If you ran a campaign in your vicinity, what would it be?

[Boomerang]

Haha! Hilarious!

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by LokRobster

Over the past few years I've run an Infinite Worlds campaign set near my home in the North Texas area, Dallas/Ft Worth, and Nacogdoches, East Texas

Sounds fun!

Originally Posted by LokRobster

2055 Reign of Steel: This is an interesting area because it's on the edge of Zone Denver, very close to the border of Zone Washington: two AIs that have opposite attitudes on dealing with us. I've had some fun imagining up what sorts of border patrols these two AIs set up to keep the pesky human vermin (or valuable production assets) from crossing back and forth much. Or do the AIs even care?

As I see it, Washington ramps up the propaganda on "those dangerous infiltrators from outside the USA" - to stop its people wanting to leave, and so that anyone who does come in (infiltrator or wild human) is picked up quickly by local patrols. I regard one of the key narrative points of ZW as "how do you turn humans into robot servitors without their realising it".

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

What conspiracy theories are you referring to?

Originally Posted by Daigoro

The Definitive Guide.

And for prime nutcase Alex Jones' take on it, see here.

[ak_aramis]

I actually ran two in my (current) vicinity, before it was my current vicinity...

I set a buffy game in Corvallis in the early 2000's. Even made use of the building plans and class schedules. I was familiar with the area (i'm currently in my Grandfather's house, so I've been to the area often through the years), and Google Earth was new and useful.

The second was a post-holocaust using Burning Wheel... Survival. Philomath and Alsea were the big urbanizations.

[jason taylor]

Here's one: the first interstellar engine was discovered in Portland and Oregon becomes the interstellar sillicon valley. PDX becomes Terra's first starport and the center for expansion into a new frontier.

Exploration games, political games, crime and punishment games can all feature around this premise. If we meet hostile aliens military games are also a possibility.

[corwyn]

If I was going to run a historical game that took place here, I'm not far from the region of the Riel Rebellion of 1885.

Otherwise, Saskatchewan has a lot of Uranium - could be a birthplace for a modern supers game.

[sgtcallistan]

Hmm... The South-Eastern-most part of England has some of the oldest evidence of human inhabitation in these islands, flint-knapping done perhaps before the last Ice Age, Mammoths, etc. all before Britain was an island.

Ice Age game set in a river valley far from the North Sea plains, where people are moving into areas where Cave Bears and other megafauna may remain.
New Stone Age period folks surviving in a huge forested area, clearing and farming, building the stone barrows and things like Kit's Coty.

A mythical Age of Conan / Slaine time, then a more historical Bronze Age kingdoms, hill-forts, trading across all of Europe via rivers and coastlines.

Iron Age invasions by Rome, calming down to Romanised Brits and non-Romanised Brits in big farms and villages, lots of chalk-digging and industry in support of Roman road and town building.
The embarrassing moment when counterfeit British coins have better silver in them than the real Roman coins.
Rebellions, etc.

'The Last Kingdom' style where Kent is a fractious client state of Wessex always seeking to remain it's own kingdom.

Renaissance-era; The establishment of printing and paper-making by Caxton in Maidstone plus arrivals of lens-makers and precious-metalsmiths from France alter the area again, leading to a large guild- and middle-class artisan population.

Steampunk; the Royal Navy enlarges the ship-building and maintenance industries enormously at Chatham, while steam traction engines revolutionise farming and make the basis of a modern, fast-moving army.

WWI; defending Britain against the Kaiser's Navy, Zeppelins and bombers.

Cliffhangers; only likely to be a few spies after the Navy's secret plans, or a cosy murder-mystery at the Grange.

WWII; the retreat from Dunkirk aided by many small ships from Kent and the Thames (movie soon), much of the Battle of Britain fought over here, then an electronic war fought with radar, navigation beams, jamming, spoofing and misinformation, much of it transmitted from Kent. Not to mention the flying of agents to and from France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

James Bond? erm... in Moonraker (the book) he drives his Bentley right past my childhood home on the way to the missile base on the south coast.

Modern spies? Tom Cruise fought a helicopter that had chased his train into the channel tunnel, as I recall. 8-|

Thunderbirds? The Dover missile base from the movie Thunderbird 6 is in reality a stretch, but a disaster waiting to happen in that sort of game.

Zombie apocalypse? Just use the maps.
Post-apocalypse? Any place on a chalk hill with a deep well becomes desirable real estate, and we're back to hill-forts again!

[Proteus]

Houston?

Spanish explorers working with and vs. native tribes is an obvious choice: add magic and monsters to taste. Were the Karankawa really cannibals or not?

Others have mentioned the Texas Revolution: the Battle of San Jacinto, just south of here, was the turning point, where the Mexican general Santa Anna was forced to surrender. All kinds of Time Patrol / alternate history shenanigans are possible there.

Galveston, just a short drive to the coast, used to be one of the major immigration centers for the United States, and was often favorably compared to San Francisco. I've always wanted to run a Victorian-era campaign of hidden sorcerers vying for social and magical power, but with the shadow of the Mayan demon Hurakan always over them. (It was the Hurricane of 1900 that devastated Galveston and opened the way for Houston to eclipse it as a port and population center.)

The oil "bidness" is another obvious topic; I recall seeing ads for a recent cable-TV miniseries about a fictional Texas dynasty working through similar history.

Houston is well-known as the control center for NASA's manned missions. A Technomancer campaign about a magically-assisted space program could be all sorts of fun. So would a "hidden history" in which the U.S. uses but keeps hidden alien tech from Roswell or such — all those cost overruns weren't bad accounting; they were actually funding the flying saucers and lunar base!

I ran a short Dresden Files campaign set in an urban-fantasy Houston, and had all sorts of fun. Alas, half the players had to move to Virginia, instead. As one of the largest ports in the U.S. and a major business center, Houston has all sorts of potential for recent / current / near-future scenarios, whether magical or mundane.

Post-apocalyptic is difficult, since unless we stem global warming Houston might end up underwater. (Same problem with dinosaurian-era adventures!) Still, warring tribes crossing the swamp between the shells of skyscrapers could be all sorts of fun.

[RyanW]

There are a lot of ghost stories around my area that could be useful game fodder. Most of them tied to antibellum houses, but also the Maco light (said to be a rail engineer who was killed when trying to warn a passing train of danger ahead) and the USS North Carolina.

I'm sure you could also get something out of NI4BK, the USS North Carolina's ham radio club (and USS North Carolina's WWII era radio call sign). Perhaps the club starts hearing a long delayed echo of communications from WWII, a la the movie Frequency.

[PTTG]

California foothills, I'd go with a Maidu first contact with Spaniards.