Skip to main content

CW Listicle Notes

Turns out I've got rather a lot to say about a rather short piece. Specifically, the Car Wars vignette in Pyramid #89. It's all in general pursuit of world-building, but there's probably as much world-building going on in this one as all of my previous vignettes put together. Four out of the five locations make glancing reference to notable aspects of the world of the new Car Wars, so there are some significant bits of history and culture to tease out there. The fifth...well, that was mostly just me amusing myself.

There's also a certain amount of--pardon the expression--reality in there. In figuring out where to put the various arenas, I looked at a lot of maps, lists of roadside attractions, locations of current sports venues, and other such materials. Each place has a definite location in the real world, sometimes to the point of using existing buildings. Here's where everything came from:

Big Swede Arena: Parking garage at the Emeryville Ikea. We went there a few times when we were living in Oakland. Still have several pieces of furniture from there. Despite complaints about how it's cheap and flimsy, it's held up better than a bunch of other furniture we've bought over the years.

Glamorgan Yards: Glamorgan Castle, built in 1904, is a real structure in Alliance, OH. Once the home of an eccentric rich guy (as advertised), it's currently the central administrative office of the local school district and is open for tours.

Homestead Proving Grounds: I always though that Emily Dickinson's line "Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me" sounded like it could be pretty badass in an appropriate context. It goes doubly so for Car Wars. There's Death, there's not doing what Death wants you to, there's a wheeled vehicle, and there's no stopping. The belle of Amherst: car warrior.

PolyPark: Currently, Congress St. borders Prospect Park, which is wide open for development by the time the apocalypse rolls around. It's also adjacent (or nearly so) to Rensselaer Polytechnic, hence "PolyPark." I assume it's the college team's home field.

Washington Slope: Definitely an old working class neighborhood in Pittsburgh there. I don't know if the Heinz family is still prominent in Car Wars-era Pittsburgh, or if it's just a name of historical interest.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More Nattering About Writing Historical RPGs

omeone made the mistake of asking me to expand on some things I'd said about writing historical rpg material, so you all must suffer for it. I write a lot of historical rpg stuff as well as entirely fictional setting material. So why make historically themed games rather than just making stuff up? Well, because it's an effective way of achieving the purpose of writing settings and adventures in general. The purpose of settings and adventures, I would aver, is to give players things to do in a convincing context. Convincing context doesn't necessarily mean realism. Players have different levels of understanding of what's "realistic" in different situations and are more or less sensitive to how closely those situations adhere to reality. For example, I'm a history and culture guy. Put me in SF campaigns (which happens with some regularity) and the specifics of how reaction drives, orbital mechanics, and subatomic physics work entirely escape me. I don't,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Briefly, How To Play GURPS

For a long time, I’ve maintained that GURPS, despite its reputation for complexity, is actually pretty simple in play. I was thinking recently that I should see if I can express the fundamentals of playing GURPS in a short, easily digested form, and so here I am.   This does not address a more general “how to play rpgs” for those who know nothing on the topic. How to approach GURPS, at that level, isn’t necessarily a lot different from how to approach D&D or TFT or any other RPG system. It doesn’t get into optional and campaign-specific sets of rules or equipment. Rather, this is stuff applicable to playing GURPS no matter what the campaign is. It also doesn’t address how to build GURPS characters, which is a vastly more complicated topic. Rather, this is about how to engage GURPS rules when you’ve already got your character sheet and are sitting at the table to play. It’s a trifle over 1000 words, which I think isn’t too bad.   How To Play GURPS Most of what you’ll need t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tour dCollection

I love dice.  It's a common affliction of gamers, but it's a particular thing for me. They're interestingly shaped, emblematic of my hobby, and modern ones are tiny works of art which appeal to even people like my non-gaming lovely and talented spouse (who has gotten me a great many of these over the years, because she knows what I like). I was recently asked about my dice collection, which has been accumulating for rather more years than I like to think, so here's a more or less historically guided tour. Back in The Olden Days (tm) of the first tabletop roleplaying games, polyhedral dice weren't easily available, nor were they initially sold as gaming accessories. They were originally sold as scientific equipment, used by people like statisticians and mathematical researchers who needed to generate random numbers (there's a fascinating paper here on the history of dice as randomizers in scientific work; the dice we use owe a lot to the reconstruction of post-w...
1 comment
Read more