Urbancrawls: wealth disparity

Here's something I came up when developing  Kaine - an industrial/Renaissance fusion metropolis using the Vornheim urbancrawl guidelines (SFW). Any city in even slightly self-conscious fantasy is a pretty neat place to live for those rich enough, and, well, sort of better than freezing to death for everyone else - and on top of that, Kaine (and the whole country it's in, Togarini) is noted for having an especially stratified class system.

This made me think I could do something slightly more interesting and appropriate than the suggested "roll d10 to determine location of shit" system. After all, there are neighbourhoods where you can typically find the classy stuff (like opera houses) and neighbourhoods where you only want to go to if you really have to and in broad sunlight (like the place your opium dealer lives, and he's never home during the day).

So, a Wealth Disparity map! We're taking social commentary on fantasy to the next level, you guys. First, procure a neighbourhood map as above. Now take 10 d10s, preferably of the same colour (I'm awfully OCD about this), and roll them. You should get several numbers once, a couple of them repeating twice or more and missing some numbers entirely (if you get some weird result like five doubles and five zeroes, or a perfect distribution of all 10 faces, consider rerolling).

Now write down the number of times that face was repeated next to the neighbourhood. The ones with 0s next to them are out of the process. They're good for inexpensive housing.

Roll 10 dice again. This time, set aside results that correspond to neighbourhoods with no wealth generated in the previous round and reroll them until all the results fit into your better neighbourhood range. If you want less inequality, reroll them only once, if you want more inequality only randomize between 2-3 currently wealthiest areas.

You can repeat the process some more times, and the results will consolidate only to richest neighbourhoods. I did it three times with the following breakdown:

• Seven - 10
• Four - 6
• Five - 6
• Ten - 3
• One - 2
• Three - 2
• Nine - 1
• Two - 0
• Six - 0
• Eight - 0

Since I don't have a d30, I'll put this into a percentage chart, multiplying all ranges by 3 and splitting the remainder 10% equally between all areas. It is possible to find an opera house in the slums, although it might not be working. If you need to find something classy and/or expensive in the city, roll on this chart.

Expensive Stuff Random Distribution Chart One

• 01 - 07 One
• 08 Two
• 09 - 15 Three
• 16 - 34 Four
• 35 - 53 Five
• 54 Six
• 55 - 85 Seven
• 86 Eight
• 87 - 90 Nine
• 91 - 100 Ten

And there you have it. You could also do the opposite thing and make a Poverty distribution chart instead.


I hope you found this useful. If you want me to explain the maths or have some remarks on methodology, feel free to comment. 

WTF Populi, WTF Dei

I'm trying to communicate here, and one of the biggest hurdles in communication is selecting words improperly or not defining them clearly enough. To this end, I asked a bunch of people on the internets about what does the phrase "post fantasy" mean to them as a genre, with no prior context of the term.

The results were, shall we say, not very accurate, but rather thought provoking. Slightly edited, the most interesting of them are listed below. 

I keep thinking Post Fantasy is a next step from Urban Fantasy to somewhere. If Urban fantasy was bringing fantasy to modern context, maybe post fantasy is about taking to the fantasy context somewhere else? Or something.

-- Shader

post fantasy?

no associations other than, maybe reality?

-- Dirian

Post fantasy? My guess would be that it's an "artsification" of urban fantasy, so drowning in metaphor, high-literary influences and kind of masturbatory about its own literary value.

 -- Thanaeon

Immediately? For some reason, gritty-futurism with fantasy elements, be it cyberpunk or post-apocalyptic. I mean, I know that's probably WRONG, but that was what popped into my head. Like images of grey streets and black skies and dim streetlamps.
^_^: Sort of like noir?
Yeah, but with muted tones of elves and orcs and GRIT.
^_^: Kinda like punk-fantasy.
Yeah. A game where no one is happy.
^_^ :( That's a bit too far, I think?
It's REAL LIFE YO.

^_^: I'm now getting the vibe that Dark Sun MIGHT be post fantasy.
Dark Sun is kind of post-fantasy, sure. 

-- Gemini

Fiction informed by the fantasy genre without necessarily being part of it. So... I dunno. A Song of Ice and Fire? Maybe magic realism? Or possibly fiction that takes fantasy and makes it mundane.
^_^: wouldn't that be framed as a bad thing?
I dunno. So, like, a crime procedural set in a universe with magic where the magic is entirely unremarkable.So the book is part of the crime genre, and it just has fantasy trappings without taking on the themes and ideas of fantasy. Maybe?

-- Snoof

WoW. Scantily clad ladies. Bright colors everywhere. Maybe some Final Fantasy games? Most artwork kinda oriental looking. 

-- Augustas

Post fantasy to me suggests a setting in which the elves have died out, the dwarves have buried themselves in the mountains and only humans remain.
- and/or -
A sexual fetish involving poor defenceless fence posts.

-- Djones



Feel free to provide your own definitions in the comments section.



Oh, and one more for the finishing move:

Post Fantasy - a sort about the magical adventures that a mail deliveryman gets up to.

-- Moxiane

Post the what with the who?

Hello. I'm vytzka, a software engineer and amateur actor and I want to talk about RPGs. Most of the posts will be at least tenuously related to the Anima roleplaying game as I am currently running a campaign of just that, but I'll try to pay attention to general applicability.

As for the post- thang, it is necessarily going to look haughty but there's not really that much pretentiousness behind it. I simply wanted a label that would encapsulate looking at classic Western fantasy through the lens of sundry modern media... and stuff like that. It is also a pun on the name of Anima: Beyond Fantasy which is actually a perfect example of what I'm talking about, being a very unusual marriage of Rolemaster with the JRPG aesthetic.

If you know what OSR is you probably just thought "how is that different again" and that's probably a lesson for another post (spoilers: not that much) but it honestly sounds cooler. Not just to myself but people I'm trying to get into gaming are probably going to be more interested in doing something called "post fantasy" than something called OSR. Since I have zero interest in coining any sort of permanent lexicon you may feel free to use any term you like or none at all, just remember the URL ^_^