Instant Renaissance Cities

The early modern period – what we lay-people call the renaissance when the nerds aren't around to tell us why it's an outmoded term – lends itself well to role-playing games. The old order is being upset. New technologies such as the gun, printing press, and spyglass are revolutionizing the way people live. New faiths and philosophies challenge the old ones, leading to violent schisms and eccentric cults. New lands are discovered every few years, and in a fantasy setting, that means plenty of distant places to go adventure to.

To me, nothing says early modern more than the city. In reality cities didn't grow in population compared to rural settlements until the industrial revolution, but where medieval fantasy takes place on the borders of civilization, early modern takes place in its heart. The city is where wealth and power concentrates, and it is that wealth and power that can afford all the trademark advances players will be interested in seeing. Even when travelling to distant lands, early modern exploration is more about visiting new nations rather than the wilderness, and PCs will gravitate towards the cities of these lands as a result.

But to make a city a city, it needs to be unique. The character and history of cities define what sets them apart from each other, and in fantasy this is all the more important, since there's no excuse for a boring place. It doesn't need to be outlandish, or have incredible detail, or never have an element taken from somewhere else – but it does need to feel like a character in and of itself, and not a nameless place to sell treasure and buy supplies.

Island City by Tyler Edlin

The tables below can be rolled on with a handful of dice, a full set of those seven dice you can buy in most game stores. With them you'll find out why the city is a city, what's considered its heart, who protects it, its geographical features, and a couple notable locations ripe for adventuring. For simplicity I've used Angus Warman's amazing list-to-HTML generator generator. Just click the button below and you'll have a city rolled up.

Upon whose cobbled streets do we tread?

As with all tables, you are encouraged to change the results as you see fit. You can mine the generator for ideas without ever rolling a die, although it's not particularly unique, and if you roll a result you dislike or don't feel fits the city, you can always reroll it. I would encourage you to change rather than reroll - if something stands out to you as bad, that's the perfect moment to come up with what you'd rather see instead.

D4 - Why is this city so prosperous?

Cities don't just come out of nowhere. There's a reason this settlement grew to such heights where those only a few hours away are still rural and sparsely populated.

1 Crossroads: The city is built in a location that is frequently visited, such as the meeting place of two major roads or at a natural chokepoint like a river ford or mountain pass. Wealth comes from the trade that flows through the region.

2 Resources: The city is built close to a rare valuable resource such as a silver, gold, or even adamantium mine, luxury crop plantations, or even around a mineral spa. Wealth comes from exploitation of resources hard to find elsewhere.

3 Administration: The city is the site of administration and trade in the region, but is not necessarily a crossroads-type location. A healthy local village economy, such as farming or logging, funnels wealth into the city as a centre of trade, in turn drawing leaders.

4 Uniqueness: The city is the site a rare or unique location that could have been built anywhere, but was built here, possibly by chance. A royal palace, a famous college, or a grand temple are all good examples. The site attracts workers and, in turn, wealth.

D6 - What site is widely considered the city's heart?

Think of this as the centre of the city. It's the place that, a few hundreds years from now, will be called downtown. The blood of cities – wealth and people – flows into the heart and back out again, and so a city's centre colours the rest of the city. A castle implies nobility, a college magic and technology, and shadows crime and conspiracy.

1 The Castle: A grand castle, possibly built for form over function. The seat of local power, both figuratively (it's where the nobles live) and literally (it's where the army is based). Nobles and soldiers have coin to spare, so many shops are built in its shadow.

2 The Shadows: Despite what any right-minded folk would like, this district of crime and destitution is expansive. Nobles go to opium dens and windowless brothels while peasants drink in dingy bars and get into fights on the darkened, namesake streets.

3 The Tower: Built to keep people both in and out. Here prisoners are kept for long sentences or before trial and punishment, the tower doubling as a watchtower and secure position in times of strife. Crowds gather for executions, almost daily in the largest cities.

4 The College: A place of learning, for scholars, artisans, or even magicians. The grounds are where the students and teachers work and live, the teachers' wealth and the students's alcoholism driving the local economy even before they're working in the city.

5 The Temple: A grand temple in monotheistic faiths, or major temples to all the gods in polytheistic ones. The city's faithful come here often, and on holidays they come from the surrounding villages and towns, sometimes travelling for days to arrive.

6 The Market: Wide, open streets and immense stone plazas, abandoned at night but bustling with merchant stalls in the day. It sucked other markets into itself like a black hole, until an overwhelming majority of transactions came to be done here and here alone.

D8 - Who or what protects the city?

If a city were truly lawless, it would fall into ruin within weeks. Someone has to keep the peace, even if they are corrupt or cruel, as well as to protect the city from the raids and riots that would see it burn.

1 The Army: Standing armies are all the rage, but all those career soldiers need somewhere to live and learn. A vast training camp is established just beyond the city's borders, but the soldiers patrol the city's streets and fortifications to keep the peace.

2 The Thieves: The local powers are weak, corrupt, or inept, possibly all three. The Thieves' Guild that has risen from the power vacuum (or created it in the first place) is selfish but not cruel, and informally punishes the most heinous and unprofitable crimes.

3 The Wizard(s): A group of wizards, or a single powerful one, live and work in the city and have a vested interest in keeping it safe. Even if only because they like the luxuries it produces, they will gladly intervene and stop threats to city-wide stability.

4 The Church: Religious factions employ paladins and inquisitors, ostensibly to protect their worshippers, often to protect their power. Regardless of their nature the local church's warriors have a base of power here, and as a result hold power over the city.

5 The Guilds: The city guilds fund a defense force as well as the upkeep of towers and walls. Though well-equipped and large, such forces are often corrupt and, even when not, answer to the guilds who pay them and not the people or leaders of the city.

6 The Duellists: A school of combat is located in the city, training nobles, artisan's children, and promising but destitute peasants. They hold lofty notions of honour and justice, hunting down and fighting ne'er-do-wells whether or not the city wants them to.

7 The Watch: Every city has a watch but most are ramshackle, corrupt, and underfunded. Here the watch is efficient and funded, dispensing justice with surprising strength and skill, while both intimidating and ingratiating the locals into supporting them.

8 The Gunners: The city has a place of gunnery training, manufacture, and repair (of cannons but also custom-made noble guns). With so many guns of so many sizes, its no wonder the musketeers and cannoneers are often asked to suppress unrest and crime.

D10 - What two notable locations are within the city?

These are places that many cities have, but not always and not as notably as here. A city may have dozens of shrines, but to have a notable one means it's a truly exceptional example. Since you roll two D10s, it's not uncommon to roll the same result – which is totally fine! If a city has two arenas, it says a lot about what the citizens value.

1 Monument: A grand statue dedicated to a hero or heroic event, or both, built near a major street or at the site of the event. Common dedications include saviours of the city, beloved rulers, saints and their miracles, and even important guilds.

2 Spa: Public or open only to paying customers – possibly from a single class – these heated baths offer warm water, sauna rooms, and relaxation therapies like massages. A great number will be split between cheap but large public baths and luxurious private ones.

3 Theatre: A grand theatre where operas, plays, concerts, and other, more eclectic performances are held. While the operas may be for higher society only, the real money comes from comedies and musicals performed for the lower classes.

4 Arena: An arena where duels, contests, and other games are held for a large crowd. Due to the relative simplicity (if difficulty) of building an arena, they are often among the oldest standing buildings in a city, built in long lost days for bloodier forms of sport.

5 Hospital: Here is where the ill of the city, and the very ill of surrounding settlements, are brought to be treated and isolated in equal measure. A grand one such as this treats nobles and teaches new doctors by giving them hands-on experience.

6 Library: Rows upon rows of thousands of books. Scholars pore over ancient texts, while printing machines create copies of important and/or popular books. New copies are allowed to be read by anyone, but the most treasured relics are kept locked away.

7 Pleasure-House: A den of sin that is nonetheless patronized by princes and paupers and priests alike. A brothel, but also a tavern, opium den, teahouse, coffeehouse, and meeting place for anyone who needs to gather in secrecy.

8 Shrine: Dedicated to a god if polytheistic, or a saint if monotheistic. Either way the shrine celebrates a direct manifestation of the deity's will – the site of a miracle, a saint's tomb, a holy relic. It draws pilgrims and is often visited by nobles wish to show piety.

9 Garden: A vast park within the heart of the city, well kept and open to the public. Rare and beautiful plants are located in a secure terrarium, while more conventional plants populate the garden at large. Vagrants flock to the garden and are often violently removed.

10 Factory: A place of work, often with the assistance of newfangled machines. Lava forges, printing presses, and bleaching fields are good examples. Workers make meagre wages while the guild artisans and merchants grow richer every year.

D12 - What geographical feature dominates the city?

Most of these larger tables are for less crucial elements of a city, but the geography is one of the first things you should consider when interpreting the results. On its own it is often little more than colour, but a city on an island will look completely different from bisected by a cliff. A city's geography sets a frame for the rest of the details.

1 Island: The city is built on an island, at least in part. The island could be isolated but important (where all the leaders live), simply a part of the city connected by bridges, or the site of the entire city. It might even be man-made or have expanded into shallow water.

2 Undercity: There is a vast network of tunnels beneath the city, a hodgepodge of sewers, catacombs, mines, and sunken buildings. Travel is slow and confusing but hidden. Secret meetings of all sorts take place next to abandoned treasures and sleeping horrors.

3 Rivers: Rivers or canals dot the city. Many cities will be built around a single river, but this one has several minor ones flowing through. It's hard to walk for more than a few minutes without crossing one, and it's possible for the city to have more rivers than roads.

4 Forest: Most cities, even those in forests, have cut down all the local trees, but not here. It could be a planted forest in non-forested areas (like a royal wood), or a patch of trees hard to remove in forested areas (tangled woods, protected by druids or elves, etc).

5 Cliff: A single cliff runs close to or possibly through the city. The city is either built up against its edge, or is bisected by the cliff as it passes through it, separating the settlement into two halves. It might be dangerously tall, or so short two-story houses can see over it.

6 Mountain: The city is built on the slopes of a tall hill or mountainside. In most cases the higher parts of society live higher up the mountain, and some buildings like temples or colleges will be be built at the top of the peak. You can see the whole city from the top.

7 Crater: A deep recess into the ground is located in the city – or perhaps the city is located in it. A meteoric crater is the most obvious type, but dry lake beds and tundra alases are other examples. The crater may be abandoned, or the site of a district.

8 Ravine: A ravine cuts through the city or is built next to it. Exceptionally large ravines, closer to canyons, could have the city built inside them. Collapses are rare but not unheard of, leading to only the poor living directly adjacent to the ravine itself.

9 Swamp: While the city is built on solid ground, it is surrounded by a swamp or other wetland, theoretically but prohibitively difficult to build on. Things like gravel flats and desert dunes also fit. The city is built as densely as possible as a result of limited space.

10 Ruins: The city has fallen a far distance from what it once was. A considerable portion of the outlying regions, and more than a few inner-city buildings, lie abandoned and may have laid abandoned for centuries or even longer in some settings.

11 Plains: The city is built on an incredibly flat piece of land. Easy construction has let it sprawl in all directions, but has also fueled a desire to build the central buildings as tall as possible so the rich can see easily. The towering centre slowly rises from the sprawl.

12 Fog: Fog, or smoke, or blown sand, etc, obscures vision the city over. Whatever the source it makes it hard to see more than a few blocks on good days, and on bad days and at night it becomes impossible to see more than a few metres ahead of you.

D20 - Every city's got a weird, fantastical place. Where is it here?

Lastly, a city needs flavour. You can put all sorts of odd locations for the players to stumble upon, but the ones here are both visitable places and say something about the city at large. Dwarven Outposts = dwarf populations, Observatories = fortune-tellers, etc.

1 Observatory: A large building, raised above the rest of the city, designed to study the movements and nature of celestial objects. The observators consist of magicians, fortune-tellers, and the rare conventional scholar interested in the stars.

2 Wizard's Tower: A tower designed for the magical arts. It may be split between many lesser magicians or a single, exceptionally powerful and/or wealthy one. Most such towers will have many connected buildings for non-magical purposes the tower requires.

3 Curio Shop: The curio shop fades in and out of reality, but it always appears here, whenever you wish to visit. It buys and sells magical items and worthless trinkets, restocking them weekly but never having more than eight actually useful relics at a time.

4 Laboratory: A place of experimentation, typically alchemical and mechanical, but occasionally magical as well. Now is an age of invention, and though it make take years or even decades, laboratories like these produce world-changing discoveries.

5 Necropolis: A sprawling graveyard, ancient, overgrown, and full of above ground mausoleums. Citizens are buried here constantly despite the overcrowding, the very air thick with necromantic energy.

6 Clock Tower: Rising high above the city, this tower displays the time and holds bells that ring hourly during the day. Clockworkers work within it, both to maintain the clock and to create and maintain new devices for the city's elite to buy.

7 Bazaar: A peculiar market selling unusual items from distant lands. The legality is questionable, the products as eccentric as the merchants, and the prices high. But they sell things no one's even heard of – clockwork limbs, protective runes, and alien plants.

8 Dwarven Outpost: The Dwarf population is high and tight-knit enough to form a miniature fortress, a single fortified building in which hundreds of Dwarves live and work in taverns, forges, and underground farms.

9 Elven Enclave: The Elf population is high and tight-knit enough to form an enclave, a gated community of fine houses in a garden environment fitting the chosen biome of the local Elves. Forest glades, pristine lakes, and even underground tunnels are common.

10 Henge: A collection of ancient stones, built to channel magical energies. The stones take up considerable space and someone always wants to tear them down, but all that magic has to go somewhere – damaging or destroying one has terrible implications.

11 Statuary: A garden of statues, some of people, some of things, some of abstract shapes. Many have been made to order for local nobles, but sometimes, statues show up overnight, made of stones found only in distant lands.

12 City-Nymph: The city has a nymph. In a place of significance, an old gate or ruined building, she or he lives and can be sought after for guidance and aid. The church is almost always in opposition of the nymph, but most city-nymphs are beloved by their cities.

13 Ruin: A stone building from ancient times, such as an aqueduct, arena, castle, or tower. It lies damaged and abandoned, but is too large and/or important to be easily removed, standing tall and strong as the city changes around it.

14 Smithy: A smith of weapons and armour, specializing both in the creation of masterwork weapons and weapons made of supernatural metals. Adamantium swords, carbide armour, and occultum trinkets can all be made to order, if only for prohibitive costs.

15 Healing Font: This location, typically a body of water such as a river or spring, has restorative properties. Those who stay in its presence have Advantage against disease, poison, and other such ailments, but it does not heal injuries or remove curses.

16 Sinkhole: A vast and deep pit in an otherwise geologically sound area. It stretches down so far that things dropped into it make no sound, but is not bottomless and likely ends in water or a connection to a cave system. May connect to a city's undercity.

17 Ancient Church: A temple to an ancient god, lost and forgotten and possibly forbidden by monotheistic faiths. Attempts to remove the ruined church have been met with curses, and it is likely that a hidden cult still worships the god it venerates.

18 Asylum: A prison for the sick and mad and mutated. Anyone deemed unfit for society is dragged and left here, cared for intermittently but most left to their own devices in dark, vast halls, where cults propagate and plans of escape are in perpetual motion.

19 Terrarium: A glass encased miniature biome, often used to grow rare plants that normally would not thrive or even survive in the local environment. It is as much a garden as a farm, and the plants and animals within are sought after by local magicians.

20 Cafe: Cafes are all the rage, but this one more than any other draws artists and intellectuals to debate philosophy over coffee, tea, and opium. Many a conspiracy and philosophy has formed in the stimulant-fueled discussions that cafes promote.