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Sometimes, you just gotta run a game set here in the "real world". There are several good games either set here, or that you can optionally play here. The World of Darkness games and Call of Cthulhu are two good examples, which I have played and derived much enjoyment from. This past month and a half, I've also been running a World of Darkness game (Changeling, to be exact, with a mummy and a mage thrown in just for the hell of it). Thusly, this month's column shall be about the joys of setting up and running a game here on good ol' planet Earth, in the present or even the past.
There are a couple of perks to running a game set in the real world, or at least, an alternate version (as far as I know, there are no vampires, little green men, or Elder Gods in this reality, but I will be sure to publish a correction if I am proven wrong). The biggest benefit is that God and Mankind have already done all the work. Countries, cultures, fully-populated cities, religions, holidays, and governments, all set up! We even have monsters, in the form of suicide bombers and people who wrap their children in duct tape. If you're running a horror or mystical type game, you may want to come up with some more traditional monsters, but those people are scary enough for me.
Best of all, you can set the game right in your home city (this works very well if you live someplace big and "exciting" like NYC or SanFran, and not so well if you live in a town with a population of 60, a hick bar, and a gas station). Not only do you know the setting well, but if you're running a game locally (rather than on the 'net), all of your players know it well, too. You don't have to describe most of the basics of the city, they already know it. Heck, if you want to be REALLY lazy, you can have the player characters all live in the players' homes (I just thought of that now, and you can bet I'll use it in the future!). Using a familiar backdrop leaves you with more time to focus on torturing the charac- I mean, working on the story. It also adds for a fun contrast... Use a setting everyone knows, but throw a few odd things in, dark shadows and strange happenings.
There may, however, come a time when you want to have your game take place in another town. Maybe your town isn't exciting enough, maybe it makes more sense to have it elsewhere (Cthulhu games work best in New England, after all), or maybe the characters are traveling. When this happens, you have a few options. You can make it up as you go along based on what you already know about the area, or you can research. I recommend the latter, as it saves you from having to put up with nitpicking perfectionists.
Research may seem like a lot of work. Actually, it usually is. But it's the fun sort of work! Especially these days, when all you need to do is run a Google search. Google searching is great fun. As a player alone, I've found myself searching for information on a certain house, housing prices in Louisiana in the 1920s, and Latin translation sites. Along the way, I read about a drug bust, found out all sorts of things about life in the roaring 20s, and discovered many links for the Latin language, which came in handy later. So, fire up your search engine and prepare to waste a few hours!
The pages I recommend most for finding out about a city are Chamber of Commerce and Government pages for facts about the city, the local newspaper(s) website, to see what's going on, and also for advertisements for local businesses and information on who's who in politics and social life, and any tourism sites for fun attractions and good pictures. You may also want to use a map site to get an idea of the layout of town. Plus who knows what random, interesting things you'll find in your search.
If you can't find everything you need or want with a web search, there are a few other things you can do. One is take a trip down to your local library, and check out some books on the area. If you're a AAA member, you can also go down to your local office and pick up maps and guide books (for free, IIRC, or really cheap). You can look for someone on-line (by searching profiles on ICQ, AIM, or whatever) who lives there and might be willing to tell you a bit about it. Look for a chat room specifically for people who live there. I, for one, love the city I live in and am always happy to tell people all about it and how they should move here and play EarthDawn with me.
Once you have a good idea about the city in question, you may want to fudge a few things. Chances are you'll have to add or change little details here and there to fit in with your game. For instance, in the game I'm running, I chose to make up a cool Goth club in the downtown area, and decide that since this IS the "World of Darkness" after all, the UofA should have a parapsychology department. I also decided it would be easier to make up all of the college student character's professors, rather than running a search on each and every one (whose names, by the way, could be found on the college website, another good tool for researching an area) and finding out what details I could find about them. There's such a thing as taking realism too far. As far as using "real" people in your campaign, I recommend only using people who are in the public eye a lot, such as politicians and celebrities.
By now, you should be pretty well-set to run a game. If you want to run a historic game, though, you're going to have a lot more work on your hands, but also a lot of fun. Web searches and libraries are going to be your best bets. Historic recreation groups, vintage clothing sites, and sites with lesson plans for teachers will offer some good information. When preparing for a 1920s Cthulhu game (which I never actually played...), I found time lines for the 20s, information on cars from the era, census information, guidelines on how to dress for a 1920s dinner party, and more. I never did find housing prices, but that's OK.
On a lot of little day-to-day things, you're going to have to fudge it, unless you want to do some serious, in-depth research. Remember that it's just a game, and none of your players were alive in that time period anyway, so they don't know the difference. If they DO know the difference, then either they're better at research than you are, or they're some sort of vampire, faerie, mummy, or immortal swordsman. No matter what their excuse, I highly recommend picking their brain. Just watch out for the fangs! And don't eat the ambrosia.
Tucson and need some advice, my e-mail is at the bottom of the column!
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