sparkindarkness: (Default)
sparkindarkness ([personal profile] 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 :))

(Anonymous) 2008-09-26 11:36 pm (UTC)(link)
The Pacific Northwest (Seattle or Portland) are both good. There's a temperate rainforest up there, and quite a lot of Nature Parks, but also a lot of land used for commercial timber farming, which is to say, you plant the trees and then kind of ignore the land for a decade. Not sure about wild wolf populations, though.

Um. For snow in winter/pine tree you're going to want to move farther North into Canada or find somewhere in the Rockies. Or both. Or Yellowstone National Park, which fits the bill fairly well. Yellowstone isn't just pine forests though, because of the geologic activity. But wolves were reintroduced back there a few decades ago and they do fairly well.

I'm not sure about a city with organized crime that hasn't been ruled out already. St. Louis has, in recent years, gone through such a recession that it is now the most violent city in America, but I don't think it's very organized crime.

Sorry I can't be more help, but have lots o' fun tormenting your players.

[identity profile] tanarill.livejournal.com 2008-09-26 11:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Sorry, that was me. Inactivity logout.

[identity profile] sparkindarkness.livejournal.com 2008-09-27 05:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Seattle keeps raising its head, supported by Portland :)

I'm not sending them to the murder capital of the US! They already leave piles of bodies behind them!