Mapping Pavis II - Building the Neighborhood

Here I will demonstrate building out an area of the Big Rubble using the blank grids I built in Mapping Pavis I.  The area where I want to set the adventure is west of Griffin [sometimes Griffen in the setting] Gate.  On the City map, it's square C9.

I'll start by taking the blank 5x5 square GIMP drawing and exporting as a PDF, which I'll then import into Inkscape and save as an SVG (scalable vector graphics) file.  Opening the Layer menu, I'll add three layers to the SVG, 'Grid', Infrastructure' and 'Subsquares'.  Select the 5x5 grid, and select Layers->Move Selection to Layer, choosing the 'Grid' layer in the dialogue box.

Switching to the Infrastructure layer, I'll add in the city wall, which starts near the bottom right and exits about half way up the left side of C9.  A simple rectangle for the Griffin Gate itself and then a straight road leading out from the gate.   There needs to be other major streets in the town, so I'll add one in branching off of the gate road and going through C9.  It roughly parallels the wall, but I don't want it to be straight, as my conception of Pavis is that, unlike Greek and Roman towns, it was laid out haphazardly.


I'll start with the block four down and three in from the left and map the buildings with in the bock on the 10x10 square drawing I made earlier.  Again export from GIMP as a PNG file, open the PNG in Inkscape and save a an SVG file.  I only need two layers on this drawing, 'Grid' and 'Buildings'.  Again, I move the background grid to the Grid layer and add the wall section so guide my layout.  I'll need to leave a gap for the street cutting across the corner of the square too.

Now to generate the buildings, of course I built a generator, I always do.  It's linked over on the sidebar.  When I built the generator, instead of setting to always build a 100x100 meter block of buildings, I set it so that it randomly selects a 'Nominal block size' and creates contents until it meets or exceeds the nominal block size. I'll just run it until I have enough buildings to fill the area.  In this case twice, I've reformatted the numbers to make a combined list for the block.

No	Type	Floors	Size (meters)	Description
C9.43.1	E		30x40	The area is covered with tall weeds. The cellar is made of field stone and has 3 levels. The cellar can be accessed by a open stair inside the left rear corner of the building site. The access has been hidden by brush and weeds. Any cellar floors in the building have a 10% chance of collapsing the first time they are stepped by any individual character. Any stairs or ladders found in the cellar have a 15% chance of breaking the first time they are used.
C9.43.2	D		10x20	The front right corner foundation of yellow brick remain behind to mark where a building once stood.
C9.43.3	D		10x10	The rear left corner and right wall foundations of brown brick remain behind to mark where a building once stood. The area is covered with brush, a small tree grows within. The cellar is made of packed earth and has 1 level. The cellar can be accessed by a hatch without a stair outside the right rear corner of the building. The access is hidden by debris.
C9.43.4	D		10x10	The front right corner , rear wall and left wall foundations of yellow brick remain behind to mark where a building once stood. The interior is a shallow pit covered with weeds and bushes.
C9.43.5	Empty		10x10	The area is covered with brush, a small tree grows within.
C9.43.6	C	1	20x20	The broken front wall and rear right corner of adobe remain standing to mark the building. The area is covered with thorns. The cellar is made of packed earth and has 1 level. The cellar can be accessed by a trapdoor with no means of descent inside the right front corner of the building. The access has been hidden by brush and weeds.
C9.43.7	D		10x20	The front right corner foundation of yellow brick remains visible to mark where a building once stood.
C9.43.8	D		40x40	The left wall foundation of adobe remains behind to mark where a building once stood. The interior is a shallow pit covered with weeds and bushes. A pool of water has collected at the bottom. Check for wandering monsters.

Building Types paraphrasing from Pavis and the Big Rubble.
    'A' - Intact and inhabited; 'B' - Open to the weather, but inhabitable; 'C' - Shell of the building; 'D' - Foundations poking up through the grass; 'E' - No remains above ground, may still have intact cellars.

Going back to the drawing, it's easy to place the building outlines on it and add labels.

The final step is to turn off the grid (Shift -Control - L) Then click on the eye icon next to the Grid layer in the right sidebar, so that the eye closes.

Click on the drawing, Select All (Control-A), then reducs the scale of the drawing by Object->Transform.  Click on the Scale tab in the Transform dialogue on the right sidebar.  Set the scale to 20% of the original and apply.

Copy the reduced image to the Neighborhood drawing for the C9 block.  Then using the cursor controls, slide it into position in the square 4 down by 3 from the left.  Delete the wall segment that was copied over, tweak the building locations to align at this level, including editing the Path for the main road transiting the square and you achieve this.

Repeat for successive sub-squares.

Now I'm not planning on mapping all of Pavis at this scale, just the pieces where the adventures are.  I'll keep a couple of generic areas for random encounters.