Workshopping an apartment building

[ajardoor]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Is it in a specific city, state, coast or other region?

No, no specific location.

[hal]

If it helps, PYRAMID 3/96 Tech and Toys IV has an article by Matt Riggsby titled Hi-Tech Buildings that may be of interest.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by ajardoor

No, no specific location.

We're all the products of our culture, environment and history, so I find it pretty difficult to imagine characters without context.

I don't really know any of my neighbours now. I suspect that most of the apartments are either short-term leases or just full-on Airbnb. In any case, never seen the same person twice, but, on the other hand, I'm not looking very hard. I usually don't see anyone, as I walk to the elevator, take it down to the lobby, and walk out the door. I don't keep regular hours, so even if there were families who left and arrived at the same time every day, I probably wouldn't run into them that often.

Let's use my last apartment building as inspiration. My next door neighbours were a lesbian couple and their teenage son, who spent a week with them, and a week with his dad. They were loud when they'd had some wine, but had the audacity to complain to me and my friends when we were being very loud. For reasons which made sense at the time, when we opened the door, after midnight, wondering who was ringing the doorbell at such a late hour, most of us were wearing underwear and one guy was on his knees in front of another one, demonstrating techniques of fellatio through a thin plastic bag.

On that occasion, they backed away without complaining. The next time they came by to complain, we invited them in for a drink, which solved the problem of them coming round to complain about our noise, but did mean they occasionally came by to demand drinks and entertainment. On balance, I like to think it was a net positive.

Other family on that floor were Serbian-Icelandic. Three cute kids, slender, pretty mom, the father would want Jude Law to portray him in a biopic, but has to settle for Adam Driver, and then discovers it's because they made him into the villain. Every conversation between the parents I ever heard was loud, which might be cultural, but also angry, which I don't think is. Perhaps not so unrelated, they got divorced a couple of years in.

Next floor down, middle-aged (to be kind) couple who recently retired. He was my English teacher when I was young, which was a short time ago, even though, coincidentally, it can also be described as having taken place in the previous century. She seemed nice. I think they had a small white terrier. Never any problems, and they never complained, though I know for a fact that some of my less-cultured friends throw cigarette butts down into their garden, and the absolute-least cultured of them urinated in it. Bunch of ----ing savages, my friends.

Now, the apartment above me also held a middle-aged, retiree couple. Unlike the long-suffering, but ever dignified couple on the ground floor, Mrs. Whats-her-name from the top floor had a new complaint every time I saw her. I totally accept the ones I had coming, like, 'Last Saturday, your friends laughed like drunken hyenas all night, keeping us all up.' Yeah, it's a fair cop, guvnor, we were roleplaying and drinking. Or when a friend of mine broke the doorknob of the downstair door out of the apartment building, when he drunkenly tried to close it as we arrived home about five hours past Last Call at the last bar, on a weeknight. My friend said that as he left, the next day, the old man upstairs gave him a look that said, "I know it was you. And your ancestors are judging you from Valhalla."

Those we all had coming. But then there were the other complaints. Like, every time I used my propane gas grill, which in Iceland is a popular cooking option, out on most balconies in apartment buildings with balconies, or on verandas or the like in other dwellings. Except that the lady in the apartment above mine felt that the smell of cooking flesh offended her so much that she wanted advance notice to close all her windows. 72 hours of advance notice, for when I was planning to use the propane gas grill. I politely pointed out that as I was not Danish, I did not, in fact, plan get-togethers with friends that long in advance. I am also very proud of how I did not in any way intimate that she was cuckoo for cocoa puffs, at least not until the interaction was over, whereupon I obviously told everyone that.

Now, the layout of the house and the Homeowner's Association Meetings indicate that there were more people there. One of them was a retired CPA, who obviously got saddled with running the HOA. Some years, his official title was Treasurer, other times, President, but regardless of who wore the other hat, it was the responsible retiree CPA who got all the mail and had to deal with every unimportant, annoying issue people bring up to the HOA. God rest his soul. The poor man. There, but for the grace of God go I. Imagine if they'd found out I was a lawyer?

I jest, actually. They did find out. A prosecutor and her corporate legal husband, both of whom had been at the University of Iceland law school at the same time as me, moved into the apartment vacated by my old English teacher and his wife, when they decided to move somewhere smaller and not with a garden. Or, at least, not with a garden bloody savages who call themselves friends 'water' from the balcony and decorate with stubs.

In any case, though my old school mates outed me as an attorney, I was able to successfully argue that I was a criminal attorney, really the next step to a criminal, and they ought to nominate the guy who worked at the corporate legal department of a huge bank, instead, for whatever HOA appointment they were trying to fill. It worked, though I am not proud of leaving a man behind. But it was him or me and I really did prefer it being him who ended up with paperwork for nothing and nags for free.

I'd describe the typical HOA meeting, but it's more or less impossible to describe, and humans don't retain the memories, anyway. Just roll on the Confusion Table from GURPS Powers until the PCs are dazed and confused, use Fast-Talk or Public Speaking as the basis for a Parry score to avoid any HOA appointment, and never volunteer for anything.