Question: Can you run a decent Hero campaign with the setting solely in a major city, with the characters traveling farther afield when they hit Demigod?
I think you absolutely can, but a better question is whether or not you should.
It's easy to set up a story where most of the action takes place in a single city; all the NPCs you have planned are there, the objects or people the Scions are supposed to be looking for are there, and you can even have the kids' divine parents tell them point-blank that what they're looking for is in this city. And that'll work for a while. The book's Long Road to Heaven campaign is largely set in Las Vegas and follows similar guidelines.
But the major problem with trying to keep a story within the confines of a single city is that the characters themselves just won't go along with it sometimes. The world is a Scion's oyster, and there's little reason for them not to explore it when it's so darn easy; not only will some of them have nifty tricks like Psychopomp boons or Wits knacks that make going further afield easy for them, but those with social epics or larceny skills can easily get transportation the old-fashioned way without even needing to pay for or schedule it. Your players are sometimes going to think outside the box, which means they might suddenly decide to go to Fort Knox for some gold to solve a financial problem or to find a renowned expert in the field of occult studies who just happens to live in Norway. And you shouldn't discourage them from finding these awesome off-the-beaten-track solutions - after all, you want them to get to exercise their creativity and find their own way to solve problems. Nobody likes being railroaded into just the Storyteller's definition of success.
You might get lucky and have players who really don't think outside a given scenario too much, or who are happy to keep the game within the city. That would make everything work out great! But you can't count on it, so you need to be prepared to deal with Scions that decide to leave for one reason or another, probably when you aren't expecting them to, and have some good backup ideas and things that can happen to them when they do. You don't want to punish their creativity with a weak, "Well, okay, you go and do that on your own, but it's boring because I didn't plan for it." Obviously, you can't plan for everything, but if you're not good at thinking on your feet when it comes to unexpected player escapes, you might want to draw up a few general scenarios - a giant that attacks the train they leave on, or a mysterious phone message calling them home, etc. - so that they aren't out of the loop.
As I said at the beginning of this post, though, the better question is whether you should try to keep your story in a single city. Why limit your players? For that matter, why limit yourself? I totally understand the issue of being more familiar with a certain locale and feeling more comfortable with running stories set in it, but in Scion, that's going to go away pretty quickly no matter what you do (nobody's familiar with things like Terrae Incognita). I struggled a bit when I first started with Scion because I was coming in with some holdover mentality from the old World of Darkness games, where your city/sept location is pretty much the be-all and end-all of where things are happening, but I had to let it go because it didn't really work. Scion's a global game; there's nothing stopping PCs from going wherever they want whenever they want unless you, as the ST, put a block in their path. And that's okay. In fact, it's a lot of fun.
I think you can definitely successfully run a game set in a single city for a little while. I could see, like Long Road of Heaven, a game that did so for a single scenario (maybe the space of one Legend dot gain). But I think it's going to be very difficult, even impossible, to keep your Heroes local for the entire trek to Legend 5 without pulling some kind of ST fiat (i.e., anyone leaving the city just finds themselves back in it thanks to some kind of high-level Psychopomp or Chaos dickery). I'm not sure it's worth the effort to keep them in one place instead of rolling with them, and at any rate, if you put the MacGuffin or the important NPC in your particular city, you'll know they'll always end up coming back eventually.
Well, it's not so much an actual game, but a story I'm writing using the Scions concept. and It won't take place entirely in the city. there will be portals to what amount to terra incognita all over the place. however the characters are still kids with families who have to keep the fact that they are children of the gods a secret, so however far they go the city will still be a home that they have to return to to keep there families from worrying. also if the city is big enough, you can find all sorts of adventure and titanspawn hiding in the nooks and cranny's. I read about a game made up entirely of Japanese Scions with the game taking place entirely in Tokyo. But your right, it should not take place just in the city, but mixing the city with terra incognita and trips to other places, but always returning home as it were. After all a big aspect of myth is gods and heroes watching over particular cities.
ReplyDeleteThat definitely sounds doable! We've found that players tend to do that anyway - they may jetset all over the world, but they usually have a place they call home and return to. For Folkwardr it's his Inuit village, for Sowiljr it's his Fortress of Solitude in Iceland, and so on and so forth - a place where family members or friends stay and they keep a residence. Almost everybody needs a home base.
DeleteWriting fiction's a bit of a different ballgame from running a game - since you're in control of the characters, you don't need to worry about them suddenly doing things that don't fit your story. In a fiction context, I'd say run with your city idea - if the concept works, there's no reason not to!
Yeah, its very hard to keep it realistic while railroading the characters into staying only in the city or terras connected to the city. What if one of them gets in a fight with their family and never goes back?
DeleteOr, more importantly, why keep them staying in the city? What does that add?
cool, but you're right about keeping it local, especially when they get into the demi-god, god levels. there just to powerful to go up against whatever thugs or low level titanspawn keep popping up. I think that they will start as heroes fighting crime and cleaning up the city of crime and titanspawn like well, heroes, with only short trips through portals into terra incognita. as there powers increase, they will venture into more dangerous terra incognita and into the underworld, and when they hit god they will fight the titans in the over world, but still stay in close contact with there families, as well as making the city there protectorate. I was the one who asked the question about a god being able to increase there legend in a low level avatar (high hero-low demigod). Even as gods I'm going to have them spend alot of time in the world and there city putting a plan into motion to absorb the five elemental titans (earth, air, fire, water) into the very fabric of the world ala keepers of the world, and just wanted to know that I could keep them ramping up to 12 even while they spend most of there time in avatar form in the world.
ReplyDeleteThat all sounds like a fine story. But planning how you think the characters mind end up feeling about their parents and families and city is very difficult to do. It surely will be nearly impossible going from hero to god. Maybe one character would end up following the same path, the rest will probably all be choosing their own paths. As the ST dont write too much of your players stories, thats their job.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't a game, It's my own fiction that I'm writing.
DeleteO, apparently anne says you already mentioned that above and i missed it. My fault. In that case that can work fine. Work on!
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