Let me start off by saying that I know I'm crazy. But I'm wondering how far over the deep end I'm sitting here.
I have always been strictly a narrative gamer, with the quality of the story being my foremost concern as either a player or GM. And after my D&D: Curse of Strahd game imploded due to one player's adamant refusal to stop derailing the atmosphere of horror I was working to create, I have spent a lot of time thinking about what game I should try running next.
I've always been intrigued by the Dresden Files RPG's rules for the players collaboratively fleshing out the setting elements which appeal to them before they even make their characters (which then makes it so beautifully easy to give each PC a personal stake in the stories their player expressed interest in during the City Creation process). But I have only lived in Pennsylvania for a few years, so I don't have a shared local knowledge base with the local RPG community.
And I have also never enjoyed traveling for either business or leisure, so my knowledge of most other cities (apart from where I grew up back in NY state) is scant at best.
But there is another option at hand for creating out own city to set our game in; "a city that everyone is used to seeing on TV". Or in my case, in comic books.
And the first time I read that paragraph, my thoughts turned immediately to Gotham.
Like most people, D&D was the first RPG I encountered; but the first one I fell in love with was the DC Heroes system by Mayfair Games. I still have all the books I was able to find for it (both in print and with PDFs of the full pages scanned as photos), including a 1st edition sourcebook for setting adventures in Gotham City. It's a very 1980s rendition of the city, long before it became fashionable to have a big crossover storyline every year devoted to being as shockingly pointlessly self-destructive as possible. It's what I grew up with.
The book includes nine pages of text providing an overview (from Commissioner Gordon's POV) of each of the city's 24 districts, in a manner very similar to the way Chicago is written up in the Dresden Files RPG's "Our World" book. As well as a city map which is obviously a hand-drawn copy of Providence Rhode Island shifted slightly clockwise, rather than the version created for "let's have a plague and an earthquake and Superman just forgetting that he cares about innocent people crying out in their suffering within earshot of him". ...I was not a fan of that extended storyline.
What I want to do, and I would like to know how crazy this is, is to recruit players for a Dresden Files game set in a genre-adapted reflection of Gotham City, send them each the PDF of "Night In Gotham", and actually have them do nine pages of reading.
Then, after they've each had a chance to read the nine pages of relevant content, I'd set up an email group to discuss what elements jumped out at everyone, and we'd start working up the Themes and Threats and Locations and Faces of our version of Gotham (which I'd call by the "historical" name of Fort Adolphus in order to have the reminder that they're on Harry Dresden's world rather than Superman's).
But, this is dependent on players being willing to do nine pages of reading before they could join the game.
Just nine pages.
How crazy am I for even hoping that my prospective players will be willing to undertake such an effort?
I have always been strictly a narrative gamer, with the quality of the story being my foremost concern as either a player or GM. And after my D&D: Curse of Strahd game imploded due to one player's adamant refusal to stop derailing the atmosphere of horror I was working to create, I have spent a lot of time thinking about what game I should try running next.
I've always been intrigued by the Dresden Files RPG's rules for the players collaboratively fleshing out the setting elements which appeal to them before they even make their characters (which then makes it so beautifully easy to give each PC a personal stake in the stories their player expressed interest in during the City Creation process). But I have only lived in Pennsylvania for a few years, so I don't have a shared local knowledge base with the local RPG community.
And I have also never enjoyed traveling for either business or leisure, so my knowledge of most other cities (apart from where I grew up back in NY state) is scant at best.
But there is another option at hand for creating out own city to set our game in; "a city that everyone is used to seeing on TV". Or in my case, in comic books.
And the first time I read that paragraph, my thoughts turned immediately to Gotham.
Like most people, D&D was the first RPG I encountered; but the first one I fell in love with was the DC Heroes system by Mayfair Games. I still have all the books I was able to find for it (both in print and with PDFs of the full pages scanned as photos), including a 1st edition sourcebook for setting adventures in Gotham City. It's a very 1980s rendition of the city, long before it became fashionable to have a big crossover storyline every year devoted to being as shockingly pointlessly self-destructive as possible. It's what I grew up with.
The book includes nine pages of text providing an overview (from Commissioner Gordon's POV) of each of the city's 24 districts, in a manner very similar to the way Chicago is written up in the Dresden Files RPG's "Our World" book. As well as a city map which is obviously a hand-drawn copy of Providence Rhode Island shifted slightly clockwise, rather than the version created for "let's have a plague and an earthquake and Superman just forgetting that he cares about innocent people crying out in their suffering within earshot of him". ...I was not a fan of that extended storyline.
What I want to do, and I would like to know how crazy this is, is to recruit players for a Dresden Files game set in a genre-adapted reflection of Gotham City, send them each the PDF of "Night In Gotham", and actually have them do nine pages of reading.
Then, after they've each had a chance to read the nine pages of relevant content, I'd set up an email group to discuss what elements jumped out at everyone, and we'd start working up the Themes and Threats and Locations and Faces of our version of Gotham (which I'd call by the "historical" name of Fort Adolphus in order to have the reminder that they're on Harry Dresden's world rather than Superman's).
But, this is dependent on players being willing to do nine pages of reading before they could join the game.
Just nine pages.
How crazy am I for even hoping that my prospective players will be willing to undertake such an effort?
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