Fitting The Archetypes, Here we... fit cities to certain styles

We can make all the "ORIGINAL, DO NOT STEAL" characters we want, but before that happens, there must be cities. Not just any cities, oh no, but specific archetypes. Cliches even.

This whole concept, the Broquest itself, was to make fun of RPG cliche's and I intend to honor that. This thread is to design cities, bland brainstorming really, that fit to one or more stereotypes. Using easily-recognized ideas is both quick and allows for genre-specific jokes, which we all love.

THIS THREAD IS NOT FOR OMGTOTALLYKEWLCONCEPTS

This is for cliche. Now discuss.

The City Sheet is as follows. I ask that you follow it to keep things organized.

City Idea: Small description of city
Size: How big is it? We all know that cities are big, but how massive? Small city massive or "Fucking Huge Metropolis" sized?
Notable Traits: What makes this place different from the rest?
Relations to Plot: How is this place gonna help the protagonist slap the Big Bad's shit around?
Seconday Quest Ideas: What is the protagonist gonna do here when he isn't directly saving the world?
Relations to Characters: Would one or more characters come from here? What is their story?
History: Give me a small blurb on the creation of the city. This is not the place for an entire novel of stuff, that is for after we agree on the ideas.

City Idea: Steampunk City

Size: Small (no more than 50K people/monsters/robots)

Notable Traits: It fucking flies. Oh, and there are steamy pipes everywhere. People are usually grimy, wear goggles, and their is an abundance of tech that shouldn't exist in a fantasy setting.

Relations to Plot: The Big Bad is trying to steal (Insert powerful technology here) and you have to stop him/her/it. You learn of this place from the Dwarves, either your party member or an NPC

Secondary Quest Ideas:
-Clear one of the engine rooms of monsters
-Kill the "Thing" that took residence in the the sewers. A miniboss with good loot.
-FIX THE STEAM GOLEM. You get him upgraded once when you first get here, then you can come back later for his super-special-awesome weapons.
Relations to Characters: The Gunslinger could remember this place, or the Dwarven engineer could have a home on the flying city.

History: The city used to just be all techy and special until the primative natives got restless. A few sieges later and the Lords of Technology said "Fuck this! THE WALLS DO NOTHING!" and gave the entire city a hull and means to fly around. It is shaped like a flying metal island, covered in guns now that the natives have ways to fly. It moves all the time, trading and stuff. It is currently docked on a mountainside when your character finds it.

There just has to be some kind of back story with the robot character in relation to this city, that's all I have to say. Maybe something a little more than just fixing him.

Aye, maybe an attempt to "aquire" his tech by greedy officials? The robot is ancient tech right? Well we all know that in RPGs, ancient=better, so what if the LORDS OF SCIENCE (stand in for whatever group runs this city) want to tear the big guy apart to see how he ticks? I see prison breakouts, chase scenes, and more happening. Preferably right as the Big Bad attempts to crash the entire city, more suspense that way.

Depending on how early into the game this tech city is, it should be the place where you learn of the obligatory crafting/alchemy/synthesizing/maguyvering system of the game.

I <3 this thread

And I'll be adding my own concepts for a generic lawful city, a tribal catgirl forest camp, and a homely farmtown start area later, when I sort out some of the team stuff with others

Posting obligatory areas from /v/
Warning: will be messy, may or may not have repeats

Church/Cathedral
Inside of a Monster
Void
Inexplicable glass of different colors, all floating in space but with breathable air
Caves
Volcano
Mystical forest with magic (elf forest)
Labyrinth of some sort
Thief Hideout
Primitive Jungle
Fortress on a Mountain
Hell
Dark misty forest
Light, nice, beginning forest
Snow/Ice
Desert/Spaghetti Western
Water
Tropical/Beach
Grasslands/Plains
Deserted Floating/Underground Technologically advanced empty civilization
Big modern city with dirty downtown
Medieval with obligatory Castle with Big Bad
Underground Mine
Carnival/Circus
Hospital
Jail/Dungeon
Ruins of a castle/fortress, either haunted or inhabited by bandits, or completely empty
Scorched badlands, with optional black skies and volcano
Underwater zone filled with massive unkillable sea monsters
" fucking giant temple in the fucking sky yo fuck those gods"

I was thinking of having parts of the Ancient Steam Golem scattered throughout dungeons and such, then you bring the pieces to a mechanic in a specific town to create this optional partner. Your idea might work as well.

We could combine the two ideas.

If you have gathered the parts and go to said city, you can create the robot and start his sidequest/backstory. The backstory part could take place later in the game, to flesh out the robotic companion you spent all that time collecting the parts for.

We could combine the two ideas.

If you have gathered the parts and go to said city, you can create the robot and start his sidequest/backstory. The backstory part could take place later in the game, to flesh out the robotic companion you spent all that time collecting the parts for.

At least one fit of birthing-rage is required. I need to see at least one laboratory trashed before I will be satisfied! Preferably multiple ones.

Sure, why not? How about 2/3 minimum, 5 tops?

City Idea: Port city.

Size: Somewhat small.

Notable Traits: It's got boats. Boats go here. Boats. Unless there's other port cities then WHOOPS.

Relations to Plot: You need to go here to go to places. Maybe even a secret island that, if destroyed, may fuck up the big bad's supplies or plan or something.

Secondary Quest Ideas:
-Get rid of the local GIANT MUTANT RAT population.
-Help repair a battleship or some sort of war boat because they need some things from a monster that could kill soldiers if they tried to get it, which the military doesn't want.
-Fend off a bunch of monsters that want to kill everyone in the city.

History: Well, it's likely there will be continents. And they need ports. This happens to be a port. It also was built a bit too close to a cave where monsters dwell, but they didn't know that until after the city was built, and it was too late to do anything but fortify the port and give it an army.



Also, something like Private Actions from Star Ocean would be pretty cool.
Those were fun.

Okay, just throwing an idea out there, trying to contribute.

City Idea: Underground city, inhabitants all suffer from fucked up disease that necessitates segregation from the normal populace on threat of being purged.

Size: Small

Notable Traits: Horrible, run down city built from the sewers of another, larger city. Awful smell. All of the inhabitants are at best depressed and unhelpful, and at worst total fucking pricks who will pick a fight with you for looking at them funny.

Relations to Plot: Possibly seeking out a minion of the big bad who decided to take shelter here.

Secondary Quest: Big quest chain involving an attempt to cure the horrible disease everyone suffers. Maybe it's something the alchemist is working on, and you help him do it.

Relations to Characters: See above.

History: A decade or so back, a plague swept through whatever land this is and infected a great deal of the population. Most of them died, but those who survived the plague became carriers, and got really fucked up looking. Think ghouls from Fallout. Once it was learned that the survivors became carriers, everyone decided to slaughter them in an attempt to extinguish the plague. So the infected fled and sought shelter in the previously mentioned city's sewers, and started building from there.

Hey guys, love the ideas. I already posted some zone descriptions on the story board.

I'll write up a few of these using your template. Tell me how you like 'em.

City Idea: Army encampment on a beach shore, preparation zone for a invasion/raid

Size: Medium Sized "Fortress", let's say housing an approximate of 50.000 warriors and about 1.000-2.000 workers/civilians

Notable Traits: A fortress on a abandoned/unclaimed Beach shore, with a small/medium sized flotilla near the shore. Several more ships can be seen in the distance.

Relations to Plot: Can be used as hired mercenaries by the main villain, but I believe it can be better served as a scouting party for a invasion of the continent/a certain kingdom. Mainly that of the Rich Arrogant Prince. If it's that route, you can side with either the prince and his Kingdom and unlimited supply of dosh, or align yourself with the invading force and have a army to back you up against the big bad and several others.

Making the invaders the brethren of the Vengeful Viking could also make things a little more interesting.

Secondary Quest Ideas: Scouting Missions/Raids for the vikings or Sabotaging for the Kingdom. Could also be used to stage the Vikings Broquest.


Relations to Characters: The Vengeful Viking comes to mind the most, the Prince can also have connections to it, as I mentioned so far.

History: A forward Outpost for an invasion Force to either raid or take over a Kingdom and have a foothold on the Mainland by the brethren of the Viking. Why? Because if you are gonna have one viking in your game, there has to be a bloody armada of them lying around somewhere.

So yes, I think you know where I want to go with this and I apologize if this doesn't really make sense Lore wise. I couldn't really read the small backstory of the characters from the image and I found no real information on the Lore. Or I'm just blind as fuck.

City Idea: Flying city

Size: Medium

Notable Traits: Isolationist, elitist, run by alchemists/technomancers guild, floating near or above a mountainrange close to the sea for some nice scenery.

Relations to the plot: BBEG has dispatched one of his henchmen here to find a Magic Mcguffin that can aid in his evil plans.
Could be set quite early, if you suceed in stopping the henchman you get the Mcguffin and the henchman will spend the game as a comic sidekick to the BBEG constantly messing up.
If the henchman gets away on the other hand he will troll you for a large part of the game with the McGuffin.
Quest should include a chase/race jumping between airballoons.

Secondary quests: Solving a feud between two rival alchemists.

Relations to characters: The henchman could be the re-aligned vixen, joining you if you stop her, crazed alchemist could also be recruited from here, with some sort of puzzlequest helping him mix a certain potion in his lab correctly.

History: City is floating in the air because of a mishap during a alchemists experiment long time ago, it has become a matter of prestige for alchemists all over the world to come to the city to try to bring it down again and sicne they are all in competition with eachother they tend to look down on others and act like snobs.
There could also be a settlement of commoners/peasants living under the city Midgar style.

Flying City is already kind of covered by Steampunk City, isn't it? I mean, two different flying cities kind of gives off the feel of recycling ideas.

You know what would be badass?
So, there's a lower Steam City, that seemingly has a gigantic roof on it of some kind thats covered in the clouds

at the end of a quest, you turn the power back on in the city, and all of the Steamstacks of the lower city turn on, and by that power it causes the 'roof', which is actually Steam City proper, to float up into the air, held aloft by billions of metric tons of air pressure from the steam below. The you fly a zeppelin or something to get to the upper city and a different quest line/area is unlocked there.
Thoughts?

Physically impossible.

But fucking amazing. Has my vote.

I like it, but we could have a city that floats because of technology, and a city that floats because of magic.

Or a dungeon or something that floats on magic.

Quick idea for the flying city:

It flies due to steam. It's considered one of the technology centers of the world. The king of this city? A rather large, kind man, named King Newen.

I got a better idea!

We start with a Steampunk city, it is made in two parts, the "Lower" city and the "Upper" city. The lower section has a ramshackle appearance, a fusion of medievil and steampunk into one. Magic has its presence here, in trinkits and other small things. The buildings are on the ground , built there as people moved in, which is important. The Upper city is a giant bowl of metal, on which tons of buildings sit. It is listing, as if the entire area was in the air at some point, but crashed. Any history of flying is lost in legend and most believe it was more likely an earthquake that shifted the Upper city.

After going through your quests, the party find a massive engine, a magic-heating reactor, enormous and apparently still operable. The room is guarded by a massive monster, a magic-eating golem that leeches its power off the generator itself. Parties that rely on magic will find that this fight extremely hard, as the golem eats magic. Spells will have reduced effects and it will drain the MP of your team for health. Tech-using parties will find the golem much easier.

After killing it, the party awakens the generator and find themselves shaking. The Upper city will take off, scaring the crap out of the people around and on it. In the Palace, a massive central tower, a group of control panels unfurl, letting the people pilot their floating home. After a lot of confusion, you get your pick of some phat loot that was found in some old vaults, unlocked after the steam starting flowing again, heated up by the reactor and pumped all over to power all the tech.

Yay phat loot!

So it turns into Balamb Gardens?

I actually had to google that, but yea, they are very similar.