I live in an island nation whose entire population is less than half a million.

I live in an island nation whose entire population is less than half a million.

I live in an island nation whose entire population is less than half a million. Though crammed, there are no dense cities to speak of. Still we have a few thousand years of history, some really great architecture in the few old fortified towns. I tend to tap my homeland for games like Blades, where I reference these spaces, distance and possibly the kind of living quarters known to everyone at the table. However I lack the diversity and range a city provides – do yo integrate your real world into your Doskvol?

13 thoughts on “I live in an island nation whose entire population is less than half a million.”

  1. Yes definitely! Chicago is useful to Doskvol in three ways, one is communicating to players just how BIG a metropolis feels, especially if you’re on foot. Second is how the invisible lines between neighborhoods can be felt once you’ve lived somewhere long enough. Third is just the smells, man. Brick and fumes and cold, wet stone.

  2. There’s this little thing out in my neck of the woods called the Seattle Underground Tour which adds a certain something to understanding what it might be like to creep through someone’s sub-basement in a place like Doskvol. (Pretty sure M. Harper has gone on that a time or two!)

  3. There are almost certainly some elements of NYC’s past, if not its present, in my version of Doskvol. I look at stuff like Gangs of New York. If there’s anything of modern New York, it’s the fact that it’s full of regular folks who don’t care which gang controls which street, because it all means the same thing: they’re going to be late for work again.

  4. Donogh McCarthy – it’s mostly gentrified now, but it had a shady past! I remembered something fun – there is this tiny island connected by a bridge you can almost jump over to the mainland, and it used to be the country’s leper colony. It has since been repurposed as a naval shipping yard in the big world wars and more recently as Ned Stark’s execution point; but leper / sick colony – that could be somewhere in Doskvol… What do those three islands next to Whitecrown in the channel do in your world?

  5. I’ve probably unconsciously used Boston brownstones as a mental template for some Duskvol buildings, but I don’t deliberately try to bring reality into my games…

  6. I’m actually working on a tweak to the setting for this reason. Coming from New Zealand I find it hard to think of an industrial revolution setting without thinking about 19th century colonialism. Also Dishonored 2 looks really neat.

    I’m adding in the Great Southern Continent, where the Three Colonies are situated. They say the seas there are blue and there are hardly any ghosts yet – you can even sail normal ships. The shards of the sun still burn bright over the Great Southern Continent, and they can grow actual crops.

    The wealthy of Doskvol pay a premium for food imported from the colonies; they say that even the best food grown under a radiant lamp still has the taste of death in it.

    Those who have been to the colonies say the sunlight gets a little dimmer every passing year, and the void sea slowly encroaches on the blue waters. The exotic animals are disappearing, and the ghosts are multiplying.

    The official story is that the Immortal Emperor created the new continent out of nothing; a gift for His people – his generosity made manifest, a source of food and resources and warmth. The indigenous people of the continent claim that there was a time Before, and that their land was pulled into this hellish world, their whole continent stolen by the Immortal Emperor. But for some reason the details are hazy, and even the oldest indigenous people who were there Before can’t remember what it is was…

  7. That’s awesome, and a good answer for my concerns on supply networks for Duskvol. Even with magic it’s hard to imagine how a city maintains enough cohesion for police and criminals without basic necessities.

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