resetbutton: ({overworld})
Sky of Diamonds Moderators ([personal profile] resetbutton) wrote2012-02-01 03:00 pm

♢ WORLDBUILDING 101


WORLDBUILDING 1o1

All of this information is readily available in the library at the Cave for your character to discover if they are studious enough to dig for it. If you need any sort of assistance figuring out how to convert canonical characters into the setting, this is the post for you.

If you have questions (or would like to look for other characters to fill your City history), please feel free to comment here or on the FAQ. We're always willing to help! For specific buildings within the City, check Locations.

Places

Overworld / Other Cities

Before the Disaster, the Overworld was a single, central continent, as any other landmasses on the planet were made up of terrain too rough to inhabit. There were nine major city-states with eight of them on the cardinal and ordinal directions (the Diamond City being the capital of the southeastern city-state) and the ninth in the center. Each city-state, along with the surrounding smaller towns, would be equivalent to a part of Earth where people might get their accents and cultures from.

The Center was similar to the UK. It was the largest of the city-states, known for being tolerant but militaristic and not very welcoming. Much of the land surrounding was boggy and often rained out.

The North was similar to Asia. It was located on a peninsula and was the strongest seafaring culture as a result.

The Northeast was similar to the Arctic. This land had very many different subcultures, being much like the different Native Americans and the First Nations.

The East was similar to Canada. Its city was settled on top of a large mountain, which why it experienced very cold winters despite its location near the center of the continent.

The Southeast was equivalent to the United States of America. This is the where the Diamond City is still located. Many of its towns and villages sat along the coast, while the rest took advantage of the plains and farm land. Any swamps or mountains were shared on the northern border with the East. Most of its inhabitants were descendants of immigrants who were interested in the equal opportunity the City boasted.

The South was similar to Russia. Their city was located south of an inland sea that separated it from the other city-states. Like the East, the South suffered from cold weather due to its naturally high location.

The Southwest was similar to Spain.

The West was similar to Africa.

The Northwest was similar to the Middle East.

An exact date for the Disaster itself is difficult to discern. The most anyone can come up with from looking into archives would be that it happened sometime in the year 4543 (when all archival stopped), making the current year supposedly somewhere around the 4690s.


The Diamond City

The Diamond City is a large circular city. Prior to the Disaster, it was divided in two different ways: the first split consisted of four districts dictated by the cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west), while the second was made up of rings leading inward toward the Spire (outer, middle, inner). The districts were segregated by nationality while the rings were segregated by income.

Income obviously made a bigger difference than ancestry: the further into the City you went, the more living conditions improved even within the rings themselves. The outer ring was where the poorest of the poor lived. This section was very much like the dystopian cities in cyperpunk fiction with dark, dirty streets and buildings, brightly colored advertisements high in the sky, and people cramped together in tight quarters.

In the middle ring, conditions were of a vastly higher quality. Almost like the suburbia of the 21st century, this ring was where the middle class lived in both tall apartment buildings and single family homes, which tended to be closer to the inner ring. Architecture was more highly advanced and utopian than the outer ring, being cleaner and brighter as you continued inward.

Unlike the outer and middle rings, the inner ring was mostly occupied by corporate and government buildings. There were few places to live there and only the richest did so, with the exception of some high-ranking government officials. The buildings here are the best and most grand in all the city, the tallest being the Administrative Spire with its Diamond at the top.

Although the cultural district boundaries are not entirely set in stone (and, in fact, got less and less distinct the further out you went), they match the cardinal direction of their home ethnicity for ease of remembrance. Centralists were peppered just about everywhere because nobody liked them enough to give them a whole district. Natives to the Southeast were met with a much less severe prejudice and could go anywhere that was convenient to them.

Feel free to mix and match, as this segregation was much less strictly enforced in the City than the income caste. Most of these cultural stigmas are no longer relevant after the Disaster, but the makeup of the City has hardly changed and remains important to decide where a business or home should be located.


People

Relations

Friends and family are very large parts of what shape a person. Just as a person's canon and City histories should not match every single point, neither should their relationships. Perhaps your character has a best friend in canon who supported them as they grew up and gave them inspiration at a key point which helped them grow into the person they are today — they can still have a person like that in their City history! However, we very strongly recommend being vague about this, even if you mean for them to parallel someone specific from canon. If someone else would like to insert the canon character there to fulfill the role, then they are absolutely free to do so. If not, do not force the issue. Other players and their characters are not obligated to make their City histories intertwine with yours, even if they are canonmates.

On the other hand, characters from completely different canons who have never met before could end up as friends, siblings, parent and child, or significant others in their City lives. It's a great way to make a sort of pre-game CR with characters who would otherwise not interact. This is something that requires permission from both players before carrying it out.

In the case of OUs, AUs and bodydoubles, most often we will require communication between players depending on how you wish to go about it. The simplest in-character explanation is to claim that the characters are twins, which means that synchronization of City histories will be necessary along with mutual permission. Another option is to say that one character is a clone of another, made for whatever reason you think would be appropriate (servitude, taking the place or acting as a younger sibling of the original, etc.). Your last option is another easy one, and requires no pre-contact with another player: genetic code donated to the hospital at birth, later used in a cloning process by an unrelated couple to raise their own child under entirely different circumstances.

Clones can be made at any point in the timeline that is convenient to you, as they can either be raised at a normal rate (to explain age differences between body doubles) or aged up soon after birth to maintain the proper age. They are generally given rights equal to naturally-born humans in society, though exceptions and exploitation may still happen.


History

Life in the City can vary as much as its people can. While many, many of the survivors of the Disaster were born and raised in the Diamond City, plenty of others moved there at some point in their life or simply managed to visit the wrong place at the right time. How they got there doesn't matter — it's a foregone conclusion that they were in the City at the time the world went to pot. What we want to know is how characters lived their lives up to that point.

Using the above information about the culture of the City and its layout, what we would like to see is the life your character might have lived under these conditions. This is not the place to convert canon histories wholesale, but it should be a life your character would have led. This does mean that, yes, similar events may take place just because that's how a character is, and we encourage figuring out what may or may not stay the same.

While Sleepers will not remember anything of their City lives, it should be noted that any physical differences between the Sleeper and Cityself will be in favor of the Cityself. Even if the Sleeper remembers having a limp, if no event causing such a disability occurred in the City history, then the Sleeper will wake without a limp. Accents are a little trickier, as they are more a mental conditioning than physical, and follow the reverse principle: whatever accent a Sleeper had in their dream would trump any differences in accent due to their City life. This same principle means that City histories should not include any sort of supernatural power; they are, as you may have guessed, aftereffects of the apocalyptic event.
navigation
trickntreats: (willing to dream forever)

Gabriel

[personal profile] trickntreats 2012-03-18 10:22 am (UTC)(link)
So who wants to have City CR with Gabriel? His name in the City is Sylvester Wilton and he owns/runs/bakes at a sweets bakery named something I still need to come up with so it doesn't metagame too much.

About all I've come up with so far is that in the past he was something of a vagrant; he's been just about everywhere and to all the major cities, settling for a little while with a small (but extremely good) bakery before moving on. Usually he left just after some dick who happened to have visited his bakery got their comeuppance, but Sylvester never usually stayed long enough for people to notice.

He's got at least two older brothers and a handful of younger ones, but never talks about them because he kind of ran away from home and would prefer not to delve too much into his disappointing family life.
hisprecious: (orly?)

[personal profile] hisprecious 2012-03-31 11:05 pm (UTC)(link)
YO. i would totally be up for some city CR with Gabe if you're still looking! i have Elena as this totally normal high school girl with a love of writing in the City, and i could probably incorporate a sweets bakery into her life somehow? 8D
trickntreats: (i'll just float away and let)

[personal profile] trickntreats 2012-04-01 12:25 am (UTC)(link)
YO that sounds good to me! He probably does have tabs for regulars, so he could have her name and everything on some of his paperwork? :D
hisprecious: (xD)

[personal profile] hisprecious 2012-04-01 12:29 am (UTC)(link)
that sounds cool! and i don't know if you want them to actually know each other on a first-name, friendly basis, or just as patron/shopowner dude?

because i imagine Chloe (her City persona) would be the type of regular to scribble away in her journal/other writing stuffs, which might attract some curiosity? :O you know, if you wanted!
trickntreats: ('i am the great pretender')

[personal profile] trickntreats 2012-04-01 12:34 am (UTC)(link)
He'd probably be curious to know what she's writing, so he'd definitely strike up some kind of conversation! So probably closer to a friendly basis, where he's predicting her orders and striking up a chat when she comes in.
hisprecious: (must resist laughter)

[personal profile] hisprecious 2012-04-01 12:45 am (UTC)(link)
awesome. i'm giving her a diary as her proof, so i imagine Elena will have a bit of an upper hand in figuring out exactly who Chloe knew.

SO I LOOK FORWARD TO PLAYING THIS OUT. :D
trickntreats: (do you just smile and say)

[personal profile] trickntreats 2012-04-01 12:49 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, yes she will! :D Don't be offended if he's all =| at first, Elena~

WOOT
hisprecious: (hey sup)

[personal profile] hisprecious 2012-04-01 12:53 am (UTC)(link)
HAHA don't worry, err, i think i forgot to mention my Elena is an AU verse one. she's a bit tougher in the touchy feely department, so no worries there!
trickntreats: (like a child without a care)

[personal profile] trickntreats 2012-04-01 12:54 am (UTC)(link)
Gotcha! XD I don't actually know the canon either way, so all good!
hisprecious: (xD)

[personal profile] hisprecious 2012-04-01 01:00 am (UTC)(link)
pfft, S'ALL GOOD THEN. |D
wheatfield: (Default)

[personal profile] wheatfield 2012-04-01 01:54 am (UTC)(link)
So much for thinking the bakery idea was original. /laughs

So, if you're looking for baker CR, Thresh's City self worked in a bakery.

Now, if it was the same or a rival bakery, I don't know, but if nothing else they could bond over the sheer WTFery of having two bakers in the first batch of Sleepers.
trickntreats: (like a child without a care)

[personal profile] trickntreats 2012-04-01 02:03 am (UTC)(link)
I saw that! XD I would love them to have some kind of CR; I'm just not sure which one it ought to be either. Let's face it, 'Syl' doesn't usually set down roots long enough to need to work with someone else. So, most likely City CR would be rival, but maybe they can work together after waking? Especially since. You know. Gabe can't bake like Syl can.

(Besides, I'll bet Thresh bakes something other than cakes and pies and things that will give you a cavity. XD )
wheatfield: (Default)

[personal profile] wheatfield 2012-04-01 02:16 am (UTC)(link)
You can never have too many rival bakeries. It's, like, a rule, or something. The drama makes the baked goods taste that much better. That said, Thresh has had all of the drama he could want for the rest of his life, and would be very willing to work with Gabyl.

Thresh can make an awesome District 11 bread. (Which looks like this: http://www.fictionalfood.net/2011/08/the-hunger-games-district-11-bread/ ) Other than that, he doesn't really have that much experience making much else. That said, one bread isn't all that different from another, and he can most likely muddle through with a recipe.
trickntreats: (do you just smile and say)

[personal profile] trickntreats 2012-04-01 02:23 am (UTC)(link)
I just hope Thresh has a lot of patience, because Gabyl is not the easiest person to work with. He makes his own drama. XD

They will just have to be fail together, obviously! At least Thresh will be able to make something they can sell.
wheatfield: (Grin)

[personal profile] wheatfield 2012-04-01 02:26 am (UTC)(link)
'Dario' does. 'Thresh' is more likely to try and intimidate Gabyl than be patient with him. Because when you're one of the biggest guys around, you can get away with that kind of thing.

Practice makes perfect, and if they need the money, Thresh will make sure they both have a lot of practice.
trickntreats: (i'll just float away and let)

[personal profile] trickntreats 2012-04-01 02:31 am (UTC)(link)
Just the sort of light touch Gabyl needs! Except for the part where he's going to forget he doesn't have his powers any more. Sounds like a match made in Hell. ;)
wheatfield: (Default)

[personal profile] wheatfield 2012-04-01 04:24 am (UTC)(link)
Thresh is from a place where pranks are practically unheard of- Gabyl is going to blow his mind.
trickntreats: (i'll just float away and let)

[personal profile] trickntreats 2012-04-01 04:33 am (UTC)(link)
And it will be glorious.
herocycle: (this pleases me)

[personal profile] herocycle 2012-04-01 03:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Hey. Hey guys. Hey.

Who wants to be a hero?

Snow Shiloh was totally the captain of one of the City's fire stations (his app's unscreened if you want more info there) and he had a half-dozen dudes who were pretty much like family to him. And who also helped him save lives preeeetty much daily.

You know you want to be one of those dudes. Trust me, you do.


You? Hero? No way?

I would totally love some CR from anyone, really. Maybe his fire squad saved your life or your house or your pet or something. Maybe you were a waitress where they went out to eat. Maybe you were his neighbor. Maybe you just happened to know him from somewhere else even, I don't know.

I'm open to any kind of plotting whatsoever. :)
trickntreats: (do you wander through this life)

[personal profile] trickntreats 2012-04-02 12:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Gabriel refuses to risk his life in endeavours considering he just did that and wound up here. =|

But he will use the fire department as test subjects for his supply them with baked goods! That or maybe they were regulars for his doughnuts or something. XD Or he and Thresh had a rivalry going on for serving them, perhaps.
herocycle: (this pleases me)

[personal profile] herocycle 2012-04-02 01:58 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm sure they would've been very much won over by glazed and/or powdered baked treats, so this would be a definite possibility.

Does he deliver? And/or could he have sent someone over with two dozen in the mornings for a nice tip and occasional invitations to hang out with them on pizza nights?
trickntreats: (do you just smile and say)

[personal profile] trickntreats 2012-04-03 12:05 am (UTC)(link)
He could definitely deliver! I'm imagining this caravan-thing whose side opens up and lets out an awning, and he puts out chairs and a table. So he could show up anywhere. XD
femshep: (action - amused with rifle)

wrong account forever

[personal profile] femshep 2012-04-03 01:03 am (UTC)(link)
Well good then, he was their official supplier. :]
trickntreats: (i'll just float away and let)

[personal profile] trickntreats 2012-04-03 01:23 am (UTC)(link)
Eeexcellent.
eyesofaserpent: (Default)

Crowley || Good Omens

[personal profile] eyesofaserpent 2012-04-16 05:44 am (UTC)(link)
I would love some City CR for Crowley (or, Barney Harris, as it were). I think he'll be a bartender of some sort. He won't own a bar or anything like that, but he's probably a regular fixture of one and has been for years.

So what I'm thinking is that Crowley was a little delinquent shit when he was younger. He was too smart for school and dropped out at 15. His home life wasn't the best either, so he spent a lot of time after that pretty much wherever he could so that he didn't have to go home. Lots of loitering, underage smoking, underage drinking... Probably lots of sex so he could stay the night. While he was never exactly a good kid, he never stole anything or physically hurt anyone. During these teen years he migrated from the capitol of the Center to the Diamond City.

Once he hit his twenties, he snapped out of it and became a bartender. He started taking care of himself properly. He got a flat of his own and an old car that he worked on when he had free time to rebuild it to it's former glory.
itemfinder: (Default)

[personal profile] itemfinder 2012-04-20 06:43 am (UTC)(link)
Hi! Um. Current plan is that Chivy (Trevor) spent a lot of his childhood being a pest in the Diamond City, they could have hung out maybe? Trevor'd be a bit older and maybe they stayed somewhat in touch? He ended up as a daycare worker.
nomoreplants: (Default)

[personal profile] nomoreplants 2012-04-20 07:38 am (UTC)(link)
Barney's been in Diamond City for nine years and was in a gang for five? Would that work with your timeline?
itemfinder: (Default)

[personal profile] itemfinder 2012-04-20 01:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Definitely. Trevor's lived in the DC his whole life and has been without parental/guardian guidance and messing around there for about 12yrs.
nomoreplants: (Drinky Time)

[personal profile] nomoreplants 2012-04-20 04:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Sweetness. Barney has been working at a bar for the last 4 years, so I'm sure they still meetup there from time to time.

[personal profile] eagletalons 2012-04-18 02:36 am (UTC)(link)
So.

WHO WANTS TO BE FRIENDS WITH A NERDY SCIENCE STUDENT? Bad influences are very much welcome, especially if you can get him out of his place to go drinking or something.

Hope (or Garrett Ross) has been a bit of a shut-in since FOREVER because of school and stuff-- but he traveled a bit after graduating and before getting back into school. Any travelers out there who want to say they've met before? You know, if they got some "memories" back and all.

Or better yet, anyone at all?
nomoreplants: (Awesome)

[personal profile] nomoreplants 2012-04-20 07:41 am (UTC)(link)
Hiiiii place to go drinking? Barney's been a bartender at The Apple Tree for the last four years.

[personal profile] eagletalons 2012-04-20 08:40 am (UTC)(link)
OOOOOOHHH Crowley! Yes, why not? However, it might take some convincing for Hope/Garrett to go and get a drink.
nomoreplants: (Grin)

[personal profile] nomoreplants 2012-04-20 04:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Ha ha ha Crowley/Barney's a bad influence without even intending to be. They might have met at a library of some sort. Barney tends to read a lot, but most of his money is going into his car so he doesn't pay for books.

[personal profile] eagletalons 2012-04-21 11:56 am (UTC)(link)
I could wrangle having them meet at a library, especially since Garrett is gonna have to be at the library for studies till he goes off to the City.
biomagnet: (⇒ this is a gift)

[personal profile] biomagnet 2012-04-21 06:25 am (UTC)(link)
SO. HERE IS SEFTON. He is prickly and mean and secretly a gigantic marshmallow on the inside, but—well, it's an invoked trope. He is a jerk on purpose. The tsundere part is an accident.

In the City, he was apparently a guy named Jeremy Daveen who had a very rough childhood in an abusive household. About sixteen years before the Disaster, he ran away from home in a town north of the Diamond City to avoid child protective services. Despite his efforts, he was taken in by CPS three years later and bounced around in foster care for another two years. This wasn't in the Diamond City, but perhaps there could be leeway here through caretakers encouraging penpals to try and get the boy to open up a bit? Something like that, if you would like to do a thing in this time period.

Jeremy went to earn a scholarship to the Diamond City Institute of Scientific Studies where he studied hard and became a theoretical physicist. After that, he worked for in a minor governmental position as a researcher and then the Disaster happened. Again, there is a lot of leeway here for him to have met up with people and done ~things~, although it would take a determined sort of person to have become more than anything but an acquaintance.

Any takers? :3

[personal profile] eagletalons 2012-04-25 03:04 am (UTC)(link)
I just remembered that Garrett has a video of a party in his honor as proof of life in the City. Would Jeremy like to have been in it as a grumpy face?
biomagnet: (⇒ so shiny and new)

[personal profile] biomagnet 2012-04-25 03:07 am (UTC)(link)
There's a thought! He could probably be some dude in the corner who only stands out because he has blue hair.