The current issue of National Geographic Traveler magazine (March 2009, USA Edition) features the theme “The Magic of the City,” celebrating urban centers worldwide, the peculiar characteristics they all share (“cityness,” as Editor-in-Chief Keith Bellows calls it) and the specific character of four international destinations in particular.

Cities define us as cultures and individuals in ways we sometimes don’t even understand, and with more than half of the world population already living in a large urban center, they are increasingly important locations, more than at any other time in history. While many people call themselves “city folk,” often which city they are from will be evident by how that cityness manifest in them. A life-long pedestrian New Yorker may find herself frustrated at not being able to walk out of the hotel in freeway-happy Hong Kong (as it happened to columnist Daisann McLane), while a Miamian like myself, used to living in a city sprawled far and wide, where a car is a must, can find the compactness of public transport-dependent centers like Paris overwhelming in the freedom they offer.

The magazine singles out four cities for specific characteristics that set them apart: Sydney, Australia for its food; London, England for its walkability; Shanghai, China for its shopaholicism; and Montreal, Quebec for its playful charm. It’s not that these cities are defined by these traits–London certainly has its share of shopping paradises, for example–but these represent interesting entry points into the soul, the cityness, of the city. Anyone who has taken the tube across London, emerging morlock-like from the depths of the earth into the bustle of the city above at any of dozens of stations, knows how much of a walker’s paradise this city is.

Track down the issue and check out the online features and galleries tied to the topic, and celebrate the cities that shape us and the world around us, then try to look at your own (whether where you live or the nearest city that shapes your current domicile) in a new way, perhaps like a tourist would, and learn to fall in love with it all over again. Trust me, after 15 years in Miami I find this a bit hard at times, but those magic moments when it happens, when I gaze at the skyline or across the bay and suddenly see it as if for the first time, those are priceless.

In Your Games

Cities are immensely important to most roleplaying games; from fantasy to sci-fi, cities tend to occupy a spotlight in the lives of the player characters, whether because the story is based in one, or because it is the place where they gather after a hard-fought adventure out in the wilderness. The problem with cities in games is that they can suffer from the two extremes of too much or too little detail: either they are faceless environments devoid of singularity with only a few locations for the characters to take care of their business, or they are bustling and chaotic metropolises where anything and everything is happening at the same time creating a chaotic setting.

Taking a page from how the articles on the four cities named above were presented in National Geographic Traveler, when presenting a city for the characters to develop in, pick a few salient features and highlight them as the city’s defining feature. All cities share traits and most major cities will be many things at once, but choose the attributes that most fit the story at hand or the personalities of the characters playing. Find ways for a city to match a character’s interest, especially those that are more story- than combat-based and can add interesting scenes to flesh out a character.

Think about it, when was the last time during a game that characters entered a city and made a point to eat the local food specialty, to drink the city’s signature drink, to seek out that most rare ingredient found only in this region? Yet this is something we as travelers do almost without fail when we visit new cities! Inject a few scenes like these in your games and add that extra ounce of verisimilitude that makes the world and the characters come alive.