Editing The Dresden Files RPG (section)

===City Creation===
Probably the best-kept secret of the game, the city creation rules are a great toolkit allowing for players to collaboratively build the kind of city they want to adventure in, and are broken into three main phases.

====Overall====
The overall part of city building is where the kind of game, and the NPC's that are going to be a part of the game world are decided upon by the players and Game master. This is done by firstly choosing three themes or threats in any combination, that will have an effect on the overall tone and dangers that the players will face.

For example

'''Cambridge (UK)'''

'''Lessons Taught, Lessons Forgot''' (THEME); '''Decay Masqued by Art''' (THEME); '''A Festival of Violence''' (THREAT).

As Cambridge (UK) is a university town with a long history to both theater and various festivals, these three things can be used almost immediately to create the three themes/threats that the players will be dealing with. Old Books and historical legacies lost in one of the many storerooms owned by the university (whose campus covers a majority of the city) means that there will be a strong and well established theme of information hunting and rarely some of those things actually being right, and very dangerous.

The theaters in Cambridge have been around a long time, with one of the most famous and established theaters (the Cambridge Arts Theater, 1936) having exactly 666 seats (the incorrect number of the beast) and is host to the universities triennial Cambridge Greek Play, which is preformed in ancient Greek, more than enough to build something off. However a lot of theater groups face struggles in the city despite its close connections to the arts. Mostly due to their hidden WCV masters who keep the theaters failing and desperate so as to maximize the Despair they can feed upon.

Lastly for this example would be the many, many SUMMER festival that are hosted in, or nearby, the city. Cambridge folk, Cambridge Art, and Cambridge Beer Festivals being the most famous examples, although another long-running festival to take note of would be "The Midsummer Fair" itself chartered by King John himself. These festivals could potentially generate a lot of arcane power which is normally fed into the Summer court, allowing them their influence on this part of the mortal plane, but they are also open easy attack, whether bureaucratic or violent as something else attempts to subsume this power from Summer.

So in this city the PC's can clearly expect to deal with ancient, and forgotten knowledge coming back into the world of the living, festivals that are an easy source of metaphysical power to anyone powerful or moronic enough to stand up to Summer, and something, something to do with the failing, and decrepit theaters that seem to face struggle after struggle.

All of this is broken down into the Mortal/Supernatural Status Quo; a paragraph each to describe the Supernatural Status Qou (The Summer Court keeps an eye on the Festivals as they gain hard fought influence from them, ancient knowledge sleeps uneasily beneath the university, and the WC have a steady food supply from the failing theaters.), and the Mortal Status Quo, (INSERT HERE). Which is used alongside the Movers and Shakers Box, a Mendelow Matrix set to the axis's of "Who is in the Dark/Who is in the Know" (describing who knows what about the supernatural in the city) and "Who wants to Maintain the Status Quo/Who want to Rock the Boat" (Who is happy with the way things are against who wants things to change, usually in their own favor).

As a good guideline, unless it's in a particularly law-abiding city, the cops should be slap bang in the middle, with maybe a little bit more towards awareness of the supernatural. The cops don't want things to always remain the same; they want things to get better, people to stop disappearing, bodies to stop showing up on the streets, corruption to stop being untouchable; but neither do they want things to cange so far that there is chaos on the streets, looting, rioting, cats and dogs living together, MASS HYSTERIA!

I've skipped over Theme/Threat Aspects, and the faces that go along with each Theme/Threat for now as they will eventually get their own sections.

====Locales====
This part of City Building is putting those Themes and Threats into solid locations where the PC's may interact with the NPC's. While the official sheet may only have nine slots open, these are your repeating main locales for the entire city, don't feel forced into having exactly nine locations for your city and only ever using using those nine locations.

Each location has several parts consisting of a Name (no duh), a basic description (no duh), whether it is part of a theme or a threat, the core idea behind the location, the Location Aspect, and the face behind the Location and their basic concept, so to continue on the Cambridge example an example Location could be...

 '''Name''': Hinton Cherry Hall Festival Grounds
 '''Description''': Regularly used summer festival grounds
 '''THEME/THREAT''': Threat
 '''Idea''': The Summer Court's main stomping grounds in the city
 '''Aspect''': Magically Charged Festival Grounds
 '''Face''': Jane Clements (Lady Fairwinds) (Summer Sylph Festival Co-ordinator)

This needs to be done several times, enough to properly represent each force in the city, and each of the three themes/threats. However not every locale needs to have a NPC face. It is completely possible for a PC to be the face of a Location provided they have a significant investment in that particular location, an example would be a True Believer PC being the face of a local place of worship where NPC's come for spiritual advice which tips the PC's into something new happening. Other options for the face could also be an actual mythical figure (slightly rare in the Dresden Files, most mythical figures have some form of existence), a murder victim, or an organisation that the PC's may have to contend with (authorities, criminal gangs, cults, etc). So long as the PC's are capable of interacting with them anything (within reason) could make a decent face, although a murder victim may make for a rather impermanent one.

====Faces====
Once you have all the locations you need, and you and your players have agreed upon what exactly they are, what they represent, and what Faces they have, you and your group then need to detail each Face to go with each location, this includes the Face's Name, what Location they represent, their High Concept, Motivations and any relationships they might have with other important NPC's in the city.

Don't worry about putting every single detail on the city Face sheets, each face should have its own separate character sheet eventually.

So to continue the Cambridge example...

We'll break from Hinton Cherry Hall because not only are the motivations of the Sidhe strange and inhuman, but she's a female Sidhe so who knows what the fuck is going on behind those eyes, let's instead go to (the made up) Mill Street Market (Cambridge has a lot of the general markets in real life we're just solidifying one of these to actual buildings).

Mill Street is one of Cambridge's most famous markets, and one of the most famous in the UK itself. Not for being a regular local produce, farmers market full of organic produce and environmental sensibilities which are all the rage today, but because it's one of the largest multi-national markets, you want to find something from some dinky little province in China, a legitimate African Shaman Mask, or even something stranger? You're going to be hard pressed, but you'll find it somewhere on Mill Street.

This makes Mill Street Market a solid location, rife with potential, and problems, but players can't just interact with each store owner when looking for every single little thing, you're going to end up with a bunch of remarkably similar NPC's with the distinction "yeah, but he sells ''Russian'' stuff, rather than Jamaican stuff", which will only increase your book-keeping exponentially, and for not a lot of payoff.

This is where the Face comes in, you need to make a single NPC who the players can interact with, while still representing the entire streets interests. This face can be the head of a market committee, a particularly patriarchal/maternal store owner who keeps an eye on the entire street, or even an actual city council official who interferes with the PC's attempt to buy the stuff that's slightly illegal to own in public, but not to have in stock for selling (lock-picks, cultural items that should be in museums, poisonous plants, small stuff a bureaucrat could make your life hell over).

For this Example we'll roll with a shop owner who has been well established thanks in part to his supernatural contacts, his minor talent that allows him to drive really good bargains, and the fact that he regularly represents the street against the city council, because of its connections to multiple parts of the Nevernever, including the Bizarre Bazaar, a Fae market where anything is for sale.

 '''Name''': Vihaan Kendle
 '''Locale''': Mill Street Market
 '''High Concept''': Market Wizard
 '''Motivation''': Mill Street's Secrets must be kept.
 '''Relationships''': Jane Clements (A deal with Summer keeps this place safe from the Seelie and protected from the Unseelie), Chris Faulkner (Fellow Secret Keeper), Prof Nigel Sterling (Nosy old man with no idea what he's trying to dig up), other Store Owners (The people I'm trying to protect) [UNKNOWN] Karl Helbrect (I am an obstacle in his way).