Re: Dragon Rock: Size matters...

>From: "Tauster" <chefseehund@???.de>
>Subject: [SPELLJAMMER] Dragon Rock: Size matters...

>i don´t have a problem with the asteroid being 2 miles broad and 10 miles
>long, but i don´t think the _whole_ available area should  be populated,
>that is, taken up by buildings, places and streets. that would make a city
>that´s just too large for any reasonably detailed map.

Why do you need to detail the *entire* asteroid?

With hundreds of ports in a very small area you are going to have to have most of it be
populated.

Modern cities like London are much bigger than 2 miles by 10 miles. The City of London is
surrounded by a large number of different villages that have all expanded until they have
grown into one large city called Greater London.

By the way 2 miles by 10 miles is not a good enough description for Dragon Rock if it is
three dimensional. Is it 2 miles by 2 miles by 10 miles? Or is 2 miles by 10 miles by 10
miles? Or is the other measurement something else? Realmspace only mentions 10 miles.

>urban area would not be feasable (...at least not for _my_ cartographing
>skills).

Why do you need a *complete* map? No TSR or WotC product ever did that. They do one big
map to give you an overview of the entire setting and a series of detailed maps of
important areas. You could do one map of the entire Dragon Rock and then do maps of the
places where you want to set adventures.

>what alternatives do we have?
>i propose the following:

>- we place the districts wide apart from each other, with several miles
>between them, effectively drawing the "master-map" of the "asteroid
>landscape" and a set of maps with one for each district.

You could still take a district approach even if the entire Dragon Rock surface was fully
populated and the districts all touched. Just have built up roads going up to the edges of
*all* of your maps. You could even stick in a couple of roads, that like Roman roads, go
from one end of Dragon Rock to the other.

>- port "facilities" of the larger businesses could be small villages, set
>apart from the surrounding city by several hundred meters of wood (or
>behind small hills).

As there are hundreds of ports each village should, in my opinion, have a very large
village green or lake where ships can land. This landing area is going to be the *only*
sort of land where building is forbidden as the landing areas are vital to Dragon Rock's
trade.

If you surround the landing fields by woodlands and hills then the locals do not get easy
access to them. I would suggest you build your villages *around* these landing fields (or
landing lakes) putting port facilities around them on all sides, taverns and shops
slightly further out and other facilities and local housing furthest away.

For variety you could make three "typical" villages: one with a big green at its centre
another with a big lake at its centre and a third with a green that has a lake in it. (The
three types give you ports that service land ships, sea ships and both together.) This
would provide a bare minimum for you to start off with. A gamesmaster could rule that the
player's ship *does* land at one of these ports.

With "hundreds" of these port-villages on Dragon Rock it would be a too much to try to do
them all, but if you want to cover Dragon Rock in a lot of detail, you could possibly do
the big 12 port/towns belonging to the 12 traders and maybe one or two other ports that
have something special in them (Shapers guildhall/Church of Ptah/whatever).

>- an extensive halfling village in the hills.

This should *still* be a port, in my opinion. With hundreds of ports on Dragon Rock
players should be able to easily walk from one to the next and you should have at least
one port on each map to give the feeling of a mass of ports. Even if none of the 12
traders are halflings, they could still have a port, because the 12 traders would probably
grant licences to run ports on their land.

For the halflings, you can have a port for ships that land on the ground at the top of
each hill (the halflings can level it off if necessary) or could even have a tarn
(mountain lake) on a hill top. The facilities could surround the hill top with spacefarers
walking down the hill to get what they want.

>- the area between the quarters might be extensive estates (each of the 12
>merchant clans, for example) or used for agriculture (lessening DR´s
>dependence on food imports and refreshing air).

Realmspace says that there are 12 *traders* not 12 *merchant clans*. I think they would
act more like feudal lords than clan chieftains. I strongly doubt that the neogi trader on
Dragon Rock would have a "clan" as there would *not* be lots of other neogi on Dragon Rock
to form a clan. He is a renegade from his own community.

Rather than making each trader own an extensive estate you could make the open areas have
different purposes. Bral has all of its farmland in one place and you could put 3 or 4
very big farmlands on Dragon Rock instead of having 12 smaller farmlands.

You could also give richer townsfolk open courtyards in the middle of their properties.
These people could grow some of their own food. Even the people who live in small houses
with no gardens could perhaps hang window boxes out of their windows and grow a few
carrots.

Don't forget to put one or two giant lakes onto Dragon Rock to supply the water. You could
have aquatic elves living in one of these lakes, they could farm fish and supply Dragon
Rock with a lot of its food supply.

>- the forest of the elfen embassy could take up lots of space.

Don't forget that you can make this a port as well. Even if none of the 12 traders is an
elf (elves are not usually lawful), there could be an elven port that services the Elven
Navy and perhaps the ships of the Sindiath Line.

You could have a lot of elves living in a forest. Clearings in the forest could serve as
landing fields. Some of these clearings could have lakes in them to cater for water based
ships.

I'd be tempted to use elven magic to create an illusion of a tree canopy over the landing
areas
giving the entire elven area the appearance of an uninterrupted large forest. The illusion
could also disguise any weapons platforms that the elves use to protect Dragon Rock. (I
assume that Dragon Rock has defences similar to Bral.)

>that concept would make dragon rock a whole lot more attraktive, changing
>it´s charakter at many areas of the rock from "urban" (dirty, noisy,
>cramped) to "countryside" (lots of free spaces, cleaner, birds in trees and
>hedges).

London is a very large area that used to be surrounded by a series of small villages. They
all expanded until they eventually joined together. Each village still has its own
character, and some of them have quite a lot of open parkland. However, they also have a
feel of London about them because none of them are surrounded by open countryside. The
same sort of thing could have happened to Dragon Rock. You could make the totally
different areas you have planned, but merge them all together.

Human streets could come up to the very bottom of your halfling hills with inns in the
area catering to both races by providing different height chairs and a low bar for
halflings to be served at.

The 12 traders could also be in the heart of the community, instead of isolated on their
own. They could have large homes that also serve as courts. Don't forget that these
traders are going to be the major NPCs and gamesmasters will want to use them. If you put
them into the countryside you are going to have to do a different map. Put the in a large
port/town and you make them accessible.

Have a look at a map of Buckingham Palace in London and you will see that it has a very
large  public park in front of it and a smaller but still very big walled private park
behind it (both belong to the palace but the front one is open to the public). The royal
parks are surrounded by urban areas. You could use this sort of thing or look at other
palaces for inspiration for some of the traders houses.

Common people could be allowed to walk around the open gardens of the traders who live in
places like this. Those with disputes could line up outside the traders houses every
morning to plea for help in settling their differences. As the owners of Dragon Rock they
*would* be expected to deal with this sort of thing or delegate the responsibility to
someone else.

However, some of the traders may choose more modest housing than others. The neogi
Brassons, may even live in his bar/restaurant, Ocean's Wake. I'd be tempted to put four
buildings around an enclosed courtyard and make one a restaurant, the second a bar, the
third a food preparation area and brewery and the last the home of Brassons. Paying guests
could stay in lodgings above the bar and restaurant and servants could live above the
cookhouse/brewery. Brassons could have the final building for himself.

Human streets could also run alongside the elven areas that you mention. The houses along
these roads could be in demand by rich locals as they would have a beautiful view from
their front windows. Druids and rangers may live in the roads opposite the elven lands so
that they can have easy access to them when the elves allow them in.

Not all of the urban areas need to be dirty, crowded and noisy. While some of the areas
could and *should* be like this, you could also introduce some urban planning in newer
port/villages. Rather than being a sprawl of cramped streets they could have a series of
open squares filled with trees and grass. These could maybe be the port/towns where the
richer inhabitants of Dragon Rock live.

If I go back to London, its West End used to be the home of the rich and its East End was
a dirtier and more industrial place that used to have that smog (smoky fog) that you see
in the Jack the Ripper films (and some American's think we *still* have today! - LOL).
There are squares like those I mentioned. What you may not realise, if you have visited
London, is that most of these squares were originally private gardens that were reserved
for use by the owners of the houses around them. They used to have fences and gates.

When deciding on the width of streets you should also bear in mind that you will have a
few space giants visiting Dragon Rock. If at least one town has very wide streets then
giants would be able to move about easily there.

You could even stick a colossus on Dragon Rock. The colossus would have to be chaotic good
or chaotic neutral as an evil colossus wouldn't be tolerated. It could work in one of the
ports loading and unloading ships, acting a bit like a living crane. During attacks from
space it could form part of Dragon Rock's defence, throwing rocks at attacking ships or
perhaps even leaping up to fight them. Give it a belt with a spelljamming helm on and
strap someone crazy enough to serve as helmsman into the helm and you have got yourself a
colossus that can fly around Dragon Rock grabbing the ships of attackers and ripping them
to bits.

If nobody else wants the colossus living near to them, you could stick him/her in the
middle of a tinker gnome community. I'm sure they would *love* to have a colossus living
with them as they could then design special colossus sized inventions. The could even call
him something like:

Theverylargegiantfromahoadwhoisveryusefulwhenyouneedtomoveheavythings.

;-)

>that´s quite different from the dragon rock i´ve imagined so far, and i´m
>still looking for ways to keep the asteroid 10 miles long AND have a
>cramped city, or at least one that´s cramped _and_ small enough permit map-
>drawing. one way would be finding things that take up huge amounts of the
>space:

Keep it cramped. Make your port/villages and port/towns grow into each other to form a
city. But make each area retain its different character (at least one area should be built
in the Shou Lung style for example). Have the remaining open areas turn into small open
parklands that are surrounded by urban areas on all sides.

Don't forget to put in a few more suburban areas (they obviously shouldn't be like modern
suburbs as they didn't exist in the sort of time period SJ is based on). Streets can be
wider and cleaner and buildings can be larger and better built. At least some of the 12
traders could live in a large house in a suburban like area. Don't forget that all of the
12 traders are lawful good, so they would probably do things that make life better for
people if they could.

However, don't try to put *all* of this onto your maps. Fill your maps with cool stuff and
*imply* that more cool stuff lies just off of the edges of the maps. If you get a desire
to come back to Dragon Rock later you can always design a new map that fits onto the edge
of an existing one.

>placing the three compounds that take up most space on the "blunt end"
>would go a long way toward reducing the available space.

>- one ofthe blunt ends is taken up by the "government hill" compound. i´d
>place the woods with the elven embassy either on the other side, taking up
>the other blunt end, or beside government hill, so that both take up
>roughly half of the asteroids lenght on one side.

I'm not quite sure I follow "blunt end" thing from the description. Maybe your map will
show what the blunt end of an arrow head is like. I always thought that the other two
points were sharp to get them to stick in the flesh if you tried to pull an arrow out.

>- the third large compound would be the 12 merchant-estates. i toy with the
>idea of placing them on one complete side, making the rough equivalent to
>brals underside (there´s no fortress there, but it´s not a public area
>either). otherwise, they could be liberally sprinkled all ofer the surface,
>claiming the same amount of space but making the otherwise cramped urban
>character of DR a bit more rural.

Putting the 12 traders together, robs all of the other areas that you put on maps from
having these interesting NPCs. This means that you are going to invent *more* NPCs to put
in the areas of any maps you make. I think you should spread the traders across Dragon
Rock.

Have you got any undercity yet? The dwarves could have dug two networks of tunnels beneath
the streets. One network could be used to move goods around. You could put in a dwarven
porter clan that uses those tunnels to move goods from one port to another. The other
network could function as sewers and storm drains and could perhaps be serviced by gully
dwarves. Both types of dwarves could live in caves next to the tunnels they service.

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://virtualeclipse.aboho.com/