This started off as a review for using City Works with Fantasy Craft, but since I intend to flesh out this city using Himmelveil I thought that I would put most of it here as well. World Works specific areas will be in Yellow.

I pulled out City Works - a now out of print (even as PDF) Fantasy Flight book on designing cities written by Mike Mearls, to start fleshing out my steampunk city Blythe (called Blight by many).

Only the first chapter is D&D specific, leaving pretty much everything else usable, as is.

Chapter One has classes, feats, and spells. Some could be converted without too much difficulty, others, not so much, and some are already covered by the Fantasy Craft rules (largely the Blend skill).

Chapter Two has the basics about creating cities - why the happen, where they tend to happen, and how they are governed. Aside from a few NPCs and rules for bribery and trials everything can be used as is.

Chapter Three is all about designing cities, and is why I pulled out the book. Everything can be used as is. The basic premise breaks down cities into areas (industries, markets high, middle, and lower class residential, docks, warehouses, etc.) and how much of the city each covers. The areas are further broken down into blocks, useful for mapping things out. Each block is 500x500 feet, and represents about 100 people. A block would be about 17 tiles on a side.... Somehow I doubt that I ill be building entire blocks any time soon....

As an example - the city I am currently working on:
I have decided that Blythe has a population of about 250,000 people - so it would cover 2500 blocks - if it were square that would be 500 blocks on a side. By D&D terms a pretty massive city!

Because I am going with an industrial age city I arbitrarily decide that they will cram about ten times the number of people and/or industries into each block - tenements will be bigger, occupy a larger percentage of space, confining the streets, and be multiple stories - typically three or four. Factories will occupy much of an Industrial block, cramped sweatshops. Government buildings will reach skywards, or lower disapprovingly at the streets below. So the number of blocks drops down to an easier to map 50 on a side, if square. Half of the available blocks will be industries, the other half residential.

As a Port city the break down looks like this:
Industries: 125 blocks pre-total
Docks 10% (13 blocks) (The whole point of the town. One dock will have facilities for prison transfers.)
Entertainment 10% (13 blocks) (Including the red light districts)
Government 5% (6 blocks) (The prison would normally be part of this, but instead I am going to make it a special area just outside of the city proper, along one of the canals. The prison is likely to be at least partially built for use in game.)
Industrial 10% (13 blocks) (I may up this to include some big factories.)
Markets 20% (25 blocks) (Including Ha'Penny Market - over on the layouts section.)
Military 5% (6 blocks)
Temples 5% (6 blocks) (At last one block will include a fairly massive cathedral - I still plan on running a Gargoyles game in this setting some day! Guess where the Cathedral comes from. )
Travel 20% (25 blocks) (Because of the setting, I am going to include canals and railroad under this heading. Canals, hmmm....)
Warehouses 15% (19 blocks)
Actual Total 126 Blocks - If I have space I may increase some of these areas; more docks and warehouses for the port!

Residential:125 blocks pre-total
Upper Class 20% (25 blocks)
Middle Class 25% (31 blocks)
Lower Class 60 % (75 blocks)
Slums 10% (13 blocks)
Actual Total 144 Blocks
Looks like the residential areas sprawl a bit, but I know how many map squares I am going to need. For Blight I am dividing the city with a fairly major river, and canals running off of the river.

The chapter then goes into placing the blocks, placing key buildings, placing streets, and building density. Probably my favorite system for creating cities in RPGs.

Chapter Four is about designing city adventures and events, and has a simple chase system. The chase system is fairly compatible with Fantasy Craft, essentially a framework for Complex Actions.

Chapter Five closes off the book with city encounters - aside from one monster table the encounter tables manage to be pretty much system free, making conversion work minimal.

All in all, this book is well worth dusting off for use in Fantasy Craft.

The Auld Grump

Transportation includes canals, a seaport, heavy rail, and light rail. Light rail encompasses a steam trolley system (including a small underground), and a bicycle railway to Manchester, then from Manchester all the way to London. Automobiles are uncommon, but present. More common are steam powered lorries and omnibuses. Horse drawn omnibuses are still in limited use, but fading, horse drawn taxis are common.

Industries include several shipyards, one of which is military, and some large manufactories. One such factory is a gunworks, producing cannon for both the army and the navy. Blythe also has a large scale ironworks, producing large steam engines for both sea and land. A satellite town called 'The Chains' has three large chain manufactories, in part to support the shipyards.

A prison squats along the canal to the east of the city, its prisoners operating a small manufactory within its walls. A smaller 'ladies prison' sits directly opposite across the canal, and produces textiles.

The local coal is of poor quality, almost brown, soot dyes the sky a rusty crimson at dawn and dusk. Those that can afford it live in the hills in the northern reaches of the city, above the choking smog when the sea fog is enriched with soot.

I thought that the population seemed small for the land area, mediaeval cities covered a lot of land for their populations. The population feels about right, I just need to condense the area.

London, the Great Devourer, was a brute - despite a swelling population people died faster than they were born within its confines, only the steady influx kept the city growing, as it swelled ever larger, swallowing the towns that surrounded it.