HELIOPOLIS

City Creator For NOVA

Hessan’s County - Bryon Casebolt

Heliopolis was designed by Bryon Casebolt (@hessan_yongdi) of

Hessan’s County in 2021 as an entry for the NOVA Jam organized
by Spencer Campbell.

This work is based on NOVA RPG (found at gilarpgs.com), a

product of Gila RPGs and authored by Spencer Campbell.
Heliopolis is not endorsed by nor affiliated with Gila RPGs or
Spencer Campbell.

The text is licensed for use under the Creative Commons

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

However, Bryon Casebolt reserves the right to revoke permission

to any individual, group, or organization who uses the materials
found within for any reason found to be harmful to others or that
promote hateful viewpoints including, but not limited to:
• racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, or other forms of discrimination
against individuals or groups based on their mental & physical
characteristics, sincere religious beliefs, economic status,
professions, or ancestry
• Fascism, white supremacy, and other extremist political and
economic viewpoints that promote exploitation or violence
against individuals or groups
 What is this?
This generator is made to help a team of Sparks flesh out the area
in and around their City for the TTRPG NOVA. As such, it has
been designed for use in your group's Session 0.

When should I use this?

To review, these are the basic stages of a NOVA Session 0 as
described in the manual:
1. Establish Safety Tools
2. Campaign Length & GM Roll
3. Creating Your Sparks
4. Creating Your City
5. The Dusk

This tool is to augment the Creating Your City and The Dusk
stages of Session 0. Additionally, the GM could use it at any time
to create a new base or help populate the world around your base
as play progresses.

The point of this tool is not to meticulously plot out everything that
is going on. Play and telling stories need flexibility and empty
space. Instead, this tool is going to help you define some key
landmarks and characters in The City.

Likewise, the lists within are not definite or complete. Rather they
help create categories of features or locations that may exist. You
could certainly pick something that is not on a list so long as it fits
the theme of the category the player rolled.
 Preparation
In order to use this tool, you will need:
• A paper with a large grid on it. I recommend 3/4 inch or 2cm
2 2

squares / hexes if using Letter or A4 respectively.

• Note-taking paper
• Drawing materials
• 3 coins
• At least one eight-sided die (d8), though we can also use the
coins in a pinch.
 Using the Tool
We will be will using following steps:
1. Scale of The City
2. 2.Place the Starting Features
3. 3.What is in The City?
4. 4.What is in The Dusk?

The tool utilized in each of the following game steps are based on
the bagua. This is the system of eight trigrams used in fung shui
and the I Ching. If you do not have a d8, you can use three coin
flips instead like below. In each stage, the Game Master (GM)
should be participate equal to the players in with the exception of
the second half of Stage 3.   

COIN FLIP / D8 CONVERSION CHART

d8 result Trigram / gua Coin Flip
1 天 - Sky H-H-

2 風 - Wind T-H-

3 火 - Fire H-T-

4 澤 - Lake H-H-

5 山 - Mountain T-T-

6 水 - Water T-H-

7 雷 - Thunder H-T-

8 地 - Earth T-T-
 Scale of The City
The first step in settlement creation will be to determine the size
and feeling it will have. These bases of operations the Sparks use
are supposed to be bastions of survival and renewal for Humanity.
They might be made of largely new constructions or built up on the
urban/suburban ruins that the Sun Shards had landed on. Normally,
a City is a mixture of 20th/21st century infrastructure with
advanced tech and newer infrastructure purpose-built to run on the
live-sustaining energy of the Sunwells. However, your city may
have a more unique feeling.

As part of this, the players should decide if the Sparks live in:
• a Village (100s of inhabitants)
• a Town (1000s of inhabitants)
• a City (10,000s of inhabitants)
• a Metropolis (100,000s of inhabitants)

Only a couple of hundred years after the NOVA event and with the
effects of The Dusk inhibiting growth, the largest settlements are
likely at or under a million people. However, they may still have a
centralized population density akin to modern Hong Kong or
Mumbai to capitalize on the Sunwells and their energy as much as
possible.

The City’s scale will not create a mechanical difference going

forward, but it will impact the flavor you give important locations
in The City. A village school location is likely a small building
with a minimal staff for teaching children while a school in a major
city has a large campus, potentially hosting a significant technical
school or university with a 1,000+ staff & students.

A location may occasionally be out of scale to what the City's size

would suggest, but this may have interesting implications like
putting stress on local resources and people to maintain it or the
City lacking the infrastructure capacity to meet local needs.

Place the Starting

Features
The Sunwells are critical to the survival of a post-NOVA
settlement, so The City will need to have at least one. If you would
like to place it in a random location, then toss the coin onto the
paper and mark its location so long as it lands somewhere near the
middle of the page. A larger settlement could feasibly have more
than one.

Once the Sunwell has been placed, it is time to place major

preexisting features that were here before Humanity returned to
this place. Some of these will be natural geography while others
are the remains of Pre-NOVA habitation that survived the Sky
Falling Down. Each player should roll once using the Features
Table.

Once each player has rolled, then decide together were they should
go on the map. Some features will be one square while others will
be larger.   
FEATURES TABLE
d8 result Suggested Feature
1 Pre-NOVA ruins of Gover
Religious structures; Old
2 Old roads & bridges, Old co
spaces (markets, malls,
3 Ruined residential areas, S
Amphitheatre
4 Lakes, Calm freshwater s
Swamp/Boglands, Geotherm
5 Mountains & hills, Old min
6 Canyon, Coastline, Strong riv
7 Devastation, Rough wild
8 Fertile land, Pastures, Perseve
spaces

What is in The City?

In this stage, it is time to look at the impact of modern human
habitation in The City.

This stage will be two parts. In the first part, each of the players
roll on the City Locations table to determine a major location in
The City and create a non-player character (NPC) associated with
it. This character should be known to the player's character (PC)
and have a critical role in the city.
For example, if we create a dam, the NPC could be an engineer or
mechanic in charge of maintaining it and was the PCs mentor in
mechanics.

Be sure to record the information for each NPC and note each
location on the map. If you are working with a small group (GM &
1 to 2 Sparks). you may want to repeat this stage to create a fuller
city.

For the second part of this stage, the players then create
relationships between their Sparks and a major location in The
City. This could be a location that we just created or this the player
can roll again if none of the existing locations speak to them. Make
sure to note the PC-Location relationships down for future
reference. For example, a PC may play for a water polo team that
meets at The City's aquatics complex (an entertainment space).

CITY LOCATIONS TABLE

d8 result Suggested Feature
1 Government Offices, Religio
Schools
2 Markets, Major transportatio
(bus/metro depot)
3 Entertainment spaces / distric
residential spaces
4 Canals, Water & sewage s
Reservoirs
5 Mines, Manufacturing spac
research
6 Harbor, Shipyard, Hydropow
7 Training Sites, Barracks, Fo
 8 Orchards & farms, Green
Persevered natural spa

What is in The Dusk?

Now that we have completed the major locations in The City, it is
time to turn to the outside environs. Dusk. Each player will roll on
The Dusk Features Table below and then describe a relationship
between the feature with their character, a former mission the team
of Sparks have gone on, or The City as a whole. These could be
friendly to the city or locations important for enemy factions like
the Hellions, Corvus, Haze-Dwellers, and Lunar Cult outlines in
the NOVA manual.

To illustrate, a group of nomads may survive along the edges of the

Crimson & the Dusk. Maybe your city has traded with them before
or our team of Sparks may have met members of the group on a
past mission into The Dusk.

DUSK FEATURES TABLE

d8 result Suggested Feature
1 Faction HQ (yours or others),
important site
2 Trading post, Major highway
Strategic bridge, Bandits,
3 Another major City, a Compe
a Safe meeting plac
4 a Geothermal Spring, Rive
Settlement, Swamp/Bog
 5 Mine & Industrial-focused s
Caves, Volcano, Other major
landmark
6 Coastal Settlement, Sea nom
raiders, Glacier, Major canyon
river
7 Outpost or Fortress, Ruined p
settlement site
8 Agricultural-focused settlem
wild-lands

Final Thoughts
Now The City and its environs are complete enough to create a
number of compelling stories for our players to be involved in. If
you have not already named The City, be sure to do so.

With some of the expansions planned for the future of NOVA, it

may be necessary to create settlements outside of your Sparks’
base of operations. I would encourage the group to work together
and adapt this tool to create those as well.

If you would like a practical example of the system working, you

can a full Actual Play at the end of this text.

Enjoy your your time in NOVA!

 Creation Example
Setup and Scale of the City
Our group is made up of four players, three Sparks plus their GM.
The three sparks are playing a Drifter, a Warden, and a Scorch. The
players decide that the Sparks reside in a city, likely around
500,000 in population. They place a Sunwell in the middle of the
map and prepare for the next step.

Starting Features
All four players roll to determine the Features they will start with
in the city.
• 2: An old Ruined Department Store/Mall complex
• 7: A Gorge, formed by a major earthquake from the NOVA
period
• 8: Fertile lands
• 5: A Cave complex that channels deep underground, uncovered
by the Gorge's creation

All of these locations are noted on the map round.

What is in The City

In this next stage, the GM and players roll to place locations in the
city.
• 7: A major base for a semi-feudal organization helps protect the
city, led by Major Preneet Bagrah.
• 5: Mines were developed in the Gorge and its caves to exploit
exposed resources. A large number of the miners are a part
of a coop. Their spokesperson is Todar Konan.
• 3: An Entertainment District that has rebuilt the department
store.
• 1: A Temple that was built next to the Sunwell shortly after it
was discovered.

Now the Sparks' players decide what connections their sparks have
with locations in the city.
• The Warden decided to be connected with the Entertainment
District. Their lover works there a barkeep and artisanal
brewer.
• The Drifter decided to create a new location. They rolled a 2
and decide to place a Marketplace. Their parents have a shop
in the marketplace, so they grew up working there.
• The Scorch decided to be connected with the Temple. They
were taught and largely raised by the people there.

What is in The Dusk

Finally it is time for the players and our GM to decide what is out
there in The Crimson and Dusk beyond the walls of our City.
• 8: Wildlands rich in food animals
• 2: A restored rail line between our city and a nearby locations
• 4: A nearby friendly settlement on a lake
• 5: A regularly active volcano

The rail line is represented on the map by a railroad station and rail
marking running out of the city toward the edge of the map.
Meanwhile the other locations are placed along the edged of the
map to indicate their presence “beyond the horizon,” so to speak.

And now they reached the end of their Session Zero!