Worldbuilding for a Generated City and its Personalities

Our Constantinople-inspired city in Streets of Fortuna is populated by literally thousands of fully simulated citizens, generated on the fly and then living their lives, including finding work, love, food, entertainment, and spirituality, within a city which is also generated in its layout and locations. This is made more complicated by the fact that we want our world to feel flavorful, alive, varied, and full of strong personalities. So, first, how do we actually generate a population that makes sense? Which comes first, someone’s personality traits or their family or their occupation? Why? Then, how do we help the player understand all those factors? And finally, how do we make the world and those people distinctive, and best use our reference materials from history? This talk will walk step by step through how we achieve this, combining perspectives from game design, procedural generation logic, and storytelling.