"Historic" Dwarven Hilltop City.

[the-golem]

After many fruitless hours, I've just about given up. Try as I might, I just cannot get wrap myself onto some proper city building. The whole urban planning thing seems to escape my grasp. To be perfectly honest, I've reached the end of my rope, and as such, I turn to you, the Community.


Budget/Commission:
I would really love it if someone could do this pro-bono, considering I'm low on cash-flow. I've tagged the request as unpaid, and would greatly appreciate the efforts of the masterful cartographers found here. However, I'm merely requesting unpaid work due to some budgeting restraints. Currently I have little access to funds, but that should change within, hopefully, the next week or so.

If the mapping effort is exceptionally well done, I have no reservations as to giving a monetary award, aside from the financial setback. I would hate to promise an artist a pay-day, then be unable to deliver.


Time Constraints:
My DnD campaign is finally going to kick-off, hopefully this coming Saturday; I would like a city map of the PCs beginning town for a point of reference. This isn't a concrete time constraint -- If it's not met, I won't blow a fuse or anything/


Description:
The city itself is hundreds of years old, quite possibly 1000+. Until recently (for the dwarves) it served as the regional capital, so you could reasonably expect it to have grown in size surrounding the keep or castle. It's primarily a dwarven city; their cities and streets are more orderly than most. Perhaps because of their longevity, they are able to accurately project and keep their city planning guidelines. However, it isn't a dwarven only city, so I expect some more organic growth on the outreaches of the town. The cities population is something over 25000 people, including dwarves, humans, gnomes, and halflings. However, the visible part of the city doesn't have to reflect this, as the majority of the dwarves could concievably live in a vast underground complex. (Although if you account for that, then some general rendering of THAT complex might need to be done as well.)

The city itself is built on a hill or a series of hills, considering it lies on the edges of a mountain range. In researching, I rather like some of the italian hilltowns, like those found in the Tuscany area. I'm envisioning something like Cortona, Montevarchi, or (maybe my favorite) Urbino.

I should also add that the city itself is on the eastern side of the mountain ranges; with north at the "top" the hills would be on the "left" side of the paper.

I don't really picture the city next to any major river (as the major rivers define the boundaries of the region), but it wouldn't be out of place to have SOME kind of water/irrigation system. My first thought, as dwarves are crafty with the pick, and mining, and stuff... they've successfully tapped into some underground resevoir that is used for their water systems.

Additionally, I think it would be awesome to have an area for a legend, allowing me to denote places of interest.

Style:
Stylistically, I'm looking for something similar to this old map of Balogna, but that isn't a strict requirement by any means. For what it's worth, I'm also partial normal to top-down map styles.

Quality and Size:
Moving on, as I've said before, this is a "hill city" with a population of roughly 25,000.Arccording to Medieval Demographics Made Easy, "Cities and towns of the Middle Ages cover one square mile of land per 38,850 people, on average." I'm expecting something of a similar scale, although this isn't very strict, as the dwarvenfolk would have burrowed partially under the hills/mountains.

On a skill level, I'm hoping for something of semi-professional quality, at least. As far as print size goes ... *shrug* I need something I can at least print out on a letter-sized paper. Anything that'll print larger would be a pure bonus. I'm not really looking for a web/screen map, as I want something somewhat interactive to give to my players. Although, to be perfectly honest, a map which they can fold and carry around much like a modern-day city map would be fantastically delicious.


Copyright:
To be honest, I don't much care. It would be your creation, so I sure as heck wouldn't bar you from claiming it. Part of me would want to keep it all to myself, so I could feel like the city was all mine...but I'm quite a fan of Open Source, and "the Community," so a Creative Commons License would be great, if it's alright with you.

[mearrin69]

Man, that map of Balogna is awesome. I dig the style; sometimes the pen is mightier than the microprocessor...erm, or something like that.

Your city sounds like a cool project. You'll probably get more interest from the folks on here if you note some specifics about pay, deadlines, etc. See the sticky thread at the top of this forum for some suggestions on what to add. Good luck with it!
M

[the-golem]

Man, that map of Balogna is awesome. I dig the style; sometimes the pen is mightier than the microprocessor...erm, or something like that.

Your city sounds like a cool project. You'll probably get more interest from the folks on here if you note some specifics about pay, deadlines, etc. See the sticky thread at the top of this forum for some suggestions on what to add. Good luck with it!
M

Thanks Mearrin! You're quite right, I _was_ missing quite a bit of information. I've updated the first post as a result.

On a side note, I was trying to change the post type from [Unpaid] to [Paid], but was quite unable to locate the apppropriate drop-down. Am I missing something, or did the forum upgrade remove that option?

[ravells]

I think that only Mods can edit the thread title (where the Prefixes are), I've amended yours. Good luck with your request - it's a pretty meaty job.

[the-golem]

Thanks for changing it Ravells.

For what it's worth, my campaign got delayed. Again. I realize my request is rather ... hefty. I hope the large population isn't acting as a deterrant. As I mentioned before, the above-ground rendering needn't reflect the cities true population. All I'm really looking for is a rendering of a hilltown that reflects or suggests a large population.