Real world campaigns: local, or anything but?

[aramis erak]

If you're running a high-body-count-low-property-damage Post-Apocalyptic campaign (like The Walking Dead or The Stand), would you rather set it in your local vicinity, or would you rather run it anywhere but your local area? I can think of advantages to both approaches, but my gut tells me I'd rather avoid the annoying "I know more about the area than you do" thing from players. And really, if the player is right, then he's right, and there doesn't seem to be much sense running a campaign set in a place where the players can know more about the setting than you do.

I prefer a third approach - an area that I'm personally familiar with, but my players are not. When I ran a buffy game, I set it in the city I've spent the most time in outside my home borough. I set my game in Corvallis, Oregon - while I lived in Anchorage, Alaska. Of my 8 players, only one had even been to Corvallis - and then, only twice, as a child.

Knowing the area helps me describe it, while them not knowing it means that, if I get things wrong, they won't know. And more than likely, as long as I'm consistent, won't care.

 

[Hand of Evil]

To me it does not matter, as long as you plan it out. If you are doing any, "real world' you have the tools and means to get the information from tourist sites, maps, history, etc. You just have to do your homework and doing the what if.

Oh, it does not hurt to watch shows like Life After People, and Cities of the Underworld. First thing that starts to happen, everything goes back to nature and that means a lot of cities go back to swamp land.

 

[Crothian]

I like the idea of doing it local but when the GM gets the details wrong it makes them seem lazy and bad. I was in a zombie game a few years ago at Origins. The GM set it in the convention center the convention was at and couldn't even get those details right. Once we got out into Columbus he obviously had no idea what the city was like as he wasn't even getting the big details right like knowing about the freeways that cut through the city.

 

[nerfherder]

I've played in a very enjoyable post-apocalypse game set in my home county, with 3 other local players. We had multiple tablets out on the table, with the GM telling us what had changed as we made our way along.

 

[Scott DeWar]

I had tried to use local small Missouri towns I knew about for settings, but I would never get any players to stick around to appreciate my cleverness. They were around only for collage and *poof* off to the real world

 

[Janx]

I like the idea of doing it local but when the GM gets the details wrong it makes them seem lazy and bad. I was in a zombie game a few years ago at Origins. The GM set it in the convention center the convention was at and couldn't even get those details right. Once we got out into Columbus he obviously had no idea what the city was like as he wasn't even getting the big details right like knowing about the freeways that cut through the city.

Isn't the problem there that the GM wasn't a local?

The point of using local should be clarified to using something local to the GM's familiarity.

I've been in Seattle once. I'm not going to base a game there. But I will use my old home town or the area I've lived in for the last 18 years.

Player's aren't going to argue with me about the layout of my Kroger. Maybe if they travel to THEIR kroger, or their real house, but that can be defused by indicating the game universe can and will deviate from the real world as needed. Based on the real world does not mean exact copy.

Getting things like roads wrong is just dumb. Google maps for everything.

 

[Crothian]

Isn't the problem there that the GM wasn't a local?

No, he had done no prep on anything it was laziness on his part. All he had to do was spend some time walking around the place or just pay attention when he was there. It was not his first Origins he was part of a company that had run games there for years and still do. He went into the game with a few villains and just made up the rest as he went along. He just wasn't good at it and it showed. What I think made it worse is that he worked for a gaming company and was showing off a new game. Based on that experience I didn't buy it and my friends have heard the stories enough that when we passed by their booth at Origins this year one said "That was the company that didn't know what the convention center was like, right?"

 

[Gilladian]

I've actually set my DnD campaign in "real world" geography, but well away from my current location, geographically. It's nice to be able to pull out the world weather almanac and know what the daily precipitation for a given month is. And whether or not an area will be raising cattle for meat or dairy, etc... I've been very happy with my choice, long term, and we actually HAVE had one campaign enter into the region where we live, but nobody was silly enough to expect it to resemble reality at all closely. I think the pros outweigh the cons, and if I were running a zombiepocalypse game, you bet I'd use my current town for the homebase.