3 cities skeletal yet fleshy

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Drowning Lions;
located at the edge of a cold tundra-ish desert , a port town, battered by storms , salt spray and dust
Landmarks: Spherical urchin like central palace, concentrically ringed and walled. Impressive and dangerous zoo and bonsai confir arboretum about the only nice things here and they are contained in things looking like a deep sea prison
Architecture; hunkered down, like soviet bunkers or monuments ,flared at the base, occasionally spiked or whimsically gargoyled
Emphasis this in descriptions; stoicism, distrust, dourness. Constant restrictions and rationings, despite not currently at war with anyone. Always assumes the worst in a matter of fact way

peoples; wearing absurd amount of  layers from the cold and dust storms, complain fatalistic about the weather
food: watery stews, dried absurdly tough meats, and wormy potatos

in charge; ring barons and baroness, each with a increasingly large shoulder panther, like half python half panther, which sleeps, acting as scarf and hat. Vote on decisions, with a monkey acting as tie breaker.
enforcing; each ring around the city has different bureaucracy and guard force. Guards badly trained volunteers armed with blunderbusses packed with rock salt, lorded over by impressively hatted heavy infantry ("bristlers") wielding 2 handed swords who work as mercenaries in various lands
special opportunities; hiring the "bristlers" mercenary or robbing their manors, one of the few displays of wealth here. The zoo is always looking for more dangerous specimens. It is rumoured that the entire city was a built as a seal on some kind of portal or vault and it any wealth it has goes towards maintaining the underground fortification.



Suun Gleez
 A city build out of bamboo scaffolding and jury rigged structures completely obscuring the castle it was originally built around. Castle occupied by ghost powered insane warmachines, city founded by exiled servants still loyal to the now dead ruling family.
Landmarks; It's a three dimensional maze with a haunted castle in the middle

Architecture; bamboo and fabric and silks, glazed with fire resistant bug secretions. Fabric lines "tunnels" that act as through-fares
Emphasis this in descriptions: you have to keep climbing everywhere, there is no planning , noise, fabric partitions as walls mean the "inside/outside" thing is not really a thing here. Large pet beetles, moths and birds everywhere. A weird sense of temporariness yet stratification
peoples; Excitable, act like fabric blocks all sound. Brightly dressed, given to big schemes with little planning, always making things out of rope or repairing things. Unconventional thinkers and prone to giving nicknames
foods: roast caterpillars, aerophytes, spicy mushrooms. Spit roast lizards. Bad luck to eat birds or eggs.
in charge; Everyone effected by an issue will have an opinion on it and agency of that opinion. Consensus minus one to make any decision. Anarchy. Everyone talking about everything all the time to make any decisions what so ever is part of the noise and possibly informs the impulsive mentality to plan as little as possible as to avoid talking about it.

in forcing; see above. Everyone will fight you from all directions with lassos , bolas and attack birds.
special opportunities; Everyone talks up how great it is going to be once they get the castle back and will encourage you to go and clear it, but then get really uncomfortable and embarrassed if anyone brings anything back from there and quietly encourage you to take it away and not mention it again.

 Purgatory:

People mined their way to what they thought was hell and then made business opportunities. Half prison half town living off the prison.  Other cities sell them their convicts , and if they are bad enough they are sold into the pit to the alien troglodytes who dwell past there, where they are made into war golems for some kind of subterranean war. Each layer is occupied by increasingly worse people. Like 1984 but with more upward mobility and therapy speak.


Landmarks: a huge gaping hole in the middle of the town. Grim watch towers everywhere with listening cones.


Architecture: Mostly carved into the side of the pit. Stone brick grim buildings everywhere. Horizontal efficient, tend to build up. Occasionally beauty in elaborate stone scrimshaw carving and murals
Emphasis this in descriptions: It's a prison where the inmates guard the inmates in order to not be inmates one day. Utilitarian. Stressed yet hopeful.
peoples: everyone has some kind of personality disorder and has to live with a bunch of other people with personality disorders but is trying their best to manage to be a better person, as not to get demoted a tier and forced to live with even worse people. A lot of self-improvement philosophy and lingo  combined with prison slang.
in-charge: Each tier has a warden with
enforcing: Dangerously reasonable armed forces (called "intervenors")   with big pitbull like rats with almost supernaturally sense of smell. 
special opportunities: entrance to subterranean realms, concentration of criminal knowledge, still a mining town and turns up strange artifacts or dangerous invested tunnels.

Inserting A City into People

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It's real important to me that games that I gm-ing have some kind of feel to them. Like you remember this city or this swamp or this cave, it's not just a part of game, there is reality to it somehow.

The game alone is not really enough to keep me interested.

I've realized this from playing playtests and some g+ games , and running a dungeon contest,  when there has been not enough thematic context I've struggled to enjoy it.

So as a g.m  how to do I get my kicks without taking away from what everyone else needs to get their kicks?

Like if you sit the players down through epically long descriptions  when they just wanna buy a crossbow, you are being dumb and punishing.

(One common way to get people to pay attention or remember stuff is to have it try and kill them all the time. That's not always that great either.  Well your mileage is going to vary on this one I think. I don't really dig at as a player, feels like there is no progression if there is no-where you get a break or you are always in the same amount of danger.)

My conclusion on this was try and put the setting on all the moving parts. The stuff that the players can immediately interact with for consequences etc.

And put as much setting on a moving part as the player ask about. So having a brief way of describing said setting on the thing and then if they ask more , give more.


THIS ALL SEEMS PRETTY OBVIOUS
 ACTUALLY BUT THEN I TRIED TO APPLY THIS THINKING TO A CITY WRITEUP
(
A decent encounter table is a good way to bring a city to life too, hopefully the below description can be used to reskin a  generic/other city encounter table )

and have descriptions , specific information, usefully adjectives , and adjectives to sprinkle in.

Though if you have spent the time sourcing pictures all of this is freaking redundant because you can go "hey look at this"

Day Of The Lords:
 long, florid:
 A sudden emergence of lazy curves from a wetlands but the begins of it are vague as water way and irrigation languid turn into canal and park lake. Bridges end in third story roof top markets and streets wide around into alleys and parks.
The languid sweet air  seems to inform the temperament of the people, with the occasionally hint of the decaying slurry ponds of the pig eels, also mirrored in the callous decadence that is a subnote here.

 
 Short/pretty much:
Like Venice  but people kept trying to build Sindbad the Sailor sets everywhere and took their time doing it.

Buying Stuff:
markets, street sellers, people in cafes, private saloons, clubs.

A combination of an absurdly complicated money system (more or less like a series of tarot cards with value that shifts depend on the moon and river tides) and fondness of haggling mean you will pay 50% more for anything if you fail your choice of a wisdom/int/or charisma check.
No real shortages of conventionally goods. Fine quality . Things from everywhere find there way here. A good market for selling exotic items , especially jewellery and animal parts. Less so for conventionally weapons and armour


Social Hubs:
Garden parks with polite wandering sales people, cafes which sometimes a just a guy with a pot and a rug and other times are mostly in a building. People here tend to not really bother with clear boundrys with streets, throughfares, homes and places of business .
Every field of knowledge, interest and activity will have a multitude of clubs tending and competing in various social strata niches.
If you want to buy anything more expensive or rare than a chapbook you will need to leave a calling card at the relevant club and then come back later to see if you have been invited to someones private saloon, where they will entertain you and display their wares.




Food And Drink:


Cardamom infused coffee, ginger candys, ginger pickled eels, crabs , lobsters, especially wrapped in river grasses. Slow cooked pigeel. Often sudden bursts of flavour from pepper corns or cloves of spice.



Drugs include a variety of bitter herb based liquors with a swirl of sweet syrup, elaborate water pipes with a range of smoking herbs , sometimes more chosen for their colour of smoke and flavour than effect.

Any food , drink or drug seemingly has to be appealing on more than one level (flavour, effect, aesthetics, contrasting flavour) to be popular or even used at all here.


Security/military:

Day to day disputes will handled by a government arbitator, who have a small boat based office liberally drifting around the city. Sometimes these are symbolically boats in a ceremonially pond. They empowered like a judge able to set sentences , ranging from work details, poetic punishments , fines and death warrents. They will sub contract out to a  "Scholars" of one of the Schools of Pragmatic Discourse (voluntary gladiators) , occasionally leading a small group of a relevant club members. (treat as a fighter level 1-3 with one combat trick , treat club members as zero level people) .
Other more specialized people maybe employed , included detective philosophy, justice poets, snipers, poisoners, impersonators or military units
.
The military is lightly armed skirmishers and air rifle platoons with lobotomized brutes as muscle/shock troops. Elite troops are supplied by the various competing Schools of Pragmatic Discourse.

Schools of Pragmatic Discourse are like gladiator schools or martial art schools, and compete extensively but more or less fairly , with a moderate amount of fatalitys in a variety of tournaments , games and competitions.


Who runs this place/ Factions:
"Day of the Lords" is the clan which gives the city its name. No government or high level administrator position can be held by anyone not a member, though it is possible to marry into the family, and many marriages are arranged in order to give a talented person a office. Numerous branches of the family compete , and while assassinations are rare, they are not without occurrence. The current head of the clan is the seemingly undying Moon's Moon's Lake, a old cunning spider of a great grandma. Other factions include the Schools of Pragmatic Discourse, alchemist and other clubs most needful for the cities infrastructure. The Tenders of the Slurry have considerable sway, controlling both the largest pigeel farms, the sewage system and the methane gas production which lights the city at night. No one can make a body disappear like the Tenders of The Slurry



What do these people Look like?
Dark , golden features , not given to hairyness, broad lipped and languid eyed.

Dress is seemingly casual and indifferent but with subtle details and flourishes.

Nose chains and various body piercings are common especially multiple upper ear rings. Clothing is wraps, loose shirts and saris. While which outfits are appropriate for men's and which outfit's are appropriate womens outfits is obvious to a native of the city of New Day of The Lord, an outsider will be constant figure of fun for failing to tell a mans scarf from a womans scarf.
The same goes for what parts of the body it is appropriate to expose and for what context (including time, place, social position, holiday, weather and presence of cinnamon essence) . A good rule of thumb is don't get naked just because everyone else is. They are properly wearing a formal fragrance and hairpins and it's early summers eve and forgoing the customary lace glove and sandals to be scandalous. 

adjectives to use in descriptions :
languid, worn, secretly smiling, humid, intricate, haphazard, contrasting, discrete, teeming, timeless .



Okay that was pretty long and I skipped building descriptions. I caught up in describing the place. Next time I'll try doing like a dozen distinctive cities in a paragraph each or something.