CHUD CITY - What do we do with all these landmarks?

[Hastur]

Here's a thread to ONLY talk about suggestions for places in the as-yet-un-named city. The reason this is getting it's own thread is we're spread out all over the place. This way, everything's in one place, related to this subject. (Reposts from other threads are allowed...we're trying not to accidently lose anyone's ideas, here.)

Please note: If you have a specific idea for a place you want to develop, mention that you would like to be the mini-developer for that place, so someone doesn't run away with it before you get to it. Otherwise, we'll consider it fair game, and you were just pointing out that we need a place like that. Also note, competition thrives in towns. There will be more than one business of a certain type, of course.

Please, serious suggestions only. (If you're going to joke about something, ok, but don't make it the only reason for your post, and make sure we know you're kidding wink )

The goal here is to start off with a plausible city with a touch of weirdness for it. That doesn't mean you can't get silly with a story (for instance, a mad scientist farce in the moutains may make for some comic relief), but the core source should be fairly..."real."

Just because it shows up here, doesn't mean it's in the bible. It probably will be, and feel free to brainstorm, but we will be laying out the town...things aren't set in stone, yet.

And no, Coyote, there will not be a Penguin Farm in this city - wellllll.......

[Rath/Brendan]

The master landmark suggestion list:

Dan Whitehead wants:

A Summer camp (known to the locals as Camp Stab)
Ancient indian burial ground
Abandoned sawmill
Derelict insane asylum
Sinister Amusement park
Bikini Cheerleader College

Rath wants:

A high school.
A historical society/library with lots of gory details in the back pages
A lover's lane with monsters
A sinister chemical plant.
An evil chrome corporation building.
A coffee shop
A strip club named Heaven's Ecstacy.
A comic book/video store
A Lyon's Park

Poxy wants:

A morturary with corpses in barrels.

Call wants:

You'll need a big, gnarly tree.
A large, abandoned building.
Hookers.
A vaguely sinister local holiday or day of observance.
Wild dogs.
A faint chewing sound coming from every direction....

Go for it. Fighting will not commence...now.

[Richard Dickson]

Okay, allow me to be a little stick-in-the-muddish here.

My initial idea wasn't to lay out everything about this town in detail from the get-go. The idea was to have it be this organic thing that grew as more stories were written about it.

For example, say I write a story and my protagonist walks past a library. My story has nothing to do with the library, but maybe Rath decides he wants to write a story about the librarian. His librarian story is now canon, and anybody following in his footsteps has to abide by what he came up with. And maybe something in Rath's story inspires Verbal, whose story inspires me, and the whole thing would feed off itself, but with everyone's contributions being officially part of town lore until we've come up with this thriving little town with a ton of history.

Granted, someone would have to separate the wheat from the chaff to make sure things don't descend into the ridiculous -- you don't want to librarian to dress up as a Viking queen or some such oddness (unless there's a damn good reason).

Anyway, I think a lot of the fun of this would be lost if we know everything about this town before anyone writes the first story.

That's my fifth of a dime.

[Blofeld]

I agree. Let's not get too involved in the creation of the town, let that evolve. Write a good story, borrow a character, or a place, from another one ... don't have it devolve into cutesy in-joke land. Just have fun. Respect other writers' stuff, and concentrate on the writing.

[Coyote]

Poxy:
We're not laying down THIS IS THE WORLD, BEYOND HERE BE DRAGONS in stone, just anchor points. Without them, what you have is a round robin affair...were you here the last time we tried that?

Not only does it give some base references, but it also allows brainstorming and an interweaving of stories on a grander scale.
Don't worry, this will *not* hinder the effect you were looking for. But any collaborative effort has a World Bible, including Harlan's World, Theives World, and Wild Cards, or the whole thing winds up looking like a scapbook in a tornado, rather than a presentable collection.

[Richard Dickson]

Okay, I just want to make sure we're not so bogged down in details that there's nothing left to imagine about the place.

I'm all for locations, but leave specifics (appearance, inhabitants/employees, history) to the writers.

[Coyote]

To put this another way:
The Bible is a tool for both continuity AND brainstorming. It's designed to help, not hinder. It's the framework for the stories to develop in (or around, through, fold space with, whatever).
Are we trying to present everyone with a little Tim Burton model of a city, complete with clockwork characters running around, and writers have to pick and choose which ones to use?
Hell, no.
But without a skeleton to hang the meat off of in the first place, you've got a goey blob that goes off in all directions. The skeleton just shapes the stories, the muscle, skin, etc...what the writers add...develops the really interesting bits.

(A note on history...Hastur said, before she ran off to dinner, that it WILL be developed by the authors. As far as characters, later we'll worry about pinning down some key folks, like the mayor, sherrif, etc, by having the authors do it. The purpose for that is so that people don't accidently go in cross purposes with each other early on, and one writes about a crooked sherrif while the other writes about a noble, but naive one, both in 3rd person rather than subjective narrative (which could contradict & still not break continuity, depending on the narrator.))

[Dan Whitehead]

We definitely need a whorehouse called "The House of Whacks".

[Coyote]

House of Whacks is a great store on Ebay for fetish wear, believe it or not.

"Dan Whitehead wants:

A Summer camp (known to the locals as Camp Stab)
Ancient indian burial ground
Abandoned sawmill
Derelict insane asylum
Sinister Amusement park
Bikini Cheerleader College"

Drop the Bikini Cheerleaders into Camp Stab as a Cheerleader conference or something, and make the sinister amusement park either a traveling carnival, or else a small community outside of town where circus folk stay in the off-season....OoOOOoo....

"Rath wants:

A high school.
A historical society/library with lots of gory details in the back pages
A lover's lane with monsters
A sinister chemical plant.
An evil chrome corporation building.
A coffee shop
A strip club named Heaven's Ecstacy.
A comic book/video store
A Lyon's Park"

Is the Lyon's Park a reference to something I'm missing, or do you just like the name? :)
We could go the whole Pentex route and have the chemical plant, evil chrome corp building, genetic/bioweapon research plant, etc all be one company with a finacial (read: corrupt) foothold in the county.....

"Poxy wants:

A morturary with corpses in barrels."

2 for a dollar?

"Call wants:

You'll need a big, gnarly tree.
A large, abandoned building.
Hookers.
A vaguely sinister local holiday or day of observance.
Wild dogs.
A faint chewing sound coming from every direction...."

...and we name the place "Silent Hill." wink

[Dan Whitehead]

Old Man Coyote:
House of Whacks is a great store on Ebay for fetish wear, believe it or not.I thought it was too good to not be used elsewhere. Oh well...

[Coyote]

Hey, that doesn't mean it can't been used wink

[Rath/Brendan]

We forgot a cemetary. With tombs. And old graves. And animal sacrifices. And a creepy attendant. I can't believe we forgot the cemetary.

[Greg Hansen]

I think all I want is:

A book store called 'The Grim Reader'
An abandoned public swimming pool
A statue in the city park that reads 'Our Founder'
A large, black cathedral style church... with no crosses or other 'Christian' symbols, there is, however, a bell tower
A large city dump
Woods. There needs to be a forest of some type relatively near the town. In that woods is a creek. Over that creek is a bridge...
A 'dark' carnival that comes through town every autumn

That's all for now.

[Rath/Brendan]

So, is anyone still interested in this? Because it seems like participation kind of died out quickly. Or is everyone just waiting to find out what the deal is with the town structure?

[Coyote]

Still interested. We do have way more stuff than we need already, really. But that's what brainstorming is all about.

[Rath/Brendan]

Old Man Coyote:
Still interested. We do have way more stuff than we need already, really. But that's what brainstorming is all about.Then I guess we should take it to the next step and start determining a basic framework for the town.

[Greg Hansen]

You set them up. We'll knock them down.

Ready for more.

[Coyote]

I think Hastur was waiting til this weekend?

[Rath/Brendan]

Tindalos:
You set them up. We'll knock them down.

Ready for more.I threw out several options for a town layout in the Location thread regarding street maps, etc. Discuss.