Your game sounds like great fun. Really makes me want to play DFRPG. Plus, you make it work without a City, which must be difficult.
Thanks! I can't honestly say that we wouldn't have benefitted from
some kind of city creation (replace "city" with... whatever), because we've never
tried it. I'm interested in seeing the Road Trip campaign setup in the Paranet book, but at this point it's probably more academic curiosity. We're a long way into the campaign and unless there's some staggeringly awesome things to steal, I'll probably keep to the more traditional style of worldbuilding we've got right now.
Also, a lot of times the running gag is that the gang CAN'T go back to whatever city they were in. Kansas City and Austin are big no-fly zones for them now.
Truth is, one of the benefits of city creation is that it gets you faces and threats, and my players incorporated plenty into their backstories and Aspects. Denarians, black ops, and artifact-hoarding corporations are all present because of my players. Nevermind the ideas that I want to incorporate for my own amusement. Ideas for this campaign just come so easily.
I've gotta do a Black Court vampire at some point. They're a classic. Take that and skew it some, because I can't NOT skew things. Plus, there's a BCV in Kathryn's backstory that I haven't even touched yet.
That Ghost Centaur-turned-luchador was a late-night idea borne of exhaustion-genius. Maybe it's not evil so much, but boy, will it have it in for Carter still. I've decided it was trained by the ghosts of los Hermanos Numeros.
The main conflict right now, though, is Pantagruel. It'd be his third appearance should he rear his ugly owlbeary head again. And a Denarian is fairly easy to keep as a recurring villain, what with being inside an evil nigh-indestructible coin and all. I think maybe I've gotta twist him around so he's
behind more things rather than a guy who puts in his own work, regardless of how cowardly his actual tactics might be.
To answer your question, though, I guess not having a City makes some things easier. The PCs can employ certain tactics that wouldn't be feasible in a city where they had to live afterwards, and as most of them are Pure Mortal or close to it, it gives them an edge. I can change up locations too, which works well for keeping interest high. We went from Vegas to the suburbs to downtown Austin to the Carolina wilderness in a handful of sessions.
You lose some recurring flavor. The Contacts skill is harder to use/less tempting. You end up describing the places and they come off a little quickly sketched or generic, but here's the flipside to that: It fits the campaign's themes. The gang are outsiders everywhere they go.
