Gate of the Ass

NEW MAP!

This week, I was inspired to start on a city map.  This is the first quarter of the as-yet-unnamed city.  The name, Gate of the Ass, comes from all the pack-mules that pass through to get to the markets and industry of the city.  If you saw the sewer map from last month and wondered what the streets above looked like, here it is!

The Three Boroughs on this map are

• Dark Belly, where rowdy vampires revel all day long in the eclipse of the floating sky port. 
• The Pale Borough, where the many burial options of the city's religions lay.
• Goblin Town, where the gobbos plot their uprising against the aristocracy.

I don't really want to write any more lore than that.  I really want my maps to be as gameable as possible with as little text as possible.  I did want to name the buildings and the burrows because it just helps communicate the idea the fastest.  If you don't want to run this city as its laid out, you can think of this as a buffet of ideas for your own game!

I've been thinking about city campaigns recently.  I'm a big fan of the Magpies Podcast, an actual play of Blades in the Dark, which is all about the characters' relationship with a busted grimdark city.  Also, I've been playing in a game of Itras By, which is a diceless RPG that centers around a surreal city.  Everyone should at least read through this game, the art and writing are so lovely!!  But what really put the bee in my bonnet was Jonathan Newell's blog post "How I Run a Citycrawl Campaign".  He has this beautiful and gigantic map of a big weird city just bursting with ideas and hooks and intrigue!  I'm official obsessed!

ALSO I HAVE A KICKSTARTER!

In February, I am launching a Kickstarter for Zinequest 3!  It's called Old Roads, and it's going to be a zine of all new maps!  These maps will be kept separate from this project, and will not interrupt my weekly map posting here.  I've wanted to try Zinequest since I heard about it, and this will be my first Kickstarter that I myself am launching.  Please swing by the link and follow the project to get notified when it goes live!