#roanton

[tractate]

On Hunter: Setting, part two

So, last time we spoke about what worked and didn't work in Roanton and I listed an example NPC that is being re-worked from the ground-up. All of this federates greater cohesion and narrative control on the part of yours truly, the storyteller. Many more options await to bait players into side stories or little one-off encounters to let them know the city thrums with life, albeit an unseemly kind. This is a city infested, like much of the World of Darkness' cities, towns, random trees on the side of the road, all of it. But it isn't exactly a city dominated as the signature cities are.  It's more Chicago in miniature. Chicago being the morass of infighting (WoD factions) that it is in-setting, but between largely human factions (mages, ghouls, and various splat-aligned cults included) who are, to various degrees, "In the Know" about the strange world they live in. Internecine conflict (in this context among mortal men) creates fertile grounds for further calamity -- perfect for the WoD, new and old.  It's a city settled in a barely plausible rim between the Big Apple and Beantown, two nexuses of rather potent means in the WoD--the city of Geists and the city of Mages. Roanton itself is an arbiter between these two great places of American culture. The little city-town funneling tourists from one maw to another. A place of flux, where the chaff escapes the terrors dwelling within capitals, the supernatural runoff.  Roanton, the pit where all sins gather into a well that whispers horror in the dreams of your fears.  Which makes it all too appropriate that starting out in Hunter, men are those in charge of the night in Roanton (more or less). Humanity is the center of the World of Darkness, new and old. They're where our splats are derived from; they're the gilded candles the spirit world flocks around; a strange fascination for the critters of splats, both species and singular.  Men are the biggest boogeymen of all. And sometimes, their horrors simply can't be matched by the critters in the dark. 

[tractate]

On Hunter: Setting, part one

Ah, Roanton, ye olde homebrew setting.  My homage to Lovecraft's Arkham in the imagined beginnings, Roanton's newest iteration feels a lot more like something that's mine rather than simple derivation. How true that is remains to be seen, I am, after all, a simple hack. Roanton was very slapdash at first, a series of interesting (if out of place) locations smacked together into a city with liiiiiittle bits of Massachusetts flavoring (told you I was a hack) to make it seem 'plausible.'

You can imagine my horror when I found out one of my players was originally from Boston. But she seemed to like it just fine, even asked if I was from the area, which was stupefying. I digress.  Roanton, yes. The Frankenstein that is the city was a poor binding of several ideas. Some which worked (kinda), some which did not. Things that worked (kinda): The Conductor, a spirit that inhabited the local train station; the Crone coterie that dwelt in the woods and took suppliants only on moonless nights; the mannikins (not the Changeling sort); the rumors of Stryx; these things worked as a whole. 

Things that didn't work: The haphazard makeup of the city (maze-like center city, City Hall, the harbor area--for factional purposes, not just the move away from the coast); the Thief-ripoff asylum which was never used; the werewolves which made no sense and never factored into anything or player narrative; the entirety of the city's supernatural nature. It wasn't something I made, but just a color-by-numbers of WoD factions.

This new iteration of Roanton will be a far more cohesive, tightened device for the players. It'll be in northwest Connecticut now instead of Mass. and given a richer, more natural history. Seeing as Hunter will be the focus here the city can have a lot more singular terrors and mortal(ish) foes for my Cell to encounter along with the primary plot arc and MacGuffin.  Roanton, along with the TN town (which is also in dire need of revision), will become a sort of stock setting for me in the WoD and perhaps actual fiction, unless I become wildly enamored of an actual city. I have half a mind to merge this game's version of Roanton with my upcoming Vampire game, but I'm not sure if I want to run it that way or make it earlier in the oughts or present day or just another Roanton altogther. Sometimes I like to do huge, setting altering things, but with the focus of this game it may not be so.  Regardless of those concerns, the city itself will be alive and a little familiar to former experiences with the setting.

Example: The Conductor, for instance, originally a powerful spirit who ruled over a train platform in the city, who could tell anyone a vital secret or presage events to come, is now an entity that exists in the collective minds of the city's homeless, uses them as vessels. It's methods and goals are unknown to every supernatural being and occultist in the city, save that in some odd way it values these disenfranchised peoples.  This feels so much better than the original Conductor, much more apt for player involvement and far, far more interesting to run across in the middle of a tense situation. An enigmatic, free hand in the crazed morass of plots that is Roanton's underworld. It makes things more colorful, I feel.  That's all for tonight. Sleep is needed and more drawing board discussions on setting are taking place in my brain meats.