Location, Location, Location: Where Do You Want to See Games?
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What it says on the tin. Where would you all like to see games set, and why?
Y'all finished or y'all done? I ain't go no more talkin'.
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I think by necessity games tend to be set in places that give the broadest range of settings possible, geographically and sociologically. That's why, for example, eldritch is set in Northern California. Mountains? Check. Forest? Check. Desert? Check. City? Check. Beach? Check.
I mean, it took a little fudging or whatever, but there you go.
I like to see settings that are characters in themselves. It's not so much that I'd like to see a specific setting, but that I want the setting to really matter and for both staff and players to really push for it to matter. The Reach lost a lot of its mystique when everyone broke the setting, essentially. It didn't feel like a small town anymore.
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Columbus Ohio. It is a surprisingly diverse and cultural city.
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Settings, much like characters, aren't self-driven. A great concept on paper still has to be developed so it breathes on the grid - and that takes work and maintenance.
As long as you don't pick a place that's somehow... wrong (say, a town too small, or some country most western-world players can't related to and don't know much about) location is irrelevant. Active, creative staff and players are what makes it work. Set it anywhere you want, it'll work or fail on the merit of how well it's taken care of, not if you picked Seattle over Cleveland.
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Miami. Hawaii. Greenland. The Great Frigid Wastes of Canada.
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Anywhere I live or have lived so I can be a know-it-all.
Actually, I can't even dredge up firm feelings on this question. I don't think where a game is set really matters as much as how you use the setting and break out places within it that make for good RP.
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I actually enjoy learning about new places/times/cities to be honest. So for me what I love is to see staff buy in and excitement, real tie ins for storylines, theme enforcement, and the like. If the staff barely scratches the surface in involvement with their city/area, if there's nothing to really help shape things in CG/theme, ect, then I don't think you can expect player buy in and it will slide to generic no matter if it's set in Paris, Fargo, or Mexico City.
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The Kowloon Walled City, in the late 80s or early 90s. In 1987, the demolition was announced. Imagine how much more difficult the forced evictions of the 90s would have been if the residents included vampires and the like.
As others have said though, the details are critical for providing a reasonably diverse set of RP locations and solid sense of atmosphere. I don't think I have the data to provide the details.
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Victorian England. Also 1940's England during World War II.
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I want more fictional cities, to be honest. With neighborhoods and cultures that tie strongly into the theme of the game they're hosting. If it's a horror game, then I want at least one Detroit-like abandoned district filled with dark, crumbling commercial buildings and a murder-house or five. If it's an urban fantasy game, I want weird geography and architecture that's designed to take advantage of ley lines, summon ancient gods, or imprison demons. If it's a political game, I want strong divisions of neighborhoods by class/heritage/political affiliation, as well as a few leisure districts where all types mingle, scheme, and get in trouble with each other. If it's high fantasy, there had better be some dungeons and ancient ruins involved.
I tend to feel like creating a setting that highlights and supports the type of play that the game is about is better, although not easier, than trying to shoehorn a real place into games that - often - are not ABOUT real places. Exceptions exist, of course. I mean, if you want to play a game about gang wars in the 30s (even if the gangsters are also wizards) then setting the game in a real city that had a lot of gang activity in the 30s makes absolute sense, and there are a lot of resources available to allow you to highlight the gangliness of the setting. But even there, you wouldn't spend much grid space on the places of the city where the 'action' isn't likely to happen.
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Miami really got me thinking. I'd love to see a setting like 80's Miami with a twist. All that neon and excess. Fickle coastal weather, great cultural diversity and still the grime and grit remains. Maybe a future imperfect kind of thing. Hyper tech, loose morals, instant gratification on steroids. A neon nightmare on the beach. That'd be nifty, I think.
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@Pyrephox said:
I want more fictional cities, to be honest.
Good idea.
On the D&D side, I always wanted a campaign focused around the city of Sigil; a city set inside a pocket dimension shaped like a torus that connects to many worlds. Pair that sort of idea with some delightfully apocalyptic tendencies-- like the space is shrinking and buildings are slowly being smashed together while the people struggle to survive with nowhere else to go.
Of a similar shrinking-finite-space motif, the Everafter from the Hollows books; it was an anchored projection of the "real" world , subtly timeshifted but bound by the same day/night schedule and dragged along by the ley lines burned through the void by (spoiler spoiler spoiler)... Buildings constructed in the real world would eventually appear there, though shrunken and distorted and eternally crumbling. Between that and the "surface demons," most of the more civilized demons and their pets lived far beneath the surface, endlessly squabbling over ownership rights to their shrinking world.
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@Pondscum said:
Victorian England. Also 1940's England during World War II.
YES! Have you been watching Foyle's War too?
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For World of Darkness, especially in a MUX, it has to be a city with a population capable of supporting the player population. A global city, a large metropolis of some kind. The Reach in its small-town feel was largely unplayable for that reason. Everyone and their neighbor was a supernatural of some type. Normal mortals seemed to be outnumbered.
Boston could be fun, if it weren't already taken. London could also be fun, if -it- weren't already covered in one of the vampire books, though it has a bit more flexibility at least. Los Angeles is a good city to use for just about anything, as it has universal appeal for both mortals and supernaturals.
Though I do agree with @Pyrephox. Whatever city you make, remember that it has to exist in the setting that you're playing for. If it's a WoD city, then it has to be the WoD version of that city. It has to be... well, dark. Dangerous, slightly sinister and mysterious. It has to have that danger, that draw, that thing that says "come explore my secrets, and hope to get out of it alive".
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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I just finished Spartacus: Blood and Sand.
I kindof want a Rome game cribbing from that, screw historical accuracy. Give me a combo of that, plus what Marius and Pandora talk about in their Anne Rice books, plus 300, Xena and Hercules. There, I'm happy.
@Derp
And this is why I advocate either using cities you know real well, or making something up whole cloth that makes SENSE when you put it into place. -
I would legit play the hell out of a WoD game set in ancient rome. Maybe around the time of the rise of the emperors, all of that political awesomeness. I think that particular punic war was set just before then, so I'd be down for that too.
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I want to see games set in kooky, mysterious small towns. Bonus points for those small towns being in Maine.
I also hate life and want to suffer.
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I'd like to see more games set in the American Southeast that doesn't rhyme with Pew Moreens.
Utah, for some reason, suggests potential but I think its mostly because that's a state that was founded on utter batshittery as a religion. It makes it easy for almost any wackadoo premise for why this town is soooo evil, guys! as a setting.
"...and a single tube of glorious MAC Russian Red lipstick because I am a fancy motherfucker." - Muffy Bolding
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@AmishRakeFight said:
I'd like to see more games set in the American Southeast that doesn't rhyme with Pew Moreens.
Utah, for some reason, suggests potential but I think its mostly because that's a state that was founded on utter batshittery as a religion. It makes it easy for almost any wackadoo premise for why this town is soooo evil, guys! as a setting.
Yeah, but by that standard, so does Rome. A trojan prince gets exiled from his home and follows the guidance of his benevolent mother-goddess to a spot where he sires twins that are raised and nursed by a wolf that eventually go on to found the city of Rome, which later becomes the capital city of a jewish mystery cult that spans the world...
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I want a game set somewhere that staff and players can maintain as that location. I don't care where it is, but if I wanted another inconsequential setting, I could play anywhere.
