MUSH Mapping
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So, I have a general question for you guys.
How do you come up with inspiration for mapping on a MUSH? I mean, specifically, coming up with city layout for a modern city? Do you reference real cities and steal them? Do you combine aspects of real cities or do you spitball things?
I'd like to know the techniques and tricks you guys use beyond 'using a real map for the map'.
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In my personal experience, it depends greatly on the city and how you want the game to work out.
Example: For CoFaB we knew we wanted territory to be a big deal, so we broke the city (San Francisco) into 5 major regions, and then each region into 5ish zones that people could control, roughly based on real San Francisco neighborhoods. As for travelling, we created a central "hub" representing the mass transit system, which linked to each neighborhood, which linked to each sub-section, which linked to individual builds.
Example 2: For Reno, a lot of inspiration was drown on the layout of the city itself. Reno (plus Sparks) is, in essence, a giant cross or plus sign. So we used that to shape the grid.
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These days I just do the same thing as for CoFaB, though different vehicles; a tree of rooms organized in some fashion to split them up and help people find what area they're looking for. Much easier than a grid, and everybody's happier in the long run.
Also, I have no interest in trying to actually map out Victoriana London on a game. Because. Really. Nightmare fuel. For me, for players, for everyone. The thought horrifies me.
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@Bobotron said:
So, I have a general question for you guys.
How do you come up with inspiration for mapping on a MUSH? I mean, specifically, coming up with city layout for a modern city? Do you reference real cities and steal them? Do you combine aspects of real cities or do you spitball things?
I'd like to know the techniques and tricks you guys use beyond 'using a real map for the map'.
We're referencing a real city, using google maps and my memory of the place.
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@Bobotron said:
So, I have a general question for you guys.
How do you come up with inspiration for mapping on a MUSH? I mean, specifically, coming up with city layout for a modern city? Do you reference real cities and steal them? Do you combine aspects of real cities or do you spitball things?
I'd like to know the techniques and tricks you guys use beyond 'using a real map for the map'.
I just made @Eerie do the initial mapping and then made the grid to fit. >.>
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I base it on how big you want the player base to be, and what sort of stuff you want to include. As an example, when I built the grid for The Reach, we knew (or hoped anyway) it was going to be a big player base so that necessitated plenty of rooms. The grid's skeleton was sorta in place when I took over the pre-launch build so I left the street names intact and expanded outwards. Diversity of the environment was important, so I added swampy wilderness areas for a more rural character base, added some underground caves, expanded the cemetery, etc. Basically, I thought to myself, HiD/Gangrels need wilderness, Bone Shadows need cemeteries, etc. Financial/crime levels played into the design as well. We wanted some high crime, impoverished areas, and we wanted some wealthy areas.
As far as mapping goes, modeling after an existing city's general structure, then filling in the gaps with your custom content is a good way to go. You can search for things like "city-name neighborhoods" or "voting districts" or "crime rate map" to broadly divide the city into large chunks, then drill down from there.
The setting's geography plays a big role too in how you lay out the grid. So does the age of the city you're looking to copy/emulate.
GoogleEarth was helpful with some of the stuff I did on HM. Mozart sent me the Earth files with the grid breakdown and I could see how they'd separated everything based on the major streets.
