sparkindarkness (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sparkindarkness) wrote2008-09-26 10:56 pm
sparkindarkness) wrote2008-09-26 10:56 pm
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Help! Need someone who knows more about North American geography than I do!
As mentioned here: http://sparkindarkness.livejournal.com/204537.html I am running a werewolf game. Because I prefer to stick mostly to game canon and because the game requires the interaction of many many tribes it is to be set in the Americas (European werewolf tribes tend to have their own established territory and multi-tribal septs are rare or limited to maybe 3 tribes. It‘s also easier to shoot them there).
The things is I don't know exactly where to situate it. I want to keep it as close to the real world as possible (makes for less invention and more interesting research - in my last campaign they went Yuma, Arizona to Miami to Townsville, Queensland and I had lots of fun researching them all) but I am willing to tweak things (turn a moderate city into a NYC sized metropolis, for example). But I need somewhere to start.
So, what do I need?
A city moderately close to forested wilderness “close” can be “within 2-3 days solid travel” but more than a week would be pushing it. The wilderness has to be predominantly woodland.
Temperate/cold climate Snows in winter. Has pine trees. That kind of thing. No deserts, palm trees, calypso dancers.
Not somewhere already heavily established in White Wolf’s canon I like the canon, I use it a lot and don’t want to clash with it too badly since I may want to use it. So NOT: NYC, New York State, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago
A Camarilla City So nowhere that is established as Sabbat - so NOT Toronto (rest of Canada’s fine, I never bought the idea of all of Canada being a Sabbat holding - it made NO sense) Detroit, Miami, Mexico
Bonus points
Not essentials but they’d be nice bonuses if possible:
Native wolf population
Wilderness is actually a National Park or similarly legally protected
The city has a history (not necessarily current presence) of organised crime ties
All suggestions gratefully appreciated!
(ETA: I'm going to do brief research on each suggestion and probably post another post on detailed pros and cons of each :))
The things is I don't know exactly where to situate it. I want to keep it as close to the real world as possible (makes for less invention and more interesting research - in my last campaign they went Yuma, Arizona to Miami to Townsville, Queensland and I had lots of fun researching them all) but I am willing to tweak things (turn a moderate city into a NYC sized metropolis, for example). But I need somewhere to start.
So, what do I need?
A city moderately close to forested wilderness “close” can be “within 2-3 days solid travel” but more than a week would be pushing it. The wilderness has to be predominantly woodland.
Temperate/cold climate Snows in winter. Has pine trees. That kind of thing. No deserts, palm trees, calypso dancers.
Not somewhere already heavily established in White Wolf’s canon I like the canon, I use it a lot and don’t want to clash with it too badly since I may want to use it. So NOT: NYC, New York State, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago
A Camarilla City So nowhere that is established as Sabbat - so NOT Toronto (rest of Canada’s fine, I never bought the idea of all of Canada being a Sabbat holding - it made NO sense) Detroit, Miami, Mexico
Bonus points
Not essentials but they’d be nice bonuses if possible:
Native wolf population
Wilderness is actually a National Park or similarly legally protected
The city has a history (not necessarily current presence) of organised crime ties
All suggestions gratefully appreciated!
(ETA: I'm going to do brief research on each suggestion and probably post another post on detailed pros and cons of each :))
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- Surrounded by forest - the whole of Georgia is actually the Piedmont Forest down to the sandier marshlands and the whole thing gets more and more forested as you get to Alabama and further on. It's heavily pined.
- Directly to the north of Atlanta you have the North Georgia Mountains, part of the Appalachians. That is STILL the boonies. Mountain people, small cities that stand alone in the wilderness. Think Deliverance.
- Atlanta was traditionally Camarilla held, with Sabbat incursions from time to time.
- The climate is tricky. Atlanta has milder cold weather in the winter, but it's snowing in the mountains. Lots of ice. Then it turns fiercely hot and humid in the summer, like it was FL.
- Wolves were ONCE in those mountains, I think.
- Several national parks in the North GA Mountains.
- Atlanta DOES have ties to organized crime. Good ol' boy systems, racketeering, bootleg runners, the Dixie Mafia, several African-American national gangs, the Mexican Mafia - tons o' stuff.
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Otherwise, places like LA, NOLA, Denver, etc have been better detailed than White Wolf's hometown.
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Fiction based in gaming settings set my teeth on edge.
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But aye, in the novel series Atlanta's camarilla presence is squished pretty badly. While the implication is the Camarilla will have taken it back (and most of the eastern seaboard north of Miami) the new prince and council will be pretty new
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Prince Benison and his entire primogen council either dead or fled (Victoria Ashe) during the Sabbat’s east coast invasion. I would like a strong vampire presence (much of the plot revolves around the urban caern being pissed because their country cousins have riled up the more powerful and influential vampires) and a city recovering from a devastating invasion and massacre doesn’t fit that well.
As an aside, a second concern I have is the closeness to Appalachia - that's heavy Fianna territory and Fianna are a distinct minority in my chornicle.
However, it has the tereain, it certainly has the population and the mature economy. It has corruption galore for my more old school Wise Guy Glass Walkers.
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- Shift it west to Birmingham, AL. The Alabama Pine Barrens are almost desolate; driving south on the highway from Birmingham to Mobile gets you into a stretch of land that goes for 80 miles with 3 exits and no gas stations with towering pine trees on either side. Also, you have Mobile nearby - decayed Southern port like NOLA without the French influence and surrounded by marshland like NOLA. Home of the former Confederate Navy too.
- Little Rock, AK. Big city, corrupt as all hell, ONLY true city in Arkansas. The rest of the state is boonie-land - the Ozark Mountains and the forest and hills it contains. Even more forbidding than Appalachia, due to the noted unfriendliness of the people out there. See Deliverance yet again. Home of a former President.
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