Late last year I started putting together a number of random charts to create names that are reminiscent of the names of cultures in the real word. The goal is to make it easy to create names that seem to be from a particular culture and therefore differentiate those names/locations/culture from others in the world.

Today, I've created a fourth set of random location name generator charts. (Although in some cases they may work for naming characters as well.)  This set is based on locations in part of India.

Hopefully it isn't too late to look back at 2009.  At Inkwell Ideas, the specialty is to give others tools and ideas useful for RPGs.

Although December was a little slow (working on the largest Inkwell Ideas project, Hexographer, as well as real life issues) there were a few November posts centered on random charts to create location names that sound similar to locations in various cultures. (The link goes to a main page that links to pages with charts for Chinese, English/UK, and Native American Indian sounding names.)

2009 also brought on some other random charts: random potion descriptions and charts of effects of expired potions, for fun.  Further, one set of random charts was converted to Javascript code to create the Magic Item Shop Random Inventory Generator.

Although the major projects at Inkwell Ideas are Hexographer and the Coat of Arms Design Studio, another large task was the 2009 RPG Blog Readership Survey. Hopefully something similar will happen later in 2010, but with more collaboration with other blog writers. Using the RPG Bloggers list it can have questions tailored to more blog writers and receive a higher number of responses.

Because of Inkwell Ideas' Hexographer product, there are often several articles on Worldbuilding topics.  Three of these were: Timelines (tips for creating a constructed world's timeline),  10 Ways to Vary Your Game World's Cultures and 10 More Ways to Vary Your Game World's Cultures.

By far, three of the most popular entries were for map collections: 101 Fantasy City, Town and Village Maps; Two Sites with Hundreds of Real Historical City Maps (which included direct links to many of the best); and 25 Inn and Tavern Maps.

The Random Dungeon Generators Reviewed article was also very popular.

My favorite advice columns described how our groups often use experience point bonuses and listed the Top 5 Overlooked Rule Subsets of RPGs.

Yesterday I put together some charts for randomly creating city names that sound like English/United Kingdom cities.  Today I've put together another collection of charts to randomly create Chinese sounding city names.  In each case I've also noted a very rough translation of each base word. Most Chinese city names seem to be  a combination of two other Chinese words.

Using the charts you will get city names like: Juining, Zishan, Dongdao, and Guangxi.

For one (maybe two) of my other projects, I'm putting together some charts to randomly generate city names that are reminiscent of cities of varying cultures.  The first charts I've done are English/United Kingdom city names.  I've split up a number of the real city names, usually by syllable, then divided them into a random chart with three columns.  There's also a chart for determining which columns to use to assemble the syllables.

Using these charts you can get city names like: Covenfield, Winbury, Oxenpool, and Lanham.  You may also get some bad results, but just re-roll or swap one syllable out.  Or ignore the random rolls completely and just pick syllables that sound good together.

Link: Random (or not) City Name Charts

I recently wrote 10 Ways to Vary Your Game World's Cultures and promised more as I put together a larger piece on building a fantasy world's culture.  I've already written about designing religions (with a couple of example fantasy religions), local campaign area design (also with examples), and fantasy world timelines.

So without further ado, here are 10 More Way to Vary Your Game World's Cultures:

1. Food & Drink:  In your typical fantasy setting dwarves are heavy drinkers of Dwarven Spirits and other hard liquor and your typical fantasy elves have a taste for wine and may be vegetarian.  Those facts inject a very minimal cultural flavor.  Maybe in your world the dwarves and elves aren't like that.  Or perhaps dwarves and elves of some cultures match those descriptions but dwarves and elves of some other cultures do not. Think through your fantasy setting.  If you have a race that primarily lives underground, what would be some of their delicacies?  How about underground gnomes who go crazy for sauteed Purple Worm?  Keep in mind the many mythical creatures in fantasy settings and consider that any of your cultures may have some unusual tastes.
2. Entertainment: How does a culture feel about gambling, theater, chariot races, gladiator combat? These are a few of the entertainment options available in larger fantasy cities.  But some cultures may look down on gambling (and the governments related to that culture may ban it) while other cultures may abhor violent gladiator battles and some others may think that a play is useless and for the weak.  For the literate in an educated culture, books can be another diversion.
3. Openness: Some cultures look forward to a dialog with members of other cultures, while other cultures may shun outsiders.  Cultures that are more open may be open because of religious practices (again, a religion is not the same as a culture, but a culture's dominant religion will have an impact on that culture) or because the culture is already a mix of people with many different backgrounds.  On the other hand, some religions may be very insular and they may preach suspicion of others. Or perhaps a country has been attacked many times causing its culture(s)  to be wary of others.  In other cases, a recent plague may cause outsiders to be ostracized.
4. Pets and Domesticated Animals: In the real world, most modern western cultures typically consider dogs, cats, hamsters, etc. as pets and horses, cows, pigs, chickens, etc. as domesticated/farm animals.  Some other cultures think of some of these animal as holy, and yet other cultures may consider some of western cultures' pet as food animals.  Changing these designations (animals that are typically pets vs. domesticated vs. food animals) can help vary your fantasy world's cultures. (Who can forget "snake surprise" from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.)  However, considering the many typical fantasy creatures can further develop your fantasy world's cultures.  Perhaps blink dogs are more common in part of your world so many people are just as likely to have one of them as they may have a normal dog.
5. Sleep: We spend 1/3 of our lives sleeping, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that sleeping practices may vary.  Some cultures sleep on a minimum amount of padding while other may sleep on an incline.  Some real world cultures embrace an afternoon nap. Some cultures advocate sleeping with your children for several years, others push the children into a different room when they are only a few months old.
6. Travel: Many people in medieval times never traveled more than a few miles from their homes.  Knights, merchant traders, sailors and nobles were the exceptions.  In your game world, how typical was it for people to travel? Consider the answer to this for each social class in each culture that you are detailing.  Does magic help people travel more-so? How do the answers to these questions impact the views of the culture?
7. Legal System: While the legal system is a function of the government, the cultures of the country impact the legal system.  If the predominant religion is very peaceful, the legal system will have few laws that call for an eye-for-an-eye. On the other hand, a militaristic religion may allow for a very stringent penal code. Consider the culture you are creating and how that will impact the laws of the countries where the culture exists.
8. Slavery & Servitude: How is slavery viewed by the culture?  Is it forbidden and other cultures that have it are looked down upon? Or does the culture support it?  Who in the culture is a slave?  People who commit crimes? People who go into debt and can't get out?  People conquered and taken captive in a war?
9. Marriage & Sexuality: As with some other aspects of culture, it is difficult to untie marriage and sexuality from religion and government.  The religions of a culture may take some stances on these issues and the government may have some laws on the issues as well.  Here's a list of ways these issues can vary: marriage is rare because people don't make long term commitments; marriage is only between a man and woman; marriage is allowed (or not) between different races (elves, dwarves, humans, gnomes, etc.); marriage is allowed between members of the same sex; a man (or woman) may have multiple spouses; marriage may only happen between three people (perhaps your fantasy world has a third sex as in The Left Hand of Darkness).  Of course there are more ways to vary these issues, but this list should get you started.
10. Economy: Does your culture's values impact the local economy?  Perhaps a religious decree by the dominant culture forbids charging interest, as was the case many years ago for some. Maybe a particularly honest and lawful culture has a peasant class with a good standard of living.  This issue was the hardest for me to consider, so please post comments if you have suggestions on this or any of the other entries!

Cultures should not have a one-to-one relationship with countries or states in your game world.  Many provinces will have more than one culture and in many cases the cultures may overlap.  In some cases where they overlap, one of the cultures may be oppressed by the others.

Likewise, some cultures may span multiple countries.  Perhaps one area was conquered by another country.  It will take generations for the customs of the people in that area to dramatically change and to some degree they may not change at all.  Perhaps some aspects of a culture spread to a nearby country or state.

With those points out of the way, below are 10 aspects of cultures. (More will be discussed in another article in the near future, but feel free to comment with your ideas.)  Consider defining a few cultures for your game's local campaign area.  If you're doing a top-down approach to building your world, jot down a couple of brief notes about the cultures in each of your game world's countries. (Keeping in mind that as mentioned above some cultures may span multiple countries and other countries may have more than one culture.)

(See also the follow up article: 10 More Ways to Vary Your Game World's Cultures.)

1. Social Classes: What are the social classes of the culture?  Perhaps in a culture that is related to a kingdom (or several) you have the nobility, followed by priests, then soldiers, then some merchants, artisans and tradesmen of respected industries, followed by merchants, artisans and tradesmen of other industries, then peasants and finally serfs or slaves. Another culture that is very militaristic may value soldiers the most (with commandeers held in even more esteem) followed by merchants, artisans and tradesmen in industries that help the military, and so on.  Once you've established the social classes, consider how they treat each other and how easy it is for someone to move into a different social class.  Do the priests shun to poor or care for them?  How easily can a slave buy his freedom?  If he does, can he become a merchant or is being a peasant the best he can hope for.
2. Religion: One key attribute of a culture is the religion of the people.  If a religion has a pantheon of gods, people in that same culture may worship different gods.  But generally a culture will not have active followers of multiple separate religions. (More on designing a fantasy game religion.)
3. Language: Generally the people of a culture will have a common language.  They may share it with another culture, and a culture may occasionally have more than one but their will still be a predominant language.  In your game, it is hard to go to the extreme of creating a new language, but consider using some common tonal inflections when speaking as a character from that culture and try to use some consistent sounds in name from that culture.  Perhaps they have long names, names with many consonants, names that are very soft and flow nicely, etc.
4. Appearance (Natural): Most of the people of a culture will have some common traits regarding their appearance.  Perhaps this is eye, hair, or skin color, nose size, how their earlobes hang, wide feet, etc.  As with all of these factors, all people in the culture won't have these properties, but variances will not be common.
5. Appearance (Additions): The factor applies to clothing, tattoos, piercings and other physical traits such as the deformed skulls of some South American Indians. What is a common outfit for the common and rich/noble people of a culture? Do the people typically have tattoos, piercings, etc.?  If so, are tattoos for specific classes of people?  Are some only for people who have achieved certain lifetime milestones or success in battle?  Maybe women only pierce their ears when they are married.  Perhaps people lose a finger if they commit a crime.  Or after a battle a warrior receives a mark of achievement.
6. Education: How valuable is education in a culture?  What is the typical level of education for the different classes of that culture?  Is a university-level education available anywhere in the culture?
7. Views on Magic and Religion: Some cultures (like the Puritans in early America) make religion the center of life.  Everyone is expected to attend church, pay attention during the service, say prayers at mealtimes and bedtime and more.  Other cultures may be much more relaxed.  The culture's views on religion will certainly impact the power of the religion in that culture.  Likewise, how does the culture view magic?  Are they afraid of magic?  Treat it (and its practitioners) with respect? Shun it and outlaw it?  Why?  Perhaps there is a good story behind their views on magic.  In any case, the culture's views on magic will impact how magic users do their work.  Maybe there are several mages in every city who cheaply sell potions and minor items that will keep food cold, water the fields in a drought, illuminate an area at night, etc.  Or maybe mages live in secret afraid to show their power.
8. Technology: What is the technology level of the culture.  Not all cultures in the game world will be at the same technology level.  Is a culture still in the stone age or bronze age? If they've past the bronze age, have they discovered the plough? Suspension bridges? Magnetic compass? Crossbow? Gun powder? Watermill? Catapult? See Wikipedia's History of Technology page for more.
9. Buildings and Structures: Many game worlds simply have the elves living in elegant woodland homes that don't affect the environment and have dwarves live in mountain dungeons.  With the exception of a tribal human group or two, many game worlds ignore the structures used by most cultures.
10. Military Service:  How does the population view their military?  Some populations might respect their military because they are always threatened by neighbors, or perhaps they are respected because they are incorruptable or maybe the military is led by a very personable leader.  Another aspect of military service to consider is who is in the military?  Are they the made up of the lower classes?  Or is the nobility very involved?  Does everyone have to perform some military service?  These anwsers may vary by country, but the country and the culture imact eachother.  If the culture in one country highly respects their military for some reason, the people of that culture in an adjacent country are likely to have somewhat similar feelings.

This will serve as one part of a larger article on cultures in fantasy game worlds.  I've already written about designing religions (with a couple of example fantasy religions), local campaign area design (also with examples), and fantasy world timelines.

More Ways to Vary You Game World's Culture will be coming soon.

My Hexographer hex mapping software is only a release or two away from version 1.0. (I hope.) If you haven't seen it before, it allows a user to make quickly and easily make maps in the style of 80's/early 90's D&D maps. (The Known World, Mystara, The Voyage of the Princess Ark, etc.) Free and pro versions are available.  The free version is very rich, but the pro version includes a few advanced features. A sample appears below and to the right.

Hexographer map sample. (Cropped.)

Here's a list of what is new/fixed:

• You can now add dashed and dotted lines. (To change styled lines, go to the "Options" menu and select "Customize Line/Text Settings."  Next to each line, there is a new drop down to switch between solid, dashed, and dotted lines. For custom lines, on the "Custom Lines" tab, you'll see a similar solid/dashed/dotted line drop down.) Note: dashed and dotted lines work best if your are clicking from point to point to draw your line.  Dragging adds many points with many sub-lines and while the lines are dashed or dotted if you chose that, your line is made up of many sub-lines and it may be hard to make out the dashes and dots.
• You can also now draw shipping routes and elevation lines. (These are new "styled lines".)
• Setting hexes as icy now works properly even when you are "Draw large area terrain" set. (That setting causes multiple hexes to change terrain type when you draw terrain.)
• The right-click hex menu has been fixed.
• The "Advanced Settings" Terrain window (opened when you click "Custom Terrain" on the opening Hexographer screen) is now a little nicer looking.

Yesterday's post of 101 Fantasy City/Town/Village maps made me think about real historical city maps.  I was going to links to many of them (not 101 of them because doing upwards of 101 links in one or even two or three sittings is tedious), but I ended up finding two exceptional websites that include historical city maps.  So instead of linking to many maps, I'll describe those two sites and link to a few examples from each.

The University of Texas at Austin hosts the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection. It includes many different maps--old and new--from many sources. The maps I focused on are found in their historical maps section.  Note that many of the maps date from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, but that is still before cars became popular and cities had to adjust to vehicles.  Here are some examples:

• Peking and its environs.
• Environs of Hong Kong and Kow-loon.
• Nankin.
• Grand Monastery of Tashi-Lhunpo.
• Rangoon.
• Tokyo.
• Dubline.
• Firenze (Florence).
• Ischl (in Austria).
• London (1300).
• London, Thames River (1882).
• Munich.
• Nuremburg.
• Prague.
• Rome and Athens.
• Torino.
• Verona.
• Vienna.
• Ottawa.
• Baltimore.
• Charleston, SC.
• New Orleans.
• Philadelphia.
• Savannah, GA.
• Babylon.
• Jerusalem.
• Moscow.
• St. Petersburg.
• See the full list!
  

The second website is even more spectacular because its maps are generally even older and it is focused on city maps. This website hosts a historical city maps. is hosted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  Below are several examples:

• Algiers, 1575.
• Amsterdam, 1550.
• Antwerpen, 1572.
• Berlin, 1798.
• Budapest, 1617.
• Cairo, 1615.
• Cambridge, 1572.
• Cologne, 1571.
• Cologne, 1800.
• Damascus, 1575.
• Granada, 1598.
• Hanover, 1800.
• Jerusalem (links to thumbnails of several maps).
• Lisbon, 1598.
• London, 1700.
• Moscow, 1662.
• Moscow, 1663.
• Moscow, 1695.
• Moscow, 1739.
• München, 1800 (Munich).
• Napoli, 1615 (Naples)
• Napoli, 1734.
• Paris, 1760.
• Paris, 1800.
• Rome, 1550.
• Rome, 1800.
• St. Petersburg, 1717.
• St. Petersburg, 1731.
• St. Petersburg, 1737.
• St. Petersburg, 1753.
• Venice, 1615.
• Venice, 1650.
• See the full list!

Ack!  Well, I didn't post 101 links this time, but I think I got over halfway there.  I tried to link to some of the best examples of maps of the more famous cities.  In a few cases (London, Moscow, St. Petersburg) I chose a few maps of each city taken at different times and in different styles.  The Jerusalem link goes to a page with several maps as well.

It is interesting to see how over time map styles evolved.  One aspect in particular is the perspective view.  The older city maps seem to have a perspective as if the artist is looking down on the city from a high hill or similar observation point.  While there may be a few top down maps from the 1600s and earlier, they are rarer.  You can see an example of this by looking at the maps from different volumes of Civitates.  (Although the later volumes that have top-down views are dated in the late 1500s-early 1600s.)

The maps also lose their artististic embellishment over time.  When colored, the older maps' colors are more vibrant.  The cartographers add artistic elements like ships in the sea or river, people in the foreground observing the city, etc.

One note about copyright: I'm not a copyright lawyer, so look into this on your own (or talk to a copyright lawyer) if this is an issue for you but it is my understanding that most of these maps (certainly all before 1900, but once we get to the 1900s and certainly the 1920s the issue gets murkier) are in the public domain because materials produced before that date generally are in the public domain and so are faithful reproductions. (Again, look into this for yourself if you have reason to do so.)  Copyright law varies from country to country, but there seem to be some international commonalities.  The Texas Perry-Castañeda website does a good job of pointing this out where they say most of the maps are in the public domain, those that aren't are marked, there is an issue with reproducing government seals that one must be careful of, check into the copyright of maps on other sites that they link to, etc.  However, the Hebrew University website adds a large copyright note to each of its maps that doesn't match my novice understanding of copyright law.  Perhaps the law differs greatly where the website is hosted, but you should look into this on your own if it is something you need to consider.

I'm sure there are thousands of fantasy maps posted on-line. Below are links to over 101 fantasy cities and towns.  It can be useful to see such a large and varied set of examples to help you design your map. While looking at these, you may want to borrow part of a city or town's layout, a map's color scheme, or some other feature of a map.

If you're only using a map for personal use, you can just doctor the map in an image editor (like the free GIMP or Inkscape or the expensive Adobe products) or even on paper once it is printed for use in your game and campaign world.

1-6: Opal Island, Carthusal, Wolfdell,  Fogdown, Gullside, Kenby at Cartographer's Guild.

7-13: ProFantasy's City Designer 3 samples (7 city/town maps.)

14. Irva, the City of Sin.

15. Tallon, The Jewel of Merrika.

16-18. Map Vault: Fantasy includes City of Liberty, Guildport, and Tower of the Magus (3 maps).

19. Jendar - City of Adventure (scroll down past the world maps.)

20. The Imperial City of Anuire

21-28. Materia Magica's City Maps: Rune, Village of Lasler, Lowangen (and Lowangen detailed), Tellerium, Templeton, Sigil and Vospire (8 maps.)

29-31. The Alexandrian's City Supplements include a couple of samples: Dweredell, Aerie, and Anyoc (3 maps.)

32-43. Mystara city maps: Blackmoor, Glantri City, Kelvin, Kirkuk, Lhamsa, Mirror Bay/Specularum, Skullhorn Pass, Specularum, Surra-man-raa, Tamaronikas, Trintan and Ylaruam (11 maps.)

44. Runes of Magic's Varanas.

45. Your Conworld in 3D: City Maps in DAZ Studio and Bryce (includes a sample city map in various stages of editing.)

46-64. Gandwarf's City Designer 3 maps (18 maps.)

65.Glastona

66-71. Sopar's Dragonlance Maps: Pax Tharkas, Nereka, Qualinost, Vingaard, Silvanost, Palanthas (6 city/town/village maps.)

72-81. Tower of High Sorcery's Dragonlance maps: Hillhome, Kendermore, Lemish,  Palanthas, Palanthas Old City, Que-shu, Relgoth,  Solace, Solanthus and Tarsis (10 city/town/village maps.)

82-92. Wizards of the Coast's Map-a-Week (link includes non-city/town/village maps) maps: Sutulak, Blackwall, Kaddastrei, Dragonport, Four Winds, Village of Barovia, Village of Eastbrook (300dpi version), Necropolis (300dpi version), Forested City (150dpi version), Canal City (150dpi version), Section of Sigil (150dpi version), Village Poisson, Timber Fort, Wood Fortress, Stone Fortress, Stone Castle,  Haunted Village,  City, Village 1, Village 2 (20 maps.)

93. Zothay

94-98. Sundabar, Silverymoon, Luskan, Waterdeep, Eveningstar from the Wikia Forgotten Realms website.

99. Brindol

100. City of Greyhawk

101. Sharn