Urban Planning
I went all in on the a|state campaign, coins, books, play mats, compass the list goes on. So I was somewhat ecstatic to join a campaign, an excuse to read the book and to try again with the fairly tricksey Forged in the Dark system.
I'd envisaged my City as something akin to Kowloon Walled City, an impossible number of people squeezed into the smallest of makeshift one room apartments, stacked side-by-side, on top and beneath. People alone, but within touching distance of each other. Knowing so much more about their neighbours through the paper thin walls Behind every door a story, a thriving ecosystem of humanity at its rawest. Both fascinating and horrific.
We discussed what our City would be like, in particular our Corner of the Location, the Location we proposed was Dreamingspires, a series of thirty seven Tower Blocks, fifty floors each. An abandoned planning project, whose residents had taken over the role of managing each of these pillars of decay.
The Jam's The Planners Dream Goes Wrong echoed through my head, there was loads of inspiration, we also thought of the Blocks in Mega City One. Maybe named after the British celebs of today, the media obsessed Gemma Collins block, the neo-facsist Rees-Mogg block. Excellent!
Next was a question of who we were. I liked the Mapmaker, a previous career in Digital Cartography had surely prepared me for this. It turns out, I'd got my wires crossed, this character was more a negotiator, with dirt or info on thousands of citizens - the Littlefinger of The City. But with the 37 tower blocks, multiplied by 50 floors, I started to see them as a master navigator, knowing who and where to get each favour, information or item from.
We looked through the book and picked out our favourite art, what's inspiring us in The City. We proposed that more mystical or supernatural elements would be infrequent, but each of us thought an overall aim, one of our aims, could be to discover what is beyond The City.
With one of our party not available we didn't make any hard decisions but agreed to complete”homework” for the proper session 0 or maybe 0.5 in a few weeks time.
This definitely feels like a TTRPG unlike any I've run or played before, I'm excited to enter The City, to build stories with this group.