A year or five ago, I floated the idea of a shared-setting _Tales of
Startown_, conceptually similar to _Thieves' World_, but set in a Traveller
startown on a world where the startown was built as a roughly TL8 city
(because I have a program that can do renderings of city scenes from such a
setting).

I _think_ I'm coming around to a point where I can think about perhaps
considering the idea of resurrecting the idea. It'll help if you will...

I'd like some ideas from you. I can detail the city accurately as long as
it fits within a square 15.5km on a side. That's almost the size of
Washington DC plus Alexandria VA!

I figure the port will be a Class C port, somewhat off the largest trade
routes, but not necessarily a complete backwater. Although C ports don't
generally have highports associated with them, I don't rule it out - but
startown includes/is associated with the downport, and the highport
shouldn't be a central feature if it's decided that it exists.

So... I'd appreciate it if people would work up ideas for the *general*
layout and character of the port and city - where, in that square, is the
port, how big is it, what is the character (e.g., steel-and-glass offices,
industrial, brownstones, detached housing, semidetached housing,
apartments, retail, etc.) of which neighborhoods where relative to such
features as the port itself, rivers, sea/lakeshores, etc.... how do streets
line up with adjacent areas? through streets or cul-de-sacs? Highways?
Railroads? Trams? Monorails? Bus lines? Metro (elevated, surface,
underground?)? Parks? Tourist attractions? Entertainment facilites? Slums?
Shantytowns? Without going into detail, what is the layout of the major
thoroughfares? Is the extrality line a fence, a Berlin-type wall, a
notional line on the ground?

Ideally, sketch it out and label it, scan it, and email it to me with any
additional text notes you feel appropriate.

I'll go through them all, and pick and choose what I like, and put together
an amalgam of features. Then, I'll detail a couple of areas, put together
some notes, and make them available for people to use when they write their
stories for the _Tales_ (which will be published in FT and posted in a
separate section of Raconteurs' Rest). I won't detail everything; that will
be left to be done by the stories as needed, just as was done with
_Thieves' World_'s Sanctuary.

DON'T FEEL THAT YOU HAVE TO PLAN ON BEING AN AUTHOR IN ORDER TO BE A CITY
PLANNER! DON'T FEEL THAT YOU HAVE TO BE A CITY PLANNER IN ORDER TO BE AN
AUTHOR! You don't; some people have talents in one direction, some in
another.

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