by
Mish

The city is a central part to any MUD, a place where the inhabitants of the MUD's world live, meet, work, and spend their money. Making a city can be easy: just some streets, shops, citizens, and you're done. But making a city that has life - that the players truly enjoy being in - is a more difficult task. Breathing life into that city requires several elements, most of which involve you, the builder, going further in your ideas about the place, and what or who you put in it.

--- Money ---

Money is something we all need, both in real life and on MUDs. The people of your city should be no exception. After all, they have to buy the basic necessities of life, with some personal spending as well. How do they make their money? This may be an easy answer: if the city is on a major river or the open sea, probably from fishing or commerce. The climate of the city may make it an ideal place to raise crops en masse, things such as corn, wheat or oats. Perhaps the climate is tropical, and they grow exotic fruits that get high prices at market. They could also have rare spices that sell very high in other places that do not have them. It could be a mining town, which makes its money from iron, gold, silver, gems or other ores which lie in the earth, and which are highly valuable things to others. And of course, it could be a major trade city, built on a highly traveled stretch of road, where people come to sell whatever they have.

Once the citizens of your town are making their money, what do they spend it on? Of course, the obvious answers of food, clothing and shelter come up. But what else? Take the idea of the mining town - they would need tools with which to mine: pickaxes and shovels. A farming community would need ploughs. A fishing community would need nets to catch fish. And all of these things need to be repaired at one point or another - simply buying new ones would get much too expensive. Coming back to clothing and shelter, though - what are they like for these people? Do they wear simple linen outfits, or the latest silk finery from far away? Their decoration - jewelry and the like - are also a consideration. While a peasant girl might adore a simple silver band, a high-class lady would most likely scoff at that, preferring her gold ring set with a large gem. The peoples' housing strongly reflects on the general wealth of the community - is it all small, wooden shacks, or larger stone houses? Perhaps a few people live in grand mansions in a trade city. In general, the simpler and more physical the activity of the people in the town, the simpler their clothing will be, because they don't need expensive things that will get torn and dirty when they are out in the field or on the waters.

--- Politics ---

Now your town is making money and spending it - lovely, no? But wait ... they don't have a leader, someone to make decisions about the town and plan its continued prosperity. This leader could be a single person, or a board of several people, voting on decisions. So who is in charge, and a bit more importantly, why? Certainly, in a smaller village the leader would most likely be a single person who was born and raised there, who everyone knows and trusts. Did the people of that village elect him to be leader or did he assume the position in a time of trouble and stay there? Larger towns are more likely to be run by a council of townsfolk, who together can make better decisions on what to do. Again, how did they get there? Most likely it is that they were voted to the place they occupy, rather than inherit it. Nobility will most likely run capital or central cities. The positions may be inherited, or they may be voted to their place. Either is likely. Consider also how the people of this place feel about their leader. Are the leaders fair and just, promoting prosperity; or are they cruel and rule harshly, with strict laws and high taxes? Something else to think about is who will rule after whoever is in charge now. This opens up quite a few opportunities for various events that you may or may not want to set up. If the people of the land are prosperous and comfortable with their lives because of a good leader, raiders may come and burn, loot and pillage. If the leader is a bad one, the people could be planning a revolt against him. The current leader might be assassinated, setting the stage for a civil war.

--- Community ---

Your people are making their money and are being ruled. Ask yourself the question now: how do they feel about each other? Are they close and friendly to one another, or are they bound there because of a common situation and have little or no choice to live there now, so they merely tolerate their neighbors? Hand-in-hand with how they feel about each other is how they feel about outlanders and strangers in their town. It stands to reason that a community that is friendly to each other will also be friendly to most people who do not live there. The opposite is also true. A more backwoods, isolated town would most likely be unfriendly to outsiders than a place that sees a lot of them, such as a trade city. In fact, the citizens of the backwoods town may be hostile to strangers, even resorting to threats or violence.

In addition, how is the community divided? A large city will definitely be stratified to some degree, because of the larger population. A village, on the other hand, will most likely not be, unless it is by trade (smiths, tanners, farmers, etc.). Are the reasons behind the stratification purely tradition, or is it more of an economic matter? It could also very well be that it is the "classic" serf/peasant/nobility division, as in medieval Britain.