Setting the Game in Your Location

I am not sure if this is a common occurrence among role-players or not, but a group that I played in high school set many of the games in our town. For obvious reasons, this does not work as well for Dungeons & Dragons as is does for games in a more modern setting; we mainly stuck to Rifts, Vampire: the Masquerade, and Macross as they are easy to set in almost any modern locale. Other good choices would be D20 Modern, Call of Cthulhu, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

It can be easier to draw players into a game if the setting is somewhere that they are already familiar with and have a connection to. This also lessens the dependence on maps as the terrain should be pretty much common knowledge. Plots could include a portal to another dimension opening and monsters or demons coming through, an evil organization bent on world domination setting up a base of operations in town, or vampires running the city through an underground crime syndicate.

The major disadvantage of setting a game in a familiar location is having too many preconceived ideas about the town. For instance, some players may argue that a certain event could not possibly happen in that town because of an element of the real city. They may also argue that the town is too small for some of the scenarios that unfold. In these cases, you could suggest that this is an alternate reality where some of the details are different; ask them if when they look out the window they see mechs, mutants, demons, para-military organizations, etc. This should help to illustrate your point.

Other players may have problems immersing themselves in a gaming environment that they know too well in real life. For instance, they may try to over analyze routes between locations instead of just saying “I am going to the police station”. This can slow the can down and cause the feeling of playing a game to be replaced with the feeling of being a civil engineer.

No one in the group I played with had any of the above issues, so it worked for us. An example of the kind of situations we encountered is below to get you started.

Since I grew up in Bloomington, IL, the enemy base was always set in one of State Farm’s buildings; not because any of us thought that State Farm was particularly evil, but because their main building towers over almost every thing else in the twin cities. It stood to reason that a military, clan of vampires, etc. would be able to fit there better than in most of the other buildings. Our high school was invariably the base of the good operations as our cafeteria seemed about the right size and shape to store a couple of mechs in jet form, and we were familiar with the layout. Also, the shop classes had tools and welding equipment which would be useful for repairs.

In the above scenario, our gaming group took into account logistics such as which buildings were suitably large and had the necessary equipment for bases. Conversely, you may choose to go with a number of smaller buildings as they are less obvious. The possibilities are almost endless as long as you can write a story around who is there, why they are a threat, and – this is optional, but some players may demand to know – why the enemy is at that location: that’s where the portal opened, resources, size, etc.

Using actual locations can save a lot of work in designing your campaign setting as some city planner did it for you! If find this useful or have ever played in a game set in your city, I would love to hear from you. Also, if you played in any of these games with me back in high school and think I am forgetting something, feel free to let the world know that I’m not only a massive nerd, but also have a bad memory! 🙂