Medieval fantasy city generator
May 28, 2017 2:13 AM   Subscribe

This application generates a random medieval city layout of a requested size. The generation method is rather arbitrary, the goal is to produce a nice looking map, not an accurate model of a city.
posted by fearfulsymmetry (24 comments total) 54 users marked this as a favorite
 
There are a lot of craftsmen.
posted by lollusc at 2:20 AM on May 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


A lot of craftsmen indeed. I might use it a bit, but I'll need to add water sources - cities without obvious supplies always seem suspect to me, although fantasy does allow a range of solutions.
posted by Peter B-S at 2:23 AM on May 28, 2017


The Craftsmen thing (and the water thing) comes up in this Q&A
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:38 AM on May 28, 2017


It seems like all the very obvious problems (no rivers, no churches, too many craftsmen) are basically problems they're working on.

The ward names all seem to match the ones in A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe including having Gate, Craftsmen, Market, Merchant, Patriciate and Slum sections. If you're really into the maps here and want ideas on what's in them, you can get the city chapters as a free download.
posted by graymouser at 2:55 AM on May 28, 2017 [4 favorites]


Good post.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:09 AM on May 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


Is this Watabou of Pixel Dungeon fame? Man, that is a person who really knows how to scratch my itch.
posted by Literaryhero at 3:13 AM on May 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


I think the designer has got things back to front, which is why they're running into problems when altering elements. Historically, walls were built around settlements, which then grew to fit the walls. Of course it's going to look weird if you remove walls from an existing city. Similarly, settlements were built around important sites and routes, like rivers or crossroads. People don't just plunk their buildings down next to adjacent ones to make a neat block; they spread out along the road to get traffic, and only later do people start building on the second-best sites away from the road. Also, topography is an issue - there are perverse cases like Edinburgh, but pretty much every city has to accommodate a landscape that's higher/lower/wetter in some places than others. I think the designer needs to start with topography, generate an initial settlement pattern, enclose it, and only then fill it in with layers of building.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:38 AM on May 28, 2017 [18 favorites]


Love it. I am adding this to my ever-growing list of tools to create the most interesting procedurally generated universe.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 4:42 AM on May 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I'm going to need a bit more detail about things like water-sources, travel routes, the surrounding geography, resources, sites of religious importance, etc.

How else am I going to explain the presence of a masochistic paladin, a magic-user obsessed with explosions, a vain arch-priestess who drinks to much, and a pervert thief?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:53 AM on May 28, 2017 [12 favorites]


So, basically, we need a city generator built on top of Dwarf Fortress's world-building engine?
posted by wintermind at 5:22 AM on May 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


Well, if you want to account for the economy, sure. My attitude is that every sufficiently-advanced RPG is indistinguishable from a spreadsheet, and we might as well cut to the chase.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:58 AM on May 28, 2017 [20 favorites]


I think the designer needs to start with topography, generate an initial settlement pattern, enclose it, and only then fill it in with layers of building.

Red Blob's Polygonal Map Generation is a great example of this kind of thinking, although the example is for a map of an island, not a city.
posted by oulipian at 6:11 AM on May 28, 2017 [6 favorites]


My attitude is that every sufficiently-advanced RPG is indistinguishable from a spreadsheet

WHO ARE YOU AND HOW DID YOU GET INSIDE MY DROPBOX
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 6:24 AM on May 28, 2017 [6 favorites]


That polygonal map creation link is cool!
posted by wintermind at 8:42 AM on May 28, 2017


This might be of interest: Generating fantasy maps, with an associated twitter generator bot.
posted by signal at 10:16 AM on May 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


Is this Watabou of Pixel Dungeon fame? Man, that is a person who really knows how to scratch my itch.

Yup, it is.
posted by Samizdata at 11:33 AM on May 28, 2017


I already have Carcassonne on my iPhone
posted by dry white toast at 3:19 PM on May 28, 2017


A lot of craftsmen indeed. I might use it a bit, but I'll need to add water sources - cities without obvious supplies always seem suspect to me, although fantasy does allow a range of solutions.

In our recent ACKS campaign (an OSR D&D rule set emphasizing kingdom building at the higher levels), we discovered a broken Ring of Water Elemental Summoning at the headwaters of an underground stream. The ring no longer summoned elementals, but it was now the anchor point for a permanent planar rift to the Elemental Plane of Water. The rift created a leakage of thousands of gallons of pure water per hour into our plane. The underground stream was the result.

When we got the ring back to our stronghold, it was positioned high on a tower and became not only a source of clean water for the growing town, but also provided mechanical energy through a series of sluices and paddle wheels.

(Incidentally, it was a golden opportunity to research the rather amazing water engineering feats of the ancient Romans. Ancient urban latrines FTW!)
posted by darkstar at 4:20 PM on May 28, 2017 [7 favorites]


Your lack of castrum is disturbing.
posted by kadmilos at 6:19 PM on May 28, 2017


My attitude is that every sufficiently-advanced RPG is indistinguishable from a spreadsheet, and we might as well cut to the chase.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
posted by PMdixon at 7:21 AM on May 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


This (and the map generator signal posted) push my buttons so perfectly and completely. I also found the /r/proceduralgeneration subreddit, where watabou first posted the city generator for a monthly challenge, and it's full of delightful things.
posted by quaking fajita at 9:35 AM on May 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yeah, the spreadsheet thing hits a nerve. The kingdom in the aforementioned ACKS campaign eventually became so complex that only a spreadsheet could grasp it. On the other hand, it made possible the autocalculation of salaries, taxes, trade revenues, guild fees, and miscellaneous realm expenses, which made it all relatively manageable so the players could still go adventuring without spending all our time playing "Medieval Privy Council: The Game".
posted by darkstar at 9:37 AM on May 29, 2017


My city was all craftsmen, and two Gifted and Talented Education sections. It also had one, that is ONE farm to feed the who thing, and in that respect reminded me a lot of Morrowind and World of Warcraft.
posted by happyroach at 12:41 PM on May 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


"Medieval Privy Council: The Game" sounds pretty awesome, actually.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:07 PM on June 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


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