ffilz
Legendary Pubber
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2018
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- 3,223
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I am very drawn to city maps yet I have yet to run a really successful urban campaign. One question I have about the size of cities is how well the city map fits the presumed population of the city and how "realistic" the size of the city is.I think it's remarkably hard to translate fiction into games, because most fiction is able to make places seem mysterious and unknowable. I felt that way about Thieves' World - once you put Sanctuary on a map, especially with a place like the Maze, it just becomes small and disappointing.
Pavis was much more interesting to me from the Griselda stories than the actual city boxed set when I eventually got it. I think that was the death knell of my interest in Glorantha, actually - anything beyond the hints in the core book. I remember an early online map which made the Big Rubble 10 times the size compared to New Pavis, and that felt much better than the official thing.
The lesson, to my mind, is to keep things as vague as possible, adding detail only as and when needed. Preserve that sense of wonder and mystery.