I’m a sucker for these challenges. But, every day feels like an overcommitment. So I’m toning down the expectations, and I’m going to post something every week, here.My two favourite cities are Fever Dreaming Marlinko and of course, Duskvol. I want to try to meet Marlinko’s scale with Duskvol’s detail, which hopefully will be a good middle ground to create something meaningful in 52 weeks. I’ll use this and the lists by Joey and Boglins in their City26 posts to generate goals and a list of things that I can choose to create in a given week.

What’s in my ideal city?

There’ll be a lot of repetition between these lists and the list in my process section later, so feel free to skip ahead. But based on reading through those 4 suggestions, my goals for this city are:

• 4-6 districts
  • 4-6 locations each
  • A description of the district:
    • 1d6 incidental scenes
    • 1d6 streets and their descriptions
    • 3-4 typical buildings in the district
  • a random encounter table (2d3 items, for night and for day) with descriptions
  • unique carousing in that district (potentially with 1d6 bad outcomes)
  • items and services for sale at the markets
  • 2-3 NPCs with a 1-2 sentence description and a quote (major NPCs are a faction, but not all NPCs)
  • 1-2 factions for that area (“their turf”)
    • A power level (I to IV)
    • 3 NPCs
    • 3 assets
    • 1-3 quirks
    • A list of allied and enemy factions
    • A current situation
    • 1-2 faction clocks indicating when their current goals are
• The City:
  • Rumour table (36 items)
  • Things overheard (36 items)
  • Minor events (36 items)
  • Major events (12 items)

Some notes: Effectively I took what Duskvol has, and scaled it down to Marlinko size. Duskvol, however, has a whopping 4 factions per district, which even when I ran Blades in the Dark, meant a lot were left on the table. I scaled this down to 2. In Duskvol they’re separated into underworld, institutions, weird fringes and trade. Dice types used for different numbers: 2d3 for 5 items with a bell curve, d6 for 6 items, d6 with 2 options for 12 items and d66 for 36 items.

If I end up with free time, I’ll write some lore:

1. City history (1-6 events)
2. Cultures and associated languages (1-3 cultures)
3. A calendar with seasons and holidays (1-6 events)
4. Typical food: 1-6 for the poor, comfortable, and wealthy)
5. Law and order (1-6 paragraphs)
6. Academia (1-6 paragraphs)
7. Underworld (1-6 paragraphs)

Ok, so doing the math, basically it’ll take 14 weeks to write a district, so 4 districts will take me 56 weeks, if I don’t stray into lore or miss weeks. If I do bonus entries when I’m on holidays or have extra days off or am sick or whatever, I can get it done in a year. There are certainly options in the list that will be less time consuming than others. The goal, however, is to enjoy myself, not to complete it.

Themes and approaches

Wenya City is a stilted city, built on and around the hundreds of small islands in the Wenya Lagoon. It’s wracked by squalls and storms in the wet season. Wenya Lagoon is protected from the worst of the storms, and so it’s a major port, with endless caravans coming up the Drowned Highway that winds through the mangroves to the west, bound for the drunk and rich ships of the Thundering Sea.

My mood board? Hot, wet, sweat-drenched, salty, long-legged birds, crabs, fish, mosquitos, octopus, sharks, coral, sailing ships, blue waters, mangroves, anchors, shipwrecks, tidal pools.

System? Writing stats and mechanics is the easy part, and if I complete the city, I can go back and do that stuff afterwards. It’s the writing that’s harder, so let’s call this project tentatively system agnostic, but maybe not long-term.

The Weekly Process

Logistics: Open a new post. Copy the Loose Ends footnote from last week’s post to the bottom of this week’s post, and read it to remind you of what the loose ends are. Don’t feel pressured to pay attention to them. Don’t forget to put the number of the week in the title.

Write. If there’s a piece of lore that inspires you in the Loose Ends, write that. Otherwise, roll 1d8 to find out what. Ignore a result you can’t do, and do the thing that you need to do to do it. Otherwise:

1. Start a new district (needs a landmark, 1d6 incidental scenes, 1d6 streets and their descriptions, and 1d3 typical buildings in the district; up to 6 districts)
2. Write 2-3 minor NPCs in an existing district (needs a 1-2 sentence description and a quote; once per district).
3. Write a random encounter table for an existing district (needs 5 day and 5 night items; once per district)
4. Write a location for an existing district (if it’s a shop, needs 1d6 goods and services available with prices; up to 4 locations).
5. Write a faction whose turf is an existing district (needs 1 NPCs, 1 assets, 1 quirk; 1 current situation, and 1 faction clock, twice per district)
6. Add to a faction you haven’t yet completed (add up to 2 NPCs, 1 quirk, 2 allies, 2 enemies, and 1 faction clock; once per faction)
7. Write a unique carousing action in that district (needs a 1-2 sentence description, a unique NPC which you can add to the district list with a 1-2 sentence description and a quote, and 1d6 bad outcomes; once per district)
8. Write a physical secret connection between 2 existing districts (needs a lock and at least 1 key; twice per district)

Name the post after what you’ve written. Add it to the category “City26” and then hit “post”. Or, if you still have a moment, do some of these things first.

Update dynamic tables: If it feels relevant to the location, faction, NPC or whatever, add something to the relevant table.

1. Add a hook to the district’s hook table (up to 6 per district)
2. Add an item to the rumour table (up to 36)
3. Add an item to the overheard in the city table (up to 36)
4. Add an item minor events table (up to 36)
5. Add an item major events table (up to 12)

Map stuff. If you’ve added a district or a location, add it to the map, or say to add it to the map in “Loose Ends”.

Add to and remove from “Loose Ends”. Remove anything you’ve used this week. Add anything you haven’t completed (for example, a missing key to a physical connection). If you feel you need to break the maximum allowed for a space, make a note in the Loose Ends and say why, and see if you still feel that way in a year.

Like, I don’t like my chances of completing. My Dungeon23 lasted a month. But, wish me luck!

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