Urban Adventures (What makes the city scary)

[Undead Cabbage]

Esteemed Brothers,

The Zherisian Gazeteer is going well. Much head way has been made, and we are looking at releasing it by the end of this summer.

In the mean time, I figured that I would start a thread on Urban adventures in general. What can make/does make a city horrifying? Not only in Paridon, but in any Ravenloft city (i.e. Port-a-Lucine, Pont a Musea, Mordentshire, etc). What urban situations, such as stabbing and mugging someone in a backalley, have inspired fear and paranoia in your players?

Thank you in advance for your input,

The Undead Cabbage

[Jester of the FoS]

What can make/does make a city horrifying?

Mimes. Street performers and mimes.

[Jack of Tears]

I set most of my games in cities. What makes them horrifying? Well cities tend to be very impersonal places. Where everyone might know one another and be aware of one another's business in a village, city dwellers don't care about their neighbors - most wouldn't even recognize their neighbors if they saw them on the street. This makes for a more paranoid atmosphere, as people feel isolated.

Steriotypically city people are uncaring. They would rather ignore the travesties that happen around them than get involved. Thus there is the sensation of being alone amidst the crowd. The knowledge that no matter how much you cry for help, people will most likely just rush past or ignore you.

Everyone in a city has secrets. There is a story behind every doorway and the windows that look out on the streets often seem to be hiding something.

There are entire societies that live in the shadows of any city. Cultures of street people with their own mythology and sense of apropriate behavior. These cultures tend to be very closed mouthed and resentful of outsiders. They may hinder or help an individual based on rules a more privilaged individual may not understand. Even a "good" street person may be cruel and untrustworthy when deeling with strangers. (though good and evil become very grey when life is a constant struggle in the gutters. It is likely many of these people have failed at least one powers check.)

Cities can be confusing and difficult to navigate in the dark. People who know the city well will always outmaneuver those who don't.

Though most city dwellers ignore the plights of others, that doesn't mean they aren't watching for something to use to their advantage. Thus, while you can be absolutely alone when in danger, there are always eyes available when you do something you'd rather not be general knowledge. This tends to add to that sense of paranioa.

Homes always feel like safe havens in cities. When a person is in his or her house, she tends to feel protected from the dangers of the street. One's house is all they have to themselves in such a place and as such intrusions become more personal and inescapable. (after all, if something is in your house, where can you run for safety?)

You can't escape the horrors in a city. A serial murderer could be anyone you pass on the street. Monsters don't hide in mountain caves, they live in nearby housing complexes, they shop at your place of work.

When you get so many people in close proximity the atmosphere serves to breed violence. Criminals tend to be clannish in cities and more brazen on their own turfs. In many cities law is for sale and even the constabulary, if there is one, might turn a blind eye to the indiscretions of criminals. Corruption in general tends to play a much more important part in city adventures - when anyone could be on the take, who do you trust?

Cities are easy places to blend in to. Even a stranger might easily lose himself in a city's mazelike streets.

I'm sure I could come up with more, once I've had time to think about it. Hopefully some of this is useful.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Jack of Tears has several good points. Just to expand on a theme he touched on a couple of times: Large cities can be extremely alienating. Much of the population is transient, and comes without strong family ties, which means it's really easy for someone to simply disappear without anyone knowing about it. In a small town of a thousand people everyone will know something about everyone else; in an apartment complex of a thousand people a reserved or introverted person might not know the name of anyone he shares living space with.

Many of the people attracted to a big city will be young men attempting to find a better living than they could get in the country; if they can get some money, many or most will spend it on prostitutes and drinking, and if they can't, they may will turn to crime. Either is a recipe for violence, especially without the moderating influence of family or even normal social stigma (see above).

Cities are also perfect for intrigue-based adventures; lots of people means lots of strings to pull and a thousand ways to conceal what one is really doing.

I'm not sure if that speaks to what you're looking for, UC, but I hope it helps.

[Darkknight]

I see that alienation is the main theme so far. Cities bring to my mind a couple of things. The hate and racism of people is easily expanded. An outsider being beaten in the streets and people either ignoring or joining in. The main horror for me in a city would be that I am no longer a person. I am just a little speck in this giant sandbox. Your neighbors knew you, trusted you. Now you are in a place where you may have to do things totally against your nature to survive. The horrifying thing about a city is the destruction of ones belief in good people and neighbors... Now you have streets full of monsters, and they look just like you.

[HuManBing]

This is interesting. I'm thinking of running a campaign in Darkon, and Martira Bay and Il Aluk (pre-shroud) would be main settings for this.

- Dogs start turning up dead. At first nobody cares, then suddenly the prized pooch of a visiting earl is stolen and turns up dead in the gutters. The earl is angry, and the guard is uninterested in investigating. With a moderate money reward, the PCs take to hanging out in taverns and trying to find out who's responsible. Perhaps even setting bait of their own. Their work will be complicated by a stranger who approaches them and offers them a lot of money to deliver the perpetrator to him, not to the police.

The perpetrator is a wretch who once had aspirations to join the foul underworld society, the Kargatane. Since then, he has undergone a renewal of morals and wants to wean himself off the taste of blood. The PCs will have to deal with the angry earl, but if they choose to turn the ex-Kargatane over to the stranger, he will be reabsorbed and mercilessly punished by the Kargatane.

- In Neblus, elves and humans live together, but not necessarily harmoniously. The elves want the human earl ousted, and replaced with a more elf-friendly human, and they want the PCs to help them do it. They'll help the PCs sneak into the manor, and then the PCs have to provide them with chalk/wax scratchings of the locks in the house. (A stick of chalk covered in wax is inserted into a lock, and you turn it. This won't open the door, but it will give clues as to what type of key will.) The elves have a contact in a warehouse who can smuggle one or two of the PCs into the mansion by sewing them up into furniture and then delivering it.

- Slavery. In Martira Bay and Il Aluk, life is cheap. Unscrupulous merchants have no qualms about making money off the misery of others. Perhaps an even greater evil is behind them - maybe a necromancer waits patiently for the slaves to die of exhaustion, then raises them as skeletons for cheap labor. The PCs would infiltrate the factory and could expose the (live) taskmaster, but then the necromancer would get away. How long can they stand the servitude?

- Guild wars. Powerful groups of NPCs can be helpful to PCs, but they inevitably have baggage in the form of enemies. To role play this accurately, you'd want to let your PCs form lasting friendships with detailed guild members. Thus, whenever the fortunes of war (or assassination) takes one of their friends, the loss is real.

In my campaign, a while after the Kargatane are revealed, the guild war escalates and the PCs come back to find their entire guild in ruins after a vicious Kargatane attack. Their task then would be to reconstruct their guild and recruit more people to the fold. The guild's former masters, now possibly dead, may have left several shrewd clues for the PCs to follow in rebuilding, including incriminating information about their foes, or weaknesses and known locations of the Kargatane, which can be ambushed for minor victories. Look at John LeCarre's Thinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or even Smiley's People for examples.

- Miscarriages of justice. Take a look in the middle passages of Catch 22 by Joseph Heller for a truly hellish thumbnail sketch of a city gone bad because of war. Yossarian walks through the decaying hulk of Pianosa, and sees sights that are evocative of horror and society gone awry. A handsome soldier sits on a step, crying, with his ruined mouth, picking his teeth out of the gutter like ivory beads. A blind old woman chases futilely after her treacherous caretaker, who has stolen her purse, and is now leading her into traffic. Children, injured by war, now prostitute themselves on doorsteps. Soldiers cajole a whore, who, drugged or drunk, keeps repeating "Please don't" over and over again as a hopeless mantra. On one street corner, a crowd gathers around a man who is beating a horse to death as it struggles to get up under a hopelessly heavy load. On another street corner, Yossarian sees a man beating a semiconscious boy, while a dispassionate crowd watches.

Granted, these are wartime extremes but the sight of justice abandoned can be shocking. One time my PCs saw a nasty fight between a woman and man, and after they stepped in to get the man off her, she started screaming and scratching at them, saying they were hitting "my man". It would almost have been funny if it weren't so shocking.

[Jakob]

- Miscarriages of justice. Take a look in the middle passages of Catch 22 by Joseph Heller for a truly hellish thumbnail sketch of a city gone bad because of war. Yossarian walks through the decaying hulk of Pianosa, and sees sights that are evocative of horror and society gone awry. A handsome soldier sits on a step, crying, with his ruined mouth, picking his teeth out of the gutter like ivory beads. A blind old woman chases futilely after her treacherous caretaker, who has stolen her purse, and is now leading her into traffic. Children, injured by war, now prostitute themselves on doorsteps. Soldiers cajole a whore, who, drugged or drunk, keeps repeating "Please don't" over and over again as a hopeless mantra. On one street corner, a crowd gathers around a man who is beating a horse to death as it struggles to get up under a hopelessly heavy load. On another street corner, Yossarian sees a man beating a semiconscious boy, while a dispassionate crowd watches.

I... think... This is one of the most terrible scenarios I can picture.
Tragically, it's realistic enough.

Granted, these are wartime extremes but the sight of justice abandoned can be shocking. One time my PCs saw a nasty fight between a woman and man, and after they stepped in to get the man off her, she started screaming and scratching at them, saying they were hitting "my man". It would almost have been funny if it weren't so shocking.

I enjoyed the same experience.
Not in character, though, but in person.

[Le Noir Faineant]

Any kind of animals in the streets or houses can be pretty terrifying... Just think of Poe's Black Cat...

[Corrupted_Loremaster]

In grossly overpopulated cities, you can add a dash of claustrophobia to your sense of isolation. Crowded marketplaces, taverns, public gatherings and such, where there's such a press of people you can barely move, and yet you don't know a single person there.

[ewancummins]

Speaking of using animals..

I once ran a game with a carnivorous ape loose on the streets of a city. The party where hired to catch a killer terrorizing the city . Of course, I misdirected them a bit.... borrowed a copy if VRG to the Created from a player, right before the game. He assumed I meant to use it that game. He started reading all the clues to support his assumption the were facing a flesh golem.

I used the ape's ability to move about the rooftops to outpace the party several times. It also had nearly human intelligence, so catching it was tricky.

Murders in the Rue Morgue was a big inspiration.

[Undead Cabbage]

Everyone, thank you very much for your input. I do appreciate it, and I hope you do not mind if I take heed from it when writing this Gaz.

Continuing back on top, another thing that can be frightening about cities is that you simply cannot turn your back safely; with the aid of terrain such as alleyways, crowds, and corners, the 'wrong-type' of people can get at you at any angle. In a town, there may be a few areas of santuary where you know you are safe. In a crowded city, you always have to be on your guard, Unless you're rich of course .

Another thing (not so much fright in this case as sorrow) might be misconceptions of a certain city. Farmers in Darkon may hear about the high life in Martira Bay or Port-A-Lucine and suddenly think that everyone must live like that. "There are no cats in america", so to speak. When they get there, they realize that 90% of the population actually lives worse than they were living before, and that only the select few have the world at their finger tips.

[Ronia Sun]

Cities have so many shadowy places. While gothic fiction, overall, tends to focus on isolated countryside (windswept moors or the mountains of Transylvania, for example) some very good gothic stuff has been done in an urban setting. (Phantom of the Opera springs to mind.)

Also, though he is by no means a gothic writer, I'd advise one to check out any of Terry Pratchett's books set in Ankh Morpork. Yes, Pratchett is a satirist fantasy writer (and one of the best damn writers working today) and so he tends more toward humor, he nevertheless manages to capture the gritty feel of a huge, sprawling, uncaring city. His Night Watch, in particular, could hold much inspiration for an urban setting, with revolutions, riots, conspiracies, corrupted police, and sociopathic murderers in one roiling mass of a city. He does an especially effective job of juxtaposing the uncaring dehumanization that can come of living in a city with the good and just trying to do the best they can in a bad situation. For a comic writer, he's deep. Very deep. (Though I admit I may be a little biased...)

And, of course, Pratchett would agree with the horror of mimes. "Learn the Words."

Seriously, though, cities will play a big part in my own campaign. Currently, my players are on their way to a big port city full of dark corners, over-crowded (and protesting) graveyards, sewers, catacombs, and the ubiquitous dark allies. Should be fun, in a horrifying, gothic manner...

[Garudos Celestar]

There's also the point that gets played up in the domain of Nosos (and, to a lesser extent, Richemulot): the difficulty in being clean. Others have covered the cleanliness of soul and conscience is great detail above, but the actual physical cleanliness can be just as disheartening. The issue fits along very well with the claustrophobia - no matter how hard you try and how noble/moral/virtuous you are, you can't ever get clean.

In the country, a beggar or transient can at least go over to the local pond to wash up; in the city, the water may be dirtier than the box in the alley under which he sleeps.

A noblewoman steps out into the street only to be splashed from the waist down by a passing carriage - while it may seem petty, it is undeniably uncomfortable and will probably leave her scowling for the rest of the afternoon. Of course, there's not really enough room to go around the puddle; in a narrow street with buildings and people on all sides, you can't just go "the long way around" like you can in a village where each cottage is separated by the garden, a little copse, and an extra fifty feet of empty space for good measure.

Diseases spread like wildfire when that many people congregate in close quarters, and these invisible forces not only cause panic and suspicion, but they add to themselves as the stench of the bodies adds to the more mundane trash in the streets.

It may seem shallow, but the grime and muck goes beyond appearances to feel physically unpleasant and hide dangers in form of disease and rot.

[Ronia Sun]

Oh, good heavens, yes. I spent eighteen months in Romania, and though two of the three cities I lived in were gorgeous, they were also absolutely *filthy*. American cities are dirty, too, but in Europe cities tend to be a lot more condensed. 600, 000 people living in a city whose area wasn't much over five miles...yowzers. So, yeah. The dirt ain't all psychological...

[Joël of the FoS]

Oh, good heavens, yes. I spent eighteen months in Romania, and though two of the three cities I lived in were gorgeous, they were also absolutely *filthy*. American cities are dirty, too, but in Europe cities tend to be a lot more condensed. 600, 000 people living in a city whose area wasn't much over five miles...yowzers. So, yeah. The dirt ain't all psychological...

You haven't seen Sao Paolo - 18 millions pop It's 6 times the density of Montreal in the same metropolitan area size...

How to make it horror tainted, let's see:

You are never alone in this city, you always have someone passing near you or simply watching you. The crime rate is high so you never know when someone will jump near you and wave a knife at your face. The only time you are alone is in your house, but its quietness is then frightening, since so many people are outside, and you alone, inside.

(OK, Sao Paolo is not this bad, but I extrapolated to keep on topic)

Joël