Ideas & Suggestions appreciated.

[@BCrosswood]

Hello! Thank you for taking the time to read this.

First, I am putting together a Dresdenverse game in Phoenix, AZ. If anyone is local please send me an email to discuss availability.

Second, this game is going to lean toward the Steampunk Aesthetic. I am going to incorporate many of the character concepts from one of my other favorite games, Deadlands. So there will be mad scientists and undead populating the game which will be set in Kansas City, MO circa 1877.

My initial hook is going to be the movie studio of a mad scientist that has discovered the ability to make movies a little ahead of his time. The PCs will have jobs on the lot or be going to a casting call etc. Basically a golden age of Hollywood scenario.

Most of the players I have interested in the game have not played the RPG before and are not familiar with the city building process. I'd like to have as much of the city built as I can before they get involved so they have something to build from. To that end, I would like help building some Locations and Faces. If you have any from your existing chronicles that would fit (possibly with some minor tweaks) I would most sincerely appreciate your help.

THANK YOU!

[@BCrosswood]

Come on guys and gals. I know y'all have good ideas out there. What sort of steampunk style locations and faces do you have??

[devonapple]

I'm running a contemporary San Francisco-based game - I'm afraid I don't have anything which would fit your needs as stated. You have a compelling concept worked out, though - I hope you are able to make it take off!

[MarkB]

How about a local Native American tribe who have a 'holy' area that's actually a thin spot to the Nevernever. Their shamans and warriors go there for vision-quests which are actually journeys into the Nevernever, where they enter compacts with Fae-like entities who take the form of totem animals as spirit guides. They've traditionally been neutral or friendly to the colonials in the area, but the semi-magical movie-making system the mad scientist has developed generates 'noise' in the Nevernever as a side effect that's annoying the local spirits, and they're egging on the tribe towards a confrontation.

[Set Abominae]

Come on guys and gals. I know y'all have good ideas out there. What sort of steampunk style locations and faces do you have??

Well as a resident of KC, I can say you can't discount the river and its importance during that era.

Here's an interesting tidbit I dug up:

In 1869, less than two months after the golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, symbolically joining east and west tracks in the first transcontinental railroad, Kansas City celebrated completion of the Hannibal Bridge, a railroad bridge joining north and south tracks across the Missouri River. With the opening of this new span, several additional railroads laid tracks to Kansas City to cross the “Mighty MO” and the threshold to places west. With the increased volume of rail traffic, Kansas City’s four small depots were stretched more and more to their limits. By 1877 construction of a new depot in Kansas City’s west bottoms was underway. Completion of Union Depot in 1878 gave Kansas City what was hailed as the “Handsomest and Largest Depot west of New York.”

And of course the wikipedia entry on KC.

I'm naturally far more familiar with present day KC, but I can tell you a substantial amount of urban and sub-urban development north of the river didn't exist even until my lifetime. In fact much of the greater North Kansas City and Gladstone area wasn't developed at all when I was a child, and a lot of it was still farmland or woodlands.

It's still a "boom" area somehow since it started expanding in the 80's. Same goes for area's around Liberty MO., even Smithville and the Ozarks. Independence is something of an "older" township but is still expanding.

Point being back then you still had a lot of very untamed natural land and substantial woodlands north of the MO river. In the Dresdenverse a lot of nasty things could be poking around out there.

Keep the idea in mind that KC is basically a barter-town/crossroads grown big story. With the river ports and rail lines that eventually came through, Kansas City just kinda "happened".

Today it is a smallish city with delusions of grandeur