Post by gamedave on Aug 30, 2018 12:34:41 GMT -5
The City is an indeterminate largish American city, probably on one of the coasts, but filmed in Vancouver. Drawing on Fate RPG design philosophy, genre conventions, and the specific weird mystery vibe of the campaign, the City is intentionally a bit fuzzy. A lot of aspects of the city (and for that matter, Aspects of the City) are left intentionally vague and undefined, so that they can be defined during play to meet the needs of the plot. So, for example, if the plot works better with nearby mountains, then there are mountains nearby, and always have been - we just haven’t seen them on-screen before. Per Fate design philosophy, players will have active input into designing and defining the City. Following is a sort of baseline, several districts described in broad brush strokes.
The Bluffs
Once upon a time, the Bluffs district was the most desirable residential area of the city. The namesake bluffs gave a scenic riverview, literally and metaphorically above the dirt and grime of the city’s industry, commerce, and common folk. It’s where both the City’s Old Money and the Nouveau Riche robber barons of the Gilded Age built their gilded palaces. However, the Bluffs are geologically unstable, in a way that has defied definitive analysis from the finest minds at the University. Sinkholes would occasionally open up, swallowing entire mansions. Then, finally, decades ago a cataclysmic storm ended in a massive landslide, as a significant portion of the Bluffs slid down into the River, and numerous sinkholes opened up across the district. Most of the district wealthy families fled the destruction, to rebuild their lives in more stable suburbs. The Bluffs never recovered. Today, the Bluffs is a semi-abandoned district of decaying mansions and swampy sinkholes. Some of the buildings in better conditions have been divided and sub-divided into apartments, and many students pushed out of Uptown by rising rents find cheap, historic, but decidedly dicey housing here. Some artistic types are also drawn here by the beautiful architecture that remains and the general air of melancholic decay. Other homes are still inhabited by their original inhabitants, Old Money families gone to seed, the decay of their wealth and status matching the physical decay of the family manse.
Aspects: Old Money, Old Problems; Long Way Down; Bohemian Rhapsody; The Veil Is Thin...
The ‘Burbs
As with pretty much every American city after the Second World War, the City saw a massive migration to its suburbs, which sprawl in every direction, covering farms and wildlands and smaller towns with strip malls and McMansions and Levittowns. The City’s elite moved from the Bluffs to wealthy, leafy suburbs like Oak Hills and Cutler’s Mill, while the middle class and working class migrated from Downtown, the Grinder, and the Riverfront to prosaic, cookie cutter developments like Archer Pointe, Piney Grove, and Rosewood.
Aspects: Nothing Happens in the ‘Burbs, Mask of Plastic Over an Oaken Face, It's Normal...Too Normal
Chinatown
When Chinese immigrants first arrived in the City, they were scorned, shunned, and segregated. The industrious immigrants basically built their own district from the ground up on their own. The Powers That Be in the City varied in their attitudes towards Chinatown from benign neglect to active hostility. As other "undesirable" immigrants arrived in the City, they often found themselves shunted by both implicit and explicit discrimination into Chinatown, and created their own enclaves. Today, Chinatown is a bustling, diverse commercial and tourist district with a nightlife that rivals the Riverfront. However, it's never fully shed its rough and tumble roots, nor have City services, administration, or law enforcement penetrated very deeply. It still stands as almost a city within a city, with its own transportation networks, services, even roads maintained by Tongs and other community groups or private individuals, of highly variable quality. With all of that comes ethnic gangs, organized crime, smuggling, and potholes.
Aspects: Anything Is Available...For a Price, Watch Your Step, The Dragon Never Sleeps, More of a Stew Pot Than a Melting Pot
Downtown
The old core of the City, Downtown has seen its ups and downs as trends cycled through urban and suburban living and shopping. It never quite reached the depths of the worst neighborhoods, though, as government functions kept the area relevant. Along with a couple of other districts, urban renewal in the last couple of decades has revitalized Downtown. It is home to big, Classical Revival government buildings, Art Deco skyscrapers, the City’s oldest and second biggest hospital, and an active if somewhat staid urban shopping district. It also home to the City's government, banks, corporations, and all of the corruption that goes with that. It has restaurants, hotels, theaters, museums, and other attractions, but most of the city’s real nightlife is now in the Riverfront. After the government and corporate workers clear out, it becomes surprisingly empty late at night.
Aspects: Mundane Days and Uncanny Nights, Downtown Has Its Ups and Downs, Thoroughly Greased Wheels
The Grinder
One of the oldest districts in the City, the Grinder was its industrial heart, filled with factories, railyards, stockyards, slaughterhouses, and overcrowded tenements. It was always a grim, dirty, dangerous place, but became even worse as industries closed down or moved operations. It’s now the City’s worst slum, filled with abandoned industrial buildings and decaying tenements. It also has a remarkably extensive, maze-like, underground, composed of abandoned subway lines, steam, coal, and utility tunnels, and, rumor has it, connections to a vast network of caverns. More than a few "urban explorers" have descended under the Grinder only to disappear without a trace. A few brave hipsters occasionally try to homestead here in a cheap studio loft, but they quickly move out - or simply disappear. Only those with no place else to go live here. It’s a place that grinds the hope out of you.
Aspects: Literally Grinding Poverty, Rusted Heart of the Old City, The UnderCity
The Old Fort
Standing outside of the City proper is an old fortification, built by the earliest European settlers in the area. It has been abandoned and rebuilt numerous times in response to changing threats. It was most recently rebuilt as a coastal defense battery during World War II, then converted to a missile and air defense facility during the Cold War, before being dismantled and abandoned once again. It was originally situated to command the local waterways and aquatic approaches to the City, but shifting tides have subsumed portions of the original site, and undercut later constructions. The oldest sections are now a living archaeological museum run by the University, while the newest section is crumbling, mid-20th Century brutalist concrete. There is a lively debate about whether to try to preserve and restore that section as a WWII or Cold War museum, demolish it and try to restore the old fortifications buried underneath, re-develop the land for commercial purposes, or just let the natural forces of wind and tide have their way. Rumors about the Old Fort run the gamut from the existence of pre-European (or pre-human!) fortifications to buried pirate treasure to Cold War-era experiments sealed in secret bunkers under the newest sections.
Aspects: Buried Secrets, Shifting Tides, A History of Violence
The Riverfront
The Riverfront used to be a bustling annex to the industrial district, but as the industries moved out and the Grinder decayed, so did the Riverfront. However, a decade or so ago, a massive urban renewal project revitalized the Riverfront, and remade it into a hip, trendy district. The old warehouses were torn down or repurposed, the piers were demolished or repaired and upgraded and integrated into a scenic riverwalk. There was always significant greenspace here, and that has been expanded as empty lots have been landscaped. The Riverfront is now filled with coffee shops, art galleries, parks, clubs, trendy converted industrial spaces, and a brand new sports stadium.
Aspects: The Riverfront is Where It’s At, Surprisingly Old and Extensive Greenspace, From Dusk 'Til Dawn
Uptown
Uptown, also known as the University District, is one of the City’s newest districts. It is dominated by the University, founded in the late 19th Century in what was then rolling hills and farmland outside city limits. The City has since grown to encompass the campus, and the hills and farmlands have mostly been build over, but Uptown is still probably the most green and open district in the City. Old farmhouses dating back to the 19th Century or earlier are sprinkled among more modern buildings. The University still maintains a working farm here as an agricultural research station and living museum. University Hospital is the city’s largest and most modern. Off campus, bookstores, coffee shops, pizzarias, cheap housing, and other trappings of student life are starting to be pushed out by industrial parks and upscale homes and apartments as Uptown has become a hub for high-tech start ups. A number of Wiccans, New Age gurus, and Neo-Pagans have declared Uptown to be a "ley-line nexus", which attracted occult book stores, fortune tellers, and similar businesses. However, they are also being pushed out by the inexorable pressure of rising rents and diminishing retail space caused by those high-tech start-ups. Some proprietors of these businesses have even accused some of these start-ups of intentionally displacing them, so as to claim the ley-lines for themselves.
Aspects: Brains of the City, Uptown Is on the Way Up, "Ley-Line Nexus"
The Bluffs
Once upon a time, the Bluffs district was the most desirable residential area of the city. The namesake bluffs gave a scenic riverview, literally and metaphorically above the dirt and grime of the city’s industry, commerce, and common folk. It’s where both the City’s Old Money and the Nouveau Riche robber barons of the Gilded Age built their gilded palaces. However, the Bluffs are geologically unstable, in a way that has defied definitive analysis from the finest minds at the University. Sinkholes would occasionally open up, swallowing entire mansions. Then, finally, decades ago a cataclysmic storm ended in a massive landslide, as a significant portion of the Bluffs slid down into the River, and numerous sinkholes opened up across the district. Most of the district wealthy families fled the destruction, to rebuild their lives in more stable suburbs. The Bluffs never recovered. Today, the Bluffs is a semi-abandoned district of decaying mansions and swampy sinkholes. Some of the buildings in better conditions have been divided and sub-divided into apartments, and many students pushed out of Uptown by rising rents find cheap, historic, but decidedly dicey housing here. Some artistic types are also drawn here by the beautiful architecture that remains and the general air of melancholic decay. Other homes are still inhabited by their original inhabitants, Old Money families gone to seed, the decay of their wealth and status matching the physical decay of the family manse.
Aspects: Old Money, Old Problems; Long Way Down; Bohemian Rhapsody; The Veil Is Thin...
The ‘Burbs
As with pretty much every American city after the Second World War, the City saw a massive migration to its suburbs, which sprawl in every direction, covering farms and wildlands and smaller towns with strip malls and McMansions and Levittowns. The City’s elite moved from the Bluffs to wealthy, leafy suburbs like Oak Hills and Cutler’s Mill, while the middle class and working class migrated from Downtown, the Grinder, and the Riverfront to prosaic, cookie cutter developments like Archer Pointe, Piney Grove, and Rosewood.
Aspects: Nothing Happens in the ‘Burbs, Mask of Plastic Over an Oaken Face, It's Normal...Too Normal
Chinatown
When Chinese immigrants first arrived in the City, they were scorned, shunned, and segregated. The industrious immigrants basically built their own district from the ground up on their own. The Powers That Be in the City varied in their attitudes towards Chinatown from benign neglect to active hostility. As other "undesirable" immigrants arrived in the City, they often found themselves shunted by both implicit and explicit discrimination into Chinatown, and created their own enclaves. Today, Chinatown is a bustling, diverse commercial and tourist district with a nightlife that rivals the Riverfront. However, it's never fully shed its rough and tumble roots, nor have City services, administration, or law enforcement penetrated very deeply. It still stands as almost a city within a city, with its own transportation networks, services, even roads maintained by Tongs and other community groups or private individuals, of highly variable quality. With all of that comes ethnic gangs, organized crime, smuggling, and potholes.
Aspects: Anything Is Available...For a Price, Watch Your Step, The Dragon Never Sleeps, More of a Stew Pot Than a Melting Pot
Downtown
The old core of the City, Downtown has seen its ups and downs as trends cycled through urban and suburban living and shopping. It never quite reached the depths of the worst neighborhoods, though, as government functions kept the area relevant. Along with a couple of other districts, urban renewal in the last couple of decades has revitalized Downtown. It is home to big, Classical Revival government buildings, Art Deco skyscrapers, the City’s oldest and second biggest hospital, and an active if somewhat staid urban shopping district. It also home to the City's government, banks, corporations, and all of the corruption that goes with that. It has restaurants, hotels, theaters, museums, and other attractions, but most of the city’s real nightlife is now in the Riverfront. After the government and corporate workers clear out, it becomes surprisingly empty late at night.
Aspects: Mundane Days and Uncanny Nights, Downtown Has Its Ups and Downs, Thoroughly Greased Wheels
The Grinder
One of the oldest districts in the City, the Grinder was its industrial heart, filled with factories, railyards, stockyards, slaughterhouses, and overcrowded tenements. It was always a grim, dirty, dangerous place, but became even worse as industries closed down or moved operations. It’s now the City’s worst slum, filled with abandoned industrial buildings and decaying tenements. It also has a remarkably extensive, maze-like, underground, composed of abandoned subway lines, steam, coal, and utility tunnels, and, rumor has it, connections to a vast network of caverns. More than a few "urban explorers" have descended under the Grinder only to disappear without a trace. A few brave hipsters occasionally try to homestead here in a cheap studio loft, but they quickly move out - or simply disappear. Only those with no place else to go live here. It’s a place that grinds the hope out of you.
Aspects: Literally Grinding Poverty, Rusted Heart of the Old City, The UnderCity
The Old Fort
Standing outside of the City proper is an old fortification, built by the earliest European settlers in the area. It has been abandoned and rebuilt numerous times in response to changing threats. It was most recently rebuilt as a coastal defense battery during World War II, then converted to a missile and air defense facility during the Cold War, before being dismantled and abandoned once again. It was originally situated to command the local waterways and aquatic approaches to the City, but shifting tides have subsumed portions of the original site, and undercut later constructions. The oldest sections are now a living archaeological museum run by the University, while the newest section is crumbling, mid-20th Century brutalist concrete. There is a lively debate about whether to try to preserve and restore that section as a WWII or Cold War museum, demolish it and try to restore the old fortifications buried underneath, re-develop the land for commercial purposes, or just let the natural forces of wind and tide have their way. Rumors about the Old Fort run the gamut from the existence of pre-European (or pre-human!) fortifications to buried pirate treasure to Cold War-era experiments sealed in secret bunkers under the newest sections.
Aspects: Buried Secrets, Shifting Tides, A History of Violence
The Riverfront
The Riverfront used to be a bustling annex to the industrial district, but as the industries moved out and the Grinder decayed, so did the Riverfront. However, a decade or so ago, a massive urban renewal project revitalized the Riverfront, and remade it into a hip, trendy district. The old warehouses were torn down or repurposed, the piers were demolished or repaired and upgraded and integrated into a scenic riverwalk. There was always significant greenspace here, and that has been expanded as empty lots have been landscaped. The Riverfront is now filled with coffee shops, art galleries, parks, clubs, trendy converted industrial spaces, and a brand new sports stadium.
Aspects: The Riverfront is Where It’s At, Surprisingly Old and Extensive Greenspace, From Dusk 'Til Dawn
Uptown
Uptown, also known as the University District, is one of the City’s newest districts. It is dominated by the University, founded in the late 19th Century in what was then rolling hills and farmland outside city limits. The City has since grown to encompass the campus, and the hills and farmlands have mostly been build over, but Uptown is still probably the most green and open district in the City. Old farmhouses dating back to the 19th Century or earlier are sprinkled among more modern buildings. The University still maintains a working farm here as an agricultural research station and living museum. University Hospital is the city’s largest and most modern. Off campus, bookstores, coffee shops, pizzarias, cheap housing, and other trappings of student life are starting to be pushed out by industrial parks and upscale homes and apartments as Uptown has become a hub for high-tech start ups. A number of Wiccans, New Age gurus, and Neo-Pagans have declared Uptown to be a "ley-line nexus", which attracted occult book stores, fortune tellers, and similar businesses. However, they are also being pushed out by the inexorable pressure of rising rents and diminishing retail space caused by those high-tech start-ups. Some proprietors of these businesses have even accused some of these start-ups of intentionally displacing them, so as to claim the ley-lines for themselves.
Aspects: Brains of the City, Uptown Is on the Way Up, "Ley-Line Nexus"