I'm currently working on a cyberpunk/fantasy game, and as it approaches Alpha status, it's finally time to pick a city as core setting.
I'm quite knowledgeable about the US, but I guess that natives from there have an easier time to point me into the right direction for my requirements, especially as my knowledge of US climate is a bit coarse-grained.

It doesn't have to be much what you tell me - just say what city may fit, what points may be a bit lacking and what points are extremely well fulfilled. The research on the city itself is something that I can do then myself, though it would be a great favour if someone from there could brief me on the finer points that traveler guides and the internet can't tell.

Here are my requirements:

1.) The city _has_ to be in the US.
Classical cyberpunk does only really work in the US, as it's a projection of American 80s future angst, so my core city should be there.

2.) It shouldn't be overused in general and not been put to much use in other cyberpunk games.
Therefore, the following cities fall already flat:
- anything from California (CP2020 made massive use of this region, and it's furthermore subject of a SR sourcebook)
- Chicago (subject of the legendary SR campaign "Bug City")
- New York (everyone from Marvel to Woody Allen has used this city already massively)
- Seattle (SRs core city until SR4)

3.) It shouldn't have a too strong own flavour - the more generic and the less unique, the better.
Therefore, the following falls flat:
- Washington D.C. (its role as capital would totally overshadow everything)

4.) It should allow weather changes from wet-cold darkness à Blade Runner/Escape From New York to global-warming horror scenario hotness à Hardwired.
I want that because it allows to easily alternate between the two classical cyberpunk climates.
This can either be by generally unstable weather (like Chicago due to the proximity to the Great Lakes) or extremely varied terrain (mountains, desert and coast in close proximity - doesn't have to belong to the city itself already, city expansion and sprawlization can take care of that).

5.) Access to the sea.
Every near future games profits from dock brawls with Triad drug smugglers, traditional piracy, Miami-Vice-style motorboat chases and Waterworld-style drifter slums created out of boats and everything else that swims

I used St. Louis Missouri alot.  It's right on a major insland water trade route (the mississippi river), climate changes would cause all kinds of varied situations (flooding parts of the city do to flooding and levy breaks, unable to have river traffic due dropping water levels in drought).

Major highway traffic goes through there also due to the amount of bridges.  Has it's own seedy section and all that also.

There's my suggestion.

Portland, Oregon.  Amped up on steroids.  It also gives you access to Seattle to the north, and the Californian megalopoli to the south.

Alternatively, you might consider Vancouver, BC.

!i!

Boston, Massachusetts! We already HAVE the weather swings! The rest fall into place neatly.

-clash

Well - except it has a strong flavor, like my other idea, Miami...

-clash

Thanks to everyone who helped me yet

Portland looks good - not strongly flavoured, unstable climate, sea access, and easy to plausibly soup up due to the Pacific, what would make it easy to access it from Asia.
Plus, Wikipedia has already a pretty detailed treatise on the city and its sections, what saves me some research time.

St.Louis doesn't look bad either, but the access only to the Mississippi instead of the sea puts Portland a bit more in favour.

Vancouver is Canadian, what is a quite different mindset from that which fueled cyberpunk in the 80s.


I'll need to read about Boston and Miami later when I have more time, but what I remember from my common knowledge could make them good default cities. (Except that I have to resist the temptation to include redheads who acknowledge everything with "sure and begorrah" or respectively blonde moustached wrestlers with jet-skis )


I'm open to further suggestions, though.

Boston looks damn good actually, but I would have to stretch plausibility extremely if I want avoid a merger with Washington and NYC (two cities I already ruled out).

Miami is also good. Yeah, it has it's distinct flavour, but when I think about the possibility of a gunfight between Cuban migrant gangs, South American narcotrafficante, Yakuza disguised as tourists with hawaii shirts and Euro corps troopers from across the Atlantic, it becomes a redeemable flaw

So, Miami and Portland are currently neck-on-neck in my decision making.

Buffalo, NY.  It would fit all of those criteria.

Quote from: SkyrockVancouver is Canadian, what is a quite different mindset from that which fueled cyberpunk in the 80s.

I meant more as an outside influence on Portland.  Shut down the border and make British Columbia a sort of land of mystery to the paranoid, misanthropic Americans. Vancouver becomes a near-mythical utopia -- at least that's what people to the south like to tell themselves.  The final scene in the original release of Blade Runner, when Deckard and the replicant are driving up the coast?  Vancouver would be the place they're headed.

!i!

Buffalo, NY looks great, especially a.) climatically and b.) because I can't remember that it was _ever_ used in media in general and cyberpunk RPGs in particular. (Other than Miami and Portland, which got a brief treatise in SR as capital of the Elf country or respectively biggest city of the Caribbean League.)
Plus, it's a sister city of Dortmund where I lived for a while, what can only mean an exquisite taste

Unfortunately Wikipedia doesn't detail much about the sections of the town, and I'd need to look if I can find any traveler guides about the city here in Germany, but until I've found out I'll keep as a strong competitor in mind.

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaI meant more as an outside influence on Portland.

Ah, then I misunderstood you. Vancouver must definitively kept in mind as an outside influence, as well as the whole remainder of the West Coast and to a lesser extinct the Pacific Rim.

Denver.

Far from other cities.  Weather swings giving you high winds and blizzards in winter.  Hot, dry summers.  WInd storms.  Tornadoes.  High elevation exposes you to enhanced effects of ozone thinning, sun burn, cancer.  

On the plains but can see the mountains which are only about 30 miles away.

Mountainous barrier to the west provides crash sites and hide outs.

Cheyene Mountain (NORAD Headquarters) to the south (about 90 miles) near Colorado Springs and Pikes Peak might provide some usefull crypto-military connection.

Proximity to Mexico (through New Mexico and Arizona) could provide a frontier region if the US borders are different.

It's a central air traffic and rail hub today, so may have a caravan city in the desert thing going for it.

My two suggestions:

1) Use the Hero Games Hudson City setting projected into a cyberpunk future.  It's already designed for Dark Champions, contains a lot of generic Northeastern US City goodness without tying you to a specific city, and it's got a lot of great material that's fairly well done.  

2) Philadelphia.  It's located in the Northeast between New York City and Washington, DC, it's got some nice historical and cultural background mostly combined to a historical district, it has a mint, it has an interesting waterfront (an old navy yard, the USS New Jersey across the river in Camden), an artsy area, and a tech corridor.  As an interesting change of pace, the tech corridor runs out into the suburbs, which could change the flavor of the hands-on hacking a bit.  You also have the Amish not that far away, if you need a really sharp contrast.

I like St. Louis too, and if you're not from here, it seems generic enough I guess.

I like using this as a reference.

Denver would be fine... if there hadn't already been an SR sourcebook dedicated to this city alone.

Philadelphia suffers the same fate as Boston: If I stay plausible I'd be forced to merge it with other New England cities that I want to avoid, like NYC and Washington.
(What is quite a pity as it is/was the home town of Branson "Blackjack" Hagerty. Would have been a nice annotation for those in the know.)

Quote from: John Morrow1) Use the Hero Games Hudson City setting projected into a cyberpunk future.  It's already designed for Dark Champions, contains a lot of generic Northeastern US City goodness without tying you to a specific city, and it's got a lot of great material that's fairly well done.

I don't own it, and for copyright reasons alone I want to stay clear from intellectual property from other games.

Quote from: SkyrockPhiladelphia suffers the same fate as Boston: If I stay plausible I'd be forced to merge it with other New England cities that I want to avoid, like NYC and Washington.

Why do you think you'd need to merge either Philadelphia or Boston with NYC and/or Washington?  Because that pretty much means that almost every city in the Northeast along the coast is probably out of the question.  You can get rid of New York City and/or Washington, DC out of your setting easily enough via earthquake, dirty bomb, or bio-terrorism, if that would help.

Another interesting option is Pittsburgh.  It's got some nifty terrain, some cool companies (e.g., Heinz, PNC, PPG, etc.), some high-tech around CMU and Pitt, an interesting ethnic mix, and a nice location that keeps you far enough from New York and Washington that you won't have to worry about them.  You won't get your ocean access but the rivers around Pittsburgh offer other possibilities (e.g., see the movie Striking Distance).

Quote from: John MorrowWhy do you think you'd need to merge either Philadelphia or Boston with NYC and/or Washington?

Those cities are quite close to each other, and I guess that if they all start to expand in the typical cberpunk fashion, they'd end up as one big sprawl where individual cities can only be distinguished by signs. (Like it is already the case in large parts of the Rhine-Ruhr area in Germany.)
It would definitively be a friggin' sweet place for a cyberpunk setting, but I'd have to deal with cities I want to avoid, as everything interlocks and interacts.

Quote from: John MorrowYou can get rid of New York City and/or Washington, DC out of your setting easily enough via earthquake, dirty bomb, or bio-terrorism, if that would help.

Ah, that sounds cool... A BosWashPhillyNYCWhatever Sprawl with a radio-active wasteland flagged by the green glowing Liberty Statue where formerly NYC was, and a Washington where mass accelators turned the White House into ruins smashed by space rocks...

I'll definitively think about it. This sounds just freakin' awesome, but I'll need some time to think about plausible inclusion (why isn't the rest of the sprawl affected by the dirty bomb, how does this interlock into world politics etc.)
Reminds me btw of Super Hero League of Hoboken, what is always a plus sign.



Pittsburgh isn't bad, but Miami and Portland fulfill my needs yet better.