Thursday, January 13, 2005

Feral Cities

I came across this on a gaming discussion board and thought that it was a good thing to share. This could be an interesting resource for GMs who run distinctly city-based campaigns, particularly ones with dark or corrupt cities. There is another interesting resource that I know about that is outside the norm of what would be a resource for GMs, but I will have to find the link for it.

I like looking for resources for my campaigns that are outside of what you would find in game books, it gives a nice edge to my campaigns.

Feral Cities

"Imagine a great metropolis covering hundreds of square miles. Once a vital component in a national economy, this sprawling urban environment is now a vast collection of blighted buildings, an immense petri dish of both ancient and new diseases, a territory where the rule of law has long been replaced by near anarchy in which the only security available is that which is attained through brute power.1 Such cities have been routinely imagined in apocalyptic movies and in certain science-fiction genres, where they are often portrayed as gigantic versions of T. S. Eliot’s Rat’s Alley. Yet this city would still be globally connected. It would possess at least a modicum of commercial linkages, and some of its inhabitants would have access to the world’s most modern communication and computing technologies. It would, in effect, be a feral city."