 15 years after they moved to that location. Turned out to be for toxicity reasons so we made a joke about the English pub that took over the old space using them to brew beer. The above bar was born 10 years ago with that joke.

[Ngagn]

What is the feeling of it inhabints torwards their city? to they love it? to they respect it? do they don't care about the buildings and general higiene of it?

[Vogie]

If that's the setting, put some thought into the mass transit system - Trains, buses, subways, oversize flying carpets, Ba-Sing-Se style monorail Chutes, et cetera.

One of the cool things countries made in the cold war were huge structures with neighborhoods on top - typically hangers or factories, and the neighborhoods on top were so that enemy planes flying overhead couldn't see (therefore bomb or shell) the military complex underneath. Having a section of the town that has that faux-"underground" portion could be a cool reason to call the city Necropolis (a la it's a lot like a crypt) if there is no spooky undead things that give it that name.

[jqavins]

I've also been hand-drawing a map of the main city and I'm currently decorating and coloring it in digitally.
Here's my progress so far - warning, large.

Spoiler

Show

You call it the main city; is that "main" only in the sense of the campaign start, or is it the principal city of the region or country or even world. From the map it doesn't look so big, but I'm not sure I'm reading it right.

If that's the setting, put some thought into the mass transit system - Trains, buses, subways, oversize flying carpets, Ba-Sing-Se style monorail Chutes, et cetera.

And that's why I ask. Remember that the bigger the city, the bigger the mass transit system is likely (though not certain) to be and - here's reason for this post - the bigger the transit system the bigger its central terminal. If the city is really big, a transit center will collect all manner of businesses and people around it, from the seedy to the sublime, pressed up against each other. Look at Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York, or the Market East train station in Philadelphia. All serve as major hubs for long range intercity transit, commuter transit, and city-wide transit systems, and they all have great plethora of businesses and a cross section of humanity in and around them. They say you can find anything in New York. the fact is, you can find just about anything within two or three blocks of 41st Street and 8th Avenue.

[sktarq]

the fact is, you can find just about anything within two or three blocks of 41st Street and 8th Avenue.

Except fresh air, peace or quiet, or a curved street . . . little things

[jqavins]

Except fresh air, peace or quiet, or a curved street . . . little things

Well, yeah, if you want to pick nits and dwell on trivialities. I guess I just mean anything a person really needs.

[sktarq]

Sorry, sktarq, but I can't help myself when it comes to picking nits. I can try, but it will bug me all day.

What about nits?

[jqavins]

Guilty. No argument.

[DrKosmosis]

The Lucky Horse Casino - A fairly popular gambling spot in the city, although it has been known to attract some of the more unsavory citizens. The casino is heavily watched with bouncers and bodyguards to make sure no one cheats the house. While they always promise that you can win a fortune with enough luck, no one seems to be able to make their money back. Despite this the food, drink, and atmosphere is enough to keep a consistent supply of clientele

[jqavins]

Area 51. About 100 miles from the city there is a military base, "shrouded" in secrecy, and widely believed to harbor all manor of alien, psychic, magical, and/or otherwise sinister artifacts, kept by shady government figures from shady government agencies that don't officially exist. The place, in fact, houses normal top secret research on military weapon systems that is conducted in extreme secrecy for perfectly normal reasons, but the reputation and conspiracy theories just won't die. The characters may or may not believe the wild stories.

[sktarq]

And workshop 42

a sub basement under the repair depot of the sanitation department where some work on the the things that people assume happens at area 51 actually goes on. Mostly collecting the weird things of the world and how to weaponize them. Mr Wolf has 1001 conspiracy ideas but but under his leadership the site has grown more powerful than even his supervising system knows. But his book keeper's manager (Mr Pipe, or the Puffing man) has a few ideas and is trying to use the items found in the workshop to manipulate the power players of the city.