Using real places in fantasy settings. . .opinions?

[RavenSinger]

Just looking for thoughts here,

I have started a campaign that is essentially a standard Greyhawkish/Forgotton Relms-y type of place. The twist is that the geography of the area is based on existing geography.

The reasoning behind it is I know the climates and terrain of existing geography and I am able to describe it much better than a hypothetical mountain range/swamp/coastline/whatever, and of course the lay of the land will be more realistic because it's. . .well. . .real. I also just like the idea of imagining what would my old home turf be like in a D&D environment.

Has anyone out there done such a thing, and if so, were there any drawbacks or advantages to doing things in this way?

--RavenSinger

 

[Echoes]

I think it's a cool idea. I've never done exactly that, but I have imported specific places into settings (not under their own names, of course). For example, if I needed a church of a god in my campaign, I'd use a church near my house as the set-up. At any rate, I agree that the geography would be easier, and the climates easy to describe.

However, I'd be careful in not making it too obvious. Another suggestion might be to do this: take a map of the world, and then find a piece of paper about that big. Then draw your world on it. Make it a little different. Then compare the too and work out the climates/zones that way. I've done that before, and it's a great way of figuring out geography/land distrobution/climate.

Hope this helps.

Laters,
-John-

 

[CrazyMage]

I'm working on my first homebrew, and I've tagged real-world cultures to various areas just to give myself clear ideas on what distinguishes each area, not just geographically, but culturally as well.

The key I think is to give things enough of a twist to make things unique and keep the fantasy feel going. I have one area that is Scottish in feel, with Sem/Sm replacing Mac/Mc in the naming of people, and a few other changes thrown in to reflect the new geographical setting for this culture. (But we still got whisky!)

The other thing is to grab cultures less well known. I've got an area patterned after Tuva (located west of Mongolia) that has nomadic sheep herders living in yurts, has throat singing, etc. I'm also able then to look up Mongolian or Tuvan or some other related languages to help give appropriate flavor to cities, people, mountains, etc.

 

[photon1966]

In my own campaign which is forest based, strong elven flavour, I have taken advantage of using Provincial Parks in my area as backdrops and info about climate and the like. There are web sites with pictures, Govermental sites with maps, some in good detail, others I get copies from local and University Library.
The other big advantage is al the players have at some point, as recent as last summer, been to this park, canoed and camped in it. It allows for them to easily put them selves there. They have camped there and know what they need, hiked and seen the animals.
For me the Park also is a source of campaing ideas as there are ghost stories, ancient Indian legends, old mining and railway lines. It all can be adapted and used as iether back drop or prime story lines.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I have done it and found it very useful. It is also benefitcal to go to sites take pictures or sketch them for use in a game or write down words that will help you describe them in a game.

It is also to look at the history of a place, the why a place came to be. Take Columbia SC (my location) before it became the capital it was the first place granite could be easily mined, which was shipped down river to Charleston, used in construction and exported.

Some sites I have used...
Stone Quarry
Old Bridge
Old Warehouse
Ruins
Graveyard in the dark of the night
Caves
Cannal

 

[RavenSinger]

Thanks for all the feed back!

My campaign's geography is based in an area of California south of San Jose in the Salinas Valley/Monterey Bay Area. The area is also known as Steinbeck Country because the novelist John Steinbeck centered many of his novels there.

One reason I like it so well is that it has quite a diversity of terrains in a relatively small area. Within a few days' journey a traveller could go through up to seven terrains--from coastal to salt marsh to rural farm to hills to low mountains to temperate rainforest to city. The other reason--a little more personal--is that I used to live near this area growing up, and I well remember how dramatic the landscape of this area is. Now I live in a very nice area of the country (Austin, TX), but the landscape lacks the dramatic character that I remember.

I agree with Photon (and others) in that the resources that are available can be very helpful. This past Christmas when I was out there, I purchased a coffee-table book of photgraphs of the area, which has been both useful to my players in showing them what I am talking about, and inspirational to me for creating ideas for new encounters.

I really like Hand's idea of also using ideas from the area's history--thoughts of the party travelling to the foothills of the Great Western Mountains (the Sierra Nevada's) to search in Dwarven gold mines are filling my head. And possibly a certain God's priesthood being modeled after the Spanish missions, etc. . .hmm, maybe I better go write some of this down. . . 'scuse me.

--RavenSinger

 

[Tonguez]

Notes from Middleearth

Hey I'm from New Zealand and if Steve Jackson can use my backyard to represent Mordor then so can I!! (yes I can see Mountain Doom out my back window)

In fact I often find myself walking through the bush or along the river bank or through the desert or up the mountains around my home and describing scenes in my head which I could set there.

eg the other day I was up in the pines and a freak wind kicked up a cloud of pollen and dust - hey I said to myself poisonous spores!
-and wasn't that a gnome I saw behind those purple flowers!

(eek - is that a bad sign of addiction or just a good imagination?)

 

[RavenSinger]

I know exactly what you mean, Tonguez! When I was back on the west coast of the US last month, I was watching the surf pound against the rocks, and I imagined all sorts of creatures that could be living in the water (i.e. sea lions, bronze dragons, etc.)
--RavenSinger

 

[DnDChick]

During high school I once picked up simple a floorplan of my school that was given to freshmen to help them find their way around, and transferred it to graph paper, then used the random tables in the old 1e DMG to fill it out as a dungeon. My players, all school mates, never caught on until they got most of the dungeon mapped out. LOL It was a lot of fun, too, because at school we would talk about, "Hey, this is the room where Coban critted that ghoul" or "I never thought I would find a treasure chest in the boys bathroom..." LOL

 

[Darrell]

Several (OK, maybe a few more than several) years ago, I ran a game for about six months using a US topgraphical map of the area around the mountain town in which the college I attended was situated.

Currently, I still use the layout of the cabins in a 'living history'-type museum in that town (Boone, NC) as a 'home base' village for the party.

It's kind of interesting from time to time to take my players on a 'field-trip' to walk the streets of their home-town.

Regards,
Darrell King