Buildings in a town
- Thread starter Ellie
- Start date
I come up with the shape of the town to try and capture what I want to draw attention to, might be more difficult to do on a 2D tiled map, but if you have something like a clock-tower in the centre of town you want that to be the first thing you see when you walk in, from there I build the town around it, with shops then quest locations then side-quest locations.
The kind of things I build are separate shops for sundries, equipments and magic, then a pub, all of which in the world have a shared jobs board for side-quests, then story locations. I'd bulk out with houses and fake-shops that you can't enter, things like slums and guild-halls I believe should be in their own area, not combined with towns.
In terms of setting, in medieval style games I think a large town should be built around a single, straight road with shops that have houses above them, smaller towns would be built up with a few scattered buildings, I'd only include the internals of buildings that are to do with game-play, so I wouldn't map the indoors of a stable for the sake of it, I'd make the stable out-doorsy, same deal with blacksmiths that don't do any smithy work for the player, I'd make it a dude outside his house with an anvil and a sign above his door.
The kind of things I build are separate shops for sundries, equipments and magic, then a pub, all of which in the world have a shared jobs board for side-quests, then story locations. I'd bulk out with houses and fake-shops that you can't enter, things like slums and guild-halls I believe should be in their own area, not combined with towns.
In terms of setting, in medieval style games I think a large town should be built around a single, straight road with shops that have houses above them, smaller towns would be built up with a few scattered buildings, I'd only include the internals of buildings that are to do with game-play, so I wouldn't map the indoors of a stable for the sake of it, I'd make the stable out-doorsy, same deal with blacksmiths that don't do any smithy work for the player, I'd make it a dude outside his house with an anvil and a sign above his door.
If you want to add life to the town, pathing random NPCs around probably isn't the way to go, giving them purpose to buildings and landmarks makes the most sense.
Although I like having crowds of people, not lots of individual NPCs that you can talk to, but a mob of characters that are either gathered outside shop windows, outside a busy train station or similar (I guess that counts as giving NPC purpose to buildings still)
Although I like having crowds of people, not lots of individual NPCs that you can talk to, but a mob of characters that are either gathered outside shop windows, outside a busy train station or similar (I guess that counts as giving NPC purpose to buildings still)
Jumping Jack Flash
Member
Pub. Toilet block. Market hall. Station. Barbershop.
Jumping Jack Flash
Member
dont underestimate the power of places.
coyotecraft
Sponsor
Fortune Teller / Newspaper or Magazine rack to clue the player on what they should do.
Knowledge centers like: a Library. A zoo or Museum as an elaborate bestiary. I've seen a lot of rpgs with telescopes/Observatory, usually for astrology and not astronomy.
Knowledge centers like: a Library. A zoo or Museum as an elaborate bestiary. I've seen a lot of rpgs with telescopes/Observatory, usually for astrology and not astronomy.
StrawberrySmiles
Sponsor
It really depends on the type of town, and possibly it's lore.