Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?

[bear_necessities]

@krmbm said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

@thesuntsar said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

where my Long Island games at, where I can RP holding the door open for people at 7-11 and wondering when road construction is ever going to end on my commute to work

we can set simon: the mush in long island and really fuck up everyone's immersion, how bout dat?

GDI you stole my joke again

[Too Old For This]

@thesuntsar said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

where my Long Island games at, where I can RP holding the door open for people at 7-11 and wondering when road construction is ever going to end on my commute to work

Don't forget your cowa-fee (I do not do the LI accent justice) before you gotta get ma to the hairdressers cause its bridge night!

[thesuntsar]

@krmbm lol i just choked on my coffee

[thesuntsar]

@too-old-for-this said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

cowa-fee

i'm hundred percent saying this outloud like koala

[WildBaboons]

Maine only has one Cracker Barrel and that's relatively new.

[bear_necessities]

@wildbaboons Las Vegas has two but also were built within the past 2 years. Best day of my life.

[faraday]

My post-apoc game was set in Maine, in a rural town with a population of about 2000 people.

So there's been at least one MU using the "largely rural and heavily forested with a low population density" setting of actual Maine

[Too Old For This]

@thesuntsar said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

@too-old-for-this said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

cowa-fee

i'm hundred percent saying this outloud like koala

YAAAAAAAAAAAS! I hear it in my head constantly.

[Lotherio]

I think OP is saying what others said about NM - not much of what you think it is (some Moose, I think the infrastructure is separated north/south with some off grid stuff more northerly?) . If I did NM it'd be completely wrong and that's okay.

I think another interesting area might be north Wisconsin, a little city area with lots of rural areas to explore (similar to what outsiders view Maine or rural Washington state as?), a few seasons, lots of snow. I'm probably totally wrong, but a few islands, can have some light houses and stuff to explore. Some sunken ships (Edmund Fitzgerald).

[Pyrephox]

I think Maine has that sort of interesting combination of not being a place many people know intimately, but also being a place where people have vaguely positive feelings about. Like, no one wants to put a game in North Dakota, because no one wants to even pretend to live in North Dakota. (Apologies to North Dakota.)

Whereas, Maine at least sounds like somewhere that you can imagine someone living and enjoying themselves, but is much less likely (although not immune from) to have a great many people who want to tell you how you're Doing Maine Wrong, unlike a lot of the more 'iconic' places.

Which is not to say that I wouldn't love a resurgence of games set in iconic places like New York, or LA, or even Atlanta or Austin or St. Louis.

[bear_necessities]

@pyrephox you basically said what I've been trying to figure out how to say so ty

[Auspice]

I want Austin for the Driskill alone. It's gorgeous and supposedly haunted.

Also we have tons of 'hidden' bars. And Spider House, which the first time I visited (for the worst 1st date I've ever had) I immediately thought 'this is 100% the sort of place I'd put in a MU'). The monthly (well, pre-covid) witches market.

...Austin's pretty baller and it's a shame no games are set here.

[bear_necessities]

I don't think I'd ever be willing to build a mush based in a real city. Can you imagine the posts? Omg this street goes north/south, not east/west!! Etc.

It's why I stick to fake places in real states.

[Roz]

I built a grid for an NYC game I staffed once but I was living in NYC at the time, so that helped.

[bear_necessities]

@roz I've lived in Vegas for 10 years and I couldn't begin to build a game here. I'd get everything wrong lol

[krmbm]

@dig Los Angeles
@desc here=You are in traffic.

Grid is done.

[Lotherio]

@krmbm said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

@desc here=You are in traffic.

... While few clouds are in the sky, there is a hazy yellow something in the distance in every direction.

[krmbm]

@lotherio THERE ARE NEVER CLOUDS IN CALIFORNIA IMMERSION OVER

[Auspice]

@krmbm said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

@lotherio THERE ARE NEVER CLOUDS IN CALIFORNIA IMMERSION OVER

Except during February when it finally rains and everyone forgets how to drive.

[Aria]

@auspice said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

@wildbaboons

I was literally talking to @Aria about this.

My theory is that people are drawn to it because of Lovecraft and Stephen King, but feel like they need a CITY for their WoD/WoD-Lite setting.

The thing is, small town was sort of why those stories worked. The lure of Maine, for me, is that it's quiet, remote, etc. I mean that just makes things even more eery if you're going for something mildly horror-ish.

But I guess people feel that a game must have a city to work, maybe?

This was legit why I was asking in the other thread. I don't think the ad or the game was a bad or anything. I had just read that, scanned a few pages on the site, and wasn't sure if they were skipping the default image of Maine that people have, if the addition of a massive city like that was meant to try to counterbalance the sort of fucky and weird that The Reach turned into when they tried to build a game on what was supposed to be the cultural shorthand of American Gothic horror set in sleepy towns in the Northeast and then players came in and went "Major TV studio! Casino! 48 nightclubs! Whooooooo!", or what.

I like the concept! I thought it was cool.

I also wanted to make sure I hadn't misunderstood something because I do think a game can take a split-the-difference approach as long as that's actually what staff is trying to do. But I would rather ask than be the dude who builds his 114-floor skyscraper for his multibillion dollar telecommunications firm in the middle of Paducah, KY or the person who decides that it totally makes sense to plunk a Red Talon cairn down in the middle of Central Park because there are clearly so many wolves living wild in Manhattan.