This Week’s post dips back into an idea I’ve explored previously.
Universal Borough Profile
I've had a week off, enjoying/surviving Paris, one of my favourite cities to visit. To go full cliché, it's a city of many halves, each one beautiful and terrifying in its own way. Shades of Bastion everywhere.
Looking back at my Universal Hex Profile, let's see if we can refit it to generate a Borough of Bastion.
UNIVERSAL BOROUGH PROFILE - THE FOUR Cs
Roll 5d6, drop the highest, then read the remaining dice in order as:
Climb: How wrecked are your legs after a day walking here? Code: How screwed are outsiders without a guide? Crush: How tightly packed is everyone/everything? Crap: How much filth is lying around?
1=1: A Bit 2=2: Some 3=3: Lots 4=N: Null, actively none, perhaps by design 5=H: Hazardous, not through lack or excess but the nature of the thing 6=S: Super, off the scale. Think big then go bigger.
EXAMPLES
S132 - The ultra-vertical high-stacked Borough taken to its extreme, pushing through the smog and the clouds, mostly welcoming for the tightly packed crowds of tourists, leaving piles of rubbish in their wake.
3NN3 - Residential buildings and heaps of industrial waste both piled high, but now walled up as an insurance write-off. Nobody can live here anymore, and visitors only permitted under armed escort. Any valuables found within are used to help pay off the Borough's debts. Perhaps one day it'll break even again.
H212 - Built on the broken ground of a failed urban mine, getting from one street to another often requires ropes and spikes. Because of that, most of the residents came from mountainous regions of Deep Country, bringing their spiky dialect with them. Not much in the way of public services, but nice to escape the crowds.
311N - Concentric spirals of paved steps, or funicular if you can afford it. The streets are clean, spacious, and well signed. When you see a Borough like this you have to ask why more people don't live here. Cost might be a factor, but there's usually something more sinister too.
Over on Patreon I’ve applied the same method to creatures.
It was fun playing around with another type of Universal Profile last week, so let's keep it rolling. Can we make this work for creatures?
UNIVERSAL CREATURE PROFILE Roll 5d6, drop the highest, then read the remaining dice in order as:
Bone: How much hard structure does this thing have? Flesh: How much soft stuff does this thing have? Senses: How acute are its senses? Brain: How intelligent is it?
Expect the full post next week.
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