You might have seen the map of the Free City of Mecros, as well as my post on map making and how it has evolved since I stated Dagenthir back in the 1990s.
In this post I’d like to give you a little insight into how I built a city, and how Mecros evolved from a rough idea to the detailed city it is today.
The humble beginnings
When I first started working on Mecros I only knew that it was a large, rich city at the mouth of the Gulf of Khal, with the Khal river running through it. So in order to get started building the city I used the Watabou city generator to give me some ideas of its layout.
Watabou’s tool is fairly basic and easy to use, and you might have to retry generating random cities a few times, but it does, at times, produce impressive results.
Here is the version I used as the initial inspiration for building the city of Mecros…
You’ll notice that it has barely any resemblance to what Mecros looks like today, but some of the basic ideas are already there.
Starting out with Inkarnate
Next I transferred my basic idea into Inkarnate, while I was still learning how to best use this powerful tool. I simply drew some outlines and started populating it with a few basic stencils. Note how the city walls, basic roads, river, bridges and castle haven’t really changed much since the very beginning.
After I was happy with the basic outline, I started adding more details. Unfortunately I haven’t captured all of these stages, but here is another early snapshot I was able to find.
Note how the various districts, the castle area, the arena, and the areas around the city are starting to take shape, and I’m starting to add different background colours.
The city of Mecros today
And in the end, after months of editing, I ended up with this – more or less final – version of Mecros, which will now not only be the setting of the first major adventure in the world of Dagenthir, but will also receive its own book: the first (and probably free, at least in digital form) expansion of the core book.
As I was editing the map, I started to understand how the various districts worked together, why they are where they are, what I had forgotten, how the city fits in the fantasy world of Dagenthir as a whole, and, most importantly, how to make Mecros a central location with huge potential for adventures.
Building a central city for your world is not an easy undertaking. You will most likely make an insane amount of changes, and if you’re anything like me, you might never be 100% happy with the “final” result. But your players will appreciate the result; of that I’m 100% certain!
I hope you’ll enjoy adventuring in Mecros as much as I’ve enjoyed creating it.