Preparing a real city for modern campaigns

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How do you personally prepare to use a real city in a campaign set in modern times?

Do you prefer to prep real cities as sandboxes or just as thin backdrops for very specific scenarios?
How much research do you do? Do you anticipate players calling you out for inaccuracies?
Have you ever found yourself regretting that you didn't do enough prep?

Do you use existing maps of the place or draw up more 'game-ready' ones? What level of granularity do you have for your maps?
How many specific locations do you write up beforehand? In how much detail?

What sort of and how many NPCs/factions do you make sure you've got ready for any eventuality?

Have you used cities that you haven't personally visited?
 
The only time I've done it was in running a Champions game for the UMass-Boston crowd out of contemporaneous (mid-1980s) Boston, where the party was the "Crimson" supers group, outright funded by Harvard as a publicity stunt. But, well ... I was already running three fantasy campaigns, in which I was doing my usual insane prep work and setting creation, and I really didn't want to spend much time or effort on it. (Probably part of my motivation for establishing a setting we all knew so well.) I said this to the players outright, and that there wouldn't be much need for detective work -- it'd mostly be a brawl-fest.

35 years on, I don't recall much by way of players calling me out for inaccuracies, but I'm usually pretty tolerant of them doing so -- if I get it wrong, it's on me to get it right.
 
I don't think the geography of a modern city matters particularly in the context of a modern game when you can just jump in car and get to your destination in anything between 15 minutes to an hour. You don't need to interact with anything on the way and the greatest threat is getting stuck in traffic. There are exceptions of course. In a gang based game inspired by the movie The Warriors, crossing territories is a big deal. Criminal organisations may also have territories but again it only matters if you are directly involved with criminals.

LIkewise I don't really worry about getting the details right, any more than I do worry of getting things canonically correct in popular fictional settings. I tend to just look the city up on Wikipedia as it can provide inspiration and a touch of local colour, but I really don't sweat it. I mean it's probably wise not talk about to Kansas City's deep sea harbour , but does it really matter if there really is a Roosevelt High School or Indepence Park?
 
I ran an online game of urban horror set in contemporary Baltimore. We used google street maps for the surface and I made a point-crawl map of the undercity that lies beneath the surface. I did prepare battle maps for all the anticipated encounter locations, but kept them generic enough to repurpose for later reuse. As I hadn't visited the city in 30 years I didn't try to base the factions or conspiracies on modern events. I used the history of the city, back to colonial times and the poems of E.A. Poe. All of that was easily accessible online and I enjoyed the research. Just looking at wiki articles on the founders and mayors of Baltimore gave more hooks for supernatural conspiracy theories than I would ever need. Most factions were based on politically-aligned street gangs from the 19th century.

The four guys I ran it for all live in the Baltimore area. They would tell me about driving past landmarks that had been the scene of supernatural battles last week in the game. They thought it was great. When I did get something wrong, they just waved it off. It was never an issue. We played for about 15 sessions of them exploring undercity locations and diabolic plots at the behest of patrons who wanted answers or the recovery of magical artifacts. The game, Esoteric Enterprises, gives a procedure for generating undercities. Tying that to the real city just requires reading wikipedia articles and some imagination. And time. Everything takes time. Prepping the battlemaps for online play was the most time consuming part. I was enjoying making them very detailed, but eventually got burned-out on that. When I do online play now, I put a lot less detail into the maps and rely on verbal descriptions, as I had always done for face-to-face games.
 
A digital pinboard of images that enables everyone to visualise the city, how people dressed, modes of transport, etc. We just did one for London in 1870.

“The thing that makes [fantastical] imaginations interesting is their translation into commonplace terms and a rigid exclusion of other marvels from the story. Then it becomes human.”
 
I do a google image search of maps. I like maps that include regions and I like tourist maps. I go to wikipedia for general info about the city (population, mayor, main commerce, current issues, etc.). I keep it open and only prep a few key locations, like 5 or 6. But I go to google maps street view and take screenshots of the buildings or pull out for the 3D view. Here's some I used for Worlds in Peril supers game set (at first) in Portland, Maine. The party was a group of unregistered supers who were eco-terrorists hiding out in an old WWII Battery on Peaks Island:

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Then I threw in random pics of actual bunkers:
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And used a lot of these for parts of Portland:
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They moved to Atlanta, Baltimore, and then to NYC and I basically did the same thing. I would use real places mixed with made up ones. I've been to most of the places, but no one ever called me out but none of my players were natives of these cities.

I don't think that prep took more than an hour per city, maybe less for the initial set up, and then I would add/expand.

The main factions for this campaign was 1. the federal Delta Prime registered heroes, 2. an underground supers network, 3. other unregistered supers (some loners some teams), and 4. a couple standard criminal organizations.
 
One of the explicit suggestions in Monster of the Week and Vampires: The Masquerade is to set the town as the one you and your players live in. Of course, this isn't feasible in an online game, but I've found it works really well for in-person ones. This means everyone at the table is able to just use their own knowledge, and any maps will be immediately recognizable.

The ability to just say "Oh yeah, you know the corner store at X street? Well, it's full of ghosts" and then you can describe how the ghosts are smashing all the bottles of your local microbrewery select (which someone is drinking at the table while you play). It gets everyone involved way more quickly.

Anytime there's an inaccuracy, you can delegate it to the player who knows that area the best. If there's road construction, you can incorporate it directly into your game.


Whether doing this or a city I've never been in, I always just highlight a couple of key locations rather than trying to do out everything. Cities are big! They're complex, changing systems. Much better to have the exciting scene in an established nightclub or theater rather than trying to be picky with the hundreds of buildings in the area. I would probably encourage my players to look up the city on a map and select some of their character's hangouts (restaurants, pubs) on their own.

For factions, I'm usually comfortable with 3 or 4, regardless of the city size. Let's me improvise any new scenes with the flair of at least one of them.
 
I just tended to do key locations in cities instead of the whole thing. Sometimes they were semi-fictional, sometimes they were real locations that I both had and had never been to. The only time I did "research" was when I set one scenario at Brady Lake in Ohio, and it was pretty easy to find histories of reports of strange phenomena in the area. (The lake had been owned by Spiritualists at one point in its history, but I forgot to mention that in the adventure.) Overall, though, I use modern-day cities and towns more as thin backdrops for specific scenarios.

Maps are the tricky part, since modern-day battle maps are notoriously difficult to find. But I used them whenever I found one that would work. Even some cyberpunk maps can work for a modern-day city at night. Once I just used a Google map of an area. I've always been fine with simple module maps. I used one of Milwaukee that just had a few specific locations highlighted on it for players to visit, but I also improvised other visits around the city.
 
I don't think the geography of a modern city matters particularly in the context of a modern game when you can just jump in car and get to your destination in anything between 15 minutes to an hour.

Quite aside from Nobby-W's response, man. That's optimistic for some cities. Here's an anecdote.

You're coming up on the Dewey Square tunnel from the south, during afternoon rush hour. So you need to get into the right lane, because that's moving faster; the offramp to South Station leaches off traffic. But don't hesitate -- you have to jump right back to the left to avoid the clogging from the Kneeland Street on-ramp. A couple hundred feet, and you're back to the right for the next offramp, and stick tight, because the offramp to Atlantic Avenue's coming up and that lane's doing well; you're out of the tunnel now. Back to the left to avoid the onramp, then back to the right for the Callahan Tunnel offramp. Back to the left, and now you're just going to have to persevere, because the lane drop at North Station's coming up, and it's a tight squeeze. From there you're in a holding pattern until you pass the split to the Mystic River Bridge; hang left on the upper deck past Sullivan Square, and it's clear sailing from there.

That was my afternoon commute in Boston for three years, until I moved to western Massachusetts, and the pattern was ingrained enough and memorable that ... well, here are the two punchlines:

(a) I last drove that afternoon commute in 1988, and
(b) Since the Big Dig, none of that even exists any more -- the Central Artery elevated expressway was torn down in 2005.

Nonetheless, I can still visualize it from memory. The whole distance I've described is less than a mile, and back then, I could have *walked* the distance in half the time it took to drive it; if during rush hour you could do that drive in only a half hour, you were doing alright.

And that's the Boston commute. I've driven through two New York City rush hours, and they were ugly enough for me to have always done my level best to either cut through that stretch at 5 AM, or to take great loops to avoid NYC altogether, en route to elsewhere.
 
I don't think the geography of a modern city matters particularly in the context of a modern game when you can just jump in car and get to your destination in anything between 15 minutes to an hour. You don't need to interact with anything on the way and the greatest threat is getting stuck in traffic.
Isn't this something you should avoid? If the players can fast forward to any location, the game loses something for me. A sense of danger and mystery is lost, I guess.
 
Isn't this something you should avoid? If the players can fast forward to any location, the game loses something for me. A sense of danger and mystery is lost, I guess.

Some players love it, some hate it. My wife's best friend joined my campaign a couple years back, and didn't last very long. He's a skilled and veteran RPer, an engineer (and so quick with math), quick to pick up the nuances of GURPS, readier than most novices to ask questions about how to do things better.

Except he disliked two key elements of my game. First is that I run a logistics-heavy campaign; resource management is important. The more important, though, is that I feel the journey's as important as the payoff. No one gets to fast forward anywhere; the party's going to walk the walk, and they'd better pack well for the journey, and be prepared to deal with the various vicissitudes the journey imposes. Nate found that utterly boring, and just wanted to get straight to the "adventure" -- spending an entire game session on the journey was not his style.

Now yeah, in a modern urban campaign, I'd absolutely do the same. "Yeah, the Big Bad's going to commit the atrocity in a half hour. In Cambridge. You're in Quincy. It's rush hour in Boston. That trip will take you a *minimum* of 45 minutes on the subway -- hah! -- and a fair bit longer in a car. How do you plan on pulling this off?"

Short of commandeering a helicopter or a speedboat (and by the bye, you're racing that speedboat flat out through a congested harbor and past a Coast Guard Station) -- or teleportation -- I'm at a loss myself, but heck, the PCs aren't guaranteed an easy scenario, are they?

Anyway, I know at least one guy who'd be pressing his lips together, thinly, and wondering when we could just bloody get on with the battle.
 
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Some players love it, some hate it. My wife's best friend joined my campaign a couple years back, and didn't last very long. He's a skilled and veteran RPer, an engineer (and so quick with math), quick to pick up the nuances of GURPS, readier than most novices to ask questions about how to do things better.

Except he disliked two key elements of my game. First is that I run a logistics-heavy campaign; resource management is important. The more important, though, is that I feel the journey's as important as the payoff. No one gets to fast forward anywhere; the party's going to walk the walk, and they'd better pack well for the journey, and be prepared to deal with the various vicissitudes the journey imposes. Nate found that utterly boring, and just wanted to get straight to the adventure -- spending an entire game session on the journey was not his style.

Now yeah, in a modern urban campaign, I'd absolutely do the same. "Yeah, the Big Bad's going to commit the atrocity in a half hour. In Cambridge. You're in Quincy. It's rush hour in Boston. That trip will take you a *minimum* of 45 minutes on the subway -- hah! -- and a fair bit longer in a car. How do you plan on pulling this off?"

Short of commandeering a helicopter or a speedboat (and by the bye, you're racing that speedboat flat out through a congested harbor and past a Coast Guard Station) -- or teleportation -- I'm at a loss myself, but heck, the PCs aren't guaranteed an easy scenario, are they?

Anyway, I know at least one guy who'd be pressing his lips together, thinly, and wondering when we could just bloody get on with the battle.

I like incorporating travel in a modern-day campaign, especially since it reminds me so much of my AD&D days. But I also feel for players who can't stand it or don't expect it. I try to mix it up. I was planning on a travel-heavy adventure that involved the PCs racing across a town to defeat multiple monsters in a certain amount of time but I never got around to running it. But at other times I'll just "fast forward" players getting to locations across a city.
 
Isn't this something you should avoid? If the players can fast forward to any location, the game loses something for me. A sense of danger and mystery is lost, I guess.
I disagree. At least a little. Lots of great urban games treat the city as a collection of places rather than a keyed map. In a modern game I never really care about drive time or street addresses, except in those rare cases where it might really matter. Much like a movie or TV show, when the PCs move from Police plaza to 92nd and Broadway they just kind of get there. How they get there is immaterial unless time is a current thing that matters in-fiction.
 
I was more thinking about the encounters you could miss out. Walking the street across your appartement towards the subway. The subway itself. There could be people you want to talk to, you could be followed, you could get mugged etc.
 
Isn't this something you should avoid? If the players can fast forward to any location, the game loses something for me. A sense of danger and mystery is lost, I guess.
Man, modern cities are constructed in a way that minimizes danger and mystery...:shade:
If you get that from walking around in one of them, it's really been...I don't know, zombie-infested, or badly mismanaged/failing (arguments whether the zombie infestation is the worse scenario incoming, I know:thumbsup:).

I disagree. At least a little. Lots of great urban games treat the city as a collection of places rather than a keyed map. In a modern game I never really care about drive time or street addresses, except in those rare cases where it might really matter. Much like a movie or TV show, when the PCs move from Police plaza to 92nd and Broadway they just kind of get there. How they get there is immaterial unless time is a current thing that matters in-fiction.
Yeah, this. Except in rare cases, I just take mental note of the travel time and move on to what happens there. If it matters where they're passing through (gangs, ambushes, random events, time being sensitive without them being aware...), I ask.
And sometimes I ask in order to keep them on their toes, when they're getting too much into OOC conversations:devil:!
 
I am still awestruck that Ravenswing got to run a game paid for by Harvard....

To simplify a city play it like a megadungeon with encounter tables and attribute checks.

Encounters include: police safety checks, EMS blocking roads, traffic violations, aggressive window washers, tailgaters, slow pedestrians, trains crossings, dump trucks dropping their loads on your hood, running out of petrol, muggers, robbers, SWAT activity... LoL

And if you fail a dexterity check you crash your car, if you fail an awareness check you run over something (another encounter table of innocent bystanders), if you fail an intelligence check you park illegally, if you fail a charisma check another driver road rages on you, if you fail a wisdom check you just start speeding and get a ticket. If you fail a strength check the power steering breaks your wrist and you crash into something (innocent bystander table or road rage or police).

Just make it so dense they can never get one block past their apartment. Saves a tonne of work...
 
I am still awestruck that Ravenswing got to run a game paid for by Harvard....

To simplify a city play it like a megadungeon with encounter tables and attribute checks.

Encounters include: police safety checks, EMS blocking roads, traffic violations, aggressive window washers, tailgaters, slow pedestrians, trains crossings, dump trucks dropping their loads on your hood, running out of petrol, muggers, robbers, SWAT activity... LoL

And if you fail a dexterity check you crash your car, if you fail an awareness check you run over something (another encounter table of innocent bystanders), if you fail an intelligence check you park illegally, if you fail a charisma check another driver road rages on you, if you fail a wisdom check you just start speeding and get a ticket. If you fail a strength check the power steering breaks your wrist and you crash into something (innocent bystander table or road rage or police).

Just make it so dense they can never get one block past their apartment. Saves a tonne of work...
Welcome to the Jungle!! :tongue:
 
Man, modern cities are constructed in a way that minimizes danger and mystery...:shade:
If you get that from walking around in one of them, it's really been...I don't know, zombie-infested, or badly mismanaged/failing (arguments whether the zombie infestation is the worse scenario incoming, I know:thumbsup:).
Ah, so you skip the traveling and leave the danger and mystery mostly to the location they visit. Actually that's how I do it as well, but I was thinking I could be wrong and I maybe should make traveling a thing, because travel is a cool thing in fantasy or space opera rpg's.
 
Sometimes traveling to or within a city is the adventure, even if the traveling happens largely automatically. The introductory scenario for Cryptworld takes place on a flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles ("Red Eye"). Another one I ran involved one player at a location in Southern California and the other was trying to get there by car to help, but ostensibly was still involved by being in cell phone communication and thus helping the first player with investigation research.
 
You said it before I could.
Now you should help him with the explanation of the "why":thumbsup:!

Ah, so you skip the traveling and leave the danger and mystery mostly to the location they visit.
No. I map the route they're taking, mentally, and if there's anything on the way, I run that first:smile:.
It's just that "modern cities exist so such areas would be, ideally, zero", to misquote my own recent post:wink:. So usually it ends up being "time skip". Usually - but that happens much more often in a modern Western (or Eastern) city than in any historical or fantasy city...

Actually that's how I do it as well, but I was thinking I could be wrong and I maybe should make traveling a thing, because travel is a cool thing in fantasy or space opera rpg's.
Thou shall not believe anyone who tells you what you should do:devil:! Everything other people say is at best a suggestion. You can incorporate it or not, but "should"...is a bit too much, except as hyperbole:shade:.

Yes, included the stuff I say! Though officially, I've never written the preceding sentence...:grin:

Also, see above - that's how you "should" do it, of course, for my method is undisputably the best one:gunslinger:!
 
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