City Crawling (pt1)

I have been enamored with Zak's Urban Crawl Rules for Slacker DMs since I found the post. I am not one for a lot of 'round' lines in an urban environment map, so I squared everything off using Libre Office (Open Office split since the buy out) Impress so I could quickly copy/paste the words and numbers. Again, just a thought experiment that I want to play out while I blog.

I am going to try this for the Manors, Villages, and Town/City of the Mini-Gazetteer I have been fiddling with. Zak started with Ten neighborhood and represented them with the words 'ONE' thru 'TEN' randomly written on a sheet of paper with varying colors of marker. This is a large City in my view, and was wondering how big various urban areas should be for a more 'medieval' feel. Ok, too much thinking, again. Go random, it is all the rage anyway:

Manor: 1 Neighborhood
Village: 1d4 Neighborhoods
Town: 1d6 Neighborhoods
City: 1d8 Neighborhoods
L. City:1d10 Neighborhoods

I am considering a single 'Neighborhood' as a flat 'footprint' of the urban area. It could, and probably should, have several 'levels' for larger urban settlements. I mean, If I roll a 1 on a 1d10 for a Large City, that small of a footprint will not house the populace. It would have to be built vertically instead of horizontally to do so.

Rolling a d8 for the City of Yorkcast I got a 4. So, four neighborhoods. I could arrange the words; one, two, three, and four for the neighborhood layout, but I don't want every city to have the same number words. So I want to roll a d10 for times to find the number words I will use for this exercise; four, eight, three, and three.

Off to copy/paste the words into a new slide... Done, but how should they be positioned? Starting with the first number, four, I decide that another random roll is in order: 1d4 (1 normal, 2 +90, 3 +180, 4 +270). A 2, so rotating the 'four' ninety degrees... Now the 'eight'... a 3, so one-hundred and eighty degrees... place on the 1d4 side of the 'four', starting at 12 o'clock as position 1 and going clock wise... a 4, or left side... now for the other two 'three's...

I moved some stuff around and added a protective wall:

Somethings just scream out at me now, as a visual thinker. For example, two entrances, one in the South connected to the 'T' in 'THREE' and one to the West connected to the last 'T' in 'EIGHT'. Add some towers, etc... (and trim the image so it doesn't take up a huge white chunk of the blog!)

Next I will overlay a random number (1-0) over each letter of the neighborhood to show back alleys and such. More to come after I watch some 'Merlin'...

Best,
TB