Monday, February 20, 2006

Where to play?

I have played and gamesmastered SR2 for many years, having run several campaigns of varying success and enjoyment. Most of the games were set in either Seattle or London and both locations were great fun.

When I decided to upgrade to SR4 and start a new campaign I wanted to start over. Seattle and London had been done, I was beginning to struggle thinking of new ideas, and my players knew every bar and club and place of interest in these two cities so I began a search of the world for a new location.

First off I wanted the place to be in America, I intend to fuel this campaign with the zip of bullets and the smell of cordite, and where else can my characters find arms and armour sold in supermarkets?

I have a couple of sourcebooks for America, Denver and Tir Tangire among others but I have issues with these. Denver as described in Fasa’s world is fucked up. Divided into five different sectors, each controlled by a different faction, each suspicious of the other. It is contrived and I find it difficult to visualise. And the other, Tir Tangire is not for my players. The secretive world of the elves in this country within a country is a place that only the GM should see into and it is not for player consumption.

So that left me to go off and find a place in America by myself. With Google Earth I found several cities that fitted the bill. New York, Washington and Los Angeles are some that caught my eye.

The next thing on my criterion was history and landmarks. Nothing better to inspire me when I am having an adventure writing block than photos of famous places, and if those places are in my city of choice all the better. After putting together a list of places that would be interesting, San Francisco rattled to the top of my list. Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Lombard Street, Those stupidly steep roads.

I was sold. And San Francisco became the city of choice.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

dude,

have a look at the Californian
freestate or target:UCAS... they are both good source material for running in the US

Owain said...

I'm looking out for Californian Freestate but it is a rare book.

I have however found a lot of info on San Francisco for the Shadowrun universe, so I'm not running the game totaly blind.

Anonymous said...

if your lucky i could send you a copy of UCAS... i appear to have 2 of them (got 1 cheap at gencon only to discover i had it already) was going to ebay it... but if you want it....

Anonymous said...

check this link O.

http://wiki.dumpshock.com/index.php/San_Francisco

Owain said...

Cheers Nigel for the link, but I have already strolled on through there and skimmed off the info that I wanted.