Just use Vancouver for everything like Hollywood does. You'll be fine.
As somone who lives there, that made me lol.
Yes the Vancouver locations in the many TV series get tiring. That said, I did like the way the X-Files used the city and hinteland locations - maybe because it was one of the eralier series shot here. When I was a kid growing up in the 1960s-70s, San Francisco wore the hat as the city every producer wanted to shoot a TV series in. And yes even the splendor of that great city became lackluster under the repetitive use of popular locations.
Welcome to Dopple City, a place where reality is as fluid as water and dreams become reality. Nestled in the heart of the Pacific Northwest,...
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I was on the same wavelength, but decided to make it a supernatural phenomena.
I really like this - very cool.
I wrote what are the remnants of Canada for Interface Zero 2.0. It's set in a cyberpunk near future (2090) and is available for a number of TTRPGs - Savage Worlds being the version that got the most sales. The Canada I wrote about was one that has splintered into fragments, mostly precipitated by the collapse of the USA. A fragmenting Canada resulted in 8 new geo-political entities; 7 being nations and 1 a free city. One of these is the Great Lakes Union which transitioned historical boundaries and combined Manitoba, Minnesota, Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and most of Illinois. In that near future Canada, Vancouver has become the Free City of Vancouver - a small, wedge-shaped region that extends from the coast roughly a 100 miles inland. A global map was published for IZ 2.0, but there's a few errors in regard to regions that once comprised Canada.
I didn't create or get to choose the GLU, as it existed in IZ 1. It certainly posed a challenge being at the center of the former Canada. Including Manitoba and retconning Toronto from a free city to the GLU capital made it more credible - at least in mine and the editor's thinking. Needless to say, Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and Minneapolis exert big influence, if not out right dominate the GLU. Not to mention the Free City of Chicago, which is enclose within it, powerful and also exerts a huge influence.
Part of the impetus for the GLU to stay glued together, is that they're in conflict with a powerful, new North American Coalition comprised of former USA states. While at the same time the NAC has good relationships with the new nation of Alberta - joining of Alberta and Saskatechewan. A majority of AB citizens would have supported uniting with the NAC, which might have happened were it not for significant NA and global powers opposing that. Note that I said a majority - there's a sizable minority that definitely wouldn't. Meanwhile Quebec becomes the independent Republic of Quebec, unites with a big chunk of Acadian/francaphone New Brunswick and unlike what's depicted on the offical map, annexes all of Labrador.
At different times in real world history, there's been political tension between CDN provinces, or more importantly; provinces and the Federal gov't. Quebec at times has conflicted with much of Canada, while political movements for western separation or amalgamation with the USA have been most popular in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Similar sentiments have existed in Atlantic Canada too, but have mostly manifested as movements within the existing political parties.
IRL Quebec is significant and probably why many other TTRPG settings have emphasized it. It's the primary home of francaphones on the continent (4% of all NA & 20% of all CDN citizens) and some of its urban locations are among NA's oldest. That results in a distinct culture that still to some extent feels the rub of earlier colonial conflicts. My editor demanded conflict, and using historical and contemporary points of conflicts I was able to achieve some of that via new, tenuous, conflict-prone borders.
The editor had established a pentad of socio-politial themes for IZ 2.0, which each geo-political entity touched upon. Those were 1) legality of drugs (i.e previously or still illicit substances and new substances), 2) right to bare arms, 3) extraterratoriality (right of Megacorps to govern their principal, rural locations), 4) The legality & availibility of cybernetic implants, 5) the rights of transhumans (genetically spliced animal-human Hybrids, Androids and Bioroids.)
A good portion of my writing didn't make the final cut -c'est la vie- most significantly content about Atlantic Canada. That region nervously exists east of Quebec and very much looks to the new Atlantica nation (former USA atlantic states) as well as the GLU, for support and survival. I'd burn out my fingers if I detailed how I worked all that in, but with those 5 touch points and a newly fragmented Canada that's emerged as new geo-polities, I feel I succeeded "
making Canada an effective place to run a game" with my writing.
I was tasked with covering Canada coast -to- coast; a challenge I might not be too enthused to tackle again. The beauty of homebrewing, is that you could just cover a more specific, or smaller portion - like Shades of Eternity did with his Dopplecity. Focusing on a smaller region instead of painting with broad strokes, you could paint in just enough to build a sandbox, or even just the intial locations within one. I'm currently brewing 5 adventures for Call of Cthulhu, which is set in a 1924 Vancouver. Having gotten a fair ways in, I will say it's been a much easier and more doable task.
If I were to recall and refllect upon what sources & inspirations I drew upon to do my IZ 2.0 writing, I could proably come up with some bullet points on how to make "
Canada an effective place to run a game" using different TTRPG genres. I'll ponder...maybe more later....
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