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одном из блогов, которые я читаю, прошел отличный пост, и я решил поделиться с вами:
(с) David J. ProkopetzAlternative districts for your fantasy RPG city:
Dragon Hill - This exclusive, gated community was constructed on what was thought to be a hill bearing an uncanny resemblance to a vast, sleeping dragon. Decades later, its name proved less poetic than intended when the dragon woke up. Now alert, the Dragon of the Hill – having napped long enough for geography to accrete around it – seems disinclined to move and accepts its situation with good humour, though it’s able to wield considerable influence over the city’s wealthiest citizens simply by threatening to stand up.
The Dungeon Quarter - When “adventurer” first became recognised as a legitimate profession, a few enterprising souls tried to cash in on the ensuing fad by constructing scale versions of various famous dungeons as tourist attractions. The project failed, as most humans found the faux-dungeons unpleasant to visit, but a new clientele soon emerged: actual monsters, keen on combining the conveniences of urban living with the comforts of home. Today the district’s centerpiece is a fully active volcano just thirty feet tall, inhabited by a family of ifrits.
The Hive - In spite of its disconcerting name, the Hive is a model neighbourhood, with perfectly clean streets and no poverty or crime. The trick, of course, is that it has only one true inhabitant, a sorcerous hive mind with bodies of all shapes and sizes. Strict population control and an ironclad policy of accepting new members only after rigorous vetting allows it to co-exist peaceably with the rest of the city; the total loss of individuality that residency entails notwithstanding, the waiting list to move into the Hive is over ten years long.
Old Twist Street - Owing to a magical accident some centuries past, this street is several times longer when measured from end to end than it appears on a map, and travelling far enough down it eventually brings one back to one’s starting point. Its relationship with the side-streets that connect to it is complex, to the point that using it as a shortcut is a good way to become hopelessly lost. Even so, its ample real estate has made it one of the city’s main commercial districts – though most shoppers are careful to exit Old Twist Street the same way they entered it!
The Tombs - Named both for its graveyards and mausoleums and for its unusual infrastructure, each street in the Tombs has a vaulted tunnel running precisely parallel to it, creating a two-level street map: one level above the ground, and another below. Buildings in the Tombs thus have two front doors, one for each street level. Many dwellings are co-owned, with the lower storeys occupied mainly by those constitutionally averse to sunlight; this has given rise to the phrase “downstairs neighbour” as a polite euphemism for the free-willed undead.
The Clockmakers’ Ward - The Clockmakers’ Ward is in constant motion – literally. Cogs the size of oxcarts jut from the paving-stones, while bucket-lifts and aqueducts convey glowing fluids from mysterious sources to unknown destinations. It’s generally understood that the Ward’s mechanisms are vital to the city’s well-being, but nobody quite agrees how, as knowledge of their actual function has been lost. Today, the cogs are used as a source of free energy for industrial machinery, a practice that seems to bother the great machine not at all.
The Sovereign Principality of West End - Due to a complex set of circumstances involving a prophecy, an illegitimate prince, and an enchanted goat, this stretch of roughly twelve city blocks is technically a sovereign nation. Bounded by the river to the south and by major thoroughfares on the other three sides, West End’s independence is limited in practice; its monarch – currently Princess Elspeth IV – has managed to retain certain prerogatives through a combination of personal alliance-building and unabashed blackmail.
