DM/GM Style Talk: Fleshing out Cities

Hey there all! One of the things that I tend to run up against a lot as a DM is how much prep work it takes to be game ready (whether in a face to face game or in a PBP game). One of the areas I personally find the most frustrating is dealing with bringing a fantasy city or town to life. In a lot of published adventures, there are a few highlights in terms of buildings of note, but that's about it.

So for you DMs out there, how do you approach fleshing out cities?

Do you build up extensive catalogs of stores and shops and homes in your cities/towns?

Do you go more freestyle and make it up as you go along as the players search for things?

How do you keep things straight in regards to locations, personalities, etc?

Any preferred tools for generating or maintaining this info?

For players, do you have any preferences for how games flow when it comes to exploring cities and towns?

I use RPG Notes, or a hidden Fourm on GP what makes RPG notes awesome is that you can reference a Object (that's what any entry you make is called) and it will automatically make the name a link to that object.

That sounds really useful. Could you explain how you manage this sorcery, as I would like to try using it?

Edit: oh, you likely mean: https://rpgnotes.xyz/

here's a link, It's an android only app I believe, but you know need to get my android advertisements out there somewhere :)

the brownish portion of text (Lightford) is a links to Lightford, literally all you need to do is spell out the name exactly and it will form a link.

It’s not an interesting answer but in D&D I use the forgotten realms sword coast. I then have maps, history, lore, NPCs, art and quests for cities.

Then I don’t really need to do much for prep.

Apologies for the boring answer.

I usually have just a few NPCs and points of interest and make the rest up as I go. DM Muse is a great help.

I maintain a world glossary for both my benefit and the players'.

I keep all my notes in a secret forum, but I'm going to go try that app KoldikSteelskin recommended. Lots of GMs on here swear by OneNote.

I tend to do a lot in the Sword Coast as well, but maybe it's just the players I end up with. Invariably they want to find a tea house, or a dwarven axe throwing booth, or some other ridiculously obscure thing that I can't find in the typical FR documentation, heh.

doesn't always need to exist :)

OneNote is a great tool. Its versatility makes it powerful. Being able to make sections and pages like a real notebook is handy. I especially like being able to insert links, photos, clips and videos. Being able to easily move and resize notes around the page is useful too. It's great for more than just GP.

Cities

I really like urban D&D. Mostly I've used published settings as of late (Ptolus, Waterdeep, Ravnica), but I'll often include politics from my own city. For example, in my neck of the woods there is a problem with affordable housing and rising house prices, which lead to all sorts of social problems. I worked that in (on the periphery) of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist to add some colour.

I find it is important to describe different neighborhoods differently and viscerally. I live in a city which has both one of the richest and one of the poorest neighborhoods in my whole country pretty close to each other. If I go into the downtown eastside of my city vs. the upper westside, the regions smell different. There are different kinds of businesses. The people act different, dress different. The way the police act in each region is different. But both are vibrant and full of character. I tried to bring that into Waterdeep which is pretty strongly delineated along districts.

I try to make each neighborhood like a separate small town, each with its own character and demographics. In the PCs local neighborhood you might flesh out the businesses and NPCs and maps really strongly but just in that local area. The rest of the city might be amorphous. I feel like that's how I live in my city. I know my barber and where to find ripe bananas and my kids' school in my local region but if I'm on the other side of the city and wanted to get a haircut I wouldn't know exactly where to go without googling it. When players go to a different part town I might start fleshing it out if they are spending a lot of time there.

When I make my own city I steal ruthlessly from all the sources I have. NPCs, locations, plot hooks, all of it. Sharn, Stormreach, Ptolus, Ravnica, Waterdeep. But also from fiction - Lankhmar, Coruscant, Ankh Morpork. All of it. I try to tie it in to the theme of the city.

I've heard of great generative content for running cities, a lot of OSR stuff is like that. Sounds very useful. Sometimes randomness helps get you out of a rut or break familiar patterns. City State of the Invincible Overlord and Yoon Suin come to mind.

Tools for Keeping Notes

If I was going to pick up a notes app for my RPG campaign I'd use Notion.so. Here is Sly Flourish's article about how he uses it. And here is a video of Sly Flourish talking about how to use it. He even has templates freely available for you to use and adapt (linked in the article and video).

As it is, I use a good ol' txt file. But I might switch to Notion - you can make it player-facing very easily and that would save me some time.

If it's a modern game I can just Google Maps a town. Or outsource it to the other players.

Someone wants a leather craftsman in a fantasy game as another player a rumor they heard about one such person in the area, ask another player the name of the place, sigh as they immediately say Letha Weatha with a smile, clear throat and get ready to do a voice and call the players Darlings', pinch cheeks since they're all adorable, make some tea and find out who's single in the party... cus ya neva know bubala, ya neva know. Watch third player smile and ask for cookies with the tea.

But as stated above I agree regardless of the way it's created make note of it cus now it's out in the world.

Cities are challenging because everything is so tightly packed but also accessible to the players. They can not get away from things and consequences follow them around. This means you do need to take better notes than non-city games. The players get to go back to the same place over and over again, on a fairly frequent basis, and inconsistencies can be a problem. What you did there last week matters.
The less you define the more freedom you have, though, so don't describe more things than you need (that way you don't need to remember if that shop's walls were green or blue), but do describe as much as you need to make the various places feel distinct.
Maybe enlist the players to keep such notes and manage the descriptions. Ask them what a place looks like or to add details, and then have them write it down and describe it again next time (yeah, this is probably not practicable, but I like to dream:). If they get their own stuff wrong the probably don't remember and tend to be more accepting.

The OP did not specify setting. If there is a setting book for an area, city you can use it, but it might not have enough detail to work with. A danger with using a pre-made setting is that you now have to get it right --or you might feel that way-- your players might know the city well and may or may not care if you get the details right or change things from the book (by accident or on purpose).
Making your own city can avoid that issue, but can be a lot of work. (I am not convinced it really is more work than finding a city book that works, but that is just me.)

If you are talking about a modern game, a trick I used to use when going to a new city to run a game (even if I was not planning on running a game, there is the chance people will ask me to) is to stop by the tourism kiosk at the airport and grab some brochures and maps for the city. Tourist maps make excellent handouts. They look cool, but don't have too much detail.
On the internet I tend to look up a city on wikipedia or other sites, or, if spending enough time there, grab a guidebook for the city. Google Maps and Streetview are very useful for getting a feel for what the area is like, and often I have had game ideas from seeing a particular shop near a particular landmark: "Ooh, there is a candle shop a block away from that graveyard... clue!"