Three Questions to Start creating Cities! - Worldbuilding 101

Hey, I'm the Worldbuilding Sage! My aim is to teach you certain worldbuilding techniques to build a setting for your book or Pen and Paper Campaign (no matter if Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder or other games).
In this video, which is part one in a series about cities, I'm talking about the basic questions that will set you up to Worldbuilding Cities for your setting. I'll be talking about the placement of your city, and the importance of water, resources, defence, and trade, about the city's food-supplies, and how it gains its population.
Twitter: / worldbuildsage
Discord Server: / discord
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:08 Question 1: Placement (Water, Trade, Resources, etc.)
03:34 Question 2: Food supplies
05:36 Question 3: Population
08:44 Worldbuilding Example: Pylesia
#worldbuilding #setting Creating a World, Creating a World for Book, Creating a World for #dnd , #dnd5e Worldbuilding, #ttrpg #writing #dungeonsanddragons #pathfinder Worldbuilding, #penandpaper Worldbuilding, #books Worldbuilding, #booktube , #DnDtube , Setting creation, How To Create a Setting, How to Write a Setting, How To Create a World, Creating a World for DnD, Creating a World for my Book, Creating a Setting for DnD, Creating a Setting for my Book, Campaigns, #city #cities #fantasy #town #civilization #history #rome #athens #beijing

[@Sofspot1]

Always a great day when worldbuilding sage releases a new video

[@worldbuildingsage]

I know, right?

[@SebRomu]

Just came across this video. I have to say that your description of Pylesia is spot on for drawing one into the world as a whole. I try to build at least one major settlement for each culture in my world, as a starting off point for roleplaying or stories set in the world. Rich in details, but with just enough mystery to leave room for expanding and exploring on the content provided. Well done.

[@jameshurd8406]

Ok I love this vid but “dubious being” is gold

[@DavidRichardson153]

The world I built has few natural rivers in it. Granted, most of these are quite large, but they are still few in number, and thus the number of cities are few as well. All but one city are on one of these rivers, and the one city that is not instead resides next to the largest lake, serving as the world's capital; two rivers to connect to the lake and act as the superhighway for the world, with one river leading to the distant mountains that feed the lake and the other draining the lake into the superocean (the world's land is one massive continent and strongly resembles Pangea entering its early stages of separation). For most of the world's history, the cities that already exist largely function as trade hubs, though I should mention that the world does not operate a predominantly capitalist economy but rather a predominantly gift economy (watch the video from Andrewism about the myths of a "barter economy" for an introduction to it). This stays largely unchanged, but as their technology advances, becoming modernized and then futuristic, new forms of them take root.
The top nobility of the world, for most of its history, maintain estates that serve as local/regional headquarters for their functions, and contrary to how such would be on Earth, the vast majority operate like public facilities. The largest hospitals are the estates of physician nobles. The largest smithys, which eventually become factories, are the estates crafter nobles. In all but one city (that one being the world's captial), all roads ultimately lead to the center, where the estate of the masonry nobles is. The nobles for farming, fishing, ranching, and all food production have the most estates by far, but most of these are jointly owned and operated by the merchant nobles, serving as farmer's markets. The estates of scholarly nobles serve as universities and libraries, eventually expanding to include various research labs. The estates of military and law enforcement nobles are essentially their bases, and they even contain jails and/or prisons (so yeah, these are arguably the most secure of all noble estates). About the only estates not found, at least not in the middle of them, are those of the mining nobles, as these tend to be near wherever the largest mines are, though one city did eventually grow around the largest mine. In the midst of these, all manner of other buildings and structures, from smaller versions of the estates to basic yet overall robust residences, as well as small farms and other critical infrastructure and services, fill in the gaps in between the estates. Nature does reach through all over these cities, but it is largely controlled, almost as though each city is ultimately one large park (this sense becomes much stronger when future tech comes into play and starts blurring the lines between nature and city).
While nobles hold the largest and most visible presence in cities, there are no separate, let alone distinct, districts that separate them from the commoners. This was due to the philosophies of the founding members wanting to minimize any separation, which they believed would only engender inequality, particularly unfair and exploitative inequality. Thus, there are no gated communities nor are there what could be described as slums, and what separation there is serves to support highly sensitive tasks such as isolating infectious patients for treatment, preventing environmental exposure to hazardous materials from manufacturing, and removing the more dangerous and violent criminals. This arrangement means that there are no travel restrictions for commoners, barely any different to virtually all travel on Earth today (aside from there only being one nation in this world and thus no visas).
Eventually, a few new cities are founded, most of which are on artificial rivers, but two stand out. One is in the largest desert, and it functions as the world's version of Los Alamos (sans nuclear weapons development). Nearly all of their local water is provided through atmospheric water generators (think Star Wars moisture farms, and yes, it is real tech that exists on Earth) and otherwise treated like how water is on Arrakis.
The other new city is a floating city, which resembles a honeycomb scaled up to extreme sizes. Not only does it serve as the primary location for the world's navy (to protect against the more dangerous wildlife), but the most research facilities, particularly those aimed at their goals for beyond their world - i.e. space - are housed here. Thus, out of all cities, old and new, it regularly sees the highest growth rate, eventually becoming the largest and most populated city in the world, stretching high into the sky and even deep into the ocean below. Further in the future, other cities in the nation eventually surpass it in size and population, but it remains known as the "Gateway to the Stars and to the Future."
Of course, I also included one more city that was founded on the moon, but that will remain solely within the story I wrote for the time being.

[@rawlenyanzi6686]

Stretching your imagination to create a cool fantasy world. Great move.
My own WIP also has little power distance between rulers and ruled, but that’s just because the population is only a quarter million people on a world cut off from Earth, and almost half of that is people under 20 because rice farming is intense.

[@DavidRichardson153]

@@rawlenyanzi6686 Worldbuilding is an incredibly lengthy process, even more so if you're the only one doing it and not taking outside suggestions. The big details tend to come somewhat easily enough, as least as far as being the broadest of strokes go, but once you start getting to smaller and smaller details, that is where the real difficulty lies. It then starts to feel insurmountable if you are trying to avoid largely copy-pasting recognizable stuff from Earth (obviously, it is not actually insurmountable, but it certainly feels like it is, and this is where outside information and suggestions can really save you from some nasty headaches).
Even now, with my description, it feels like there is even more to develop. Of course, this might be the greatest challenge if you want a fantastical city/world that still somehow feels like it could actually exist and function as described. If you want some kind of failed/failing city (or world - nothing said you cannot go grimdark for your WIP), then you have a lot more room to work, all the way down to coming up with whatever put it in its position.
It ultimately comes down to this writing advice: "Is this interesting about this character/city/world/etc., and if not, why are you spending 'X' time and words on it?" Granted, something might be interesting to you, but it might not be to other readers (assuming you want to share it), so it is far too easy to overload with unnecessary filler, and it can be especially painful to go back through it, find what works and what doesn't, and keep what does while throwing out what doesn't. This activity tends to be what you spend the most time and effort doing when worldbuilding, but make no mistake, far more often than not, it is worth it.

[@rawlenyanzi6686]

@@DavidRichardson153 All the moving parts involved with worldbuilding are why I chose to make my WIP’s setting small-scale (although it *is* part of a much larger setting.) I too go for some level of plausibility, though some Rule of Cool gets in there too; for example, I like the witch aesthetic, so I gave witches prominent roles in the setting, and only later realized I wrote a matriarchy without intending to. (It does help that the people aren’t meant to be medieval, but modern.)

[@DavidRichardson153]

@@rawlenyanzi6686 Pretty much the same in my case. It started small, but it quickly ballooned into a whole other world, and the Rule of Cool also came into play, especially by the time I started creating my cities, particularly the new and futuristic ones. I did have my world start off not modern - not medieval, mind you, just Industrial-Revolution-Era but with a magic system built around bodily enhancements in place of heavy mechanization. There is tech development, but due to the magic system, it is much slower (not exactly a great need for tech when magic does the job, but the research is not discouraged), at least until they finally start getting into modern and then future tech. Still, with their magic system in place, they largely avoided the negatives that arose during and after the Industrial Revolution.
I also ended up making my world a matriarchy, complete with an actual divine goddess-queen ruling over it for most of its history. Granted, I wrote that the matriarchy arose not out of any laws (because there were none that pushed in any way towards such), but because the goddess-queen and her closest friends lived the example they wanted to set. Writing about the goddess-queen was some of the most fun I had, especially when I decided to start writing something of a prequel for it all (note the key word of "start" set before "writing" for an idea of what little progress I've actually made).
That is how writing ultimately plays out, at least when you are doing it for fun and not for a living: the two laws of Rule of Cool and "Interesting Enough to Dig Deeper Into," and an enforcement system of just going nuts with them while worrying about cleanup and cohesion later - much like having the most extensive collection of Lego you could ever imagine.

[@rawlenyanzi6686]

@@DavidRichardson153 The best ideas come about organically.

[@zwierzak2012]

first city is Essen HBF - lol. funny, I was in Essen and I guessed.