Tap into the OSR with the Questing Beast newsletter: bit.ly/Glatisant Join the Questing Knights on Patreon: bit.ly/QBPatreon Download my RPGs and adventures: bit.ly/ItchStore My favorite OSR books: bit.ly/TopOSRBooks
As an architect let me just say that this technique is how we are taught in architecture school. And another good book for reference is “S, M, L, XL” which basically breaks down how cities are formed (and drawn) from the micro to macro scale
One thing I have to add to this excellent Tutorial: Most cities have a reason to be there. A road may be an adequate starting point, but if jou know why the city is here, that can change it's whole character. And the way in which roads are built. Might be a harbour, a river, a fortification, a trading hub, entry to a mountain pass, access to rare resources, or whatever reason comes to mind. Every one of those needs it's special facilities and those needs their support and the city is mainly built around those. Also cultural aspects can very much shape a city. Some cities are built round around a center, or (more or less) rectangular for purely cultural reasons. Do the citizens want fast access to one cultural center? Are there multiple distributed "centers"? The city layout will reflect that. And that can support the "feel" in your campaign or novel. Just my two cents.
Also remember that cities will often have special buildings in common, which take special consideration when designing and placing them. Churches/temples often take up prime real estate - the larger ones having courtyards or even adjacent cemeteries - with all other structures being built _around_ it (because such structures often enough are built first during the town's founding). Moreover, depending on the city's size, it might end up with multiple places of worship dotted throughout, as the population expands or the "city" forms out of multiple nearby towns. Or simply as a quirk of religious make-up; different religions, different gods, and/or different religious denominations might necessitate having so many in the same community. Rivers will have docks and bridges, because people usually want to interact with and cross over the waterways. Certain industries - like tanners - need access to water, and it's preferred that certain businesses be downriver of everything else. Yes, knowing which direction a river flows is kind of important. Decide how large the river is, too, and how fast it flows. A large, meandering river has a rather different relationship to its community than a thin stream.
The city I live started from a 8th century Saxon nunnery destroyed by Danes in 1016. A Benedictine monastery (St Mary's) was built on the site of the nunnery in mid 11th century. Franciscans had church here in 1234, then in the 14th century a Carthusian monastery and a Carmalite Friary. There exist a terrace of six houses built by the Priory in 1455 which they rented out to craftsmen. 1102 St. Mary's became a priory and Cathedral and owned half the city until the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century. There were a number of Medieval guilds, the Mercer's Guild being the most powerful.
Re: drawing the roads, you may have to consider that sometimes the main road becomes choked with buildings and is not viable to a large amount of foot and wagon traffic, and a new road (like a bypass) is built to accommodate the increased foot traffic, so one of the side roads could end up being wider than the main road, as the path was cut because large caravans couldn't make it down the main road anymore.
I live in a market town in England, that is pretty much like this. You have a market square which has the church on one side and a town hall on another, and then loads of random streets and alleys coming off it.
Good start. The Romans were not the only ones to plan cities. Medieval cities were organic because the only institution capable to create and enforce good building codes was the Catholic Church which had little real interest in doing so. You are correct to ask why the city was there. Nearly every major or important city/town of medieval Europe is located on a river or at the mouth of a river to ease materials and food transport into the city as well as trade. The Romans where the only ones who went into reshaping the landscape so many cities ended up being located on a natural rise for defense. Every city of importance and many smaller towns had walls for defense. Cities were crowded because everyone wanted to be inside when the ugly neighbors came calling. The smaller towns may not have been enclosed by a wall but it did narrow the defensive front if some barricade existed on one or more sides. A cliff to the back made it difficult to drop in or climb up to. A river, marsh, ditches, hedges made it difficult for sudden mass attacks to easily enter the defensive line. Private wells were rare, expensive, and added to the taxable value of the property. Public wells tended to be located in the courts especially when when on or close to the river elevation. The poor made a living hauling water on their backs uphill, yes uphill to the richer homes on higher elevations. The rich lived there to catch cooler air, avoid the diseases found close to the river, or "industrial" areas. Sorry a bit wordy. But a good start on mapping a city.
Well, i'm totally impressed. I was sure i'd watch the 1st couple of minutes then fast forward a few at a time to just get to the final product. Who really wants to watch some guy draw a bunch of lines & listen to him blab about what he's doing, -for over 17 minutes? I listened to every word with interest & even followed with anticipation as you subdivided your lots. Truly well done, i got a lot out of it. Thanks muchly!
When I create a medieval city, I start with its pre-village state, with a crossroad or road crossing a river and a stage inn in that crossing, then adding the cooper and farrier an slowly adding more houses, first only public and craft houses and gradually adding residential buildings and maybe some barracks, later walls. The original court yards are part of the stage inn and other businesses that have wagons to hold the stables for horses and wagons. If it is a road crossing a river, the embankment will be built out to land some river barges, a ferry house or bridge would be built..the bridge would be built eventually anyways, and as houses are added, the spaces between the early buildings are filled in with new, narrower buildings to utilise the empty spaces. Branching streets emerge as house rows radiate away for the main roads of the crossing, crescents, closes and courts are the result of houses being built away from the roads and needing access, etc....
I'd be interested if you'd make a video of your process. My novel, a fiction/fantasy, includes "pre-village" villages (one in particular) and a major city (a few thousand people). I know where I want a few buildings to be in the story's feature village, and I have an idea of its geographical location, but I'd like to develop a map of the larger area.
This seems more like a modern (or early modern) city on a medieval street layout, rather than a medieval city. The original city layout/town layout, was a relatively sparse network of main routes, often broadened in part to act as the market (but still a road, rather than a formal square), with the butter cross in the middle and guildhall/gaol on the edge or also near the centre. Larger towns might eventually get several such market centres... before specialising at a later stage once trade numbers increased. Off these few routes, there would be an arrangement of a consistent width and depth of borough plots. A single dwelling at the front edge along the main route, and few side roads if any (these could be developed later if needed, but aren't common in the plan). The common sizes for these plots range from 30 ft through common widths of 45ft and 52.5ft, through to a 105ft maximum. Depth of these plots vary as well, but range from 75ft to 300ft (with most being around the 150-200ft range). The plots in a single phase of a given town development are uniform, as far as the terrain permits, with some care applied to this. Later developments might squeeze in a few more plots width wise, but the voting right of the burgrave is tied to the plot of land, and the dilution of this right was not desired, so even changes tended to be small. The main variation in sizes is per town and region within the country and their local and regional practice and generosity of the land owner when making the grant of charter, and the attractiveness of the offer to the best settlers of sufficient quality, and being freemen. (all feet in this will be the saxon foot 10% longer than the modern foot, for a 15' rod, of the same length as the modern definition of 16.5ft - then acre bredth is 45-60ft (nominally set at 60ft, but as it is a functional area, rather than a defined measurement specifically this varies by region and function. (An acre is the land area ploughable in a 'day work' by oxen.) The burgraves were responsible for the good management of their town, the supply of arms for the garrison and forming the core of that garrison and expeditionary forces in support of their king or baron if lands held from him. While each borough plot was indivisible, the tenancies and buildings upon it were a free for all, and after some time, the agricultural and trade yards in the 'backs' of the borough plot might see some small encroachment by tenancies allowed by the burgrave holding it. The front buildings were frequently modified, demolished and replaced, enlarged, converted etc. The ground floor front was often converted into "shops" each a tiny workshop, with a small door and large window opening up and down (to form a shelf for wares). The customer would place orders, talk to the craftsmen and purchase items of simple and cheap form which were in stock, or to collect their orders when ready without entering these shops, just like the market stalls, we are familiar with, but with a permanent address and weatherproof building. Even into the C18th, much of the back lands of towns and cities were open and used for variously agriculture and pleasure gardens according to status and need. The explosion of dense networks of lanes and courtyard throughout the borough plots was a later change wrought by the migration of former agricultural workers to towns, partly following the enclosure of land for sheep farming, partly through the early increases in industrial production in cities and the need for lots of cheap labour newly available and desperate. The borough plots themselves were often similar in size and form to the peasant holdings of a village ~ the presence of a wall, the freedom of all burgraves vs relatively few peasants, and the number of plots of a typical settlement are the main difference between villages and towns initially - as well as the charter to hold a market. The town would hold a considerable amount of land, as well as contracting with other settlements in the hinterlands, the original charters would permit a square mile for each 15ft of wall (saxon ft so this is = 5m), and provide for 4 men to defend the same in time of war, and to originally build and to periodically maintain it. I haven't yet seen a fantasy map which has much in common with a realistic medieval village or town. Most have insufficient space within them, all have woefully inadequate cultivated land supporting them.
I live in Europe and we have a block as big as the Vatican(huge gardens). It was so big that the town wanted to build a road trough the block. But a coffee trader living there didn't want the road, so he bought all the buildings and sold them with the condition, that the owner is not allowed to build buildings in the gardens. And we live close to the town center.
At long last! So cool. I've been asked to make a video on cities for years now and I can now point them to this. I actually started drawing my first city a few days ago. Was very inspired by a city map I saw from Dyson.
Very nice video A few thoughts: More or less every city which evolved in medieval time (as far as I know of) has a very large central plaza which was big enough to hold most of the cities inhabitants at once. These were used as market, for festivities or declarations of the mayor (or whoever). very large building blocks (like the one you draw in the right lower corner) usually have/had tunnel like alleys through them which are often so small that only 1 person at a time can pass through them. Those "alleys" are usually overbuilt by the upper floors of the building and only big light shafts and sometimes small courtyards in the middle give light. City halls and churches are usually very large seperated buildings with quite a bit of place around them.
Another tips for you. Older citys are more round and they are build from inside out. So in the middle you basically have your castel or the house of a famous/important person. Around that are houses and maybe even a wall or some kind o "ringstreet" where the wall used to be. Since cities evolved in time you can always drwa a few more "rings" around the castle maybe distort them a bit so you can show that this city has a lot of history ^^ My hometown is actually almost build like that
In medieval cities that had big bridges, there was houses on the bridge. You can also see how they could look like by looking on Google maps European cities and towns, specially the old ones, they're rarely straight but all wibbly wobbly
you have to ask why the city exists first. Cities were connected by roads, but existed to take advantage of something that made life easier - at a ford in a river, or where a deep channel river ended; maybe near some mines or hard wood forests could start shipping. Cross roads usually had something like a hostel or guard tower to control the traffic but they require two roads that were already there.
Often towns and cities were placed to take advantage of local production of crops and were a market first and foremost. Some were placed originally as a suitably spaced defensive burgh to provide protection (retreat to) for the population of villages, and to concentrate military power for active defence against raiders (march against).
I seem to remember that a feature of some towns in Britain, was that you could get large open areas behind tightly packed streets. These would be used for storage, market gardening, work areas, and the like. So you could have a block of houses, all cheek by jowl, running along narrow streets; but with a hollow centre divided into gardens and yards.
Rivers are good sources of water and fairly effective means of nautical transportation (in one direction, at least), which is why most large cities are located near one. If there isn't a river running through or near your city, it's important to think about where the inhabitants are getting their water. (A well, in this case, but transporting water from the well becomes impractical at a certain distance.)
I love your drawingS, I draw maps my self professionally and I am happy you make videos to teach our craft to Bring more folks into our love of fantasy drawings.
Five years passed since publication of this video but still to this date it is the most useful guide on constructing cities that I've stumbled upon. Thank you.
Absolutely agree on your book recommendations. Yes. I own them both... and a few others by the same author(s). Dwelling places for humans need drinkable water. Access to drinking water would be a significant initial location selection criteria. Springs and streams, and perhaps rivers and ports, are a necessary part of the initial urban area. Over time, wells would be dug to supply more outlying developments. Water sources would become gathering places. Eventually, smaller water runs might be moved underground into "sewers" or aqueducts. As the city grew, water run-off management would become more important: Cobbled streets and slate roofs do not absorb water well. Water management will initially be driven by the contours of the land, thus influencing the starting distribution patterns of structures and streets. We must remember that travel in these cities was mostly by foot. Thus, a number of separate, virtually free-standing, small communities would form. The book "A Pattern Language" goes into this and recommends use of delineation markers to reinforce a local feeling of neighborhood. Foot travel--and animal assisted travel--tends to follow "least energy" routes: Why go up and over a hill when you can go around it more easily? Why change your level on a hill when you can move along a constant elevation line? Why go straight up a hill when a more gentle slope along a hill's face will take you where you wish to go? Thus, the contours of the land influence traffic patterns. Cities develop political systems. Political systems lead to taxation. A common basis for taxation in the past was street frontage. How many feet of street space did your house occupy? This led to very narrow and "deep" houses. You can still see some of these in older US cities on the east coast (they remain common enough to have remodeling articles focused on them in architectural magazines). The wealthy would minimize their tax hit by surrounding their homes with smaller houses and shops (usually shops on the ground floor and dwelling space for the merchants/craftsman above). The street exposure for a wealthy house might be no more that a ground floor gate big enough for a carriage to pass through. Of course, such a house would usually have an enclosed courtyard. The above details might help make your imagined city become more "real." They can also add more "story" to the map.
Another point of interest: City "blocks" is a relatively new invention. Mostly introduced as a fire spread prevention. You might have narrow alleyways between some buildings, but streets would be packed a lot longer than we are used to, in long narrow bands. Also the "overhanging second floor" was a way to get more space out of a property. Where you might have to build a certain length from the road at the lower level, but at the higher level you didn't have this restriction. As fashions changed the lower levels would often be built in to make a more "straight" facade. Where I live there's tons of 16th century buildings still standing, which have been retrofitted like this. The tell tell sign is usually that the window frame in the first floor is a lot deeper than the one at the second floor. (since the facade on the first floor was extended out to modernize it's look)
7 лет назад
hi, i like your video, it's pretty good for a start. Although I feel I need to add, most settlements evolved through many cycles of destruction. A simple seed of each town is: landscape + direction of nearby large resource locations + direction of nearby settlements + direction of nearest fresh water source. Now add the first house with purpose. Is it a mill on a stream, an inn at a crossroad, a farmhouse? Add the first dozen neighbours. Add the first defence (plank walls, etc) then destroy it: burn the first house, erase the neighborhood. Build on top and next to the previous generation. Reiterate until satisfied. The amount of destruction in each iteration depends of the tech level and the size of the settlement. Lower tech level means less damage on a larger settlement, and it flips at the other end. in each destruction cycle add increasing amounts of houses and services to the town if they have sufficient resources. If the resource locations are either destroyed or depleted, abandon the ruins. If it is a strategic location add forts and extra defence, so the next destruction bring less of the settlement to ashes. This method will add a level of complexity and designed imperfections to the face of the settlement that will generate the history and new stories in the present setting.
This was crazy amounts of informative, thank you - getting the sort of practical history lessons alongside the map as you make it was genius. Now I feel kind of bad for my method. I've just been finding maps of old real world cities and tracing portions of them to get authentic looking building shapes, haha.
That's actually a really good strategy. If you can find accurate maps of medieval cities, just remix the different neighborhoods. Or use as is and rename everything.
one thing i always do is start with a crossroad, while some settlements pop up along a straight road its far more common to happen at a crossroad dont add any other roads yet, put down an inn right on the crossroad (or middle of the map if its only one road) next think of what businesses may pop up the serve the inn and its guests (item shops, blacksmiths maybe a doctors) and build up your city from there adding roads as the buildings get too far from the inn, over time as a city grows the inn may end up pushed away from the center of town as other things become more important or other bigger inns become the new center of town. the other option is replace the inn with a castle but its the same idea think of what is needed to support that castle and build from there. but that's just me.
It's funny how you say these things as though they're things of the past, but most cities in my country are old enough that their centers still look like this. Well, except that we have canals everywhere. On another note, I like to have the occasional house crammed into the center of a cluster, essentially breaking your rule of having light access. Those will be your hidden magical shops, potion labs, secret bases and those types of things.
Interestingly, while Romans built fortifications with a grid system, Rome itself was a goddamn nightmare of twists, turns, and dead-ends. Traveling at night was especially dangerous due to the road layout, lack of light, and the fact that early imperial laws restricted practically all deliveries by cart to be done at night.
Great guide! I've only recently learned about the nuances in designing a city, making sure things like water are food are available, how cities build walls around themselves and then expand and build other walls, creating inner and outer city districts... fascinating stuff.
Amazing video. Extremely helpful in a subject I've had trouble with recently. Have you thought about doing critiques of maps sent in by your viewers? I think that'll be pretty unique content that'll help a lot of people see mistakes that they might have with their own maps.
i do think important building are an exception to the rule ecpecialy churces and temples but also cultural important buildings mayers home town hall where not mashed next to other buildings and are often found standing alone
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_urban_planning provides a pretty interesting counterpoint to this video, I think. While there aren’t too many RPGs set in imperial Rome, for example, I could see one of their planned cities being just as immersive as a more organic medieval city. Would you be willing to do a video about ancient urban planning and how to use it in RPGs too?
I find this helpful, I had started to do the mistake you mentioned by drawing a load of roads and then dumping building alongside.Also you just get on with it, where a lot other videos they just mess around.
Medieval cities were all built around a church and marketplace, usually near a river and with a cross-shaped central axis. Yes, travel roads and river crossings played a big role, but only for the placement, not in the layout. They looked like wonkey grids, working around unevenness in the ground and older buildings or walls. Take a look at the fortress Hameln during the 30 years war. The "rational" layout of the old town and the central axis are clearly visible. Many cities were also built anew after feudal Europe had consolidated and those looked very similar to the grid-based colonial outposts that were built in the Americas.
A small correction; most cities don't spring up around ROADS, they spring up around RIVERS (or streams). Usually where they end up in the ocean, or at fordable places along the river (where you can easily cross or build a bridge). The trade that flows through these places naturally causes people to start living there to cater the trade. Think taverns and markets, craftsmen and farmers. Also, most city houses WOULD have a yard or garden. Most of the time the area in between the housing blocks was used for this. If not behind the house, then at least within the city walls. Most people grew their own food, even in cities. Since bringing in enough food for the entire population was difficult and expensive. Here are a few examples: www.thuisinbrabant.nl/beeld/verhalen/_800/83114_1645.jpg www.bouwdomtoren.nl/img/kaart.jpg?v=2 www.mijnstambomen.nl/leiden/leidenk.jpg upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Blaeu_1652__-Kampen.jpg/1280px-Blaeu_1652-__Kampen.jpg
but also, when traveling long distances, towns would spring up to accommodate overnights, such as stage stops (Phoenix, AZ USA) I mean, why else stick a building, much less a town, in the middle of a desert??? $$$ In my fantasy novel, the City is 3 days away. There must be at least an inn along the way, if not more towns. People left town when land got scarce and start a new farm. Heard a YT lecture yesterday, that it took 10 farmers for every one city-zen to provide enough food for everyone. ?!?
Most structures in Medieval London were about 10 feet wide and 40 feet deep. That narrow deep design later captured in Row houses packed more individual homes to a street. Ancient Rome had a problem with land owners building structures to unsafe heights to maximize rental income. The same problem occurred in medieval cities, 1800's NY so the cities were really slums. Some flooded when it rained. Streets were narrow except a very few major major important streets to important buildings. There were covered passages to enclosed courtyards or to other streets. Google snickle for information on allies less than 3 feet wide and 250 yards long. They had other names depending on the region. Paris, Buda Pest were built using rock quarried from underneath the city.
I would suggest that the casual gathering of various buildings around a road is only one possibility. Many medieval towns and cities would form around a fortification or manor house - guarding a cross- roads, river passage, port or simply occupying a dominant feature in the landscape. Towns were a fairly new concept in that era and there were very few that could be called cities. Some archaeologists insist that to be a town there needs to be division of labour, dependence on the market for provisioning, and some form of overall authority.
I usually put one or two main roads, then put a few buildings along it. Add more roads, rinse and repeat. Most of it doesn't really matter because my PCs only care about where the tavern is.
This is a good video. Great technique for making realistic cities. But I think if your playing fantasy. The people in that world have different things too consider when organically making their cities. Would people want to build things so close to each other when you have fire breathing dragons that can swoop down breath fire and because everything is so close the fire spreads quickly? When drawing fantasy maps maybe we should consider things like that.
If a dragon swoops by I don't think spacing doesn't help THAT much. Either you have the means/magic to deal with the dragon and the fire or your foked regardless if you haven't. Still if it is fantasy it doesnt really matter anyway since historical realism isn't that important.
I'm sure you answer this in another video or maybe you answer it in this video, but I'm lazy and don't want to read through all of the comments. What kind of pen or pencil are you using or recommend? Your line work is so smooth and detailed.
The buildings today aren’t spaced out for no reason tho, it’s because americas in particular has a lot of space and Europe has barely any. so they have to cram their stuff together.
I have been looking for tutorials and related materials on youtube for days now that are related to drawing a top-down castle map for role playing games or novels. If you do not have one already is it possible that you could do one. My preference for the maps is to use a pen or pencil and draw them by hand on a sheet of paper. Most of the tutorials or similar materials that I find use a computer and software to draw them. I need them on paper because I am planning a personal use map book for some games I am working on.
I like the idea of the history aspect being taken into account, but I feel drawing all the roads still leaves it a bit wonky. I'd say that making the first road, then the people that settle along there for whatever reason and make the rest stop, then the hamlet, then the village, then the town, and then the city. I feel it would create a much more organic roadway putting in the buildings before the rest of the roads. also help define it's history a bit more. Maybe even start by creating a landscape map as well. What kind of resources are there or what important thing happened or what kind of thing made this place pop up. Maybe they have an untypical architecture. What forms the districts if any. What defines new and old. Did it grow in a certain direction or just outward. Is there anything that might cause them to have to change the way they build houses. Maybe grab a multiple sheets of paper and start with the original building or buildings, and come up with events that change it up and draw a new map to represent that event.
One thing I feel was missed when drawing the building shapes is what the interior rooms of these building would look like. While the exterior of the buildings he drew look very organically built to use all space, the shape is sometimes creating interiors that would have awkward, unusable shapes or rooms.
