As I've been running my campaign , I've come to realize that no version of the Star Wars role-playing game has done a particularly great job of making cities feel unique, from a play perspective. Force & Destiny 's Sentinel book introduced some useful but generic skill tests that revolve around falling off buildings, being carried off by mobs, being hit by cars, or being pegged as an out-of-towner.

Since Star Wars paints environments with a very broad brush (i.e. snow planet, desert planet), I've been brainstorming ways that planetary environments shape the cities on their surface and how PCs interact with them.

Off the top of my head, we've seen the following urban locales:

• Coruscant - New York City/Tokyo amped up on enough steroids to accommodate 1 trillion people. Flying cars, neon lights, and miles deep metal canyons.
• Theed City - Tuscany by way of a Romantic-era painting.
• Mos Eisley/Mos Espa/Jedha City - A Wild West town combined with a North African desert bazaar.
• Cloud City - A space operatic 1930s city-in-the-clouds by way of Flash Gordon and Star Trek .
• Canto Bight - Las Vegas meets Monaco.
• Mon Cala City - An underwater city that looks like the Mon Calamari cruisers flipped on their sides that uses high-pressure bubble tubes to shoot pedestrians from location to location.
• Lothal City - A very generic science-fiction city with a bunch of tall buildings but no surrounding suburban sprawl.

A lot of nice visuals but only Mon Cala City and Cloud City are truly reflective of their environments. Ironically, the Christmas Special animated segment introduced Panna City , a bubble metropolis floating on a planet of gelatin. That's pretty cool! And since, according to EU/Legends, Panna Prime is in the Tion Cluster - the location of my campaign - it was easy enough to plug that location into my maps. But I need more, so here's what I've come up with:

• Wanderlost: Located on the volcanic world of Tharkos, Wanderlost is less a city and more a colossal mining crawler. Straddling lava streams on massive treads the city, is actually a modified city-sized vehicle; a Continent-class mining vessel. Huge bucket-wheels attached to fat booms dredge the lava river and convey the piping hot magma along force field channel conveyors toward the interior of the mobile mining city. Aerials, rectennas, and flashing beacons give the vehicle a spiny, almost sea-creature like appearance. Scout craft and transport ships circle and land at the Wanderlost like Dekk flies on a dewback. The air on Tharkos is breathable but uncomfortable without a filter mask.
• Zirfan: Located on the cold and mountainous world of Eredenn Prime, the city of Zirfan occupies two-thirds of Mount Zirfan's north face. Built in half-rings, a handful of shining silver towers rise above the steam emitted by the large metropolis, the majority of which is in the form of blocky buildings of all shapes and sizes. A large and heavily trafficked main-thoroughfare winds up from the lowest level of the city, the location of the main spaceport, to a cavernous opening in the side of the mountain. The opening provides access to the city's primary economic engine, a 100-level factory complex. Sludge pours from the mountain's south face, a side effect of the manufacturing process, into the valley behind the city. A winding tram and plasma cable cars are the primary means of public conveyance in the city. During the warm months, perpetual streams of snow melt race down the sides of the mountain. This melt surges through the city streets, making walking at ground level a difficult affair.

I like the idea of a large city on a planet that's enshrouded in perpetual fog or mist, like a science-fiction Gothic Horror novel, but I'm having a difficult time figuring out why the city is there and what it does.

How about you lot? What cool ideas do you have for urban environments?

I’ve just developed the city of Nexus on the planet of the same name for my new campaign.

From space Nexus is a featureless beige ball but as you fly closer the surface of the planet is covered in a maze of deep canyons that, from altitude, look like baked desert sand!

Nexus has a thinner than thin atmosphere making survival impossible on the surface without environmental gear, however the atmosphere within the canyons is perfectly breathable. Hence the first people to colonise the world built their city into the canyon walls.

Due to Nexus’ position at the intersection of 3 hyperspace lanes it grew into a bustling trade hub where anything can be obtained if you know who to speak to. As a consequence the city grew quickly & now covers nearly a third of the planet’s canyons. Numerous bridges, the largest of which have been built on, connect one side to the other & the ZipWay (an extensive mag train system) ferries people between its different zones!

It’s early days in the campaign so far so my players have only visited once, it’s going to feature heavily though so I’m looking forward to developing the place more!

I'm fascinated by the city of Iziz on Onderon, from the AoR Beginner Game and Web-published Operation Shadowpoint. Imagine a large city surrounded by hostile jungle. Further, the Legends encyclopedia has a lot to offer on Onderon.

On 4/12/2018 at 1:04 PM, Concise Locket said:

I like the idea of a large city on a planet that's enshrouded in perpetual fog or mist, like a science-fiction Gothic Horror novel, but I'm having a difficult time figuring out why the city is there and what it does.

Maybe you'd like my modified Formos (near Kessel) that I used for my players in the "Trouble Brewing" Adventure. The standard description is "its arid with little water"...boring.

"Formos is a forbidding world, shrouded by dark clouds and beset by frequent ash storms. While technically a terrestrial planet with a breathable atmosphere and standard gravity, there is virtually no surface water and life does not flourish upon its surface. Were it not for its position at the junction of busy hyperspace routes, it is unlikely that anyone would choose to live there. The only settlement, simply known as Formos Spaceport, is a spaceport with a reputation for shady deals and rough customers.

The Formos Spaceport is considered a Limited Services Port; it consists of a large area of duracrete for the storage of ships and cargo. There is a small control tower and a number of sheds for docking, storage, and maintenance. The spaceport proper is surrounded by a ramshackle settlement of mostly hastily constructed dwellings and warehouses. These are ugly and utilitarian buildings, blocky and gray like the crags of rock that jut up from the surface of Formos. Almost everything is covered in a layer of gray soot, and among the tight alleyways heaps of accumulated ash gather among the nooks and corners untouched by wind

Most species begin to feel thirsty shortly after landing on the planet and those used to life on humid worlds soon feel dehydrated and uncomfortable. Not surprisingly, species with an aquatic heritage, such as Nautolan, Mon Calamari, and Quarren, are notably absent from those who make a home here. Thankfully, water sellers are a common sight along the streets and docks, though the prices they advertise would be considered extortionate on most habitable worlds."

3 hours ago, Evil Anvil said:

I'm fascinated by the city of Iziz on Onderon, from the AoR Beginner Game and Web-published Operation Shadowpoint. Imagine a large city surrounded by hostile jungle. Further, the Legends encyclopedia has a lot to offer on Onderon.

The interesting thing about Iziz, and Onderon in general, is that Iziz was the only city on the entire planet, At least according the original source material.

8 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

The interesting thing about Iziz, and Onderon in general, is that Iziz was the only city on the entire planet, At least according the original source material.

Onderon seems to be the kind of hellhole planet where there is nothing really worth the cost of setting up more cities. The flora and fauna is too hostile to make larger settlements work, it's like a less hellish version of Dxun.

On 2018-04-12 at 2:04 PM, Concise Locket said:

I like the idea of a large city on a planet that's enshrouded in perpetual fog or mist, like a science-fiction Gothic Horror novel, but I'm having a difficult time figuring out why the city is there and what it does.

How about you lot? What cool ideas do you have for urban environments?

Umbara would make for an ideal location for a fog shrouded, alien landscape. It would even have a lovecraft esque horror feel to it.

The skakoan’s offer a nice take on a planet with a different atmosphere and stations they might construct may be distinct in this way.

The Volcanic activity on Sullust and their heavy industry makes for an industrial wasteland/paradise.

On 4/17/2018 at 12:49 AM, Darth Revenant said:

Onderon seems to be the kind of hellhole planet where there is nothing really worth the cost of setting up more cities. The flora and fauna is too hostile to make larger settlements work, it's like a less hellish version of Dxun.

Exactly why the entire population, except for exiles, all lived in one huge mega city.

Just now, Tramp Graphics said:

Exactly why the entire population, except for exiles, all lived in one huge mega city.

It's not that huge a city. The sources I can find puts the population at roughly 4 million people on the entire planet. It's probably a very fortified city with some rather impressive construction and architecture, but it's not a huge metropolis. Operation Shadowpoint also features a village outside of Iziz that isn't settled by beast riders. So there clearly are settlements out in the jungle as well, although they fare rather poorly. The whole planet is pretty much a **** hole, which is why it's a perfect place for my character to come from.

I love Nar Shaddaa, and made an effort to employ it to the fullest in my campaign, and really do it justice. I made it unique by playing up how seedy, chaotic and shabby it is, to a level where some might think that it's too rauncy for Star Wars (obviously, I don't). I used all my experience of having lived in a shabby yet gargantuan city in one of China's poorest provinces to color the descriptions with chaos and bisarre random background events.

On my campaign wiki, I give all planets a slightly tongue-in-cheeck list of potential hazards and dangers, to serve as inspiration for stuff that may happen there. The list for Nar Shaddaa goes like this:

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Smog inhalation, falls from high platforms, speeder accidents, building collapses, kidnappings, spice overdoses, bad spice trips, veneral diseases, muggings, scams, press gangs, rapists, pickpockets, genetically engineered viruses, bar fights, gang shootouts, animal attacks (a mortal threat), psychotic killers (a mortal threat), techno-primitive cannibal gangs (a mortal threat), Hutt intrigues (a mortal threat).

I also prepared a list of fitting names for dive bars, shabby cantinas, casinos, strip clubs etc, because I knew I was gonna need it. Names I've used thus far includes Swallow, The Crazy Couch, The Corellian Cabaret, The Explorer's Club, The Dive.

Some of the many other things I've done to create the feeling of a gritty ecumenopolis:

- Many combat encounters have an automatic setback dice on all initiative and ranged checks to represent the chaos of fleeing bystanders, moving speeders, smoke, debris, etc.

- All checks to navigate or drive around on Nar Shaddaa gets a setback dice due to the sheer chaos.

- Many combats in the lower levels gets setback dice due to darkness.

- Due to the hyper-urban environment, there's always, always cover available in combat. Some cover, like street stalls, might easily be blown up by a couple of advantages though.
-- There's also almost always bystanders that'll react to the combat. In some cases, the Hutts' security guards might not be far away.

- I make a lot of use of the advantage/threat-table for Urban Encounters and the similar table from the modular encounters in Lords of Nal Hutta.

- I always describe briefly what happens in the background when the PCs does something, for example by letting bystanders react in some way.
-- I also emphasize the 'rythm' of the city in this way; the bystanders behave differently depending on the hour. If the PCs take a train in the late hours of the night, for example, the background NPCs seem tired and worn after long nights of working or partying, if it's in the prime hours of the night the streets are bustling with clubgoers, entertainment workers and tourists, etc. In the early morning, the city is rather sleepy as Nar Shaddaa is all about nightlife and decadence. For the most part, of course, I portray this cycle as relative, and not connected to the actual day/night-cycle, as the days and nights on Nar Shaddaa are bizarrely long, but in the decadent Hutt Shardal's party-crazed court, I implied that they'd been partying for the whole 30+ hours long night.
--- Various shady characters approaches the PCs in various ways. The would-be-jedi who just look too goody two-shoes seem to be a magnet for beggar children, the ominous-yet-handsome zabrak gets solicited by prostitutes, the shady trandoshan gets deals on off-brand chronometers and cheap drugs, etc.

- I emphasize that the city is very vertical by letting despairs and triumps lead to people tumbling down to lower levels. That's how one PC got stuck trying to survive in a bizarre underworld of collapsed megastructures, bioluminescent plants and techno-primitive marauding gangs for two whole sessions.
-- I also encourage player to use the verticality by giving a boost dice to checks to climb, run or jump, as Nar Shaddaa has somewhat low gravity.
--- That underworld, the Darklands, is very thematically interesting, as it emphasizes that Nar Shaddaa, like other ecumenopolises in Star Wars, is ancient beyond our imagination. I try to fill the Undercity and especially the Darklands with hints of that antiquity, portraying it as a weird, almost unearthly, place where withered buildings from ages long past have crumbled together to create bizarre cave rooms and gargantuan dark spaces, mazes of overgrown structures, ancient cabling, crumbling refueling spires, broken concrete and the rusty remains of vehicles that only an archaeologist could recognize.

- I use chase scenes. They're a pure delight to run in a derelict urban environment as there's just soo many cool things you can throw in. For example, the trandoshan crook in my group tried to swindle a Hutt who ran a huge, rundown and mazelike apartment complex similar to the old Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong . It became an awesome chase scene, where the trandoshan first had to find his way out of the mansion, then escape across the rooftops, followed by a horde of the Hutt's dug henchmen. He jumped between balconies, and tried to get rid of the dugs by cutting down a rope bridge - unfortunately, he fell too, but landed in a scrap heap and hitchhiked with another Hutt who drove a garbage collecting speeder. He got off where another player character was, but the swindled Hutt then appeared with three l avishly decorated speeder buses , and the chase continued as a vehicle chase. This chase eventually ended when one of the buses blocked a narrow ally, and transformed into a combat encounter. But the PCs managed to escape in their landspeeder when a bunch of Gamorrean freelance police intervened.

- If I can, I end sessions when a PC is falling from a great height. This is the best of all cliffhangers. In my city's RPG theory discussion group, it's become a running gag to start a session with "You're falling. What do you do?", as it's actually a great way so start an RPG session, immediately unleashing a flood of creativity from the player(s).

This last quote is kinda long. It's how I chose to describe Nar Shaddaa on my wiki. It's my own take on the wookiepedia article, so to speak, but I think it might give some more ideas about how to describe a shabby urban environment:

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The moon of Nal Hutta, Nar Shaddaa has an unsavory reputation, often called "The Smugglers' Moon", "The Vertical City" or "The Cesspool of the Galaxy." It is an ecumenopolis, completely covered in layers upon layers of a decaying, filth-encrusted urban landscape. Its gargantuan skyscrapers and refueling spires are wreathed in clouds of smog, while crumbling stairwells and painfully slow elevators lead down through the layers into an increasingly lightless underworld. Neon signs and bright advertisements litter almost every street, though some of them seem to refer to products and places forgotten long ago. The Hutts, the masters of Nar Shaddaa, seem content to let chaos, corruption and vice reign supreme, while they profit from cutthroat business deals high up in the skyscrapers and simultaneously reap a good portion of the rewards from the myriad of shabby cantinas, hotels, nightclubs, brothels, contraband shops, gambling joints and drug dens that lies below. Security forces patrol only the most prestigious areas - everywhere else, the only security one can expect is the one that's personally paid for, by credits or by sworn allegiance to Hutt cartels. Almost nothing is illegal, and things that would be frowned upon elsewhere are barted in the open - contraband, exotic drugs, dangerous weapons, illicit cybernetics, slaves, bounties, and much stranger or sinister things. The almost complete lack of tariffs, regulations and oversight is what makes Nar Shaddaa a base of operation for smugglers from all over the galaxy, but also a haven for companies wishing to conduct questionable experiments or test unsafe products. Some would say that it is a testament to the callousness and the malice of the Hutts that they've let such a wretched place as Nar Shaddaa thrive in the galaxy. Others would just shake their head and say that Nar Shaddaa is precisely what the galaxy deserves.

What a great thread!

Thanks for detailing those cities and I think I need to makes some tables to randomly generate city descriptions like that. For some reason your description of Lothal city was very appealing to me, probably because it was very striking and of course conformed to the visual.

Having cities that kind of resemble Chicago, or San Francisco, or even Los Angeles where it's so spread out over so much land and sub-cities that it takes a while to get out of it and there is no real epicenter.

I also like the idea of the platform city like on Tarus with big piles that hold the city up instead of repulsors.

You could also have weird things like suburban sprawl that is built like giant roads that span from one epicenter to another but aren't very wide 2-4 km.

I'm developing a world of perpetual acid rain with skyscraper-sized trees, where the termite-like natives live in villages that hang from the underside of shielded mining rigs that climb between the trees. There, they spearfish the mutated leviathans that haunt the treacly sea of acid that drowned their homes and now covers most of the forest floor. The water levels rise every year, and the threats they faces only grow more dangerous. Their only export is an acidic, once-sacred sap that can be refined into a material vital to the manufacturing of Imperial hypermatter reactors, though this greed is what led to the destruction of their environment in the first place.

On 4/13/2018 at 8:54 AM, AceSolo5 said:

Nexus has a thinner than thin atmosphere making survival impossible on the surface without environmental gear, however the atmosphere within the canyons is perfectly breathable. Hence the first people to colonise the world built their city into the canyon walls.

2

Totally stealing this.

46 minutes ago, edwardavern said:

Totally stealing this.

You are more than welcome ?