Help with the Never Never and Faerie land in my game

[Phantomdoodler]

I am having trouble resolving how the the faerie kingdoms work in the Never Never, regarding my campaign city

1. Should each campaign city be aligned to a particular Faerie court, so that if a character crosses over, they arrive in a faerie version of the home town, permanently in winter or sunny woodland?

2. Or is the Never Never far more flexible, so that each time you crossed over, you could go anywhere? Would the seasons affect the faerie lands first encountered?

3. In Dresdens chicago, there appears to be a Never Never echo of the city, which you first travel to before heading to Faerie/other realms, so would that be the case with other cities, settlements?

Any thoughts would be welcome- I am having a hard time trying to see how things work!

[Anher]

I'm not going to try tackling all of these and YMMV with regards to them, but here's some of my take on the questions.

 1) While a city may generally lean more towards one court or another it generally would have both represented. Though places like Miami will defintely have a ?uch heavier Summer court population and places in Sibera or the like would have heavy Winter court populations. Having said that, the extreme locations would still be subject to the opposite court as the seasons change or if you have a sudden extreme (i.e. snow or heat wave) it can easily be due to action by the other court, which leads to plot hooks and more story.

2) Anywhere within reason. If you step across in the same place everytime you're going somewhere the locale in the Never Never should be the same, unless someone/thing has put effort into changing it. The route you take while travelling will still end up being the same, at least in terms of endpoints in the physical world.

The seasons could have an affect on it, and we've seen that in the books, so up to you.
 
3) I don't see why not, but again up to you.

Okay, so I answered them all...

[Phantomdoodler]

Thanks for some clarifications/opinions there. I think the more I think about it, plot and story seem to be the driving force here rather than just geography. I guess some locations of a city would probably be more suited to having portals to the summer or winter court, if they existed, rather than think "x" town is definitely winter court. But as you mentioned, a city may be favored by one court over the other. I guess I think its more useful to think what factions have an interest in the city, rather than theme it so strongly.  I was thinking of the the faerie lands as being static areas clothing the mortal realm, but i guess the Winter, Summer and Wild fae domains are more abstract parts of the never never, rather than feudal domains physically bordering each other as I was trying to imagine.

[Anher]

That pretty much the way I handle it as well in terms of plot and theme. I don't know if you've read or have access to the Umbra sourcebook that was published for the Werewolf RPG BY white Wolf, but if you do it's fairly helpful in terms of helping figure out how to work up a spirit world that both fits in and is still alien to the characters.

[devonapple]

The Nevernever has been defined with relative vagueness compared to other Dresdenverse elements, in part because the Nevernever generally works at the speed of plot. Getting somewhere using the NN should take only as much effort as is warranted by the plot, or at the very least, NN travel should allow one to travel much more quickly (albeit with exposure to more danger) than traveling in the mundane world.

As far as actual NN geography, what I've absorbed so far is that there are three ranges:
Near Nevernever: maps to real-world spots, but is not in any way a 1:1 landscape duplicate of the real world, and spiritual association is more important than geography; generally considered the Faerie Realm due to the presence of the Fey here; can change over time, but stays relatively constant to mortal lifetimes; time passed differently, but usually in one's favor.
Far Nevernever: more fluid and subject to the whims of the local denizens; time passes differently here, but not usually in a helpful way; this may be where places like Down Below reside. Somewhere here can be found the Outer Gates which bar the Old Ones from this universe.
Beyond the Outer Gates: a plane of madness and unimaginable chaos, locked away from the world.

And then there are Demesnes: usually linked to a single real-world spot, but could be a traveling portal to multiple spots of similar energy/association; most often seen with ghost hauntings, which produce a nightmarish pocket dimension which is adjacant to wherever the ghost happens to be haunting at the time.

[Richard_Chilton]

One of the things to remember is that if two people open a gateway at the same spot in the real world they might not end up in the same spot of the Nevernever.  At least that's what Dresden mentions in White Night...

Also, the Nevernever doesn't map directly to the real world.  You could open one passage in one place and end up in an unseelie noble's garden and open one a few miles away to discover yourself in the feasting hall of the erkling.

Richard

[Phantomdoodler]

Thanks for all of this guys. Its really helping me visual things, when I start running my game. I do like the idea of a shadowy very near Never Never, much like the one described for Chicago, but maybe tied to the history of my campaign town (Gravesend in England), which has a rich history of ghosts, plague pits and highwaymen. So I think there may well be a shadowy, ghost haunted, 16th century version that has similar geography, burned into the collective minds of the ghosts that inhabit it, including pocohontas, which can act as the first stage of for general Never Never travel. Obviously its possible to open gates to anywhere, but this part of the Never Never has the weakest boundaries - not that it would be a pleasant place to spend time though.... 

[Phantomdoodler]

That pretty much the way I handle it as well in terms of plot and theme. I don't know if you've read or have access to the Umbra sourcebook that was published for the Werewolf RPG BY white Wolf, but if you do it's fairly helpful in terms of helping figure out how to work up a spirit world that both fits in and is still alien to the characters.

Thanks- I remember playing that years ago, and yes, thinking about it, it was very Never Never ish. I will check it out!

[JediDresden]

We are starting a game that is locate in Hawaii next month.  In city creation we decided that the NN and Fae will be much different that in Chicago and what Dresden is used to.  Remember the stories are from Harry's point of view and he is not all knowing when it comes to magical knowledge - and as far as I know he has not been to Hawaii so it is fair game.

That being said Summer definitely has more influence in a place like Hawaii, but we decide that the 'Courts' would not be based on the seasons so much as the tides and land vs water.  The Hawaiian 'gods' were more than likely the local fae courts interacting with the humans on the islands.

Yes I know tides are daily occurrences not seasonal but it seemed appropriate to use it since a lot of everyday life was based of the tides, much like early humans from other locales had much of their lives dictated by the seasons.