It all started when I found the old AD&D Lankhmar supplement, which features this gorgeous map right here:

See all those white boxes? The supplement contains neighbourhood geomorphs that you randomly insert when the players move off the main streets and into the ‘burbs, and even suggests changing the geomorph if the players don’t go back there for a while to make the city feel more alive. I know, it’s wonderful.

 

Around this time I was also having chats with the also wonderful Jeremy Duncan about mapping Cörpathium and his own Galbaruc, and the trouble of figuring out how much is too much, what to nail down and what to keep loose. Because as pretty as the above map is, forget that.

 

Really what I want is to capture the sprawling mutability of cities like Viriconium and Ambergris, something you experience by running around in it rather than poring over a lavishly drawn map, with just enough grounding to make it work as a game.

 

 

OKAY SO WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST SMART GUY?

 

Map your main streets. That gives you a framework, points of reference, clever/punny street names for players to remember. Everything else though? Doesn’t matter until it matters.

 

When your players want/need off a main street drop a d4 and a d6 (try to use a d6 with sharp corners, you need that random bounce). If the numbers match, there aren’t any reachable exits.

 

Otherwise, treat the d4 as the player’s position on the street, facing the way you are. The number is how many alleys they can see, and the points of the dice show the rough direction they’re in. Add them clockwise from whatever point is closest to the d6.

If there are 4 alleys put the 4th wherever.

You might prefer to drop the dice directly onto the map instead, do whatever makes you happy, I’m not your mother.

 

There’s also this roughly where the d6 landed:

 

1.  Someone left their door open

2.  Public house

3.  Sewer entrance

4.  Way to climb onto building

5.  Lesser street

6.  Intersecting lesser street

 

So if you rolled like below, there’s four reachable alleys; one back off in the direction of the 2, one ahead in the direction of the 1, one directly off to the right thanks to the 3, and another one wherever takes your fancy. The d6 came up as a 5, so there’s a lesser street leading away back on the left side of the main street.

 

 Okay so now we’re running around in alleys, fun!

 

Every time the players enter an alley, drop the d4 and d6 again and generate the exits like before, using the tables below. If the numbers are the same, there’s a complication.

 

 

	AlleyCrawling
d4	Points of Dice	d6
1	Alley.	1	Back door.
2	Alley.	2	Darkened nook.
3	Alley.	3	Boarded-over alley.
4	Alley.	4	Way to climb onto building.
		5	Reachable window.
		6	Alley complication.

 

 

 

 

	Alley Complications
d20
1	Dead end.
2	Partly blocked (trash, boards, sleeping vagrant, etc.)
3	Whispering conspirators/rituals.
4	Interrupted 1-2 Murder 3-4 Pursuit 6 Coitus
5	Solitary creatures.
6	Cosmic filth.
7	d8 people.
8	Unexpected landmark.
9	Corpse of note/mess of organic material.
10	d4 people, -2 to reaction roll.
11	Sudden open door.
12	1-3 Valuable item 4-6 Refuse Falls from overhead.
13	Arms reach out from the dark and pull you into a hastily shut door, beseeching your silence until “they” have passed. Looks like you're about to be initiated into a cult/conspiracy/whatevs.
14	Cries for help from a side-alley/low window.
15	Snares.
16	Creatures 1-3 Fighting 4-6 In a pack
17	1-3 Valuable 4-6 Malignant flora.
18	Interrupted break-in.
19	Swarm.
20	The hell? Who would leave all this just lying around? Whatever mundane item the players most wish they had right now (a stack of pointy things and breakables to throw down behind them? A ladder? Some booze?), it's sitting right there.

 

 

 

	Alley Creatures
d12
1	Rat King.
2	Rather large and concerning cat.
3	Hyena.
4	Sickly yellow cobra, swaying and confusing.
5	Mongrel dog.
6	1-2 Fungus infested 3-4 Horribly mutated 5-6 Parasite infested... (roll again)
7	Golden-haired baboon.
8	Bloodmouth Monkey, honey-coloured fur and void-black eyes, shrieking at you with a crimson void of a mouth.
9	Mordhund 1-3 Escaped 4-6 Released for training and being watched.
10	Escaped angry goat.
11	The nigh-invisible web of a Golden-Dawn Orb Weaver, with its fist-sized spiked monolith of an abdomen covered with glistening eyes, grasping at you with legs like amber, fangs full of transcendent poison.
12	Free hog.

 

You know what else needs crawling? Rooftops and sewers.

 

Let’s use the same method!

 

The only difference is that when you’re roof and sewercrawling the numbers on the d4 point to different kinds of exits.

So if you rolled like above the d4 shows two exits, the d6 is closest to the 1 so we start from there, which points to a makeshift walkway, and then clockwise to the 4 which is pointing to an adjoining building. The d6 came up as a 5, so another storey extends out of the roof back to the left.

 

 

	RoofCrawling
d4	Points of Dice	d6
1	Makeshift walkway.	1	Someone left their attic window open.
2	Close enough to jump to one storey lower (likely with overhanging signs, arches, gargoyles, etc.)	2	Open window one storey down.
3	Close enough to jump to one storey higher (likely with overhanging signs, arches, gargoyles, etc.)	3	Hole in roof/chimney.
4	Adjoining building (one storey lower if d4 was 1-2, one storey higher if d4 was 3-4).	4	Way to climb down from building.
		5	Building has another storey.
		6	Rooftop complication.

 

 

 

	Rooftop Complications
d20
1	Dead end.
2	Roof in disrepair.
3	Whispering conspirators/rituals.
4	Interrupted 1-2 Murder 3-4 Pursuit 6 Coitus
5	Solitary creature.
6	Cosmic filth.
7	Solitary figure.
8	Unexpected landmark.
9	Corpse of note/mess of organic material.
10	d4 people, -2 to reaction roll.
11	Sudden open window.
12	Shiny shiny valuable trap.
13	A hushed voice from the shadows tells you to stop. They point to a loping misshapen shadow two rooftops away. Want to make some coin?
14	Cries for help from an adjoining rooftop/nearby window.
15	Snares.
16	Creatures 1-3 Fighting 4-6 In a pack
17	1-3 Valuable 4-6 Malignant flora.
18	Interrupted break-in.
19	Swarm.
20	The hell? Who would leave all this just lying around? Whatever mundane item the players most wish they had right now (some throwables? A sturdy rope? A nice umbrella to shade them while they enjoy the view?), it's sitting right there.

 

 

 

	Rooftop Creatures
d12
1	A rat as big as a small dog.
2	Rather large and concerning cat.
3	Some people claim they've seen great shaggy white goats with enormous gleaming curled horns on the roofs of buildings, but that's crazy, right?
4	A yellow-bellied viper with vibrant scales of orange and purple, its soft hiss sounds like it's whispering something.
5	Golden-haired baboon.
6	1-2 Fungus infested 3-4 Horribly mutated 5-6 Parasite infested... (roll again)
7	A thief-trained Blue-Faced Macaque on the long con.
8	Bloodmouth Monkey, honey-coloured fur and void-black eyes, shrieking at you with a crimson void of a mouth.
9	Blue Quetzl Large birds with feathers of pale blues and white and greens, gold-shimmering, calling with voices like little girls from thick jagged hornbills. They sometimes nest on roofs. Near impossible to catch or even shoot during the day due to uncanny reflexes and eyesight, but their eyesight isn't so good at night. They can be sold alive as pets or research specimens. The feathers can be sold for fashion, the body for alchemy. It's said that one egg of every clutch is a precious crimson crystal (hollow mineral shell full of nectarous bloody yolk, eaten by the hatchlings). Poisonous spurs cause intense nausea and vertigo. They eat the dead.
10	A curious pale Spiny Flail Mantis, the size of a cat, considering you through bulbous violet eyes, you can almost hear the venom sloshing around inside its spiked abdomen.
11	Yellow baby-flesh skinned porcupine things with leaking skin quills bristling from their backs, gripping roof edges and pushing awkward pleading sounds out of their lungs.
12	Translucent colourless goo that sparkles like a galaxy when you touch it and your skin starts to eat itself. Eyestalks sprout like a slug and the whole clump slips towards you, still lit up in multicoloured points of light but fading.

 

 

 

	SewerCrawling
d4	Points of Dice	d6
1	Higher tunnel spilling water from wall.	1	Basement door.
2	Run-off into lower tunnel.	2	Open nook.
3	randexpand tunnel, you'll have to hunch.	3	Sewer exit.
4	Tunnel big enough to crawl through.	4	Lesser tunnel.
		5	Intersecting lesser tunnel.
		6	Sewer Complication.

 

 

 

	Sewer Complications
d20
1	Dead end.
2	Partly blocked (barricade, pulsating shit, piles of vagrants, etc.)
3	Whispering conspirators/rituals.
4	Interrupted 1-2 Murder 3-4 Pursuit 6 Coitus
5	Solitary creature.
6	Cosmic filth.
7	d8 people.
8	Unexpected landmark.
9	Corpse of note/mess of organic material.
10	d4 people, -2 to reaction roll.
11	Sudden water surge.
12	Something shiny moves past in the flow of filth and water.
13	A group of six Kanalsknecht including a young boy, clustered around an intersection of tunnel, their hooked polearms stuck into the water. There's a grand tosh down there. Reaction roll.
14	Cries for help from a side-tunnel.
15	Snares.
16	Creatures 1-3 Fighting 4-6 In a pack
17	1-3 Valuable 4-6 Malignant flora.
18	Rolling miasma from random tunnel.
19	Swarm.
20	The hell? Who would leave all this just lying around? Whatever mundane item the players most wish they had right now (a cruddy raft? A pot of spoiled lard? Waterproof pants?), it's sitting right there.

 

 

 

	Sewer Creatures
d12
1	Rat King.
2	Rather large and concerning cat.
3	Horrible pudgy wrinkled coiled 20ft long black eel, flushes a pale green when rousing from its slumber to bite your face off and swallow your mangled corpse.
4	Deep purple gold-banded octopus, swum in from the Hollow Sea.
5	Toadstool Like a knee-high mushroom, flat-capped, thick-stemmed, dusty miscoloured grey/green with sudden streaks of violent pink, crawling about on things either tendrils or crab legs. You might come across it by the water's edge or sitting atop a decomposing corpse, but make sufficient noise and you'll find it scuttering towards you, ejaculating choking spores from rows of gasping holes across its cap. Save vs. Poison to stay awake, but if you do it induces trypophobia which makes its horrible spore holes like a thousand times worse.
6	What looks like the biggest tosh you've ever seen is a spherical carapace that sprouts segmented legs and claws and a face that's all proboscis, jamming into your flesh and digesting you from inside your own body.
7	Oil-fleshed python 1-2. Its belly full with a recent meal (will regurgitate the dog if it must). 3-4. Younglings curled within holes across its back. 5-6. Looking for a meal.
8	Muck Picker Loping crustacean sprouting six long legs and razor-clawed forelegs from its segmented body, with two pairs of manipulator arms fidgeting around its locust-like face. Generally content to scrounge amongst the sewer waters.
9	Mongrel Barbed Catfish, it'll spit streams of shitty water at you until you get mad enough to try to hit it, and that's when you get barbed and pulled under the water.
10	Sickly pale albino Salamanders, blind, with an incredible sense of smell and skin that senses vibrations through the stone and water. First you hear the soft crying and tittering of a child, then you smell pepper, then a 5ft amphibian lunges from the water and latches onto your leg. You can feel the extra rows of teeth inside its mouth, it unhinges its jaw and its throat expands, suctioning your flesh into its mouth while it pulls you under with its adorable adhesive hands.
11	Ulcerate Vermis Loathsome grey masses of slopping and rolling clumps of tentacles. The light touch of a tentacle when you get too close to them opens a painless ulcer in your skin that will heal within a few days, but while it persists you remain mildly irritated over nothing. They often evade capture simply because those around them are too busy arguing over meaningless drivel.
12	It's all pulsing purple lung sacs and translucent cartilaginous teeth, sleek limbs covered in slime or spit. Pretty sure no one has a name for it yet.

 

Oh and I said there’d be swarms and unexpected landmarks didn’t I, okay here’s some of those. If you roll a landmark that you can’t currently use, just use the one above it.

 

 

	Swarms
d12
1	Rats.
2	Nest of Poppy Spiders. The narcotic slumber of their venom is rather pleasant, whatever/whoever finds you may not be.
3	A pool of yellow ooze, an amalgamation of individual microscopic organisms, bubbling towards their prey. They don't dissolve flesh, they invade directly into it.
4	Mayflies Beautiful shimmering blues and golden yellow, as big as your thumb, they like to burrow into bodies and eat them from within, chewing out chambers in which to lay their young.
5	Golden Hart Frogs Lustrous blue skin speckled black, fleshy horns protruding above their eyes and golden fluid seeping from porous humps on their backs. A luxurious narcotic that grants calming far-sight and clarity of possibility when refined, potent to the point of poison when fresh from the frog.
6	An embarrassing mud nest crawling with vibrant orange wasps. Some old men say the spiral core of the hive is made of a coveted resinous purple honey, some old men say lots of things.
7	Pox Gnats A veil of swirling red spots like blood mist, a thousand microscopic bites that you don't feel for several heartbeats, and then the yellow pox marks bulge from every bite, a maddening itch across a landscape of bubbled skin, blood oozing beneath frenzied tearing nails.
8	Ants rolling their nest/queen, a body the size of two clenched fists, riddled with chambers and tunnels, they seminate directly onto her ovaries and raise their larvae in brood chambers within her body.
9	Green Spitfires, tumbling and crawling over each other in an unrelenting cacophony of forward motion, spontaneously stopping to crawl up walls and trees, dividing out into incomprehensible arrangements, bending their forebodies into the air, leg stumps splayed, little right angles of unholy worship vomiting popping black bubbles of caustic fluid that spill down their bodies and stain the ground below.
10	White Moths Soft beautiful little things fluttering softly in swirling clouds, having them close to your face feels like breathing them in, being lead to something wonderful down twilit green paths, mist parting around your ankles, never to be seen again.
11	Bloat Wasp An absurdly unhappy looking wasp the size of your fist, it looks like it would have trouble dragging its bulging body let alone fly, but it does, and after it has landed on you is when you discover streams of lice pouring from crusted holes bored throughout its body, swarming over your skin, harvesting flesh for the colony.
12	Curious Mantis Stockier than most mantises, with a bigger head, exploring everything they come across, trying to pull things from your pack, endlessly inquisitive. If you laid still for long enough they'd try to pull you apart just to see what's going on inside.

 

 

 

	Unexpected Landmarks
d12
1	The tell-tale acrid scent marking the home of a Narcotic Chymist.
2	Small courtyard with enshrined idol of obscure and mostly-forgotten god.
3	Secret Pleasure House.
4	Wall carven with obscure script and strange diagrams of symbology.
5	[Sewer Only] Mostly-crusted-over entrance into a resinous chamber of filth-covered machinations, lifeless egg sacs atop the rotting remnants of their predecessors, scrawled papers torn from their bindings and plastered over the surface of a nest smeared into a ceiling corner.
6	Hole-in-the-wall Brewhouse.
7	Brass fountain and basin set against a wall, small holes in the stonework above it.
8	[Rooftop Only] Rich garden beds of bobbing flowers and luscious fruits. Watched over by a protective bird of prey with misshapen wings, preventing flight.
9	The continuous ethereal melody of some manner of bellows organ, nullifying magic within 40' of the origin, any attempt to use it manifests an agonised animal groan in the mind of the user for the next hour.
10	Black glass mirror, near as tall as you, framed by wooden hands with fingernails of gold. If torn out they grow back. I wouldn't recommend stealing them.
11	A life-size statue of a naked man with palms outstretched, carven from a single piece of polished amber-toned wood. An ornate plug in the nape of its neck conceals a cylindrical hole down which light will not shine.
12	[Rooftop Only] Cages of sparrows, hopping towards you, eager avian eyes pressed against the bars like they're waiting for something.

 

Now, the intention here is that all this comes up out in the big vague blocks of “the city” at random points on the street, not next door to the player’s house or directly in front of the Cathedral of Lost Virtue, so once the crawl is over and they aren’t immediately going back throw out anything you marked down unless they randomly found a landmark or something else important, in which case put that shit on the map.

 

 If this is your bag you can download the tables from Penny Pamphlets in either spreadsheet or PDF form.