The City, After
You cannot kill hope.
January 2010 Update.
Right. Christmas is done, the new year is underway. This game will start in earnest Monday 18th January. Can all players please finish their prologues by then. Thanks!
What's the gen?
The City: After is a post-apocalpytic fantasy roleplaying game set in the world of Desolation (www.desolationrpg.com) and using the Ubiquity system first developed for Hollow Earth Expeditions (www.exilegames.com). The apocalypse in question, an event dubbed "The Night of Fire" happened within recent living memory and the world is starting to recover from both that and the long winter that followed.
Where's it set?
OK. Open your Desolation books to the map inside the front cover. If you don't have Desolation yet, you can get the map here: http://www.desolationrpg.com/wallpapers.htm You're looking for the word "Empire" on the right-hand side of the map. The city of Khadim sits at the point of the lake where the middle of the "m" in "Empire" is. Please note that this map is pre-Night of Fire and no geography can be relied upon.
I thought fantasy games were all dungeon crawls!
Not necessarily. I'm a fan of city-based gaming as I feel you have to spend more time developing character over killing the next monster. Role-playing versus roll-playing if you like. Opportunities for Dungeon Crawling abound, however - Khadim had a very extensive sewer network that was part-built by the Dwarves. All that waste has to go somewhere, and it goes deep...
What sort of characters are you looking for?
The characters are all to be members of the City Guard. Following the Night of Fire, the City Guard became the cohesive force that held the city together, kept rioting under control, distributed food, and so on. The Malcontents (named after their commander, Alec Mal) are respected - for the most part. Characters could have been guardsmen (or women) who came through the Night. Or they could be recent recruits to the Guard. Alec Mal has a habit of conscripting the ringleaders of any troublesome groups so that he can keep a closer eye on them. Several dozen magi served alongside the Guard, working out of the city's Watchtowers. Only two of those towers survived the Night. No race is prohibited, though any of the Oruskans might be in for a harder time of it. Before the Night of Fire, the human:non-human ratio was roughly 50:1. It's closer to 20:1 now...
Sounds interesting. But I'd like to know more.
So would I. The city and it's environs are in a state of flux at the moment. I'm not even sure how many people lived there before the Night, how many survived. The beauty of the Desolation setting is that the geography is entirely your own to play with. Anyone who's dealt with the Warhammer game in it's various incarnations might have come across "Chaos Terrain". That's what we're dealing with here. Areas of the landscape could be fluid, chaning from one day to the next. I'm open to suggesions - we've got quite a large area around the city to work with (and there's the city itself, which has hardly come through unscathed).
If you've got questions, please visit the forums here on-site and ask them! http://www.nextgenrpg.com/forum/forums/campaigns/-city-after
Any particularly juicy or useful answers will be added to this here or the official The City: After OAQ. (That's Occasionally Asked Questions).
Is there a meta-plot?
I'd be lying if I said there wasn't. However, until I have my cast of characters I can't finalize anything... But I can tell you that there are some rather prophetic writings that have been discovered in the ruins of one of the Watchtowers.
What's the system?
Desolation uses the Ubiquity system - I can't explain it any more eloquently than the game's designers do here: http://www.desolationrpg.com/example.htm
More information about character creation can be found here: http://www.desolationrpg.com/sample.htm
I don't have Desolation. Can I still submit a character?
Of course. If you don't own Desolation yet (and I stress the yet there. It's a fantastic game) then please submit a character concept using the Motivation-Personality-History guidelines laid out here: http://www.desolationrpg.com/mph.htm
I can then take that and between us work it into a full character with all appropriate numbers. And there's a cheat-sheet for character creation over on Scribd here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19206864/Desolation-Character-Generation-Cheat...
What about Survivors? Will you be using material from this supplement?
Yes. And a few more sources that aren't so obvious. No-one out there's got Unhallowed Metropolis, have they? Good. Hot War? No? Excellent.
Comments
Is the City After officially casting?
So enough already! Let's get these Desolation games going. It's going to rock.
I notice that "The City, After" has been in the "Now Casting"section on the main page here for a week or so now (but with a 'Coming Soon' warning attached). I haven't seen any details of game, what it's about (other than the system and a brief paragraph or two), or anything like that. So, my question is, is The City, After actually now casting? Are you looking for submissions? Or do you already have enough PCs?
The City, After
This game will indeed be casting!
Imajica has been feeling under the weather and is catching back up, but I know that he's genuinely excited about his upcoming game. The following details are vague and quite possibly wrong! ...but here's what I know and I'll let Imajica fill you in on the rest.
He's currently in the process of building the settlement that springs up from the desolation of the Apocolypse. He's also working on a journal from the Captain of the City guard. ...the campaign itself will be a city based campaign for the most part and I believe the PCs will somehow be volunteers or roped in to serving on the guard that the settlement cobbles together.
Again, any or all of this may be wrong or incomplete. ...but rest assured, she's a work in progress.
Right now the campaign page is blank, but here's the address - http://www.nextgenrpg.com/content/city-after.
If you want to tack this more easily, just say the word and I'll add you as a lurker to this game so that any activity will show up on your My Games page. Might make things a wee bit easier to follow. That goes for anyone interested, and then you can be upgraded to player status once he's made his selection and it gets off the ground. (We can do this with any of the games upon request)
Expect the first real
Expect the first real information about The City: After to appear soon. And by soon I mean a period of time greater than 1 day and less than the distance between here and Christmas 2009...
Having said that, our illustrious Chairman is right on several levels.
Right. Yes, The City: After
Right.
Yes, The City: After is officially casting. There's going to be quite a build-up to this one as I'm not planning the official start of this game until the new year - I would like to concentrate on my current games and make sure they're well in hand and that I'm properly prepared and not winging it too much.
Submissions are welcome - the characters Chairman's got lined up for her Vernal Steps game are a good indication of the sort of thing I'm after. So are the Discworld novels involving Ankh Morkpork and the City Guard (just re-envisage characters like Sergeant Colon, Corporal Nobbs and co after they've lived through the Night of Fire - what Todd McFarlane over at Spawn.com did to the nursery rhyme or Oz characters is a good start...)
I do not have a full complement of PCs yet - in fact I have 1 that I know of (NestorDRod's Desolation take on a Paladin).
I will post more details along with the first entries of the Captain's journal starting next week. Meanwhile, if you've questions to ask, ask them!
I need...
Okay. When you get a chance throw some stuff in the actual page. Once I see that happen, I'll post around the official game call to various sites, including the Desolation boards, if you don't beat me to it.
A description of Desolation might be in order, maybe some linkage to their boards, number of XP points you'll be awarding - I went with the numbers on Nestor's cheat sheet. ...maybe an invitation to email you to obtain the cheat sheet for character creation and the excel spread sheet, or some such.
I just hate to post the official call until there's some meat in the main campaign page. :D No hurries of course! ...but once I see that happen, I'll work my recruiting mojo and see if we can russel you up some more interest. Particularly on the Desolation boards.
Some sort of campaign call would also be great, or we could just steal bits and pieces from what you've already written. Doesn't matter to me, but not a lot of people aren't familiar with Desolation yet.
I'll get you what you need
I'll get you what you need sooner rather than later...
weee!
Okay. My last post might have come off dry and bossy, not my intention at all. I'm just under the weather. ...and apparently forgot about the existance of emoticons.
So, anyways!
...of course the call is officially open, that's a given - totally up to you! I'm just saying that since there isn't a big hurry, I'm going to wait for the campaign page to be populated with some meaty info before I start recruiting off site. That way any new comers will get a juicier first impression.
Helpful links
Desolation Forum -
http://www.nextgenrpg.com/forum/forums/gaming-corner/desolation
Over a hundred thousand
Over a hundred thousand people in an olde-worldy city is quite a lot. Even now, the City of London (that is, the square mile right in the centre of the district of London) only has a population of, I think, 8000 people. Nearby Manchester (well, near to me) has ~500,000 people in about 50 square miles. So Khadim is very big then (i.e. getting from one end of the city to the other usually requires a horse, a carriage or a decent pair of well-fitting boots and a map)?
Might scale that down a
Might scale that down a
littlelot then. Thanks!I grew up in Ripon, North Yorkshire. That's got a population of about 25 thousand. Seems about right plus it gives me a nice city map to start work from.
I agree 100k people is a huge
I agree 100k people is a huge number for an fantasy city, but i think comparisons to Modern UK cities might be a bit deceptive.
London has a population Density of 5100 (people/km2) 100,000 would need 19km2 which is a circle with a diamiter of 5km (3 Miles)
By contrast Mumbai has a density of almost 30k which is a circle of diameter 2km.
For reference i am using http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html
I was under the impression that 100K was totally unreasonable for a fantasy city but either of these websites sugests otherwise. Taking london as an example.
http://www.demographia.com/db-lonuza1680.htm
http://www.londononline.co.uk/factfile/historical/
They sugest that 100k was possible by late 13 hundreds and well surpassed by 1680. Also of note is how the population density has fallen with time. Historically people lived much closer together even without towerblocks.
Those are excellent
Those are excellent resources, thanks. Mumbai in particular is a surprise for sheer density. I'll go away and mull things over for a while, see where to set the level after a bit more reading.
See? This is why I'm actually planning things in advance!
Right. Where did I leave those Huzuz PDFs?
script?
I had a thought, you might hate it though.
...It might be cool to use a handwriting/script font for the journal entries. Like Lucinda Handwriting or some such.
Not sure how hard it would be to add some more dynamic fonts to the editor...
The problem with that is not
The problem with that is not everyone has the same fonts installed on their computers. Different operating systems have different fonts available so if you don't use a standard font it's not going to look right for everyone.
--
Imagination is the seed of intelligence. Nourish it and watch it grow.
Might not look exactly the
Might not look exactly the same for everyone.
Would be fun to play with.
Using non-standard fonts can
Using non-standard fonts can completely break a website for people who don't have the right fonts installed by throwing all the formating on the page off. It's not just a case of them not seeing the same thing it is a case of them not being able to enjoy the page at all in some cases. If a font is used that is not on the viewer's computer the viewer's computer picks another font to display it in.
Non-standard fonts can be used in some cases but only when you specifically tell the page which fonts to default to if someone doesn't have it on their computer. This can only be done in the source code and you have to know the name of the font family you want to default to.
Fonts on web pages are not interchangeable.
--
Imagination is the seed of intelligence. Nourish it and watch it grow.
Yay! Font
Yay! Font wars!
Unfortunately, I have to side with Heatwave on this one. Mixing unusual fonts and websites is a recipe for disaster.
Having said that, there are ways and means to do these things in php. And certainly when I do the pdf of this one it'll have a far more interesting font...
"The problem with that is not
"The problem with that is not everyone has the same fonts installed on their computers".
Which makes me wonder what font this is displayed in and whether this looks different on other people's screens? It'll probably also depend on whether they've got Zoom on/off or viewing Large/Small font size. So it's possibly going to look different anyway and, as long as your careful, it shouldn't matter which font you're using.
Also, the WYSIWYG editor has an option for fonts which shows 6 available (I have far more than that on this PC so it must by those installed in the editor?). So you could write it in, say, Comic Sans. :) :)
The city of London is,
The city of London is, admittedly, somewhat unusual. There were far, far more people actually living there 300yrs ago than there are now (so 100k in the late Middle Ages wouldn't be unusual for a place like that). Nowadays people commute into the "city" rather than live there.
Most cities tend to grow in population. York, as Wikipedia tends me, had a population of 24k in 1800 and has now grown to 190k or so.
Not that it really matters - it's a fictional city in a made-up world! Go with whatever number you want and if things don't quite fit blame it on magic.
This site uses Lucida Grande
This site uses Lucida Grande as the main font. Fortunately the creators of the theme specified a more generic font, Verdana, to back it up for those of us who don't have Lucida Grande installed. The six fonts available in the editor are the ones that are usually safe to use for web sites as almost everyone has them installed.
I would LOVE to be able to use different fonts for certain things and know that everyone was seeing the same thing but right now there is not a good way to do so. There are technologies to embed fonts in the web page ensuring everyone sees the same thing but as fonts are covered under copyright and so far these technologies would allow those who have not paid for the fonts to download them they are not standard in web browsers.
--
Imagination is the seed of intelligence. Nourish it and watch it grow.
No War
No Font War. It isn't my page and I respect KL's superior knowledge to the tech side of things.
If it was my page tough, I'd do it anyway, make sure I chose a common font, check with all my players to make sure they saw it the same way, and on my parents dinosaur that they call a computer. If it didn't break those, I'd use it just for the piece in question, and if it did, I'd let pout about it and let it go.
Then I'd be really glad that I had several states separating me from KL's wrath.
Of course, you could always
Of course, you could always type the story up, save it as an image, and put that up on the page.
Then you wouldn't have problems with the font. You might have problems with page load times, though...
That didn't occur to
That didn't occur to me.
...and you could use a scroll background or weathered page, to boot. Nice thought.
Why would I type it up when
Why would I type it up when I've got a perfectly good fountain pen? I've even got a quill sat around somewhere.
There are all sorts of font options in the pipeline to get different fonts into the web but there's going to be copyright issues - if you've worked long and hard on crafting your font the last thing you're going to want is to see it let loose on the internet.
You can pull off a lot of font magic using php but you end up with images at the end of it. There's also flash but that's not exactly friendly to get stuff into.
No, I think I'll write up by hand and scan. Give me an exucse to play with some different papers.
Ooo. Are you going to write a
Ooo. Are you going to write a (long) 's' to look like an 'f'
"Khadim of the feven towers..."
Depends what font I go for.
Depends what font I go for. There's some beautiful ones out there - some I'm confident in, some less so. The long f/s is a lot easier to write than the short one. And it's certainly going to have those wonderfully extravagent z's
Imajica wrote:No, I think
Ooh, I like you.
--
Imagination is the seed of intelligence. Nourish it and watch it grow.
Imajica wrote:Depends what
Ack!! Please tell me you did NOT just call a calligraphy hand a font.
Are you looking at a pre 13th century hand or one from the 13th century onward? If I know I could possibly send you some illuminations to go with it.
You just hit upon one of my other hobbies here. I help produce the award scrolls we give out in the medieval reenactment group I'm in. I'm bad with calligraphy as I tend to either reverse or leave out letters and words when I'm writing by hand but I can do a decent illumination.
--
Imagination is the seed of intelligence. Nourish it and watch it grow.
Not Guilty
This sounds all kinds of cool! ...but for the record, I had nothing to do with this project.
Imajica has a habit of blaming me for his little projects. :D
I may just have referred to a
I may just have referred to a hand as a font. My bad
I suck royally at illumination but if I take a long enough run-up (and enough practice attempts) I can work with a couple of hands with some degree of success. Still not sure which one I'm going to use, though. I'll post the names once I've had a chance to look through my book.
Cool, if you like I'll try to
Cool, if you like I'll try to do some illuminations to go with them.
--
Imagination is the seed of intelligence. Nourish it and watch it grow.
recruitment
Hi guys
Am interested in signing on Can you provide some extra details about this campaign? eg Is there a specific rules type being used?
Rachael
This is another of those
This is another of those things I need to get sorted out...
The ruleset is Desolation (http://www.desolationrpg.com), itself spun out from the Ubiquity system used by Hollow Earth Expeditions
More information about the campaign will go live on the 14th October...
Great additions to this
Great additions to this page!! This snuck up on me. love that!
Quick question, is the first question right, or did you mean genre? I figured that 'gen' is likely slang for 'genre', but I wasn't sure.
"Gen" is British slang
"Gen" is British slang meaning "General Information", and "What's the gen?" is a question sometimes used over here to mean "What's it all about?" or "What's going on?". I think that's what Imajica meant. Of course, he could have also meant "genre". ???
Oh!
well...isn't that interesting.
Thanks for sharing Nimbus! I had no idea.
Here, if you asked someone 'what's the gen'....they'd likely have no idea. Then again I'm from ho-dunk Indiana.
I do like it. ..and shall start using it regularly and get even more peculiar looks than I do now. *grin*
Cancel my expression of interest to join
Greetings all
The wright-up sounds interesting however I Don't have the game and will not be buying it either... so I guess that leaves me out of the game
Rachael
Nope, you're right. Gen -
Nope, you're right. Gen - general information. Spent too long working between the forces and the civil service not to pick up the odd thing like that
Not in the slightest.
Not in the slightest. There's a fantastic resource for character creation here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19206864/Desolation-Character-Generation-Cheat...
And any more specific questions can be answered as they crop up.
The system is not complex - pretty much everything you need is on your character sheet. I'll handle the complexity of things in the background - the whole "GM as Swan" thing works really well on this site.
I don't own Hero and yet I'm embroiled in a Hero game at the moment. You don't own Deliria and yet Yolanda is going to come along just fine in the reboot of Night at the Opera. Never let not owning a game put you off. Heatwave's in exactly the same position so I'm going to take the cheat sheet and see what else might need adding to it.
I don't own Hero and yet I'm
I couldn't agree more. With text based games where GMs handle most if not all of the die rolls, owning the source material isn't necessary. After playing for a while, if you decide you really like the system and want to know more about the setting, you could always pick it up then.
Well then
Chairmain and Imajica
Apologies, my post was based on the wrightup, which indicated a preference for the rules. Your proposals, assistance and comments has prompted a rethink ot this; That is if your willing to endure the fumbling of an unknowen.
Cheers
Rachael
Everyone is welcome to
Everyone is welcome to submit. I'll be doing some recruiting this week, off site.
Sometimes there is more interest than there are available slots, in those instances the GM will choose the characters that are the best 'ready made fit' for the campaign.
Imajica, do you have a deadline yet for submissions? If so, let me know when that is and I'll include it in the recruitment drive email.
Recruitment Deadline
Recruitment deadline 31st October. Cast will (hopefully) be announced 14th November at the latest. Prologues to start as soon as possible after the announcement. Aim is to get the prologues wrapped up before Christmas with a big January launch for the game itself.
Sound fair?
Don't worry about it! The
Don't worry about it! The setting is far more important than the rules.
I wonder if the guys at Greymalkin would consider a freebie "player's primer for Desolation" with the basics of the races, the religions, and the pre-Night land laid out for newbies to get a handle on.
I'll ask...
Font Wars 2 - the Squirrel
Font Wars 2 - the Squirrel fights back.
This: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/
plus this: http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menu/fonts.html
equals use a more interesting font on your website! Go CSS!
Thanks, I have the feeling
Thanks, I have the feeling I've got more stuff to look over.
--
Imagination is the seed of intelligence. Nourish it and watch it grow.
Character Submitted
Submitted my character on the Desolation forums, figured I may as well chime in here.
Helix! Helix! Everyone loves a helix!
Heya Geech!
Heya Geech! Welcome to NextGen.
Glad to see you here. You'll find Nestor lurking about as well, from the Desolation boards.
Aah! You ratted me out, C!
Aah! You ratted me out, C!
Welcome to the Monkey House, G.
Lurkers
As I see that people submit to the game, I'm going to grant them with Lurker status. This will allow you to click on the My Games page, and if any of The City, After pages are updated, it will allow you an easy way to find them.
Once the line-up is announced, we'll change the privileges around.
If anyone else wants lurker status, to this game or any of the others, just let me know.
Welcome aboard. Hop over to
Welcome aboard. Hop over to the introduction forum and let everyone know you're here.
Got your submission from the Greymalkin forums. That makes 4 so far... And they're all gems.
9 More Days
9 more days till submissions close.
Plenty of Time! (Said in my Soldier Boy Saves the World Voice.)
Deadline Approaching
Imajica is out most of the week, so I'm sending out reminders for him.
http://www.nextgenrpg.com/content/after/city-after
Flavor Page (Journal of Alec Mal) - http://www.nextgenrpg.com/content/after ... l-alec-mal
I just wanted to write a quick note to let everyone now that the deadline is approaching for the Post Apocalyptic Fantasy game.
Submissions will be accepted through 10/31.
Cast will (hopefully) be announced 14th November at the latest. Prologues to start as soon as possible after the announcement. Aim is to get the prologues wrapped up before Christmas with a big January launch for the game itself.
Thanks for looking!
PS. Email them to his files and records account. If you need it, then just PM him so that he knows it's in the pipeline.