What Megacities Taught Me about Creative Discovery

What Megacities Taught Me about Creative Discovery | RPG Mainframe

Рет қаралды 2,936

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 23

@adammcclendon431 6 ай бұрын

I think this translates well to any genre. You keep it centered on the character level view, and offer information on the city based on what a character could literally view. Do you need to know what buildings you're racing by on your cyberpunk motorcycle? No, you need to dodge those slow poke cars on the highway as you race to save your friends. As the settings begin (game start) or descend (session end) having a cool descriptive set piece is awesome, but simulating Kowloon Walled City will end you as a GM. Great Mainframe! Looking forward to the new ones later this year :)

@damiansilva2454 6 ай бұрын

My DM (an artist) has been semi regularly creating the front page of the local paper in the PCs home city. Using it to foreshadow future events and document the results of our adventures. Incorporating the ads, art, editorials and articles written by players is a fun bonus.

@beardyben7848 6 ай бұрын

What a legend. I love fictional newspapers as props!

@Game.Master.Allen83 6 ай бұрын

Fantastic take on simulating the vibrancy of a mega city in Cyberpunk! The 'News Flash' technique is such a clever way to bring the city to life right from the get-go. It's those snippets of lore-be it through news flashes, social media posts, or NPC messages-that truly make the world feel dynamic and responsive to the players' actions. I completely agree that focusing on key factions, their goals, and how they move towards them (with or without player interaction) is crucial. It creates a living, breathing world that evolves session by session. And your point about starting with key locations and NPCs, then building out as needed, is spot-on. It's a more organic way of world-building that naturally expands through gameplay. The idea of writing down creative thoughts only to discard them as part of the process really resonated with me. It's a great reminder that not all ideas will make it into the game, but jotting them down is essential practice-like shadowboxing for storytelling. Thanks for sharing these insights; it's a valuable perspective for anyone looking to master the art of game mastering in a Cyberpunk setting (or any complex world). It's all about embracing the process and letting the city and its stories unfold naturally.

@sanjaraejour9632 6 ай бұрын

"Disposable work" is an excellent term, and actually encapsulates an idea that's been vaguely bouncing around in my skull for the past couple weeks. I've long been meaning to design rpgs for my home games, but I'm always starting over from scratch or only jotting down a couple ideas. I need to try approaching it as disposable work, I think, and just bash something out enough to run a few encounters with - then I can actually see what I think of things in practice, and use the experience to do the same thing with different ideas. That aside, that's an amazing intro! When you finally said "mainframe" in it all I could think was "that was just the intro, not an adventure/campaign set up!?" You also nailed it that you don't need to go into an extreme level of detail on a whole city (or other such location), but rather cover the types of locations that can be found within and focus on a couple specific, important places. Reminds me of how sets for shows like Star Trek are set up, where they have the important locations, and then only a short bit of hallways that they can use over and over again from different angles with a couple minor tweaks of set dressing.

@GregMcNeish 6 ай бұрын

Disposable work is such a powerful concept in creative work. Having the mindset that not all creativity has to be for a productive purpose is so freeing, because it takes the pressure off to only create amazing things. I use it extensively as a musician. There are plenty of times when I'll pick up my guitar and end up playing something out of the blue that sounds great, so I spend some time developing the idea. I rarely make any kind of recording of something during that initial jam, because I'm just having fun in the moment and staying in the flow. Whether that idea ever sees the light of day again depends on whether I can remember it the next day. If not, then it was just a fun creative activity I did as an exercise. I like to say that some musical ideas are for the world, and some are just for me. I enjoy my disposable creativity, and by embracing it, I continue to build my skills, I continue to associate creativity with fun, and I continue moving forward in the pursuit of creative greatness. And who knows? There's always the possibility that an old, discarded idea will some day get recycled into something new. No effort is every truly wasted.

@sanjeevshah168 6 ай бұрын

Newsflash is awesome! I don’t run much cyberpunk but I like this for fantasy as well. That scene where the town crier is hollering the news of the day. Brilliant.

@jesternario 6 ай бұрын

Cyberpunk 2020 has something known as screamsheets, small one-page newspapers with various stories that happened recently. It is encouraged in game to use these as both plot hooks, with stories to get players quests and jobs, but also lore building, using advertisements and fluff stories to add to the setting. This sounds very much like what you’re planning, and I wholeheartedly endorse it. Maybe you’ll share some with those of us you don’t run the game for at some point.

@azrael1885 29 күн бұрын

Completely connect with what you are saying on the disposable creative work. I'm working on a wuxia inspired setting with icrpg as a base and going down so many rabbit holes but what a ride. Once I let go that I dont need to keep anything and be prepared to throw away a whole world setting or kung fu system that I've meticulously created and even play tested, its kind of liberating. I really resonate the part with this wasnt really what I wanted to do. Theres an aha moment when the thing u thought you wanted to simulate proved to be a real pain the ass and actually distracts from the thing thats enjoyable.

@timothyyoung2962 6 ай бұрын

I have been running a homebrewed cyberpunk RPG now for 3 years for multiple groups. I use "holo vid" news to showcase things happening in the city as well as the world at large. If the PCs were part of something big, it makes the news. I throw in random commercials and holo vid shows to touch on the popculture of the world. Even have a few random charts for graffiti, advertisements, and simple little encounters for various areas of the city. Just to make it appear as this whole world is doing its thing as the PCs do theirs. My players really enjoy it.

@timothyyoung2962 6 ай бұрын

I run my cyberpunk campaign by making the city feel like this massive, urban jungle with all sorts of things happening at any given time, but focusing the plot on the characters and the narrative drive of the story is pushed by the actions they take and the consequences those actions generate.

@csabafazekas5245 6 ай бұрын

Making a compelling cyberpunk or any modern city is one of the hardest part in TTRPG. The thing why fantasy is more popular than cyberpunk is that fantasy is like a fairytale. You can twist the world as you like. Teleport the party to an icy or arid environment, make elaborate dungeons and so on and it can be fresh and new and once in a lifetime experience for your party. Creating an urban setting is more tricky. It will be your mega dungeon as well as your hub for gaming for the next X adventures. People like variety and sometimes the same place, even it is a megapolis with 50 million inhabitants can be repetitive (you know the drill: corrupt cops, high tech heist in a mega corp, hookers with info, bar brawl, gang fighting over a junkyard, you name it) That's why I like your approach to this topic. You zoom in to the most important things in this city. A few locations, NPCs. The Blade Runner example is perfect.

@euansmith3699 6 ай бұрын

The intro is amazing.

@streetsurgery Ай бұрын

Cyberpunk 2077 does the newsflash during the loading screen, making it look like the player is watching TV. But it also can show up in game too on tv/radio whatever