Help! Need someone who knows more about North American geography than I do!

[sparkindarkness]

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 :))

Comments

[semiotic-pirate.livejournal.com]

Billings, Montana Wiki
Denver or Boulder, Colorado Wiki

I prefer the Montana location, personally.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I am plagued by the west having so many perfect locations - but I think I really need something more eastern

(Though the wiki links are always helpful)

[semiotic-pirate.livejournal.com]

Well... You could always go with New Hampshire. South of Concord you have tons of cities, north of Concord (pronounced con-curd, not con-cord btw) you've got the Lakes Region, the White Mountains, etc. Nashua has a wonderful park system that runs across main streets that gets a lot of use by the local SCA group (the people who like to play King Arthur & the Knights of the Round Table, etc) and whatnot. Some of the houses run along the border of a state park, so when you go out into your back yard a ways, you are in the state park. Pretty cool actually.

It gets lots of snow - one year, in a town between Concord and Portsmouth on the coast, after the snow was plowed off the streets it was like driving through a tunnel it was so high.

Wiki

Addendum to NH bid for werewolf population...

[semiotic-pirate.livejournal.com]

We do have wolves - or at least they've been spotted returning on their own from Canada. Plus bear, moose, bobcat, lynx, etc... Plenty of good deer and beaver to eat too.

Here's a report about the anticipated, predicted, possibly already here and returned wolf population. Note the 90% wooded bit.

Another report from the same time period by NPR.

A blog post earlier in the year about NH coyote and wolf pop.

Article from 2006 in Washington Post about their return.

Re: Addendum to NH bid for werewolf population...

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Hmmmmmmm so wilderness galore there :)