In "Least Sexy Hammondal News," tonight I was just placing the entry labels that will eventually adorn the neighborhood maps. For clarity's sake, I'm doing so on top of a crude raster with ugly colors I can distinguish at a glance. Later on, it'll all be integrated into the master map.
This is dull stuff, so most of my brain was distractedly pondering what I could remember of each entry as I placed it. THAT was educational, in a way. 😅
When I say I've studied 109 FRP city-guides as part of the #Hammondal project, that doesn't include books like Haven: Secrets of the Labyrinth, because it never presents itself as a city guide. It's a supplement to Haven, one of two (the 2nd never made it to shelves before the publisher folded).
If I _were_ to count it, at least 105 other books would have to respectfully _fall_ a notch on the list, to make room for it near the top.
In so many ways, I'll never make a book this good.
I feel like myself when doing a bit of #Hammondal design I could fairly describe as "the burning of Elgin Cathedral by the Wolf of Badenoch via Mork & Mindy, but spooky."
Just as a mostly-idle thought experiment, I'm revisiting all 109 of the FRP city guides I've got in the #Hammondal research library and re-reading ONLY the brothels.
Seriously I could write a very amusing (and almost entirely useless) book describing just _this._ 😅
While my #TTRPG #worldbuilding never shies from the political, I'm usually not aiming at the headlines, but it's hard not to notice when they collide anyway.
A minor NPC in #Hammondal is partly inspired by Augustus Bradford, who both opposed and benefitted from Lincoln sending soldiers to the polls to bully voters.
And that's not _strongly_ germane to my NPC; the Bradford part of him is more about the range of crap PCs have to contend with if they mess with moneyed interests. But ... 😆
I sometimes envy the lighter job-set of a supplement city guide (which can build upward from a world already established), and also of city guides that can truly be village guides, because they can presume a narrow PC range.
#Hammondal has neither going on. That means it gets to be _more awesome_ ... but it does mean the climb is steeper. 😆 It has a lot more jobs to do, on every page.
The earlier guides I admire mostly walked similarly steep design terrain.
As #Hammondal develops it becomes increasingly asymmetrical in design. Same thing happens to all my books yet it surprises me a little each time. 😅
Like, each neighborhood is still a chapter. But the shape of each chapter is increasingly unrelated to how other chapters are structured.
A good sign. Symmetry is never my friend.
A bit of #Hammondal going from doodly to less-doodly.
Just playing with subtle changes to how I tone and texture the water.
(Plates like this one are the most that fit on a single page, so there will be three such plates in Hammondal's book, plus up to 23 neighborhood maps, zoomed and text-encrusted, plus a few others)
Many fantasy cities have been presented as campaign worlds, but they're usually _big deal_ cities, fantasy equivalents of New York, Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong, London, Cairo.
#Hammondal is a campaign world that's the fantasy equivalent of Livonia, Michigan or Parma, Ohio. Cities for which most people never spare a single thought.
And if that strikes you as intriguing, or even a little audacious ... I agree. 😆
S. John Ross