Guys,
I’m looking for ways to Display the city, from skyscrapers to slums.
So I’m looking for little bits of a scene which I can use to make the city more real. Here is what I got:
– A drunk in the middle of the road
– rats eating leftovers near a fastfood joint
– somebodys puked all over here
– some rednecks looking for a hip club
– homeless girls asking for money
– a dumpster with some very suspicous sounds coming from it
– a movement on a roof – might be a gargoyle? Or a mob sniper?
– sewercovers exploding up
– a bum with his trolley
– a hooker at work
– some b-class starlet making a big scene out of visiting a club
– Some very strange looking guy who wants to wipe your carwindows at the trafficlights
– a huge gathering of cats in a park who “sing” together
Would like your input here – how else can you show the city?
A little old lady sitting in a park feeding pigeons.
Children playing soccer in the street
The smell of fresh bagels and freshly washed sidewalks in the morning as you walk…
Nice!
A crowded subway wagon, eerily silent as everybody is busy playing with their smartphones.
A dude in a medieval costume guiding a group of senior Japanese tourists (well, in European cities anyway).
The sound of police sirens from two blocks away.
A drug addict searching an overflowing public garbage container (in German cities anyway, due to bottle and can deposits).
A semi-coherent old man with a battered looking megaphone preaching conspiracy theories at a tourist hotspot.
A sports car racing down the street on a rainy day, splashing dirty water on passersby.
Great examples of city suburbs, but i think, there is not enough opposite side of city – skyscrapers and higher class.
– long queue of people dressed really stylishly at the posh club entrance
– paparazzi following a star trying to hide away
– chic limo, slowly passing by
– street blocked for filming a blockbuster
– entrance of the restaurant being cleared by guards before VIP persons arrival
– A well-known TV journalist, filming reportage
– a helicopter with a huge TV channel logo hovering over the city and filming something
– a street full of parked sports cars
– two business man wearing expensive suits emotionally discussing something near office skyscraper building
The ring of your neighbour’s alarm clock sounding through too thin walls.
Deafening hip hop beats from an old black BMW.
Shop windows displaying furniture with minimalistic design and price tags ordinary people would attach to cars.
A crescendo of car horns during a traffic jam.
Hipsters camping on the street in front of an Apple store.
Kamikaze bicycle riders. Like, everywhere!
An elegantly dressed crowd having a drink in front of the opera house.
The smell of marihuana emanating from a half closed doorway.
An ancient monument or famous building, brightly lit up at night.
Street musicians playing Klezmer tunes.
Dozens of dirty grey pigeons gathering in front of a fastfoods restaurant.
If it comes to trying to help set a place where story can take place, urban legends are perfect things for that. If you’re looking for things to just POP for your players (such as landmarks and city description), a good way too look at things is think about what kind of city you want. You can usually tell older and modern cities apart, based on their layout. History can also be really telling for a setting.
Another good idea is divide the city up into segments, and set certain “bits of scene”, as you put it, to those areas. People are creatures of habit after all, so on any given night it’s likely business as usual. Until the players come to the area and start shifting things around.
The smell of a garbage truck
The smell of a young womans perfume in the subway
John Layton Good advice there! You go for a different kind of approach there – I was looking for stuff to enrich an improvised scene while you go for a more planned approach.
If you have Eternal Lies for Trail of Cthulhu — if you don’t, don’t buy it just for this, obviously — look at the Hopeful and Sinister Beats for examples.
I don’t own that one. Care to share some of the best ideas for these Beats?
Sure, I’ll give you the ones for a city in Mexico. Bear in mind that the campaign is set in the 1930s, but a lot of these are likely still usable:
Hopeful Beats
• Children run and laugh through the street and plaza, chasing each other for fun. One has a dark rubber ball that he’s trying to keep away from his cohort.
• The smell of fresh flowers drifts down from window boxes along the street ahead. A young woman, tending some flowers, smiles a casual “hello.”
• An old man pushes a salbutes cart up the uneven street. The smell of cooking, spicy turkey, and fresh tomato tickles your nose. A row of taco-like salbutes in simple paper wrappers tops the cart, the bright avocados catching your eyes.
Sinister Beats
• A black bird picks at a cat left dead in the road. The bird looks at you with its yellow eyes, a bit of raw meat dangling from its mouth, then flies away.
• You notice a mural depicting conquistadors in the jungle, pointing toward a Mayan pyramid. The mural is riddled with bullet holes.
I’m not sure if these are “the best” — it’s all fairly subjective. The focus tends to be on the middle and low ground, not the high ground, which is appropriate for Eternal Lies and for Trail in general.
Also, if you’ve got the DresdenFiles RPG, check out the guidelines for city creation. There’s a lot of good material there.
Hm, also, a book recommendation: The Dervish House, by Ian McDonald. It’s sf set in the 2020s, iirc, in Istanbul. But, a lot of the characters are old enough that events from 40 years ago, you know, back in the 1980s, are very present in memory. It’s also got a lot of wild and weird stuff going on, and, as is common with McDonald, a recognition that, while the future is unevenly distributed, it comes to all countries. The city, or at least certain neighborhoods, are very much alive, and you could probably map Urban Shadows onto the characters.
It was my first choice for the Hugo for Best Novel (and, sadly, didn’t stand a chance), and I liked it better than his River of Gods, but that’s also an important work, and, FWIW, back in the last Denver WorldCon, the ONLY work that appeared on all panelists’ lists of the 20 most important sf novels of the last 20 years (where they’d all agreed not to get bogged down in definitions of “important”, “sf”, “novel”, or in one case, “20” (Charles Brown could come up with 15 or 17 or 25, iirc, but not 20.)
Yeah! I love the one with the black bird!
I played the hell out of Dresden, and the city creation is a great idea which I love. But I’m unsure about using it for US. I do not yet have a set of players for a campaign, so I think I’ll use a different approach and create the city while playing in it.
That should work. You only need to create in advance as much as you’re going to need in, mmm, figure the first 20 minutes of play? And even there, the players will help.