Urban fantasy? (that isn't WoD)

[Corinnguard]

Stephen King has the bad guys lair in Vegas in The Stand.

Now, someone do New York. Hub of commerce in the natural and supernatural worlds, and of course the city's diversity extends to supernatural beings as well.

This had been done in an anime series called Blood Blockade Battlefront. Blood Blockade Battlefront centers around the crime fighting organization "Libra" and their battles in Hellsalem's Lot, formerly known as New York City. Hellsalem's Lot was created when a portal to the "Beyond" opened, becoming a paranormal melting pot of monsters, magic and the everyday mundane life, and it is up to Libra to clear the streets of trouble and prevent the horrors of this city from spreading to the outside world.

Not an RPG to be honest, but still something of an Urban Fantasy that could be an RPG.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Stephen King has the bad guys lair in Vegas in The Stand.

Vegas has showed up in several stories of the supernatural. And I think I’ve seen some RPG products covering it.

But I don’t think I’ve seen a fey city take on it.

Now, someone do New York. Hub of commerce in the natural and supernatural worlds, and of course the city's diversity extends to supernatural beings as well.

You mean like What We Do In The Shadows? And that’s not the only vampire story set there. The Addiction is another. Love At First Bite.

Other supernatural stories set in NYC: Ghostbusters, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Exorcist.

I think most of the iconic American cities have gotten some kind of supernatural story or RPG treatment. LA, NOLA, Chicago, Seattle, etc.

And I’m sure if I listed some on which I’m drawing a blank, someone would correct me. Like…Miami?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And I’m sure if I listed some on which I’m drawing a blank, someone would correct me. Like…Miami?

Still nothing coming up for me, but it occurred to me that, besides “Las Feygas”, the Fair Folk would probably enjoy messing around with major amusement parks, like Disneyland/Disney World- great places to enjoy their hijinks in plain sight.

Or even the smaller traveling carnivals, such as in Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. That could be a source of evil or the base of operations for the party.

And speaking of Florida, Gibtown (where some carnies go to retire) has a horror analog of sorts in Midian, the setting for Clive Barker’s Cabal/Nightbreed.

Another setting possibility: hidden cities. Brigadoon and Storybrook (Once Upon A Time…) could contain or launch any number of campaigns.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Slight DUH moment for me: The Addams Family and The Munsters provide another model for an Urban fantasy campaign model.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I have vague plans for a Something Wicked This Way Comes carnival for my campaign. I know the ring mistress is an enemy of one of the PCs. The player has bought a Hunted, her fey cousin. I've decided the cousin is using the carnival as a front. And that she's a Greek fey of some sort (probably a dryad or maenad.) I know that she wants to kill/imprison the PC but I have no idea about details as yet.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Stephen King has the bad guys lair in Vegas in The Stand.

Now, someone do New York. Hub of commerce in the natural and supernatural worlds, and of course the city's diversity extends to supernatural beings as well.

That was the assumed default for an early and slightly obscure kind of punk urban fantasy RPG called Nightlife. While it talked about running it elsewhere, it very much made NYC kinds of basic assumptions.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Other models:

A Sliders style campaign, but fantastic as opposed to scientific in nature,

The John Carter/Adam Strange type campaign where the heroes pop back & forth between mundane Earth and a planet where magic works.

It’s not quite urban fantasy, but a Narnia/Magic Kingdom of Landover/Xanth type campaign where PCs cross a barrier between mundane Earth and a mystical dimension could be considered on the fringe. Goodnight Darling presented a variation on that theme in which the protagonist went back in time. Here, traveling into the past would reveal that Magic USED to work.

Imagine the Arthurian knights returning to defend England from a supernatural threat.

 

[MGibster]

A Sliders style campaign, but fantastic as opposed to scientific in nature,

This kind of reminds me of Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber series. Sliders style travel between different words is typically within the realm of science fiction, but it works perfectly well for fantasy too.

Imagine the Arthurian knights returning to defend England from a supernatural threat.

That was an episode of Gargoyles!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Other IPs to mine:

Grimm
Kolchak, The Night Stalker
Demons (British TV show)
Todd vs The Book of Pure Evil
Reaper
Brimstone
Dead Like Me
G Vs. E
Ghosted
Ghosts
Special Unit 2
Lost Girl

 

[Wicht]

I don't think anyone has mentioned The Laundry yet... modern spy meets mythos and saves the world via applied magic. But Lovecraft aside there is in the game/novels/world the underlying assumption that all magic is simply advanced mathematics and geometry and spells can therefore be written and cast more safely and easily using computers. But also that programmers playing around can also accidentally cast spells. Which is an interesting idea to explore all on its own.