Roleplaying on Location?

[Trevortni]

I've talked a few times about a modern campaign I'm preparing, so I'm sure people are probably sick of hearing from me by now; but I just came up with an idea that I'm wondering if anyone else has used.

I'm planning on setting the beginning of the campaign where we live (in Seattle, if anyone is interested), with the opening encounter taking place at a local park. It occurred to me that it might enhance immersion if we were to have that opening session actually at the park in question; this could conceivably also aid in strategic planning, adjudicating things like visibility and viability of actions, etc.

Has anyone ever done anything like this? How did it turn out? Any other pros or cons other than the obvious fickleness of weather?

[VincentTakeda]

Never actually gone to that great a length... Our previous zombie campaign started out at or local major league football stadium and it probably would have been really fun to be there. Much harder to orchestrate than a public park for us, heheheheh. Would have been really fun if we could have swung it.

We used google earth as our map, which is pretty common for modern day campaigns and now with more zombie specific versions of that map its even easier. We're again using google earth in our current modern supers turned zombie outbreak campaign as well but this time they're nowhere near our neighborhood. So far they've run a crime spree from Hawaii to Los Angeles to Burbank to Las Vegas... In earlier campaigns we ranged from Wales alaska to the great lakes and everything from St Paul to Quebec.

I was shocked when I realized that i'd personally driven on the street they were standing on when they landed in Hawaii. I'm like wait a minute... This is where I was... I have pictures of this neighborhood I took myself... Almost feels like cheating to be able to embellish the details of a setting from having been there. But a good kinda cheating.

My players also cheated a bit with the local based zombie campaign, raiding gun stores that they were personally familiar with in real life... They almost considered raiding 'their own homes' beacause they knew what kind of guns they own themselves... until I pointed out that they'd probably have to pry those guns from their own cold dead hands... heheheheh.

[bulbaquil]

Pros: It doesn't get more immersive than literally actually being on the battlefield of your encounter. Line-of-sight, stealth, and other things like that are fairly easy to adjudicate by standing in the relevant locations.

One relatively major con: You're in public, and as such may draw unwanted attention, especially if your characters are intending on doing anything illegal - passersby unaware of the context might think you, the players, are intending on perpetrating the act your characters are planning to (fictionally) commit. (This has been known to be a hassle in particular with Shadowrun games played or discussed in public, non-game-store locations.)

[kaoskonfety]

Pros: It doesn't get more immersive than literally actually being on the battlefield of your encounter. Line-of-sight, stealth, and other things like that are fairly easy to adjudicate by standing in the relevant locations.

One relatively major con: You're in public, and as such may draw unwanted attention, especially if your characters are intending on doing anything illegal - passersby unaware of the context might think you, the players, are intending on perpetrating the act your characters are planning to (fictionally) commit. (This has been known to be a hassle in particular with Shadowrun games played or discussed in public, non-game-store locations.)

In defence of the idea most people will either not notice you, not care, or actively ignore you unless you are yelling about violence and crime or acting combat scenes (you weird, weird people). If you are doing a standard table top game, but walking around and sighting things while talking about the action (rather than LARPing)very few people will bat an eyelash.

The problem of course being the one in thousands person who decides you are dangerous and calls the cops, kicks up enough of a stink the cops have to arrive to look into it. I'd assume that MOST of the time the worst that would happen after explaining (and possibly re-explaining a few times...) would be getting asked to leave.

Honestly bigger issue with this sort of thing are the weather and lighting, everyone being interested in actually doing it (some of us are shy shut ins... some of us) and, in highly trafficked parks, people being physically in your way.

I'd try it but be ready for some flavour of it being rained out - if it flops; lesson learned, time for pizza, otherwise you've tried something new at the gaming table.

[Frozen_Feet]

Not exactly, but I've done something similar, trying to set up games in otherwise moody environs such as basements or attics.

It's a major bother and not worth the effort unless you're live-action roleplaying. Just use a map of the real-life location and stay indoors where its comfortably warm, it's not raining and the wind is not blowing all your notes across the park.

[Beta Centauri]

Sounds cool. I've toyed with the idea of using a real area, well known to the players. I once thought it would be cool to base an adventure around my high-school, but it's probably best that I didn't.

Even if you're not right on site, I would think that real maps, schematics, satellite pictures and the like would be great aids. Though part of the benefit of using a familiar location would be the ability to rely less on things like that.

Good luck. I hope the weather holds out for you.

[Trevortni]

Yeah, I have also been looking at Google Maps of the intended location. Which brings up a secondary question - does anybody know any good (free would be nice too) tools for turning Google Maps into roleplaying maps?

[Beta Centauri]

Yeah, I have also been looking at Google Maps of the intended location. Which brings up a secondary question - does anybody know any good (free would be nice too) tools for turning Google Maps into roleplaying maps?

A printer, a pencil and some imagination.

[AdmiralCheez]

Back in college, we did a one-shot superhero/zombie invasion adventure where we all played ourselves at our college campus. It started with us playing a game of D&D in our apartment living room, complete with figuring out what kind of characters our fictional counterparts were playing. Then everything went wrong when an explosion ripped the college campus into another dimension, granting us powers and making everything weird. Like, the campus safety telephone poles were now murdering our neighbors, the rumored ghosts of the theater department were escaping, and a strange all-powerful light was emanating from the top of the library.

It was actually a lot of fun, since we all knew the setting (or, at least, the not-altered version of it), we all knew the characters, and there was a real sense of camaraderie and teamwork in the party that never happened in any of our other games. Plus, we all couldn't resist the idea of playing an RPG within an RPG. (To be fair, the GM asked us, "Okay, it's Thursday night on campus. What are you all doing?" And the most logical answer was playing an RPG in our living room.)