Shamra remembered deep mines. She remembered the dungeons of dark elves and the mazes of minotaurs, but none of those places had been as bewildering as this huge, uncaring city. Somewhere, she had to find the Blue Wizard Inn to join her party, but she had searched all day, and dark was coming. The street was like a tunnel, with rooftops leaning against one another overhead and patches of light shining between eaves. When night came, marauders would emerge, easily evading the city watches, robbing, kidnapping, and killing. She had to find directions or at least a sanctuary, a base camp from which to explore the city. Finally desperately, without looking to see where she was, Shanra climbed a staircase and knocked on a dry wooden door. Somebody would be inside....
No DM can plan encounters for every single part of a town. This problem is compounded by the fact that PCs seldom need so much information as when they enter a city and wonder what all the buildings are for. Worse yet, PCs often visit a town on a whim -- perhaps because they want to trade with some rare sort of merchant, forcing the DM to decide if the businessman even exists.
One solution to this problem is a random city generation system, and that is what this article provides. These tables show what buildings PCs may find in urban areas of all sizes and what customs might be expected, in both Occidental and Oriental campaigns.
The buildings tables (Tables 2-5) can be used in several ways. Each attributes a modified die roll to a building type, so that an otherwise undefined building can be given a purpose. ("Looks like you've found a livery stable, Brak.") Each also has a column that determines the chance that the building exists somewhere in or near a city. ("The peasant says there's a livery stable around here!") Always override this second column when it conflicts with other data; if the DM wants a building to exist in a city, it exists. Furthermore, if a roll on the first column indicates that the PCs find a certain building, it is there, no matter what the second column says.
Note that 1d100 results above 100 are given in the first two columns of Tables 2-5. These figures are 1d100 rolls modified by figures from Table 1 (hence the possibility of "rolling" a number larger than 100). The Table 1 modifiers are used to reflect the size of a given city. Each such modifier is added to the 1d100 roll for the first column and to the percentage chance for a building's existence on the second. Thus, the larger the city, the easier it becomes to find unusual businesses.
Although many of the entries listed in the city-generation tables are self explanatory, others require a bit more definition. The following notes describe structures and professions listed in these tables. For further details on these structures, DMs may consult the books listed in the bibliography of this article.
Artisan: Roll this result on Table 6. Most tradesmen live in their workshops. These house/factories have large windows (without glass) that let people on the street watch the craftsmen at work, serving as a sort of advertisement. A large wooden panel is used to shut each portal at night, being used as a drop-down table to display wares during the day.
Bridge: Bridges span canals, rivers, chasms, or aqueducts, and can be found in even the driest cities. Passers-by must pay a toll at many city bridges; any attempt to avoid this toll (by swimming or other means) is a serious crime. Offenders will have to pay costly fines and may be whipped or imprisoned if they have no money. Cities need their revenue, after all.
Castle: This is the fortified home of a great noble, possibly the ruler of the city. If the city is not ruled by a lord, castles usually belong to priesthoods or knightly orders.
City wall: Most cities stretch far beyond their walls. City fortifications usually surround as small an area as possible because the people who build them want only to protect their own property without wasting money on bigger walls. Therefore, characters may find streets blocked by the defenses. The urban area outside a city's wall is called the faubourg, an old French word for suburb, and is usually poorer than inner city districts.
Court of law: District magistrates administer these courts, commanding bands of constables. Their functions are described on page 140 of Oriental Adventures.
Embassy: Embassies in Oriental worlds are not intended for diplomacy but as hotels where foreigners are quarantined to keep them from infecting the local peasants with barbaric ideas.
Fortification: This indicates some sort of barracks or tower, manned with city guards and controlled by the city council.
Guild hall: Roll on Table 6 to see which guild owns this building.
Hospital: Charities operate most hospitals and treat anyone entrusted to them. They have few trained physicians or clerics, but they do provide a safe place for sick or injured people from any social class. A few hospitals (20%) cater to lepers, and 5% are mental institutions.
Hut: Huts usually belong to peasant farmers. In large cities, laborers and poor craftsmen live here.
Magic shop: This store sells material spell components (see "Living in a Material World" by Michael Dobson, in DRAGONĘ issue #81, reprinted in the Best of DRAGON Magazine Anthology, Volume IV). Magical items are almost never for sale, but the shop might buy them from PCs for roughly half the normal sale value.
Market: PCs can buy almost anything from hawkers here. Almost all of the people in a market (80%) are peasants trying to sell farm produce, but 10% of the street vendors are merchants from distant lands; another 10% are artisans rolled from Table 6.
Rice paddy: Oriental peasants farm rice everywhere, even in the centers of huge cities. In the real Orient, rice growers still work in modern Tokyo despite its staggering population.
Shanty: These shacks have been illegally built by squatters. Many belong to serfs who are fleeing servitude on some rural manor.
Storehouse: Most cities store a supply of food to be rationed out during famines or sieges. Although storehouses do not usually have permanent guards, characters caught robbing these granaries will be severely punished.
Tattoo shop: Almost all tattoo shops are operated by yakuza.
Thieves' den: This sort of building is always disguised as something else. Roll again to see what it looks like. These dens have a 30% chance of belonging to assassins' guilds or other secret societies. In the Orient, thieves' dens serve as meeting grounds for the yakuza.
Training hall: This is the dojo of a famous teacher. The master has a 20% chance of teaching martial arts and a 40% chance of teaching philosophy; the hall has a 80% chance of involving martial arts, a 20% chance of teaching some court proficiency, and a 20% chance of teaching an artisan proficiency (roll each chance separately).
The DM may choose exactly which martial art or proficiency is taught here according to the needs of the campaign. Some of these professions are extremely specialized. In most cities, guilds force all businessmen to specialize and prohibit them from practicing each others' trades. Guilds also set prices and standards of quality. Merchants control most cities, so these guilds are extremely powerful and seldom defied.
DMs should never use random rolls as a substitute for writing exciting adventures. However, a dice-generated city would be quite realistic in most fantasy worlds. Ancient cities laid their streets wherever there were gaps between buildings and had no definable slums or rich neighbor hoods. A merchant's villa might stand next to the town's rowdiest bar or a stinking tenement. Artisans often clustered along a single street, and mighty kings sometimes had cities built to order. But in general, medieval cities were designed randomly.
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Gies, Joseph and Francis. Life In A Medieval
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Saalman, Howard. Planning and Cities:
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Inc., 1968.