The Dresden Files RPG

Warning, this is more about process than the specifics of the game.

So, my knowledge of Baltimore at the start of this process was pretty limited. I’d driven around the city some, and I knew that you had crazy stuff like Poe’s grave, and Anthony Bourdain’s magnificently dismissive description of Baltimore. Beyond that I had a few jokes (Driving in Baltimore, you can end up in two places: The harbor, or dead). As such, I had a big challenge in front of me: what in god’s name do I need to do?

Stepping back, I thought a bit about what I would want out of the final write up. A bit of history, sure, but interesting history, which is to say, history that I could draw plot seeds from. The major imports of the late 18th century just aren’t going to be useful to know unless there’s a plot seed somewhere in them. So that means that no, this is not an opportunity to write a treatise on trade in the age of sail.

Similarly, I want a map, but I don’t want a gaming map. A pretty map of streets with a numeric key of interesting locations is almost entirely useless to me as a GM. The city is not a dungeon, and I don’t really want to be dealing with player’s making turn-by-turn navigation decisions within the city. I need to know enough about the geography of the city to know the general flow of things. Beyond that, I want a linguistic map of the city. I want a map that reflects how people describe the city, which means a map of neighborhoods and important streets.

Similar to history, I also want to dig up folklore and ghost stories. Every area in the world has its own stories, from colonial stories about witches to modern urban legends.

Trappings of flavor are also important to get. From humor to dialect to media portrayal, this is going to have more signal to noise than history, but it will serve much the same purpose. There’s a temptation to grab every quirky nugget of trivia and offer it up as local color, but that needs to be strictly curtailed.

Lastly, I want to find a theme. This last is an interesting challenge, and once I won’t really be able to address until I’ve looked at the first three needs, but it’s going to be very important, because it answers the question that “Stories in Baltimore are usually going to be about….” This isn’t something to lock ourselves into anything, but it helps provide a reason that the city is Baltimore and not someplace else.

To give an example, if we were writing about DC, the theme would be power, plain and simple. Why? Because that’s what DC is all about – it’s where the thousand most powerful people in America do their business. It’s the place where all other currencies; money, information, sex and more, get cashed in for the real stuff – power. As a GM, this is like candy for me. Power struggles, questions of real vs. illusionary power, where real power comes from, the responsibilities of power – all these ideas are rich with potential game ideas, all drawn from a fairly simple theme.

I want to find something similar for Baltimore, and I have a few ideas, but we’ll see what research brings up.

The question of theme is one of the reasons that a prospective GM would be well served to pick a city he knows personally. Personally, I have no idea what would distinguish a game in Albany, NY from one in Buffalo, NY, but if I were to sit down with a native, maybe read some papers, read some local fiction, the differences may become apparent. Every city has some hidden awesomeness to it, so pick something that you know well enough to find it.

I’m violating this a little, in that I know DC far better than I do Baltimore. However, I live 20 minutes outside of the city, so it’s too good an opportunity to pass up.

Anyway, that means I’ve broken this down to 5 different things to look into, and #5 is really going to wait until after I’ve had a chance to look at the other four.

Now, I can do a lot on the Internet. Between Wikipedia and Google I could probably slap something together in pretty short order, but it’ll be fairly half assed, so let’s start things off in the real world with a trip to the Library.

Retro, yes, but you really will find more there than you will online, especially if you’re looking for local interest material. Now, depending upon how long ago high school was for you, you may have some bad habits to break, or new habits to learn.

Personally, as a power nerd, I’d always had a kind of disdain for encyclopedias. In school, I’d been taught that using them was a kind of cheating, so I’d always been hesitant to hit them. That was quite stupid on my part.

Start with the encyclopedia. If you dread actual books, Wikipedia is a good stand in, but in general, I’d suggest it as supplemental to hitting the books. Ideally, grab two or three encyclopedias and a cup of coffee (yes, you can drink coffee in most libraries these days – it’s fantastic!) and just absorb. Take notes, but in a limited way. You’re looking to capture key words – names, place and events. Don’t worry about context – this is just your opportunity to get an overall understanding and to gather those things that you’ll want to look up later.

Now, armed with a basic backdrop, you might be tempted to wade right into the stacks and put your mad card catalog skillz to use, but hold on a minute. The next step is the real reason we’re at a library, and not doing this all with google. Ready for it?

Go talk with a librarian.

This may seem oddball to some, though I think at least some of you are nodding because you already know the secret. See, a lot of us have an impression of Librarians as some sort of glorified custodians, or worse, have the common gamer hesitancy to talk about our hobby in a non-crazy context. Both of these ideas will shoot you in the foot. Librarians are a special flavor of power nerd, and I promise you, if you have an interesting question for them, they will bend over _backwards_ to find ways to help you with it.

Explain that you’re trying to put together a guide of your city with an emphasis on the weird. Explain you’re looking for accessible history, and if possible any folklore or ghost stories. Then stand back.

(Now, I shouldn’t have to say this, but be polite and let them help you, but don’t assume they must help you. If you do so, or if you neglect to thank them, that is being a jerk, and is a problem far outside the scope of this document.)

Now, it’s possible you will encounter a burnt out, busy, or otherwise unavailable Librarian, but just wait or ask another.

I know I seem to really be hammering this point, but until you have seen the difference that 5 minutes with a real librarian can make, you’re just going to accept that this is powerful, powerful mojo on their part.

If you end up having to look up the stuff by hand, I’m so sorry. I really thought there’d be a good librarian there, so it will take longer, but the final result should be two stacks of books: one of history and local interest, and one of folklore, legends and ghost stories (as an aside, make sure to explicitly look for ghost stories – that tends to be the way that supernatural stories of all stripes get filed).

Now the good news is you don’t have to read all this, but you should skim it. Skimming is a valuable skill, and there’s a nice writeup on how to do it here for those who want a refresher.

Your goal now is to capture hooks. Hooks are, thankfully, very easy to spot because they’re the things that you find interesting. Just putter along and when you hit on something that makes you go “Huh” or “neat!” then write it down. Maybe some of these will suggest other things to read, but the key here is that you should not be investing more time and effort than you are interested in. When you lose interest, then the material has stopped being useful. Wrap up there.

This little outing should give you enough of a foundation that you should already have ideas about what kind of games might run well in the city. Old disasters, organizations, robber barons, crime sprees and just random noise can all take fascinating twists when you say “Why is this magical?”.

With that footing underneath you, the next thing you want to get may be the single most useful book you’ll pick up (and possibly the biggest investment) – hit the travel section of your local bookstore and get a travel guide. If you’re lucky enough to have many to choose from, take a minute to flip through them and pick the one that seems like the most fun to read.

(And here’s a confession – if you really want to skip the whole library thing, you can really just start with this step. Most good tour guides include a decent history section and are chock full of possibilities. Also, if you’re a AAA member, see what they offer.)

Beyond that, grab a few periodicals. Most cities of a certain size have a magazine of their own, and local papers are great references. If you can manage to go into the city itself, go and grab an armful of free weeklies. I have no idea what they’ll be called in your city, but you can find them near coffee shops, and they are the best path to the true weirdness of your town.

NOW it’s time to hit the web.

The web is going to be an excellent resource for maps and photos, and google is going to be your friend for this. As such, I’m going to suggest a few search terms you might find fruitful (I’m missing some, so feel free to add suggestions.) :

Use your cities name plus:
neighborhood Map (having the names of neighborhoods is SO important)
ghost stories
folklore
magic
humor
jokes
historical maps
politics
crime
dialect
prostitution (The goal of this one is to find out where the red light district is. Every city has one. You don’t need to go there, but you definately wan to tbe able to name it.)

Again, cherry pick the stuff that strikes you as interesting.

You’re also going to want to use google images to look for pictures of your city, and I would also suggest going to del.icio.us and look for entries that use your city’s name as a flag.

Honestly, the web stuff does not need much rigor. Put a folder in your bookmarks and load it up, and just putter through this stuff at your convenience. It should just be a pool you can dip your toe into

The one exception to this is geography – put in a little work here. Get a list of neighborhood names and major streets, and see what you can find out about them. Check crime statistics, house prices and news stories and see what comes up. If you know that the kibble district has a lot of warehouses, and that the Bits neighborhood has a crime rate 4 times the rest of the city, you are now armed with information you want to have when you have something in mind that requires a warehouse or a mugging. Definitely find out where the nice part of town is – several evil people probably live there, so get a sense of what it’s like.

You’ll notice that while this is relatively completist, the emphasis is on being as lazy as possible. There’s a good reason for this – the setting is going to be exactly as interesting as you find it. At the end, you should have:

1. A bible – the travel guide is the most likely candidate for this, but whatever it is, it should be the one book you find most interesting and useful, that becomes you fallback.
   
2. Backdrop – You should have enough history and folklore under you belt that you feel like you could maybe start putting together a magical history of your city, y’know, if you _had_ to.
   
3. Geography – You should have enough maps that the shape of the city looks familiar to you, but more importantly, you should have a list of place names. Remember, people don’t think like maps – they describe places in neighborhoods and streets.
   
4. Flavor – Jokes and local interest news stories give a sense of what sort of things happen in your city.
   
5. Theme – this one is kind of on you. If nothing has suggested itself yet, look up books and poems about your city and see what other people have glommed on to.

Next entry, I’ll run through what this process found around Baltimore.