Tackling Building New York City

[RoseThorns]

Hey folks! So I'm new to the forums - my name's Shoshana and I'm going to be running a NYC based Dresden game for my New York group and I'm trying to tackle stating out the Big Apple for the City Building section. And before I even started, I'm feeling sliiiiightly overwhelmed. I'm still in the research gathering portion of this shindig to set things up, but I wanted to ask if anyone who has tackled major cities might have some suggestions, especially when it comes to breaking down major areas of the city. I found one previous forum post about breaking down into neighborhoods as well as just locations? Perhaps that might work?

Also if there's anyone out there who has worked on NYC and wants to talk, that would be great?

[Morgan]

Well I had to tackle making New York City for Dresden Files for my summer convention games and I've just started collaborating on Los Angeles with my home group. I'd say the first thing to do when tackling any city creation is go through the process with your players, not only is there more creative energy, it also really helps you get a sense of what your players want from the city and the story. Also the really big thing to nail down with city creation is the Themes and the Trouble, once you've got those you can fill in neighborhoods, locations, and faces as you go or as needed. But still running through the steps with your players will help you and them get an good sense of the City and Campaign you're building together.

For New York I knew I was going to be running three different one shot four hour games so getting every location, neighborhood, and borough wasn't really necessary but getting the cities themes down, and then giving each game it's own trouble really helped to focus the game and place them in New York. For Themes I though about how everyone and everything comes to New York and its place as one of the most important cities in the world. So the Aspect I chose for that theme was "The Crossroads of the World". Next I wanted to focus on New York's reputation for its bustling pace, its energy, its excitement but also its dangers. The Aspect I chose in for that theme was "The City That Never Sleeps". Once I had those themes and aspects I could then focus on finding the Trouble and its Aspect for each of the games. (When coming up with names for Themes and Aspects for Cities, slogans and sayings about the city you're creating are your friends.)

I then went into choosing locations and characters for each of them as well, for two of them I chose very defined starting locations and also prepared some ending locations, the other I opened up the whole of New York to the players and let them choose where they wanted to start off and end up. I gave the locations some Aspects and a face or two, and also prepared some stock locations and characters, but I really leave it up to my players to help me create New York City using their skills to make Declarations and Assessments, as well as Contacting new NPCs.

Now for the Los Angeles Dresden game my friends and I are starting up we've spent two sessions creating Los Angeles and our characters, the Themes and Troubles we came up with for the city really highlight the game we want to play there. The sprawling, disjointed nature of LA and its cities and neighborhoods was defined with "A City Divided". We are also planning to kick off the game just as the Vampire War gets started, we also wanted to highlight element's of LA's violence and crime, as well as its haunted history and that was all nicely defined with "Blood on the Streets". Now for Trouble we are going with the PCs being two young apprentice Wizards who find themselves betrayed by their master in the opening shots of the War and end up alone in one of the war's front line cities, so that got defined as "Out in the Cold".

So that is what our game and our LA looks like, we have quite a few locations and faces, but there are still large sections of the map we've left blank. And I'd say that is another important thing when creating a really big city don't try to do it all. Hit the highlights and important places, get enough so you can start playing, but don't try to do every location in a city. Doing that for a small town could drive you nuts, doing it for a megalopolis like New York is nuts. Also your Los Angeles or New York, or wherever could look totally different then mine, and indeed it probably should. The Themes and Troubles really help to define Your City and Your Game, so talk to your players and see what all of you want out of your Dresden game and model the city you choose accordingly.

[Todjaeger]

I haven't started tacking NYC for Dresden yet.  At least, not fully.  Since I'm going to be running things in CT, NYC will be a "background" location as it were.  I have (helped) create San Francisco during the playtest, and that helped given a number of ideas/ways to go about 'Butchering' a city.

Part I:

The first thing to keep in mind is that the place you are creating doesn't have to be a place you have ever been to, or are personally familiar with, assuming of course that the location is fairly well-known and therefore somewhat easy to research.  Having said that, it can be nice and very satisfying to create a Dresden version of ones own hometown, college town, or other place that you're personally familiar with and have a connection to.  This can allow you to provide additional, personal 'color' to some of the places.

Speaking in general terms, I would recommend getting a fold-out map of the city, as well as one or more vacation/tour guide books of the city in question.  And yes, I recommend this even for those who are native and/or longtime residents of the cities they are creating.  Aside from often getting to see pictures with different views of familiar places and sights, guide books often have little nuggets of information that can help make places have their own distinct Aspect which natives often are ignorant of or just overlook.  From there, a city should be broken down into smaller sections of regions/neighborhoods, and then specific people and locations within those areas should start being identified.  Once this has been done, then one has the choice to begin with the overall 'look' of the city/Theme-Threat-Aspect, or one can start at the bottom and the based off the descriptions of the locations, use those to determine what the city is like overall.

Part II:

Okay, this part is specific for 'Butchering' NYC.  The first question which comes to mind is what do you mean by NYC?  For most people outside of New York, that means the entire 5 Boroughs, Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island.  For those within the 5 Boroughs, NYC or the City means just Manhattan.  As a recommendation, I would suggest initially just sticking with creating one particular Borough (Manhattan most likely) instead of trying to create the entire 5 Boroughs all at once.  My reason being that any one of the Boroughs can rival most other cities in the US in terms of complexity, nevermind attempting to tackle all five at the same time.  As an example and aside, the Borough of Brooklyn has almost as many residents (~2.5 million) as reside within the limits of the City of Chicago (~2.8 million).  Once the extent of the area being created has been chosen, the get the map(s) and guidebooks I suggested above.  New York being New York, some history books on the City would be highly recommended as well.  New York has a long, sometimes bloody, yet always fascinating history.  Make use of it.

In terms of citywide themes, troubles and aspects, I would definately use some of the nicknames of New York like The Big Apple and The City that Never Sleeps as these both describe New York in certain ways.  From there, I would recommend making a listing of relevant neighborhoods as well as famous landmarks or places of interest.  Once that has been done, determine the theme for these sites, as well as some of the people who are significant or add character to these locations.

Using Manhattan as example:

Examples of neighborhoods which would have a particular 'feel' to them would be:
Wall Street/The Financial District
Battery Park City
Chinatown/Canal St
Greenwich Village
The East Village/Astor Place
Midtown
The Upper West Side
Harlem

Some examples of specific city locations:
Battery Park
City Hall Park/the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge
Union & Washington Square Parks (both have Arches...)
Penn Station
Grand Central Station
The Tombs
St. Patricks Cathedral
Trinity Church
St. Paul's Chapel
The Met/Metropolitan Museum of Art (has mummies...)
Central Park
Cleopatra's Needle
The Cloisters
The Subway system
and so on...

So for this being rather long, but there is quite a bit which can be done with making a Dresden version of New York, I would be happy to help further if that would be useful.

[GruffAndTumble]

I'm doing New York myself, and I have a lot of material, admittedly produced under the heavy influence of "the Vancouver method". I'll start with my Themes and Threats, and if you want more, I'll be glad to provide.

DIRTY MONEY, DIRTY STREETS (Theme)
The Idea: The city falls prey to crime and poverty while the rich hoard ever-increasing wealth.
Face: “Big” Ed Biggs, Ruthless Crime Boss

WORMS RIDDLE THE BIG APPLE (Threat)
The Idea: New York has a tremendous density of supernatural predators, all seeking sole access to their prey.
Face: Utapishtim, Ghoul Prophet

IF I CAN MAKE IT HERE, I CAN MAKE IT ANYWHERE (Theme)
The Idea: Power abounds in New York, but only the toughest survive to seize it.
Face: Thrymm, Jarl of the Jotnar



THE STATUS QUO
Supernatural: Predators bicker for power and prey while the clued-in mortals do their best to flee or weather the night. Meanwhile, the Goblin Market supplies all sides.
Mundane: Making money and taking money—New York’s principal business is business.

[Morgan]

Concerning Maps, one thing that I'm going to be doing from now on is use a NYC Subway Map I picked up on a recent trip back home, and lay that out on the table to give the players a rough idea of the city's geography.

It also ties into the Sub-Theme and Aspect I've put on New York "No One Drives".

[Todjaeger]

Concerning Maps, one thing that I'm going to be doing from now on is use a NYC Subway Map I picked up on a recent trip back home, and lay that out on the table to give the players a rough idea of the city's geography.

It also ties into the Sub-Theme and Aspect I've put on New York "No One Drives".

Umm...  Actually lots of people in NY drive, especially in the outer Boroughs.  Something else to keep in mind, the NYC Subway Transit Map does not give a realistic idea of distance.  Look at the placement of Staten Island on the map, and then take a look at a real map of NY, you'll see that Staten Island is quite a ways away from the other Boroughs, except for part of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, where the two are connected by the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge.  It does give a fairly accurate representation of Manhattan though.

[Morgan]

Umm...  Actually lots of people in NY drive, especially in the outer Boroughs.  Something else to keep in mind, the NYC Subway Transit Map does not give a realistic idea of distance.  Look at the placement of Staten Island on the map, and then take a look at a real map of NY, you'll see that Staten Island is quite a ways away from the other Boroughs, except for part of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, where the two are connected by the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge.  It does give a fairly accurate representation of Manhattan though.

I am aware that lots of people drive in New York, in fact a nice follow up aspect to that one would be "Legendary Traffic". I am from Brooklyn and I know that the Subway Map does not accurately portray the physical geography of the New York area. However to me it does accurately portray my Mental Map of how to get around New York very well, and I think really I'm not alone in that. Knowing the Subways and how to use them to get around is a fairly common New Yorker trait.

In fact a really interesting thing I've noticed after having lived in both New York and Los Angeles, is there are two conversation people from those cities engage in when talking about where they live. In New York you discuss which subways you take to get to your respective homes, in LA you discuss which freeways you use.

[blcahill]

Our group decided to concentrate just on Manhattan to start, instead of all the boroughs. The other boroughs may be expanded if needed.

[Tsunami]

Oh Boy... the first thing i thought when i read the thread title was

"why would someone want to tackle a building... that has to hurt." 

[exploding_brain]

Building a Dresdenverse NYC can be an overwhelming project.  The only reason our group tried it is because this is where we live.

We did concentrate pretty heavily on Manhattan, including the way northern end of Manhattan, that a lot of people forget about, but Grant's Tomb, The Cloisters, and the George Washington Bridge are all up there, past the point where most people subconsciously think Manhattan ends.  We also included a bunch of Brooklyn, especially Brighton Beach, mostly because we needed somewhere to put the Russian mob.

On thing to consider in a city as big and complex as NYC is that you can cover more ground geographically if you resign yourself to being a little more limited thematically.  There are a tremendous number of themes that you could explore in NYC, but if you chose a few to concentrate on, you can ignore the parts of the city that don't impact on that theme.

We decided that we wanted to primarily concentrate on the city as a cultural crossroads, an international center for the arts and sciences, a center of world trade, and the number one global target for terrorism.  Those became Cultural Battleground (Theme), Anything can be had here... for a price (Theme), and The Smallest Spark Can Start a Wildfire (Threat).

The subway map of NYC is a great tool for understanding how the city connects to itself, and where things are in relation to each other.  Google Maps has can show you the subway system overlaid with their normal map, and that's a pretty good way to look at stuff too.

Feel free to steal any of the following that you find appealing.

We decided that the creative energy in NYC was going to be a significant element in out game, connected to the Cultural Battleground Theme.  In the middle of central park is a feature called The Great Lawn, which is a place of power.  It the origin of a ley line that snakes off in two directions, up into the Bronx and down through Manhattan into Brooklyn.  It's a source of creative inspiration, that is particularly easy for mortals to unconsciously access, and most of the major cultural institutions are built on or near that line.  The summer and winter courts compete in NYC by finding and sponsoring up and coming artist, actors, musicians, fashion designers, etc, trying to have one of their candidate become "the next big thing".

There's a hidden center of supernatural commerce, called Foundation Street, underneath Wall Street.  There's a very old Black Court Vampire who runs a small but influential financial firm, and a pack of young werewolf day-traders who want to break his hold on the financial district.

The White Council has a stronghold hidden under the Cloisters, and The Fellowship of St. Giles have one hidden under Grant's tomb.

The anit-terrorism branch of the NYPD are rather well clued in, and do a decent job of protecting the city from some supernatural threats.

NYC is too big for any one organization or individual, supernatural or otherwise, to have any hope of controlling.  The city itself will grind you up and spit you out if you try.

The Malvoras (fear vampires) want to bring back the good old post-9-11 feel to the city, for obvious reasons.

Times square was declared Accorded Neutral Ground sometime in the late '80s/early '90s.  The Raiths are pissed off about being kicked out so that Disney could move in, but there's still plenty of sex in the city for their purposes.

[black omega]

We've had some fun with this.  We elected to focus on Manhattan.  I'd have to agree New York is one of those cities it would be hard to do all at once. 

So far the theme I suggested was 'Rotten at the core' to reflect that things seem to be going well for the city but behind the scenes it's actually getting worse, it's just better at hiding it.

The threat suggested is 'A pebble can start an avalanche' to reflect how all the different factions are jockeying for power, and how one bad move and set off a chain reaction of chaos.

We're still working out the details though.

[exploding_brain]

One of the things I found hardest to wrap my head around for NYC was the "Things are getting darker" theme of the overall Dresdenverse.  Things in NYC really have been getting better, overall, for the last couple of decades, punctuated by tragedies and crises like the financial meltdown and 9/11.

The "Rotten at the core" theme sounds like a nice solution to that problem.

The sense that it can all go to hell suddenly is the other way to go, though I suppose they aren't mutually exclusive.  It's working well for my group so far.

[RoseThorns]

Thanks so much for your suggestions, folks! It has actually helped me walk through this process, which I was finding a little daunting. I was going to also suggest to my players potentially creating our own little town instead of using New York but it seems that New York got everyone interested.

The different Themes suggested have been very important - there is so much New York can encompass and getting an idea of where you guys have gone before has given me some ideas. Especially the notion of the Rotten (corruption) that can be at the heart of New York. I'm also going to be going with, I believe, something along the lines of the anonymity that New York can bring about and how isolating it can be, as part of an overall thread for what is going on in a number of different parts of the mortal and supernatural community. So I chose LAND OF EIGHT MILLION STORIES as the overall aspect, though I'm still tweeking it. I also LOVE the idea of Cultural Battleground and that gave me an idea for a White Court versus Red Court plot that I'm going to be putting in, so thanks for that one too.

The locations I also divvied out to my players, and they seem to be having fun kicking around their favorite neighborhoods and locations as well. I think that Manhattan is going to stay the focus, primarily though, just to keep this from getting too large. If I can manage to widen things a little more, I will, but I will start with the city.

Oh: And to drop in on the debate about the driving thing? As someone who got stuck in two and a half hour traffic today, I think EPIC LEVEL TRAFFIC might be a better aspect People definitely drive!

But thanks folks, I really appreciate it.

[Jibril]

Hi. I’m new here and english isn’t my first language, so pardon my – sometimes – bad english.

Anyway, me and my group decided to Dresdenize Manhattan. I would like to hear your opinion on the themes and threats that we created. In advance – most of it was created basing our knowledge upon Wikipedia and the movies.

THEME 01: The city hides it’s darker side under the glamorous mask. Art, culture, knowledge, science, finance – it’s just a mask to hide the ugly side of the city. Politicians are corrupt, greedy and power-hungry – as long as they have power they don’t care about anything. The police becomes more brutal with each passing day trying to maintain the order - more and more cops starts to bend the rules to get the job done. The poor and the homeless wallow in their despair over their fate – brought upon them by greedy employers, uncaring landlords, apathetic government.

ASPECT: Glamorous rotting Big Apple


THEME 02: Welcome to the concrete jungle – predators abound. This city is dangerous. One wrong turn and you can be mugged, killed or raped. If you’re lucky that is. If not you can become food for the ghouls or the were-rats from the sewers and unused metro tunnels. Or you can become a slave to the vampires. Or you take a wrong turn and instead of ending next to the cinema you appear in a strange land with blue grass and centaurs galloping in the distance. There are portals to the Nevernever hidden in most places of the city. Some are in the tunnels, other in dark corners and hidden in abandoned building. And some are on the top of skyscrapers. And the supernatural predators use them.

ASPECT: It’s jungle – and you’re the prey


THREAT 01: There is no Accorded Neutral Grounds. The last ANG burned down in a freak accident with it’s owner inside. Now three distinctive establishment petitioned queen Mab for this status. Mab refused declaring that only one ANG can exist in a city and that they should decide between them who shall get this status. A large conflict is brewing because every competitor has some power behind them. One of the potential ANG is a bookshop near Central Park that is run by w wizard of the White Council. It’s competitor is a small Chinese restaurant in Chinatown run by 600-years old Jade Court Vampire. And there is the final competitor – somehow forgotten theater turned bar/theater/club on Broadway run by a former changeling of the Summer Court – who employs mostly changelings and scions.

ASPECT: No Safe Zone

[exploding_brain]

Twofold response.  From a fictional point of view, those sound like powerful, evocative choices for Theme and Threat, and they would probably do a good job of driving a dark, brooding sort of game. My only criticism might be that they seem a bit generic, and could apply to almost any big city, anywhere, not necessarily New York, except for the use of New York's nickname "The Big Apple".

The from the point of view of a native New Yorker, I'm afraid (or rather happy) to say both Themes are horrifically out of date, by 30 or 40 years. New York's crime rate, relative to it's size, is quite low, there aren't a ton of homeless people, the poverty rate has gone way down, police relations are relatively civil, and the city government is famous for it's complexity, scope and occasional dysfunction, but not for corruption and apathy.

The city that you're describing sound more like New Orleans, Detroit, Baltimore, LA, maybe Miami, Philly, or DC. I hesitate to add Chicago to that list, since I bet the myths and the facts about Chi town are probably as mixed up as those about NYC.

The thing that's cool and scary about the real NYC is that it's a city of the world (arguably THE city of the world), and it can roll right over you crush you without noticing or caring. Also, it's target number one on the list of basically every terrorist group, foreign or domestic, on the planet. Also, a major center of world finance, and home of most of the asshats that caused the global financial meltdown. Also, the UN is here.

It's scary, but in a Summer court, "Look at all that freaking out of control growth!" sort of way, rather than a Winter Court, "Rotting corpse of a once great city" way.

As far as becoming prey, you're much less likely to lose your life than to lose you dream. The kind of predators that exist in NYC are more likely to consume the soul, and leave the body; an empty, corporate drone. And those are just the mundane predators that really exist, let alone the supernatural ones.

That bit about the competition between locations to be the next ACN is perfect, since NYC is where the powerful come to make deals that change the lives of people all over the world, for better or worse, so being the one ACN in NYC would be incredibly prestigious.

Having said that, hey, the themes you chose would totally work, and if you game group likes playing in that version of NYC, go nuts and have fun.