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.