Vaguely inspired by the NYC thread.

In my experience, setting a game in an existing, real-world city, comes up mostly in horror, urban fantasy and supers games, and the odd near-future SF game.

How do you go about choosing a real-world city to set your game in?

What role, if any, does first-hand familiarity play?

We've set oWoD games in our hometown all the time, and took great delight in ascribing supernatural influences to local events, weird and mundane, historical and current ("expanding the subway lines through Poortown is totally a Ventrue plan to flush Sabbat packs from their secret shantytown havens"). Of course there's a thin line between fun and cringeworthy ("my 13th generation Nosferatu is ghouling the Mayor"? Good luck with the Prince, and the Sheriff, and other Masquerade-enforcing parties and their heavily armed, daylight-mobile, ghoul-led goon squads). We've done it so much that, for our Requiem game, the GM specifically mentioned that he wanted to set the game elsewhere. I think it's a bit silly, but since Vampire (old and new) is such a scenery-drinking, style-over-substance game, I can appreciate anyone anywhere in the world wanting to set a chronicle of fleeting power and inevitable decadence in Detroit, or ages-old upper-class intrigue in Boston, or monsters in beautiful guises in Paris, or stark contrasts in Rio.

One of us tried to set a supers game here too, but for some reason we didn't let him; we just couldn't take the idea seriously enough to play a coherent game without it breaking down into a shapeless blob of lame jokes. I feel superheroes (at least in their classic, spandex-clad-people-with-superpowers presentation) feel so uniquely American that it feels, I don't know, "wrong" to set a modern-day supers campaign anywhere that's not a big US metropolis like NYC or LA or Chicago or Miami.

What do y'all think?

As always, reports of first-hand experience are much appreciated.

Quote from: The Butcher;516554One of us tried to set a supers game here too, but for some reason we didn't let him; we just couldn't take the idea seriously enough to play a coherent game without it breaking down into a shapeless blob of lame jokes. I feel superheroes (at least in their classic, spandex-clad-people-with-superpowers presentation) feel so uniquely American that it feels, I don't know, "wrong" to set a modern-day supers campaign anywhere that's not a big US metropolis like NYC or LA or Chicago or Miami.

What do y'all think?

As always, reports of first-hand experience are much appreciated.

I say, trust your instincts. Sure, I justify things  that larger than life heroes deserve larger than life settings where the stakes are higher and everything is bigger. But really, when your brain tells you something makes dramatic sense just go with it.

I always do supers in a large city. Doesn't feel right, otherwise.

I set my crime network campaigns in real world boston, but use entirely fictional crime families and bosses. For crime RPGs it works very well because knowing the ins and outs of a place makes a huge difference.

I usually try to choose a city my players are not familiar with, especially when I am familiar with it. I find it remains familiar enough just through being the same culture, and through TV, movies, etc... However, the lack of familiarity with the details means I can make shit up or mess with it without jarring my player's experiences and memories of a place. Unless, of course, it's PA, in which case I love to lay waste to intimately familiar places to the players

My rule is either

1) Use a city which everyone knows very well, like home city, so there can be a lot of references

Or
2) Use a city which everyone barely knows, so whatever shit as a GM I say, it stays.

That does not mean I do not care about source material about the city at all, but GMing isn't a job where I feel tempted to be Frederick Forsyth*.

I have yet to run a supers game, so...

*For those illiterate enough - he's well known for very detailed investigation of his source material for fiction.

Quote from: The Butcher;516554One of us tried to set a supers game here too, but for some reason we didn't let him; we just couldn't take the idea seriously enough to play a coherent game without it breaking down into a shapeless blob of lame jokes. I feel superheroes (at least in their classic, spandex-clad-people-with-superpowers presentation) feel so uniquely American that it feels, I don't know, "wrong" to set a modern-day supers campaign anywhere that's not a big US metropolis like NYC or LA or Chicago or Miami.

What do y'all think?

As always, reports of first-hand experience are much appreciated.

I think I get that. I just can't visualize super heroes in Washington DC. Without the tall buildings it just doesn't seem right. It might be cool for a lower-powered, street-level, Heroes-style game though. I did set my Alternity Dark Matter game in DC, and did a vaguely "Big Trouble in Little China" type series of adventures using some actually locations in DC, such as the 930 Club (one of my old hang-outs).

Quote from: Rincewind1;5165692) Use a city which everyone barely knows, so whatever shit as a GM I say, it stays.

That does not mean I do not care about source material about the city at all, but GMing isn't a job where I feel tempted to be Frederick Forsyth*.


*For those illiterate enough - he's well known for very detailed investigation of his source material for fiction.

Yep, this is where I'm coming from most of the time. I will research a place, such as when I run Miami Nights, using Miami (of course). After that, I'll just make shit up Mostly the little details, like what convenience store is here... what mom and pop deli is there, etc.

Quote from: Rincewind1;516569My rule is either

1) Use a city which everyone knows very well, like home city, so there can be a lot of references

Or
2) Use a city which everyone barely knows, so whatever shit as a GM I say, it stays.

Pretty much this.  For my CP2020 campaign, I used the Greater Boston Area, 'cause I know enough about it first-hand to make extrapolating it into the crapsack CP world we all know and loathe easy-peasy.  This also means that we (my group) all have plenty of built-in associations with the area, that I can both rely on (people know what parts of town are "the Combat Zone," since Boston is the actual, real-world origin of that trope in the first place), and play off of (when I change something, people notice).

The other GMs in our circle are more Shadowrun guys, and their games are pretty much in Seattle by default.  They don't use a stitch of published SR material on the setting, though, nor do they do any significant amount of research - and since none of us knows a damned thing about Seattle, it doesn't freakin' matter.  Ignorance, meet bliss.

For games like WoD (old or new though I favor new given that's what I have).  I go with my local area or where I lived long term.  Lucky for me I lived in both the Bay Area, was born there in fact, and the  Seattle area for years, so those tend to be my go to cities, all the better given I live in Kansas City now, I have wide latitude to make changes without my players knowing any better.  Because I know the area good enough to keep it believable.

Quote from: The Butcher;516554What role, if any, does first-hand familiarity play?

I try to avoid any cities I don't have first-hand experience with that my player(s) do.

If I don't, I either end up dealing with somebody who's constantly correcting me and/or I end up repeatedly disrupting somebody's suspension of disbelief because I'm screwing up their hometown.

Though Rincewind's method is solid as long as your players are good sports about you messing up their stomping grounds.  I find it's a tossup, some play along some muck up the works.

Love using real cities and regions. Helps my prep time immensely. One of the more fun tricks is to use the props but use an older map or rotate its grid a bit to mess things up a bit (a la alternate earths). But Rincewind's spot on the money, either use it for group familiarity or something alien for group suspension. Nothing like a large, inhabited spaces to give a grand scale -- and grand scale is so useful towards mystery and exploration (just like dungeons!).

I admit I ought to start a Cthulhu game set in my home city, since Łódź is Polish equivalent of Glasgow - except we still are dirty and a terrible postsocialism hellhole of greyness.

Quote from: Rincewind1;516618I admit I ought to start a Cthulhu game set in my home city, since Łódź is Polish equivalent of Glasgow - except we still are dirty and a terrible postsocialism hellhole of greyness.

Heh - that's the other thing.  I live in New England.  It would take a lot of heavy lifting to set traditional CoC anywhere BUT where I live.