Real world campaigns: local, or anything but?

[Morlock]

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.

 

[gamerprinter]

Only problem with that is you have people like me, who lives in north central Illinois (now), but I've lived in Seattle, Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs, Anchorage (and 2 other places in Alaska), Augusta GA, and my family has gone on driving vacations to 47 of the 50 states. While where I lived, I am most familiar, I am rather familiar with much of the country - if your post-apocalyptic setting is set in the US, you might not want a player like me.

Right now I'm building a gothic horror, old west setting in an alternate US territories, although it is the US geographically, the borders are wrong (in some cases), only a few railroad lines cross the region, with many spidering out from those few transcontinental rail lines, for the most part much of the old west has no road and no rails so very isolated, and perhaps slightly more difficult for someone say from Arizona to relate to an alternate Arizona without most of the towns and civilized things that resident is completely familiar. I'm not worried about it, personally.

 

[Morlock]

Yeah, I was thinking that too (lived in like 10 states myself), but it seems a couple orders of magnitude down from the *spits* "son, I've been living here for xxx,xxx years, and Squirrel Holler ain't nothin' like 'at" problem. I can get the broad strokes right from the web, it's more the infinite details that I'm thinking about.

Edit: contrariwise, there's something compelling about designing this kind of campaign around a local setting. Helps make it more immediate and plausible. There's an aspect of "hey, I've been there! Now it's overrun with cannibals...cool" and "yeah, it'd be awesome to turn the abandoned nuclear submarine into home base!" to it.

 

[Umbran]

One of the flaws of the TV show "Falling Skies" for me was that it mentioned Boston geography, and got it wrong. If you are having a tactical discussion, and someone says they'll take Route N+1 to Suchatown, and Route N+1 doesn't go anywhere near Suchatown, it grates.

If you have a really solid handle on your local geography, then this can be compelling. If you don't, it doesn't evoke the feeling you want to any native of the area.

 

[gamerprinter]

Honestly wouldn't you just use a road map and tourist pamphlets of whatever area your game is set (do a decent amount of research of the actual place with references). While a local would certainly know more details, for a general game you could be fairly accurate.

 

[Umbran]

While a local would certainly know more details, for a general game you could be fairly accurate.

If you aren't playing with a local, that's fine. Locals, however, will always note the fine details.

 

[Tonguez]

I once set a Disney Gargoyles inspired session in the local area but with the proviso that it was the mythic version of the region where things might be different from what we know. We had fun describing different bits of geography with things like "is that the gully where the tree roots stick out? I didn't know there was a cave there - yeah there is just where it drops down to the stream, you can put your arm into it - but this ones been washed out..."

Pretty much I also add the proviso that what I'm describing is a mythic/cinematic version so it might be different

 

[delericho]

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?

Ideally, I'd run it in my local area but with players who are from out of town.

Assuming that's not an option, I'll take the game elsewhere. My experiences with running the game in my local town have proven unsuccessful, for the obvious reason: some player notes that a key detail is simply wrong, at which point suspension of disbelief snaps.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'd stick with local. However, if challenged too many times, I might be tempted to say that, while the campaign is set in "X-town", in reality the designer used the maps of Toronto because they got a better deal from the city council.

 

[Jhaelen]

In general, I'd avoid setting an RPG in my local area. For a zombiepocalypse scenario it might actually work, though.