I expect you noticed the many articles about Russia’s cyberwarfare section, Vulkan Files, this week.
This isn’t going to be a cyberwarfare post, though. The post is inspired by a throwaway line in the Guardian’s article. It goes like this:
The inconspicuous office is in Moscow’s north-eastern suburbs. A sign reads: “Business centre”. Nearby are modern residential blocks and a rambling old cemetery, home to ivy-covered war memorials. The area is where Peter the Great once trained his mighty army.
Which made me think: how often, in any RPG setting, does the Keeper think about the neighbors?
A lot of settings go into some detail about, say, city blocks, or neighborhoods. Fantasy used to be particularly bad at this. I remember one of White Dwarf’s prize-winning series of articles detailed a city block by block, practically house by house, and while it’s an incredible achievement I could only think, as I read it, ‘there’s absolutely no way I could use this.’
I mean, what would be the point? As DM, you’d never remember half of it. The bits you did remember, you’d never get right. You’d forget stats, or get lost in the maze of text, and be forced to make things up on the fly.
Swords of the Serpentine and Bookhounds of London are better at this, as is Night’s Black Agents or even D&D 5E. There’s enough detail to get you going, not so much that you get bogged down in minutiae, and you convey the flavor of the setting which is much more important than knowing Boggs the Butcher lives in a tumbledown shack in the middle of Spogger Street and owes money to the wizard Fibble who’s in a sadomasochistic relationship with Dodo the gnome who lives in Quaggoth Street at the bottom of the hill and who experiments in alchemy, supplies for which she gets from Ruin the golem on Dundle Lane. Ruin has a quest for you, by the way. They have a rat problem in their cellar. If you bring him six rat tails … and so on.
But there is some advantage to knowing who the neighbors are. It sets the mood, gives you backdrops for scenes, and sometimes allows for important plot twists. It might be nice to know if, say, there was a rambling old cemetery nearby your Bookhounds’ shop. Or just where they go for breakfast.
Not every setting has an established base of operations for the characters, nor does every genre encourage it. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser never had a home for longer than a few minutes. The only time that duo established a nest it got burnt down a few paragraphs later; after that, they were wandering adventurers – at least until they retired. Your Nights Black Agents flit from city to city in a never-ending quest to rid the planet of bloodsuckers. Dungeons and Dragons invented the murderhobo, point being that they are actual hobos – Kings of the Road.
Some settings do, though. Some are deliberately located in particular places – Bookhounds of London, Dreamhounds of Paris. Some are a little more broad-canvas but still rely on central locations; most World of Darkness games center the action on one or two particular places. Wraith depends on its Haunts. Vampires don’t like to travel, and even if they do the intricacies of the setting demand that they pay close attention to the territory they currently occupy.
So what does that look like?
First, a couple ground rules.
It’s not all Plot Relevant. The coffee shop on the corner doesn’t have to have Quests. The shopkeeper’s apprentice doesn’t have a Destiny, or at least not one that requires five fantasy archetypes to go on an epic journey in search of the golden sphincter of the arctic wyrm Quixotus.
It’s not all Supernatural. Yes, settings like Vampire assume all sorts of peculiar entities operate in the shadows. It doesn’t follow that every Starbucks is a front for the Camarilla/Sabbat/Mummies/Wraiths/Santa. Sometimes a Starbucks is just a Starbucks.
It’s not Exhaustive. Don’t name every least business or NPC. Concentrate on the ones you intend to use, even if it’s just as set dressing.
It has a Past. Sometimes that can be fun to play with.
Finally, Randomize. Don’t feel as if everything has to be meticulously planned. Plans never last long once play starts, anyway. Know where you want to get to; the hows and whys of getting there is determined in play.
Let’s say this is a Bookhounds of London game, and the decision’s been made to have the store in the West End. As per the main book, the West End is:
Although there are poorer streets and plenty of low commerce in this area, the West End represents fashion, wealth, and power. The term “West End” can refer to the whole area of central London west of the City or to a specific set of districts west of Charing Cross Road ...
So already you have a decent idea of the kind of businesses/offices/services might be found in that part of London. You also have five players (in this example), each of whom are busy scheming and daydreaming about their characters.
Now’s the time to get those players involved. Five questions, one for each player. A sampling:
- What’s the business right next door to your shop?
- What’s the best short cut to get to the street your shop is on?
- Where does your character go for lunch?
- What’s the traffic like on the corner?
- If you needed to raise money in a hurry, who would you turn to?
- Where do you buy tea?
- Where does the person you crush on work?
I hope you see the pattern. Ask questions that are directly relevant either to the character or the shop. It doesn’t matter if the local amateur FC meets every week in the sports pavilion two streets away if none of the characters have any interest in football. From those questions, devise neighbors.
If this sounds like the Building, well, that’s because it is the Building. Except it’s those parts of the Building that are directly relevant to the characters, and it’s designed in part by the players, not you. Sure, there’s plot involved, but it’s not long-term plot. It’s character plot. Stuff they get up to in their downtime. It's the equivalent of Night's Black Agent's Solace; it's important to the character but has no immediate main plot function.
Put it another way. Agatha Christie wrote murder mysteries, but more often than not there was a sneaky romantic side plot hiding away in there among the corpses because Agatha Christie liked a bit of romance with her exotic poisons. This is your version of that romantic side plot, except the romance is optional.
Let’s dig a little deeper.
What’s the business right next door to your shop?
Answer: a family-owned laundry, which shares a back alley with the shop as well as frontage. Sometimes we get their mail, and they get ours. The turnaround in the back alley is tight, which can cause problems when their truck is parked too close. After some discussion with the player, you decide between you that the family is the Gerondis, and there are five of them: mother, father, two sons, a daughter.
Finally, the random element. Something not in the players’ control.
I like using Tarot for these situations. That gives me a hundred or more combinations determined by the cards, not me; more than enough to be getting on with. I don’t need a lengthy backstory. I need something brief, pithy, and useable in a hurry.
Quick shuffle and one turn of the card later: Death. Straight up.
Oooo.
Death is major arcana, beginnings, change, transformation. OK. That’s now the Gerondi default state. It doesn’t matter when the character encounters them or when they appear in the plot, there’s always something involving change, beginnings, transformation.
Maybe the father is an inventor in his spare time coming up with peculiar gadgets. Maybe the daughter is a romantic falling in and out of love. Or maybe the mother has a love for travel. Or all these things at once; doesn’t matter. Point being, this is the Gerondi default state. No matter when they come up in the narrative or why, something is always changing.
That gives you plot hooks, or at least something to use as a framing piece. None of this has to be plot relevant. This is character relevant, which is just as useful but doesn’t have to involve zombies, magic items, or the ongoing machinations of cults. When in doubt, the Geronidis change, transform, or begin something new.
That’s the neighbor.
Do this four more times and you have five neighbors to play with.
That plus your actual plot should be more than enough to keep your players occupied.
Hope you folks enjoy! See you next week.
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