Dyson Logos released a city map free for even commercial use today on his blog Dyson’s Dodecahedron: the city of Alderbridge (click to see the map). I’ve always wanted to detail a city something like Judge’s Guild did with the City-State of the Invincible Overlord. I’ve never had a city map I could use that I actually liked, however. I saw Alderbridge and liked it, so I’m going to start detailing some of the buildings in the city on this blog: probably one or two buildings a week. I hope to detail about one-third of the buildings by the time I’m done. That will leave a large number of empty buildings both as residences/tenements and as places where GMs can customize the city for their own campaigns. I’m doing this on my blog in the hope that this will make me actually make the time to do this project.

I’m not sure at the moment when I will start writing up buildings as I first need to name the city (if I don’t keep the name Alderbridge), name the streets, and come up with a general idea of how the city works and where it is in general terms as these decisions will determine what is likely to be found in the city. The building writeups will be in general D&D terms and so should be easily useable with any TSR version of D&D or a clone thereof (including Microlite74, Microlite78, and Microlite81).

For those who have never seen the City-State of the Invincible Overlord, here is a sample of a short building description I wrote up for one of the empty buildings in the Street of Shadows in the City-State of Invincible Overlord back in the 1970s.

BARBER
Artfoon Gandal (Human Male MU-6 LE HP-15 AC-9 S-8 I-16 W-11 C-10 D-10 K-12 WPN: Knife)

Artfoon is a snobbish and seemingly incompetent barber. He often nicks those he shaves (50%) and always carefully blots the blood on a new blotter(which he later labels for use in magic rituals against customers with money or power). Artfoon expects a tip but seldom gets one. He can be a bit surly if his previous customer did not tip. Artfoon owns a wand of wonder which he hides in his boot. Shave and a Haircut: 2sp. Rumors: The Orcs of the Purple Claw will soon mount another attack on the City-State. The Overlord is looking to hire a pack of werewolves for a deadly mission.

More important establishments get longer write-ups, of course. I’m interested in feedback on this idea. If there is no interest in this project, I’ll push it to the back burner. It shouldn’t interfere with rules projects as most building descriptions will not take a lot of time to create and write up.