any of you momos ever design a floating city?

[Shorty Lickens]

OR, have any of you ever run a campaign thru someone elses floating city design?

[taalismn]

Gloating in air or water?

While I can't say I've designed a floating city either way, I've designed the potential components for building both....

[Orin J.]

i mean, i have but do you just a city that's floating as a big single chunk or a city made of "pieces" that are all connected together?

[ShadowLogan]

OR, have any of you ever run a campaign thru someone elses floating city design?

The Sky Knights from New West (WB14) do build cloud cities (IIRC aren't they supposed to have done that for Tolkeeen Refugees) and can also be found in their Cloud Magic section (or Book of Magic) though it doesn't go into much detail.

I have considered it and did start doing it though dropped it (this was a long time ago to)

[Curbludgeon]

Floating cities are pretty cool, and I've had 'em come up a few times in games. As far as design considerations there are a few I can think of off-hand.

Means of floating: this needs to be expressible in a few words, such as "a combination of anti-grav tech and lighter-than-air aircraft" or "is enchanted to rest on treetops."
Amount of necessary upkeep: in addition to describing person-hours and materials, think about how and how much a given shortfall will affect operations. Also, how does the city obtain and perhaps reclaim needed resources? Are there portals to gate in water, or does the ship have to land in an ocean every month?
Mobility: Is the city fixed, moveable with a great effort, slowly self-mobile, able to be towed, freely mobile, or capable of other movement such as teleportation?
Composition: this includes both overall construction material, e.g. clouds/dreams/ghoststone and slyphwood/plasteel and hypercrete, as well as the general layout of the city, i.e. is it a bunch of tethered floating barges, magical castles, a cityscape, a subtly shifting morass, or something else?
Suitable environments: Is this place floating in the Himalayas, within the Grand Canyon, or a meter above the South China Sea? Can it go underwater, or to outer space?

I'm betting some of the impressively productive people here already have a random floating city generation table. In terms of Megaversal stuff I'd assume Phase World's Gravitonic tech. could swing it, as could New West's Cloud Magic, and whatever combination of Stone Magic and Biomancy Lemurians use with their cities. Rifts China 2 describes nuclear-powered floating barges tuned to minimal power usage with indefinitely idling VTOL engines, which along with things like blimps could be part of a less polished approach.

[Shorty Lickens]

i mean, i have but do you just a city that's floating as a big single chunk or a city made of "pieces" that are all connected together?

I consider both types acceptable. Either way you have the potential for big adventure.

[glitterboy2098]

WB7 underseas has Tritonia, ocean going floating city. designed as a bunch of large hexagonal raft-modules docked together, with bits of the city on top of each, and living spaces extending both up from the rafts as buildings and down from them as well. i suspect that different raft modules are specialized, so some are straight housing with the general housing support stuff (stores, laundromats, etc), while others are built as parks with greenspaces both under and outside of domes, others as industrial modules housing the various extractive, refining, and production facilities, others as agriculture centers where crops are grown and fish are farmed, etc.

one thing the book does leave out that real world seasteading studies have shown to be important is the breakwater. a structure a distance away from the city itself to help damp down waves and such, making the city and its surrounding waters that much safer.

[ShadowLogan]

I'm betting some of the impressively productive people here already have a random floating city generation table. In terms of Megaversal stuff I'd assume Phase World's Gravitonic tech. could swing it, as could New West's Cloud Magic, and whatever combination of Stone Magic and Biomancy Lemurians use with their cities. Rifts China 2 describes nuclear-powered floating barges tuned to minimal power usage with indefinitely idling VTOL engines, which along with things like blimps could be part of a less polished approach.

TW Skyboats could also be used on a Ley Line and never need to be recharged (unless you land the city/section). Combine that with multiple TW Mystic Portable Generators powered by the Ley Line.

I would also add that unless a skyborne floating city is enclosed, after a certain point you will have to consider the impacts of altitude on air temperature, pressure, and oxygen content.

[taalismn]

I would also add that unless a skyborne floating city is enclosed, after a certain point you will have to consider the impacts of altitude on air temperature, pressure, and oxygen content.

"Twice a year we get everybody into pressure-shelters, take the city up into a jet stream and let the winds vacuum out the place. Mind you, it leads to a lot of complaints and reports of junk-falls from the communities below, but it cleans up Nimbus City nice and neat."