
Advent day 11: City, a guidebook for the urban age by P.D. Smith
Music
Music is by Chris Zabriskie: chriszabriskie.com // bandcamp // instagram // youtube
Advent day 11: City, a guidebook for the urban age by P.D. Smith
Music is by Chris Zabriskie: chriszabriskie.com // bandcamp // instagram // youtube
The Melisonian Arts Council produced these really cool Pocket Dimension booklets. They’re sold out but I got mine from All Rolled Up (with my Dee Sanction reward plus a lovely purple koi facemask). I hope more are printed because they’re awesome.
I found a way to combine these booklets with the Metacity Primer, which is free on itch.io
OK, so in Metacity you design a city with freeform boundary drawing. You can use the template provided or create your own.
BUT since the mini hex grid in the Pocket Dimension is 37 hexes, you can place the Heart of the City in the middle and then assign the other 36 to the remaining hexes. Use one page to give the city overview, like this:
I used this to brainstorm Carchar-Lygaid, the City of Eyeless Princes with its temporal-sighted monarchy (the King) and propagandist Vizier (the Queen). I laid out five districts and left the other hexes blank.
Then use other pages to zoom into a district, e.g.
That’s the district of Shant, the Wyrmfelds where the dragon farmers cultivate dragons for scales, meat and venom. The whole place is a marsh with wooden walkways, lit by lanterns to penetrate the perpetual mist (District level tags). Then I made a few locations using the hex grid, like the Fane of Lupulold, the Decan of Shant, and Curlidge’s Gaff (the local Bishop).
So yeah, it looks like a great match of the notebooks with the tool. It works a bit like a Mandala Chart but with hexes. Also the regular hex pattern is a lot easier to scan than the random shapes I did for the graphic in the Metacity Primer, and a lot easier to visualise as a city map whilst still being basically topological.
The Squares Of The City by John Brunner
Intro 00:07 // Synopsis 04:16 // Commentary 15:05 // Further Reading 21:35
The City Shaped and The City Assembled by Spiro Kostov
City by P.D. Smith
The City Accelerated, a city building tool by Ralph Lovegrove
Music is by Chris Zabriskie: chriszabriskie.com // bandcamp // free music archive
Samples: “Is that you or are you you?” from Reappear // “Cylinder Nine” from Cylinders // “Take off and shoot a Zero” from Stunt Island // “I don’t know where I’d be without it” and “Another version of you” from Thoughtless
The City & The City by China Mieville
Intro 00:07 // Synopsis 01:47 // Commentary 12:02 // Breach 12:26 // Politics 18:14 // Conspiricies 19:24 // Precursor Age 25:01 // Tololgangers 28:19 // Further Reading 32:50
What happened at the prom by Elizabeth Lovegrove
Music is by Chris Zabriskie: chriszabriskie.com // bandcamp // free music archive
Samples: “Is that you or are you you?” from Reappear // “Cylinder Nine” from Cylinders // “Take off and shoot a Zero” from Stunt Island // “I don’t know where I’d be without it” and “Another version of you” from Thoughtless
Rats and Gargoyles by Mary Gentle
Intro 00:07 // Synopsis 05:30 // Commentary 36:05 // Bleed 36:05 // Magic 39:09 // Magicians, Runequest and Mage: The Ascension 41:01 // Dialect 47:14 // Resources 53:45 (Yates, Agrippa, Authentic Thaumaturgy)
Music is by Chris Zabriskie: chriszabriskie.com // bandcamp // free music archive
Samples: “Is that you or are you you?” from Reappear // “Cylinder Nine” from Cylinders // “Take off and shoot a Zero” from Stunt Island // “Another version of you” from Thoughtless
Viriconium by M. John Harrison
Synopsis 03:47 // Act 1 (Viriconium Knights, The Pastel City, Lords of Misrule) 04:13 // Act 2 (Strange Great Sins, A Storm Of Wings, The Dancer and the Dance, The Luck in the Head, The Lamia and Lord Cromis) 09:47 // Act 3 (In Viriconium, A Young Man’s Journey To Viriconium) 19:19 // Themes 26:54 // Artists 26:55 // Symbols and foreshadowing 29:25 // Time and “mutant future” 31:48 // The City (Glory, Thief: Dark Project) 34:49 // Roleplaying 40:24 // OSR and Appendix N (Sorcerer and Sword, DCC, Plot Points podcast, etc.) 40:25 // City building tools (Corpathium, City Accelerated) 56:07
Links to resources I mentioned in this episode:
Music is by Chris Zabriskie: chriszabriskie.com // bandcamp // free music archive
Samples: “Is that you or are you you?” from Reappear // “Fly inverted past a Jenny” from Stunt Island // “Another version of you” from Thoughtless