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City Building and You


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I've once heard that the most important main character in any story is the setting. I think this is doubly true for rp forums since we don't have control over each and every character and how they act. Most forums limit their locations to a small region, city, or small town. So my big question for all of you is how did you build character to your location? Did you use pictures for your forums? Divided things by district and provided text? Named shops? For those with regions instead of a town or city, how did you narrow down what was important? Did you use a fictious location or a real one?

 

I like finding out why people did something for their specific site and how they tackled this. I thought long about this both with my soon to be released site and my old one as well as just seeing what people did. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I used text descriptions and pictures: maps, inn descriptions (with various kinds of photos), ship descriptions, so that everybody sees the same thing, exactly because we are several writers writing together, not mind readers, and we need to keep consequent with each other. Back in time, on a site, the poor ship people were on, not having an official description, looked sometimes like a frigate, sometimes like a brig or brigantine...

We named some places/ ships together, by vote, some I named myself. And the geographical places were real, with maps as accurate to the period as possible (a few decades difference).

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  • 4 months later...

My situation is extremely  unusual in this regard because of the games I've run. When you run a Star Trek game, a major part of your setting is defined for you - it's the ship. Whether you use "official" sources, ACTD, or something else, the ship is a moving city that's predefined and is the main setting for most of the game. It's the Wagon Train to the Stars element all over again. That can happen with a lot of sci-fi games; even Star Wars games can be set on a single Star Destroyer or Cruiser. Napoleonic naval games also can manage this pretty well. Once you've decided on a ship, that's the job done. Have the deck list posted somewhere, list a few key locations as needed. Let the players fill in the rest.  As for the places the crew go, it tends to be node-based in terms of the structure, much how I'd do in a tabletop game - here are the 'hot spots', here are the people in them, here's the mystery to solve or the problem to tackle, etc.

 

I've also run two games set in different versions of New York City - one Marvel, one TMNT (they're connected in many ways, but there are differences). Being from New Jersey and having commuted into NYC for work and play for years, I'm very aware of the City and locations therein. I find that in games set in the "real world', having those landmarks and having people who know them write there can make it feel more realistic. One of my favorite threads took place in the pizzeria across from Port Authority at midnight during a snowstorm, for instance.

 

In the one fantasy game I ran, I actually used the D&D City Builder's Guidebook from 3rd Edition, which helped me quite a lot in terms of how I constructed a city to fit my plot. I think nowadays you could also add the Gygax 75 Challenge to it - because even Star Trek can work along that line, with the "Town and Dungeon" mindset.

 

I think the biggest thing is, don't get lost in the details. They're important, sure, but the plot is more important than the setting. The setting is the backdrop against which your plot takes place. Think about this - is there any reason in particular why Romeo & Juliet takes place in Verona; or Death of a Salesman takes place in New York? So work on your plot first; your setting follows.

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Longtime roleplayer with experience across multiple franchises and genres; though trending toward Sci-Fi.

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