How They Work
City Projects follow a fundamentally different process from other projects because of their scale. It's built to handle thousands of structures.
Phase 1: Foundation Work
Before any plots open, leadership establishes the framework that will guide hundreds of future builders.
- Style guides define the city's architectural identity: core design principles, regional influences, historical evolution (older vs. newer districts), and the distinctive features that make the city unique.
- Gradient guides show how building quality transitions across the city.
- House examples are fully built and furnished for each class level and district type: low-class dockside warehouses and slum dwellings, middle-class market shops and residential houses, high-class merchant mansions and noble residences.
- Specialized plots and Mini Builds cover unique areas: guild buildings, religious structures, government buildings, markets, taverns and inns, industrial areas, and defensive structures.
This foundational work is critical. With dozens of builders eventually contributing, these guides keep everyone on the same page and reduce feedback sessions. City Projects can take years, and keeping everything cohesive is vital to the project's survival.
Phase 2: District Development
Cities are divided into manageable districts, each with its own character. Grouping builds by district type helps focus the styles each one includes. Some examples:
- Dockside: warehouses, fishmongers, sailor taverns
- Markets: shops, guildhalls, merchant homes
- Slums: overcrowded housing, poor construction, like Flea Bottom in King's Landing
- Working residential: craftsmen, laborers
- Wealthy residential: merchant homes, minor nobles
- Noble quarter: great houses, mansions
- Religious district: septs, monasteries
- Industrial: smithies, tanneries, workshops
Districts can themselves be organized as a Server or Canon Project. In King's Landing, for example, the district containing the Red Keep and the Great Sept of Baelor would be treated as a Server Project; in Lannisport, the Casterly Rock district would be planned as one.
Each district gets a district lead responsible for quality and coordination, specific style requirements building on the city-wide guides, plotted areas ready for builders to claim, and clear boundaries with transitions to neighboring districts. Districts develop sequentially or in clusters, not all at once, so lessons learned early improve later ones.
Phase 3: Community Building
Because City Projects contain many times more structures than typical projects, they rely heavily on organized participation.
- Community Build Days are scheduled events where many builders work simultaneously. They create momentum impossible to achieve individually, build camaraderie and shared investment, allow real-time coordination, and generate visible progress that keeps people involved. These are coordinated in Discord.
- Frequent approval cycles catch issues early. With so many people building at once, small deviations compound quickly, so more review cycles than other project types keep quality under control. The Wardens and the city lead(s) make frequent but short check-ins to active districts.
- Ongoing style refinement happens as the city takes shape. Style guides evolve based on what's working, new house examples are added for unanticipated situations, successful innovations become standards, and problems are corrected systematically.
A City Project is considered complete when every district is fully approved.