City Themes: Denver

[Fedifensor]

I'm stuck on the very first part of the City Creation process - coming up with the big themes for the area.  The city is Denver - or rather, the Denver metro area (which could extend all the way to Boulder if needed).  Some cities have catchphrases that are easy to turn into themes - "Sin City" for Las Vegas, etc.  Denver is the mile-high city, but I'm not sure if that's something that would be a useful theme for the game.

[Remy Sinclair]

I use to live in Denver until 7 years ago (I lived in Denver for 26 years) and about 17 years planning games in Denver.

Not sure what you are looking for. I will say making the city with the players for my Dresden game was a lot of fun and left me with less building the city. Be surprised

Why not look up the historical history of the city? There are many haunted houses and famous occult backgrounds in Denver if you know where to look.

I would use the Wikipedia information on Denver as a basic basis.

I have run many a World of Darkness games in Denver from Vampire, Werewolf and Mage which pretty much covers most of the Dresden landscape. If you can find WoD Alien Hunger good resource for you running a supernatural game in Denver. Also the Kitty Norville series is written by Denver native Carrie Vaughn.

Denver is part of the old West some of that might be helpful to you. Look at the history there.

• Brown Palace Hotel, how can you not use this old strangely built and old historical building.
• Historic Richthofen Castle was built by Baron Manfred von Richthofen who was the uncle and Godfather of the famous World War I Flying Ace - the Red Baron.
• http://www.haunteddenver.com/[/il]
  
  • Tivoli Center http://ghostlyworld.blogspot.com/2009/05/haunted-denver-tivoli-at-auraria.html[/i]
    
    • The high Vampire Religion groups that are in Denver.
    • Keep in mind Denver is a sprawl that includes Aurora, Arvada, Northglenn, Englewood, Centennial City, DTC, etc.
    • • The Church Nightclub, the converted church that when I was younger was a big Goth club
      • Manitou Springs which is over 2 hours away, that being a big Wiccan Colony and all the New Agers there as well
      • Washington Heights, one of Denver's highest crime areas.
      • Denver in the 1920's was a major headquarters of the KKK and why there still is a high NeoNazi movement in Denver.
      • What about that Castle Building that is up north on I-25
      
      That is just off the top of my head of some locations. Want any more questions or help e-mail me. Be glad to help I have notes galore from all my old RPGs.

[Fedifensor]

Not sure what you are looking for. I will say making the city with the players for my Dresden game was a lot of fun and left me with less building the city. Be surprised

The issue is that this is the first time our group has done anything like this - we're new to the FATE system, and most of the group has a background in games with a completely different style of play (D&D, etc).  I want to come to the City Creation session with some ideas to help move the conversation forward, in case we get stuck.  It's really hard to do that without being able to offer some sort of high-level theme for the city.  Once we can get past that, I think locations and faces will be fairly easy.

Why not look up the historical history of the city? There are many haunted houses and famous occult backgrounds in Denver if you know where to look.

I will definitely do that as part of my research- and the links you gave will be a big help.

[Remy Sinclair]

So was my group and they all varied in experience. None of us have played FATE either. I have a good bunch of players. I will say I was apprehensive as well with having the players help build city. After all GMs need to do everything right? What I was taught and every gaming system I have played, which is a lot all teach the same thing.

Everyone had different ideas and the city went a completely different direction and game any of us thought about. My players are all saying this game feels like they are in a Dresden novel.

I am going to use this approach in every game I run for now on not just FATE.

[Fedifensor]

Well, we had our City Creation session.  I'm still compiling the notes and turning them into things I can put on the sheets, but a few threats and themes emerged that are developed enough to share.

The first one was "Better Living Through Chemistry".  Colorado has a LOT of breweries, medical marijuana distributors are popping up everywhere...and that's without even looking at Boulder, Colorado.

The second theme is "Sunny Days, Bloody Nights".  With 300+ days of sunshine every year, the Summer Court is very strong in Denver*.  We also saw a lot of possibilities for Red Court activity, especially since we're setting the campaign around the time of Small Favor.

More to come after I have time to sort through everything, and we finish character development.  Everyone has the general idea of what they want to play, but research needs to be done before we finalize character sheets.


* Though the Winter Court has the occasional victory - we get a big snowstorm every few years that brings things to a halt in the city for days at a time.

[Remy Sinclair]

I am still working on the notes from our session and I have been running. Just so many ideas people had and I had two players.

[ryanroyce]

The second theme is "Sunny Days, Bloody Nights".  With 300+ days of sunshine every year, the Summer Court is very strong in Denver*.

* Though the Winter Court has the occasional victory - we get a big snowstorm every few years that brings things to a halt in the city for days at a time.

I find it a bit odd that you think Summer would be very strong in Denver.  Admittedly, I've only spent a 2-hour layover in Denver, but just from the city's average temperature levels I'd say it is comparable to Chicago.  I mean, from the looks of it, you have real winters there and everything, so a balance of the Courts would seem appropriate.

OTOH, I live in Atlanta, sometimes referred to as Hotlanta.  Last year, I comfortably wore a short-sleeve t-shirt on New Year's Eve.  Atlanta is lucky to have two whole days of snowfall per year, and even then it'll barely amount to more than an inch or so.  ~5 inches of snow is considered "severe".  Note that on Atlanta's average temperature levels entry, the bottom of the chart is 30`, not 10`.  So there!

I'm not seriously being critical, of course, just engaging in some good-humored regional ****-waving. 

[Fedifensor]

I find it a bit odd that you think Summer would be very strong in Denver.  Admittedly, I've only spent a 2-hour layover in Denver, but just from the city's average temperature levels I'd say it is comparable to Chicago.  I mean, from the looks of it, you have real winters there and everything, so a balance of the Courts would seem appropriate.

The Summer/Winter balances is about far more than temperature and snowfall.  When we were brainstorming ideas for City Creation, both the Denver Botanical Gardens and the Butterfly Pavilion were brought up as locations (along with Red Rocks).  Denver has a lot of parks, which ties in with the Summer Court themes of life and growth.  Plus, as I mentioned before, Denver has 300+ sunny days every year.

In the end, we decided that the Summer Court's overall influence was higher than the Winter Court, despite the occasional large snowfall (which could correspond to Winter Court attempts to change the balance of power in the area).

[Remy Sinclair]

Ummm both the Denver Botanical Gardens and the Butterfly Pavilion are both  indoor facilities.

Denver finally has broken the drought of 20 plus years and now the blizzards have returned. Don't see Denver Summer Court either. It can be sunny but freezing there too.

[Fedifensor]

Ummm both the Denver Botanical Gardens and the Butterfly Pavilion are both  indoor facilities.

I didn't see a requirement that a place full of life has to be outside...

Denver finally has broken the drought of 20 plus years and now the blizzards have returned. Don't see Denver Summer Court either. It can be sunny but freezing there too.

Well, I've got six current Denver residents that believe the city better reflects the Summer Court than the Winter Court.  Now, the foothills west of the city have a strong Winter Court presence, and the Denver area is still contested.  It's just that currently, in our version of the Dresdenverse, the Summer Court has the edge in Denver.

[Remy Sinclair]

Hey first yours and your players version of Denver not mine.

Second I am surprised you and your players see it that way, my wife and I always saw Winter Court for Denver (when were we thinking of our game in Denver before using the more local locale of Albuquerque). Did not mean to offend.

Believe me my version of Denver would be different than yours and Joe Blow's version of Denver would be different from both of ours.

[Fedifensor]

Second I am surprised you and your players see it that way, my wife and I always saw Winter Court for Denver (when were we thinking of our game in Denver before using the more local locale of Albuquerque). Did not mean to offend.

No worries.  Everyone sees things differently.  One of things that swayed me was seeing a foot of snow drop on my driveway in the middle of winter...and two days later it had melted away due to the 70-degree weather.  There's a lot more Summer-esque incursions during the middle of winter than the other way around.

On a side note, people have decided on the general concepts for their characters:
* A Champion of God wielding a walking stick created from the Tree of Knowledge (see the Staff of Enoch thread)
* A bouncer who was raised by members of the cult of Siriothrax (the dragon Michael killed)
* A child of two White Council wizards who abandoned magic for a time to become a doctor - he's specialized in suppression spells (like the one Harry uses during the Larry Fowler show) so he can be around technology when necessary.
* A scion of the Greek pantheon - he suggested Hermes as a parent, I countered with Tyche (the goddess of luck, and the daughter of Hermes and Aphrodite).  The character is working as a messenger for the pantheon.
* A successful businessman who became a devout Buddhist after a plane crash (see the Supernatural version of Redirected Force thread).  This one is still very much in flux - he's going to be the group's social character and financial support, but we're still working out the specifics.

[ryanroyce]

No worries.  Everyone sees things differently.  One of things that swayed me was seeing a foot of snow drop on my driveway in the middle of winter...and two days later it had melted away due to the 70-degree weather.  There's a lot more Summer-esque incursions during the middle of winter than the other way around.

 See, that's one of the things that makes your assertion so amusing to me, as a citizen of Atlanta.  Snow that actually lasts two whole days is practically a blizzard down here, nevermind the fleetingly rare occassion of getting one whole foot of snow to fall in the first place.  Such an event would be the sign of a relatively successful show of Winter's strength, not the other way around.  Normally, the worst we Atlantans can expect from Winter is the black ice which forms on our roads.

 FWIW, the lone Winter agent in our Atlanta game practically hides in the Georgia Aquarium, surrounded by eight million gallons of running water, in order to mask her presence from the many agents of Summer.

[Fedifensor]

See, that's one of the things that makes your assertion so amusing to me, as a citizen of Atlanta.  Snow that actually lasts two whole days is practically a blizzard down here, nevermind the fleetingly rare occassion of getting one whole foot of snow to fall in the first place.  Such an event would be the sign of a relatively successful show of Winter's strength, not the other way around. 

Denver is a lot better than Chicago, which the books show with an equal presence of Summer and Winter (in Summer Knight).

If you focus strictly on temperature and snowfall, then you set strict geographic limits on the Courts, which limits story potential.  You really need to look at all aspects of how Summer and Winter are defined - life versus death, fire versus ice, sun versus moon.  Can Mexico have a strong Winter Court presence?  I'd say yes, especially with the drug cartel battles and the death that results.  Can Canada have a strong Summer Court presence?  Depends on the location, but I'd definitely say yes - there is a lot of life in Canada.

[ifshnit]

Sounds like fun, Fedifensor. Yeah, I'd probably agree with Ultratroll but it sounds like your group is having a great time with coming up with some interesting Summer Court stuff.

My wife and I settled on "Gateway to the wild frontier" as our overall city theme, capturing the 'old west' attitude that even today still seems to be a part of Denver. Plus, it captures our idea that Denver's a Summer Court/Winter Court battlefield.