Hello there,

my playing group anounced several times now, that it would be great to play a campaign on coruscant only.

I can see the potential and I am tempted to do this but I see several problems/issues where I could use some advice.

First of all, I need as many source material as I can get regarding Maps, city plans or any other material regarding coruscant.

Second, I do know from expierience with Fantasy RPGs that one of the major issues is to keep track of the players movement. Where have they already been, what are the major areas / palces which are usefull and a general overview of the city.

Right now I have no idea how to keep track on something as huge as a city planet like coruscant.

I will be grateful for some advise, thanks in advance.

If there is already a similar thread like this which I did not see, I apologize.

The entire planet of Coruscant is a city and it has over a TRILLION inhabitants. That' roughly 142x's as populated as Earth! IMO, there is no way to keep track of it all. It is impossible. My advice would be to focus on important sites and timeline events. I like using Wookieepedia. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Coruscant There's at least 20 locations listed there.

I use the important or notable places to develop stories. Otherwise, the rest is just (underground) city block after city block, each one looking like the other. I am doing the same and just give areas they are in random sector numbers.

This is definitely Theater-of-the-Mind territory. Coruscant has over a thousand levels, but in reality, only a few will matter to your plot, eh? Have an idea of what "zones" you might want players to visit and have an idea of what is there. Need some underworld? Are there gangs there? Are they going to a government building? why? Only create what you need. Another great thing about Coruscant is the main mode of travel is Airspeeders, so you generally fly everywhere and can ignore a few thousand blocks of terrain on your way to your next thing.

My group was on Tatooine for a while and I had an OOG discussion with them along the lines of "Hey guys, are you thinking you'll stay on Tatooine? I can work out a couple of options for you to go to..." ...and they were like, "naw, we need to go back to Ryloth to check in on Nym." So that saved me a ton of wasted time. I had them land where they usually do since that is where their business is, now I'm giving them leads to other areas of the planet. Sure, they could just ask to visit a non-plot area just because they read about it on a wiki or saw it on Clone Wars, but then they are going to deal with a lot of. "OK, you are at Kala'uun spaceport. What are you looking for?" "What is there?" "It is a spaceport, you see spaceporty things, anything specific you are looking to see?" "A cantina?" "OK, there are a few here" *activate NPC name generator site and improv a cantina...."

In reality, Coruscant is almost easier to do that Waterdeep (if you know that refernce) because there are so many maps and sourcebooks for that city it feels like you should know the names of all the streets. On Coruscant, you have to abstract everything.

I super-rambled, there, need sleep!

The novel Triple Zero was set almost entirely on Coruscant, so might be worth reading for getting a feel of the place (albeit before the Empire).

If you play(ed) SWTOR you can find some maps of different areas of Coruscant. Granted there is a lot more to the planet that what you see in game but it can get you started

https://www.google.com/search?q=swtor+coruscant+maps

10 hours ago, Urbane Spaceman said:

The novel Triple Zero was set almost entirely on Coruscant, so might be worth reading for getting a feel of the place (albeit before the Empire).

Yeah, there's a few bits on Coruscant in there, but it's a terrible novel even by Star Wars standards.

Check out maps of mastery. there are some good maps you can use as a stand in

As noted, "maps" in this context is kind of pointless. Just use set pieces and place them where you want. For ideas you can also watch a few of the TCW episodes where they go into the under levels, there are a few in each season I think. The one with the most detail on the under levels is probably Ahsoka's final arc. The episode Lightsaber Lost is a good view of the upper levels. Interesting to note the contrast in costume, street-space, and transportation on the different levels.

Thanks for all the input.

On 6/12/2019 at 8:30 PM, RecklessFable said:

Another great thing about Coruscant is the main mode of travel is Airspeeders, so you generally fly everywhere and can ignore a few thousand blocks of terrain on your way to your next thing

Slight quibble, this seems to be mostly limited to the upper levels, but there are also "hoop rail" trains (like monorails or subways), in the lower levels there are "street cars", and from all appearances they have "rent a speeder" services where you just walk up and take a speeder and have it billed to your credit/wallet/apple-pay/comm-device. There is a ton of variety, and TCW is a gold-mine for that kind of stuff.

The WotC free modules Core of Corruption and Reckoning of Wraiths both take place on the planet and have maps, but they're all interiors and a few streets. I think they can still be obtained by Wayback Machine. Coruscant and the Core Worlds has a single, low detail, overworld map for a single district, though it does tell her that the Senate Building was almost directly south west of the Imperial Palace and not that far from it.