One of the reasons I'm enjoying #Hammondal as a small, unregarded city away from the centers of the world is that it let's me have a modest variety of cultures without dumbing down the world as a whole ... just a couple dozen countries have any presence at all in the port, and less than one dozen have anything like prominence. But the hundreds of others can peek in, one traveler at a time, at need. It makes the whole thing both more intimate and more isolated, in a cozy way.
I made a key for an internal reference map, an act which feels simultaneously elderly (I kept forgetting which species I'd assigned purple to) and indulgent (it's just for meeeee). 😅
Parmarrow is in the spotlight in tonight's work on #Hammondal, and it's a doozy. The underlying local themes (which should be mostly invisible to the reader) are the intersections of drugs and holiness. The surface stuff is about the heartiest handshakes between the Gamlish and the Boranese faiths. And magnets. And noodles. Cheeky references include nods to TFFV, Discworld, and the Wizard of Oz (but with lots more nazis and slightly more Tarzan). Also, Scooter.
Sometimes I think the most outrageously optimistic thing I do is, I leave little notes to myself and genuinely seem to assume that, a few days later when I find the note, I'll have any idea what I meant.
For example, a line from my "big note-dump of #Hammondal notions" file is simply:
Increasingly, #Hammondal becomes a kind of stealth gamer autobiography, incorporating versions of nearly every campaign I've enjoyed across the years, as player or GM.
This is an interesting (to me) contrast from Uresia, which was more a fantasy retelling of my work history.
But with each world it's comparably vain and self-indulgent, and isn't that what really matters? 😆
Of the twenty-something fantasy city-books highlighted in the #Hammondal biblio, Eidolon (and Sel-Kai) might take the "pleasantly surprised" award, because I've never been a Shadow World fan (still not) ... But my preconceptions were unfair to this book, which is Really Very Good. While it has some of Amthor's usual tics, they often end up serving, rather than undermining, the design. Dragon magazine called it the jewel of the Shadow World crown, and I agree.
Years ago, I played a profoundly insecure wizard; he just had layers of walls between himself and those around him (the dismantling of those walls as his friendships developed were the fun part of playing such a broken creature).
Anyway, he spun endless bullshit about how his magic worked. Just, outrageous garbage. Total fibs.
All these years later, some of the forms of magic described in #Hammondal are based directly on some of his bullshit. So that's been fun. 😅
Chélemby: City of the Sea Kings (Keléstia, 2009) is the closest thing Hârn has to to a great fantasy city-book, and while it stumbles into some pat filler-material here and there, it constantly saves itself with the late N. Robin Crossby's ability to slip sly awareness of human nature, in gameable ways, into places where I'd expect something rote. This ability to surprise every page or two elevates it to Really Very Good-ness, and I'll be happily citing it in the #Hammondal biblio.
Everyone who does FRPG #WorldBuilding dips into history, to varying degrees, and applies or ignores it, to varying degrees. Specific interests exert heavy gravity:
History: "He led the expedition with twenty armed valets and two-dozen crossbowmen."
Me: Cannot possibly give a shit SHUTTUP WITH THIS BORING CRAP.
History: "Innkeepers often took responsibility for elder care in their neighborhoods, even to the extent of --"
Me: OMFG YES GIMME GIMME MINE MINE MINE.
For me, fantasy doesn't feel like fantasy without some "realized paranoia," but, I also enjoy fantasy most when most of those paranoid elements are minimal, downplayed, and subverted, often with a dusting of mockery.
Not crude mockery, of course. The finer stuff. Confectioners' Mockery.
Combining multiple dimensions of wealth, demographics, and occupancy in a similar image using color, borders, and secondary borders. I could (and will) add more with overlay patterns or patterns within the colors, etc. Since maps like these aren't for publication, they can get real ugly and confusing in the name of information density, and they turn a lot of vague heat-maps and broad design choices into a quilt of useful specifics I can treat as fresh clay.
Mapping out the vacant and abandoned structures of #Hammondal
I went lighter on these than I might have ... A kind of fantasy-world compromise, with a fistful of in-world reasons, but a lot of the real-world places that inspired Hammondal would have nearly twice the number of shells if mapped this way.
Same disclaimer as usual: This is just development-process stuff. The book won't be nearly this explicit (entries for only 40 or so).
Most fantasy-urban building interiors in RPG publishing tend toward the embiggened (for more of those sweet, sweet 5' squares). One of the few books I know to go with a more medievaloid vibe (with single-rod, deep-lot shops) is Andy Law's "Buildings of the Reikland," from 2019. It may not be a popular aesthetic, but I dig it a lot, and it's a good little book I'm happy to cite as an influence (though #Hammondal shops seldom have as many floors as WFRP ones).