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Real World Vs. Fantasy Settings
Tweet Topic Started: Jan 2 2008, 02:20 PM (144 Views)
kismetrose Jan 2 2008, 02:20 PM Post #1
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For a long time, I've run a D&D campaign set in the Forgotten Realms. When I first started, I wanted to make a city of my own so that I could start out in my own sandbox, with fewer preconceived notions about how the city should be. I found a good spot in the region I wanted to be in, came up with a sketch of history and hit the ground running. Over the years the city of Thandell has become more and more defined without being exhaustively explored; we still don't have a map, but if I made one it would be a general layout anyway. When the PCs have traveled, I've looked to the official books for information about various regions and cities. I've used a lot from the books but I've never tried to be 100% true to their vision (and in some cases I've come up with renditions very different from the established ones).

But for the most part, I've worked with a freedom that comes from playing in a fantasy setting. Nobody can really tell me I'm wrong because it's my version of the Forgotten Realms (and anybody who's going to insist that we stick to the official version isn't going to be playing with me for very long). It's not like any of these places actually exist - they are what they're created to be, lock, stock, and barrel. Fantasy places can be changed in major ways without too much resistance from the players, too.

Since I've started running a Mage: the Ascension solo for Valefor, though, I've felt strangely constrained. It's set in San Diego, mostly because it was a place I was familiar with but hadn't lived in, and I wasn't sure where else I'd put it. I've looked up various information about the area but I'm still disconnected from it. I also have my own associations with the place because of my visits, and that's difficult to get past. It's like I'm fighting my own mental image of the city so that I can establish it as a World of Darkness sort of place. I'm not sure that changing locations will help, either - the geographical location is good, I've already estabished NPCs that Valefor likes, and Valefor's character is definitely a Californian. I don't know entirely why I am stuck on this point, either, because I'm usually able to gloss over the setting to get to the story. I think that part of the problem is that I don't have much of a story to work with yet; I have a few, relatively small ideas in mind but nothing major. The PC isn't the kind that's going to generate lots of things to do, either; she'll come up with some things, but otherwise she's content to just be. I don't want to have to do as much work for a solo as I do for a group game, I just don't, but I feel like something major needs to be done to save this solo. I'd like to use the setting to generate stories but since I don't have a firm grasp of that, it's not going to work.

When I ran my Vampire: the Dark Ages game, I didn't have this feeling of being restrained. Perhaps it's because that game was set centuries ago, and the past has its own sense of fantasy to it. I did a bit of research but I knew that there was no way I was going to get close to historical accuracy, so I went for something simpler. I played off of my player's mental images of the Dark Ages but I added more darkness and grit. All I had to do was reduce the population a bit, lower the buildings a few stories in height, dirty things up, and voila! London just before the Black Death. And I wasn't necessarily using the city of London to generate stories. I went into the game with lots of ideas, an over-arching main story, and characters that were going to generate plenty of their own leads.

The trouble with basing a game in a real life, modern day location is that it's constrained by its real life dimensions. It is difficult to make significant changes to a place when people already have their own mental images of it and their own beliefs about it. Just by making a neighborhood classier or more poverty-stricken, you can run up against a player's suspension of disbelief. And I have my own suspension of disbelief to worry about as well. Valefor's pointed out that one of the good things about using real-world places is that you generally don't have to describe them as much. You can just say, "You hop a plane to new York" and folks have their own mental images of New York. That is a benefit. But I find myself wrestling with the rest.

I am planning to run Changeling: the Lost sometime, probably set in the modern day. I bought myself Damnation City over the Christmas break and read it, and I can use it to better define a city or to create one from scratch. And for a few weeks now I've been seriously wondering if I should start a city from scratch. It'll probably take more work than just defining a city that already exists but it could be a real breath of fresh air. I could always use a map from another place instead of drawing my own, too. (That's what they did with Sunnydale in Buffy the Vampire Slayer; any time you see a map of Sunnydale, it's really a map of Santa Barbara.) I've been bouncing my thoughts off of Valefor bit by bit, and I still feel the need to examine the issue some more before I make my choice.

So if any of you have any thoughts about city settings - the good things, the bad, issues you've dealt with - I'm all ears. Even if you've only dealt with fantasy settings, you've still used settings in important ways.
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Lord_Iames_Osari Jan 7 2008, 10:57 PM Post #2
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Well, I started my first game as a DM with the player in a city, which later morphed into a major city in my homebrew campaign world. From its undefined beginnings, it evolved into my world's equivalent of Constantinople: a major trade nexus and economic power.

The biggest difficulty I've had is deciding on the geography and layout of the city. In its current incarnation, it's backed by cliffs on the north with the docks and beaches to the south, sitting at the very tip of a thin peninsula. There's a wide, well-kept primary boulevard that goes from the main gate to the government buildings, and along a section of which is a street market. I avoid having to figure out where anything else is by having a taxi service to ferry PCs about.
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kismetrose Jan 11 2008, 05:10 AM Post #3
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After doing a good amount of thinking about setting creation, I've come to realize some things.

My own mental images of particular places get in the way of my efforts more than just about anything else. Stories and lives can happen just about anywhere, so I should be able to run just about anywhere, with enough desire and probably some prep. But it's relatively easy to fall into a pit you don't know is there and I didn't realize my own brief impressions of various locations would ever get in my way. I mean, I've spent less than a month's time in San Diego in my whole life, yet I've had strong positive impressions of the place because I was on vacation, seeing the city's best side. So when I try to bring myself to darken the place - and the World of Darkness requires some kind of shadow - I grind against my own opinion and something has to give. I'm tired of fighting myself. If I want to move forward, I have to be willing to make any place my own. If I have to reimagine large swaths of territory or stamp darkness on shiny streets, so be it. It will actually be better for me if I ignore my own memories and go with something new, and there's no harm in it so long as I create and maintain a solid sense of how the city works. Every game system has its own sort of logic - what's possible and reasonable - and settings have the same. If I stick to that, I should be okay.

Part of the problem is that Valefor's solo character is rather passive and doesn't have much in the way of goals. She has very few things on her To Do list at any given time, doesn't want to commit to any of the supernatural groups she's met, and doesn't know a whole lot of people yet. She's perfectly content to hang out and Valefor's content with a lot of talk interactions, which is fine on one hand. I'm normally up for social interactions, but they have to go somewhere eventually. They have to be a part of a larger motion, like eddies in a stream. I don't know that I want to be the only source of plots and action in the solo, but there's more than one way to skin a cat. I'm sure that if I spend some real sit down time with it, I can come up with things that the character will have to deal with, and we can go from there.

I do very well when I have something upon which to base my own efforts. I jumped right into the Forgotten Realms because I had a wealth of information at my disposal and could do what I wanted with it. Creating things from scratch has never really been my style, because I don't usually have the time or energy for it. So I've been looking into the Chicago setting that White Wolf has already published, as a place to start. So far I like what I'm seeing. I'm pretty sure that what I end up with will be different from what was published, but it'll be easier to make due to the printed materials.
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