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GameMastery Guide / Adventures / Urban / The Shape of Civilization

Streets and Traffic

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 202
How do people get around in the town where they live? What are the streets and avenues of your settlement like? Is the town open, with wide avenues, or is it cramped, with houses crammed together, casting the streets and alleyways below into perpetual shadow?

Assuming that the settlement doesn’t contain some sort of wide-ranging magical transport network, most people get around the old-fashioned ways—by foot, mount, or carriage. In most cities, these are the only options available. However, depending on the city and the level of technology and/or magic available, how the populace gets from Point A to Point B could be far more interesting.

Adult humans have a walking speed of around 3-1/2 miles per hour. Thus, walking across a small, open town may take only a matter of minutes. Yet as cities grow in size, they become more difficult to swiftly navigate because of the density of people, animals, and vehicles on their winding streets. In large cities or metropolises with moderate-to-high population density, people on foot move at the rate of a single mile per hour.

Rather than walking, those who can afford the fare may also travel in animal-drawn vehicles, such as wagons, carriages, or hansom cabs. They might also travel in rickshaws or something equivalent. This method is probably more common in places where people are plentiful and horses, mules, and other beasts of burden are either rare, expensive, or both. Does your city sit on a river, or is it interlaced with canals? If so, then gondolas, barges, canoes, or other flat-bottomed boats are probably used as a major form of transportation. Cities and towns built in confined spaces may be far more vertical than less densely-built cities; the populace might make use of bridges, ladders, and even lifts to haul people up and down the several stories they need to traverse.

Beyond these mundane methods of movement, magic and technology can create truly bizarre or fantastic conveyances. In a high-magic game, magic carpets or the equivalent may be employed by the wealthy to travel within a city. Alternately, the city (or independent entrepreneurs) may possess its own “fleet” of specially trained griffons or other flying creatures capable of carrying one or more people to specific locations. In extreme cases, teleportation may even be relatively common, with special booths or “stepping portals” scattered throughout the city, allowing instantaneous transportation within the confines of the settlement or beyond. Take care to limit these magical methods in your game, though, unless you want a game where the wondrous becomes commonplace.

Keep in mind that the PCs can encounter danger and excitement even as they travel through a town or city. Besides the occasional assault by thieves, gangs, or other ruffians, the PCs may have to deal with animals run amok, riots, duels (mundane or magical) in the streets, fires, agitators, and any number of other interesting events. If a pickpocket manages to snag an item from one of the PCs, a rooftop chase might ensue as the PCs pursue the thief. A procession of nobles may stop and question the presence of the adventurers in their fair city. A random corpse in the gutters bearing the signs of a ritual murder may open up an investigation or mystery.

The city’s streets themselves bear consideration as well, for it is here that many of your urban-themed encounters will begin or end. A typical city street should be wide enough to allow two horse-drawn carriages to pass each other, with a little bit of additional room for foot traffic—as a result, well-traveled city streets should never be less than 30 feet wide, with major thoroughfares being 60 feet wide or wider. Back streets might be only 15 or even 10 feet wide—anything narrower than 10 feet will be difficult to navigate on horseback or via carriage. These narrow lanes are usually your city’s alleyways, only 5 to 10 feet across and often taking complex, winding routes between buildings.

Additional rules for city streets, for moving through crowds or across rooftops, and for cities in general can be found on pages 433–437 of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook.