Dugeons and Resources: Sci-Fi Cities

Tonight is my games night and even though it is not my turn to GM I figured I could share some of the things I do to make my world. When it comes to role-playing games it is a GM’s job to create a world that the players are immersed into. Sometimes coming up with new and interesting locations can be an especially daunting task.

My personal specialty when it comes to GMing is heavily set in the more Sci-Fi futuristic style settings. When I was learning how to be a good GM I borrowed some of the base concepts from a role-playing tips email newsletter I get and modified them to my style. Though their concept was more targeted for a game called Traveller, its basic concepts are transferable to any science fiction setting.

From what I understand the term "Startown" is the game Traveller's phrase for a city connected to a ground starport. Each city is therefore connected to their interstellar community. When building a world in a game with tens of thousands of planets, it becomes overwhelming for the GM to think about individual cities. But like with all things a little bit of organization and random generators, the burdensome part of the task of creating these places can be taken care of. I used this system to build my own cities in my created universe of Shadowrun my favorite Sci-Fi game.

First let us break it down into three basic ideas of what is important to think about when creating a city. Each game is different for example I use Shadowrun which is set on earth so all I had to do was think about a city or country and that would cover its location for me.

1. Location
2. Districts
3. Connection

Location

If you look to the history books you will soon realize most cities were formed for a reason they did not just spring up out of nowhere. There are essentially six reasons for a city and therefore a simple roll of the die will tell you why and where the city is set up

Depending on the features of the Planet or Country, a city may be built near one of the following features (roll 1D6):

• A river or a steep, deep ravine.
• A crossroads or centrally located between two large cities.
• A resource. For example, a lake, ore smelter, refinery or shipyard.
• An Imperial Naval base, an Imperial Scout base or an Military Garrison.
• A mountain or atop a plateau overlooking hundreds of kilometers of land.
• The world's or country’s capital city.

If you want to you can roll two times to make a city more interesting and dynamic.

Districts

At any given time a large city will usually have about six very different districts:

1) Warehousing

This is the area of the city with mostly dingy buildings and seedy bars filled with unsavory type NPCs. Typically looks abandoned, except when a large shipment is being loaded or unloaded into a building. This area operates at a constant level of activity day and night, meaning something could be potentially happening whenever. This is a great place to put secret backroom games or word of mouth only clubs, primo place for underground type dealings.

2) Industrial

This is where all of the cities factories are located, whether they are clean and new or old and dirty here is where the city stashes them. Typically looks a little like a warehousing district, except with a lot of the ambient noise of construction. At night this tends to be where the more organized crime does all of their dirty deals and also dispose of the bodies.

3) The Old City

This is a more central area of the city, here there are many mixed zones that are coexisting in an uneasy peace. Wealthy urban living mixed with slums, office and medical complexes, museums, libraries all in some of the city’s oldest buildings. Activity here is at all hours, but primarily during the day for both the locals and the tourist traffic. This is where old turf wars are disputed as the gangs battle for domination of their old neighborhoods. This is also where the older colleges and hospitals would be located because this is the original start of the city.

4) Tall Corporate

The clean, urban towers of fancy hotels, restaurants, and wealthy, big businesses make their homes here. Activity here happens at all hours, with lots of transportation such as cabs and limos from all points in the city in and out. Mostly people in suits and fancy wear are here and those less dressed stand out like sore thumbs.

5) Ex-Urban Light Corporate

Usually this is the Silicon Valley, where the young and struggling start- up companies find a place to get on their feet. Also the location of some super-wealthy but low-profile businesses set up shop to keep out of the corporate spot light. The wealthy tend to like to live here because it is located farther away from the central corporate areas. This area is busy during the day but oddly peaceful at night, and tends to be monitored around the clock. This is also where the private medical practices set up shop to serve those who can pay a pretty penny.

6) Habitats

Apartments and housing blocks where typical citizens live take up a majority of the space in this area. These are microcosms of urban living, that include little shops, pubs, parks, small offices, schools, and various typical services built-in or close at hand. Active most of the time, though it tends to be fairly quieter in the late evening and early hours of the morning.

Connection

This refers to how easily the city is connected to others around it and whether or not it has a large airport or not. Most of the time cities have developed infrastructure to work closely with is neighbors so as to share resources. 

This is just an idea on how to build the basic structure for a large urban centre and gives you a starting point from where to go. Things like a city’s culture are completely up to you and I think that is where the creative fun generally comes from. I hope that this concept is helpful for any aspiring GMs out there who might have been intimidated by the idea of creating a city from nothing.

Sincerely Urban Yeti

Tablespoon of Geek: Bite sized tacos

Here we go yet another Thursday and time for me to share my exploits from being in the kitchen. Before I get started sharing one of my many recipes with you let me first start by explaining what the near future will hold. For starters if you have not been keeping up with my blog I am moving to a new house, YAY, this good news bring some other things with it. The moving day is swiftly approaching with only three weeks to pack until we can occupy our new home.

What the move means is that up until that time I will not have full access to my all the things in my kitchen. Therefore until after the big move that is happening on the 15^th of November and probably the week after I will not be able to cook anything. Really and truly I hate that I am not able to deliver what I have promised I would with this cooking segment. Sometimes life can really seem to get in the way of the life goals that we set out for ourselves.

Ok now that my sob story is done I can carry onto what I have planned out to show all of you today. Every Friday I tend to have a little geek get together that involves us all throwing dice and end up having a bunch of hungry mouths at my house. We take turns on which one of us is set to provide the nourishment each week and it just so happened to be my turn.

A couple of months ago I re-pinned on Pinterest a recipe for two bite tacos, I remembered this and decided that it would be perfect. One big problem occurred with this plan however when I went back on to Pinterest to find this recipe much to my dismay the link was broken. My only option for making this recipe was to get a little crafty and resourceful with only an image to use as a guide.

Here is my recipe Bite Sized Tacos

For any recipe it is best to start by listing the components that go into making it.

Ingredients:

1 pack of Spring Roll Pastry

1 lb of Ground Beef

½ a Green Pepper chopped

½ a Red Pepper chopped

¼ of a White Onion chopped

2 Cups of Marble Cheese

1 Jar of Salsa (you will not need the whole jar but it helps)

And as Always don’t forget to spice to taste, here is what I use

For starters put a large skillet on the stove element and bring it up to high heat with some cooking oil add turn on the oven to pre-heat at 350 degrees. Once the skillet has reached optimum temperature take the Ground eef and dump it carefully into the pan, and break it up with a spatula. The meat will start to brown and once you have separated it up a bit add the chopped up Green Pepper, Red Pepper and White Onion. Continue mixing it up with the spatula and then add the spices of your choice as well I like to add a little bit lime juice, fresh is best. To help the meat cook nicely you can add ½ a cup of water but this may mean that you have to drain the meat later or make your tack shells soggy.

The meat should be a consistent light brown once this happens then it is time to remove it from the heat. Using a muffin baking pan line all of the cups with the Spring Roll Pastry, one per cup and fold the corners in. Using a common spoon, ladle the cooked meat mixture into the pastry cups eyeball this and try not to have it over flowing. On top of the meat put a spoonful of salsa, I use a corn and bean Salsa because I find it has a little bit more kick to it and is less runny. Top them all of with a sprinkling of the shredded Marble Cheese, this is a to taste type deal so you can add as little or as much cheese as you want.

Take the filled muffin try and place it in the oven to bake for between 10 to 15 minutes, or until the cheese is nice and melted.

And Serve

This is one of those things that takes a lot of prep work to make but is great finger food for parties. The one thing I need to still figure out is what to use instead of the spring roll pastry, any ideas let me know.

Sincerely Urban Yeti

RPG IRL: The Beginning

Today is the start of a brand new month and I have decided that it was time for me to start an epic Quest. With each new month I like to reflect on the month that has just past and try to think of what it is that I need to do to get what I want our of life. As of the recent I have been using this reflection period for looking at this, my blog, and how I could go about to improve upon it. I have been using this blog as a means for me to set up many different goals that I want to achieve and as a means of sharing and expressing myself up until now the posts have seen kind of random.

Finally I figured out a way for all of my different interests that I post about to converge on one ultimate unifying purpose. For my future blog harmony I plan on using an element that I have derived from one of my many different geeky hobbies. The system I am foreshadowing about is that I have decided upon making a role-playing stat sheet based on me that will reflect who I am in a real life representation.

The project in question I have named the “Role-Playing Game In Real Life” and for it I was going to have to make my very own character sheet. For this project it required a little bit of research on my part of a few different types of role-playing games. To make the “Role-Playing Game In Real Life” (or RPG IRL for short) I came to the decision to use the D20 Modern character sheet as a starting point for my own.

Using one of the main ideas of character creation from Dungeons & Dragons the baseline stats for attributes are a ten. By using this baseline stat as a bases and taking into account what I have done in my life I came up with stats of my own.

The Attributes are as follows

Strength: Body Might and Brawn, A measure of how physically strong I am.

Dexterity: Agility, Reflexes and Quickness, A measure of how coordinated I am.

Constitution: Stamina, Endurance and Vitality, A measure of how resilient I am

Intelligence: Mind, Brains and Intellect, A measure of how knowledgeable I am

Willpower: Spirit, Wits and Psyche, A measure of how mentally resilient I am

Charisma: Presence, Charm and Social, A measure of how sociable I am

One thing that is a general constant among all of the Role-Playing Games is that on top of the character attributes the characters also have defined skill sets. While I was in the process of building a character sheet it dawned on me that I needed to pick a group of skills that were actually relevant to real-life. The challenge to picking these skills is that they had to be realistic and achievable, that means things like “spell casting” are a big fat no go.

The set of skills that I finally chose are mostly from the D20 Modern character sheet because it seemed to meet my purposes the best. I will not go through all of the different skills from that set and why I chose them nor will I list all those that I cut from the list.

The way that most Role-Playing games work is that as you play you gain experience and your stats then level up accordingly. As for how to go about leveling all of these stats up in real life I had to put a little bit of thought into how that would happen. After quite a bit of pondering I finally decided that the best way to accomplish this is with a completion bar method.

With the completion bars idea this means that each ability stat gets a percent bar as well as the total level. As I accomplish different types of challenges the progress bars will go up accordingly in 5% increments until the bar is full and the level or stat goes up by one point. Each challenge that is completed will improve a related ability score as well as go into the overall level status bar.

For example let us say I do an obstacle course that would increase my strength by 5% and my dexterity by 5%, therefore my total level bar would go up by 10%.

I figured that because I have already achieved some things in my life that I would start myself at level two. On top of not starting off at level one I know that of the skills listed I have actually started learning some of them and due to past training I gave myself the Computer use and the repair skill. Also I know can speak English fairly well so I put that in the skills as well and I am actually hoping to one day fill the other two speak language slots.

On the sheet on this page I have included the completion bar increases from my recent 5k run for the cure that I will be posting about later today.

Now I think that I have explained this to the best of my ability and I cannot wait to begin increasing my personal scores. I am also looking for any suggestions that may help me to improve this system so leave them in the comments below. Also I welcome any and all questions about this that you may have and I will answer them to the best of my ability. 

Sincerely Urban Yeti

Two more sleeps: Roll for Kisses

Down to two days left and it is still feeling very surreal to think that after such a long wait and so many hours of prep time there are only a couple of days left. I have been looking forward to this for so long as well but with it all quickly creeping up on me I just want it to be here so I can just get over with. Not that I want it to end I am just so excited that I want it to hurry up and happen already.

I have one last project that I can share before the event and one that will have to wait till after the wedding to be shared. The one I can discuss without fear of ruining the surprise is a simple sign for the wedding.

I don’t know about you but my Wify and I cannot stand the sound of clinking glasses at weddings the only way to get it to stop is if the bride and groom kiss. The most infuriating part of that is there is always some crazy old lady sitting in the back who every five minutes as if she is timing it she starts clinking again. The sound alone makes my ears want to bleed and I get the urge to hurt people and smash all the glassware in sight.

The future Wife and I are Dungeons and Dragons nerd and we love to play the odds so we figured we would incorporate that into the event. Now instead the old lady has to make her way to the front where she will find a Foam D20 located along side a sign.

The idea is that instead of damaging the reception hall’s glasses with the bashing of silverware people will roll the dice. However there is a catch your odds are only 50\50 because a 10 or lower and you have to kiss someone. I hope people have that in mind and have pre-picked who they will kiss if the odds are not in their favor.

The stand that the sign rests upon I discovered at a garage sale and spent only two measly quarters on. The Stands looks awesome and really fits in with the theme of things. It is finds like this that I truly love going garage saling.

Well one more item to post but it will have to wait sorry. I can’t even drop any hints because it is a present and I am not sure who reads this so I have to be careful as to not ruin the surprise.

I would like to send a shout out to my good friend Kassandra for printing all of the components that were used in the wedding. She did an awesome job on the prints and added a very professional element to my designs that no desk-top printer can even compare to.

Sincerely Urban Yeti

P.S. Don’t forget to vote on the new segment name located in the upper right corner of the page