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I've been wanting to do something with the Alberta area for a while now, since I find Lone Star kind of restrictive yet love the New West book to pieces. Then there's the Calgary Rift. I think Megaverse in Flames is the Rifts portion of the Minion War that covers Calgary, but I don't own it (yet?). Is the information on the Calgary Rift worth having for a game kind of set around there? How much of the book is dedicated to it?

I wrote up some notes a few weeks ago where I wanted to set up the game in Clairsholm, approximately 80 miles South-ish from Calgary. There they have a working relationship with a small mercenary company who not only helps protect the city but escorts goods from the various Fadetowns who look at Clairsholm as a beacon of stability, it being metaphysically stable. This mercenary company, the Deer Stalkers, have a barracks just outside the city, where they can keep watch on their neighbors to the North and keep sight of caravans coming to the city.

Entertainment in Clairsholm is just as important a draw as its markets. The name of the game is professional wrestling! Unlike the scripted spectacles of old, these matches are more non-lethal gladiatorial contests. The pageantry and flamboyancy are still there, as are the contrived storylines. Part of what's different is that the surrounding towns can send their own champions to wrestle and join in the fun, leading to more storylines and sometimes actual contracts. While not as reliable or safe as the wrestling of old, it brings in the credits, which for the promoters is the most important thing.

That's what I had before dropping the idea, but I'm really liking the pro wrestling/shoot fighting angle, which could be a campaign all to itself. Yeah, I think this is worth exploring. Any opinions? I know I'll be getting a lot of use out of the Rifter #24, but other that that what could I use to jazz this up? Thanks in advance!

Ice hockey is another popular pastime for the residents of Clariesholm. There are about 8 sanctioned teams consisting of between 8 and 12 members, though the only requirement is to be able to sport a minimum of 6 on the ice at any given time. These teams compete annually for a cash prize and bragging rights until the next season.

The last big sporting events are the monthly rodeos. These spectacles allow pretty much anybody to participate regardless of skill, though the untrained risk serious injury and ridicule of they perform poorly. To cut down on injury to any given horse, bionic horses are used to simulate a wild stallion. These horses are programmed to randomly kick, jump, and buck and immediately stop once the rider is thrown. Theoretically there are set levels of difficulty, but people don't pay to see the horse play nice, so the lower settings are rarely used except for youth competitions.

It goes without saying that wrestling, hockey, and rodeo riding are designed for generally unaugmented humans and SDC-based D-Bees. There are really no sanctioned avenues for MDC beings, crazies, juicers, and 'borgs to play in polite company, but underground fighting competitions are, while not sponsored by the city, popular in their own right. Several bars have basement rings for these entities to fight for the amusement of their patrons.

There have been rumblings to the North about giant wolf men sacking smaller communities, slowly making their way toward Claresholm. These are not mere rumors. These wolf men (Wolfen) are indeed sacking and looting various homesteads and villages along the path to Claresholm, which is currently their ultimate goal. Well, actually, it isn't really their goal at all, though they don't mind tagging along. The real aggressor here is Ebion, a Neuron Beast. He was summoned by Regulus, a Wolfen Shifter who desperately sought allies against another aggressor from the Calgary Rift. Now he and the rest of their tribe are linked to the Beast by a bond of honor and fear.

Ebion wants to control Claresholm to create a comfortable space for himself to exist and pull the strings of the many communities and homesteads surrounding it. It wants to savor it's eventual victory, however, by driving its Wolfen force against the Deer Stalker mercenary company, first in light skirmishes they can easily win until the beast and its horde (such as it is) bear down on Claresholm like a storm.

These recent raids may have tipped the Wolfen's hand, however. The Neuron Beast's need to play games has allowed some of the refugees to escape. Some of these displaced peoples have survived their way South to Claresholm or other communities as yet untouched by the Wolfen. Warnings are trickling in. While no living witness knows about Eibon itself, the Deer Stalkers are sending out Wilderness Scouts to assess the situation and ready the populace for a potential invasion. When the Wolfen finally get to the city, the city will have swollen its defenses with additional adventurers to supplement the Deer Stalkers, possibly taking Eibon's forces off guard. Only the future will tell.

So, let me get this straight, your town is 80 miles away from Calgary?

Give me a minute, I want to check how far out away from the city the demonic patrolling kill teams usually go.

Yep, the borders of the demonic kingdom of Calgary

Your town is officially located in schittsville. Those Rumblings in the north that your people have been hearing are not giant wolf men, its the rumbling of crowds of demons in the 300,000 seat gladiatorial stadium in Calgary that are celebrating the coming apocalypse.

Actually your Neuron Beast, Eibon, and his band of giant wolf men are really appropriate for this setting. In fact they are so appropriate that it is almost a matching description of this group is listed as %21-30 on the "Random Encounters Around Calgary" table.


The table wasn't very clear how often you need to roll on the random encounter table, but I am guessing within the territorial domains of the kingdom (which Claresholm definitely is) that anybody traveling through would need to roll on this table at least once or twice a day. These guys might just be your 3:00 pm appointment today, and you'll need to come up with another group tomorrow.

hahaha This was fun to write up.

...

You should really get that Megaverse in Flames book if you are going to run a game here.

Better yet, I think you might want to move the city somewhere a little further away. You know there was one setting called "The Northwest cooperative nation" that another person on this forum, Hawk258, was talking about and it was actually pretty interesting. He's got a few towns described, and some NPCs (they were actually the PC's from his game but it will work all the same). I suggested that he should have a bunch of cultists of the Lord of the Deep setting up shop in his town's basements, but he didn't seem to like that idea. You should check it out.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=147449

Wow, not having Megaverse in Flames really hobbled me canonically. Poop. I was relying on Rifts Canada, where their range was more like 50 miles or so (p. 97).

It's hilarious that I wrote up a Neuron Beast and pop! there one was. Oh well. I'll either relocate my game or focus on one of the others, though I must admit that playing closer to Iron Heart is appealing. I'd probably have to drop the New West vibe, which I hate to do, but I get some CS 'Burbs to replace it, so it's not so bad. Something to think about anyway.

Thanks for responding and giving me the low down.

of there's anything the library for rifts taught me it's if a book hobbles your campaign you say "the stuff in that book hasn't happened yet/ever" and keep going. stick with what's gonna work for your story, your players won't know any better!

Now that I've thought about it some, I still like what I've got. I know I asked about Megaverse in Flames, but after mulling it over, I think I'll keep my game as is and just use whatever's in the book I like, which would be the interesting parts of the Calgary Rift and probably not much else. I hate having my books invalidated by crossover events and messing with my cunning plans. I don't mean to come across angry; I'm not, but I am a bit ranty. Maybe I need a nap.

Anyway, I ordered Megaverse in Flames and will judge after I give it a once over. Whatever makes it into my game is whatever it is and the rest is window dressing.

All this so I can have Canadian Cowboys and Professional Wrestling. Sheesh. Thanks for reading.

Amusingly I was writing the same conclusion as you replied. Thanks for your input, I appreciate it!

Exactly this.

I'm also of the opinion that if something makes absolutely zero sense (CS, a tech power, is mostly illiterate? So you're telling me that illiterate mechanical engineers are designing the CS robots, planes, armor, etc?) or is just plain stupid (I'm looking at you, Death Head transport and Skull walkers), it gets changed.

Thanks for that, I appreciate it.

I agree with your opinion. Common sense and the rule of cool should always be followed. Not always in that order.

you could run it as Calgary claims an area several hundred miles around the city, but their actual territory (as in, the territory where they have constant presence) is smaller, only a few dozen miles from the city (a few days march/a day's leisurely flight), with just warband camps and city patrols farther out.

Palladium has always been bad with distance and scale.. "hundreds of miles" would at minimum (200) give them most of Alberta, and at most (900) nearly the entirety of Canada. which suggests that the lower value would be more accurate. basically an area bounded (roughly) on lethbridge to the south and Red Deer to the north.. that would be about 200 miles around the city. (there aren't any obvious landmarks on google maps for east/west, but you should be able to work it out)
that is a heck of a lot of territory in itself, and odds are that aside from a few camps/towns, most of them would be inside the city proper.

what might be interesting would be to put your town in the ruins of Edmonton.. which is about 300-350 miles north of Calgary. dangerously close, but perhaps the place existed prior to the demon city forming, and the inhabitants are too stubborn to leave, instead creating fortifications and shelters to hold off the monsters, and making alliances with the local simvan and/or Psistalker tribes (and probably also any native americans) to jointly try to fight the monsters.

being to the north of Calgary cuts them off a bit from the normal New West regions, the route you'd have to take to reach them would actually run through a passage between the monsters to the west and the Xitixic hivelands to the east,down to the northern part of the Missouri River and the New Frontier region.

Does it *have* to be Canada? There are suitable places for what you want (if I'm remembering correctly) in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and the Spokane area of Washington.

I checked out Wikipedia's entries on Edmonton, Lethbridge, and Red Deer (thanks!) and I'm not sure I can make them work. I really don't want to be north of Calgary, because, as you mentioned, it would cut them off from the New West. Lethbridge is only 132 miles south from Calgary, which puts them comfortably within the Demon Kingdom's sphere of influence, even given your conservative estimates. Again though, as you mentioned, it could be area that they claim but can't necessarily hold. Still, it's more dangerous there than I'd like; I wanted the Wolfen threat to be kind of a surprise. I really like the idea of the humans cooperating with the Simvan and Psi-Stalker tribes, but one of the reasons I tried to put this together was to use the New West book.

I really appreciate your post, and in any other game I'd probably go for it (I like the Edmonton area; being on a huge river is definitely a plus), but if I'm married to the New West and the idea of relative safety I need to be further South, assuming I use Megaverse in Flames as written. If not, Lethbridge makes a better location than Claresholm in terms of size and location and definately something I want to look further into once I get my MiF book in. Thanks again!

Ironically, the reason I wanted to be in Canada was to be closer to the Calgary Rift, so as to give an excuse for my Wolfen and Neuron Beast to have access to Claresholm. I just didn't know it got so big. I didn't find a lot of information in the New West/Spirit West on the places you mentioned except for Montana, which is too sparsely populated for my needs. It doesn't have to be that way of course, and Western Montana has lots of monsters and ley lines and rifts to accommodate my needs, so if I mess with the setting a bit I could make it work. It's definitely something to look into. Thanks!

Keep in mind, just because the book says "X" doesn't make it so. It said "X" about a lot of things when the main book first came out back when I was a kid. Follow-on books have changed more than a couple things. I wouldn't be surprised in the least bit if there's eventually a book about the Pacific Northwest. I *will* be surprised if the writers (EVER) take the time to learn the things I'm about to share with you, or do anything with Spokane WA since there's a rather significant AFB there too, as well as plenty of farmland nearby, some industry, etc.

When I made that other reply I had a big reply written out with areas to consider, then I realized that it was all dependent on how bad the eruption of the Yellowstone volcano mentioned in the book was *in your game*.

If it's not a continent-destroying mega-event, there are a few places that would probably work pretty well for your needs.

Great Falls, MT: Oil refinery. Industry. Missouri River. Wildlife. Farmland. Malmstrom Air Force base. About 115 miles or so from the US-Canada border at Sweetgrass (I just checked, and Google says 119 miles). 126 miles to the Blackfeet reservation at Browning, 300 miles to the Crow reservation (that's to Lodge Grass, there are other towns that would be closer), 160 miles to the Fort Belknap reservation, 98 miles to the Rocky Boy reservation. Within 300 miles there are current, active mines extracting platinum, palladium, copper, gold, silver, lead, zinc, and manganese (I think). As well as petroleum, natural gas, lumber, quarries, and gemstones.

Billings, MT: Basically the same as Great Falls, minus the AFB, but with more industry and a population that's growing instead of shrinking. Same goes for the industrial base (Billings is closer to the NoDak oil fields, and got and continues to get a lot of business from the companies that do the drilling, pumping, etc). It's further away from Canada and several of the reservations, but the Crow are basically in Billings' back yard.

Bozeman, MT: No refineries, but a fair number of machine shops in Bozeman/Belgrade area. Land suitable for farming. Same minerals as above. Montana State University, which is big on engineering (though not as big as the next school) and science.

Butte, MT: COPPER. They've been mining it for a LONG time, and they are still pulling a lot of copper out of the ground. IF you set your game in Montana, please do me a favor and have this cesspit have been wiped completely out during the Cataclysm. Or destroyed by pretty much anyone (demons, rioting locals, whoever) not long after. If not, well, Montana Tech is located here, and it's a big-time engineering school. Not as much as it was in the 90's, but it got taken over by the U of M so....let's just leave that there.

Bonner's Ferry, ID: Logging. Silver, lead, tungsten, cobalt, and vanadium are mined in Idaho. Bonner's isn't far from three reservations (Flathead, Coeur d'Alene, and Nez Perce). Bonner's is 100 miles from Spokane, 112 miles to Fairchild AFB, 43.9 km to Rykerts, BC (I guess since I was looking at an address in Canada, google map gave me distance in km. That's fine, I can operate in either system just fine, and greatly prefer metric). The main question regarding the survival of Bonner's Ferry, to me, is the same as that regarding the survival of Libby, MT and Troy, MT: did the dam holding back Lake Koocanusa break?

Wyoming has a lot of resources too, and the books don't mention much about it. Cody would probably be gone unless the Yellowstone volcano was just a tiny fart, Greybull, Thermopolis and Powell might survive. Sheridan, it would all depend on how much ash got dumped on them.

People that live in MT, ID, and WY would probably fare better than a lot of other people in the US (again, depending entirely on how big the Yellowstone volcano blew up). Not only are there no coasts, thus no huge waves to destroy everything, there isn't much worth hitting with a nuke in the "limited nuclear exchange" that started the Cataclysm. There USED TO BE a lot of nuclear missiles in eastern MT and parts of WY, but they've pretty much all been deactivated and scrapped. And the people aren't basically unarmed and completely defenseless like Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Maryland. And there are quite a few weapon manufacturers in the area.

Anyway, hopefully I've given you something else to think about, possibly spurred an idea in your brain.

Good luck.

I was reading up on Montana after I replied to your previous post and was eying Billings, but you make Great Falls look really appealing. After looking at a map of the area, I think that might be it.

What book(s) are you referring to when you mention the eruption at Yellowstone? Was that in Megaverse in Flames as well? I couldn't find it in the New West/Spirit West or the RMB/RUE.

Again, I'd like to thank you and glitterboy2098 for the effort you've put into helping me with my game. It's helped tons.

I don't remember exactly where I saw it, just that it mentioned that Yellowstone became a supervolcano and wiped out everything. If that was the case, though, from what I've read about what would happen if Yellowstone went supervolcano IRL, it wouldn't just wipe out eastern MT and basically all of Wyoming, it would pretty much put paid to the entire continental US. So no CS, no Lazlo, no nothing. I read a book here and there, not in any particular order, and I haven't played the game in.....twenty years? So sometimes I can't remember exactly which book a certain description was in. Sorry. If I see it anytime soon I'll try to remember to come back here and post it for you.

The main thing Great Falls has going for it over Billings is the air force base. And a super cool comic book store owner that will happily set issues of numerous comics aside and ship them to me once every couple months. There isn't a pizza place worth mentioning in the entire damn city though.

Depending on how bad the Cataclysm affected the area, Great Falls has one other thing going for it: a hydroelectric power plant. Several, in fact.

http://www.northwesternenergy.com/our-c ... facilities

And it's no problem helping you out. I may not (currently) game, but I still like helping other people improve *their* games.

Yeah, destroying North America would be a serious downer for my campaign. Of course, it would make me focus more on the European campaign threads I've started here



Yeah, I definitely noted the hydroelectric plants. If Chi-Town can have a working nuclear plant, I can believably have at least one working plant, plus Operators to fix the others eventually over the past 109 years or so. It's also believably close to Calgary, close enough to the Blackfoot who are, as written, hostile and warlike, and also perhaps a good place for Bandito Arms to set up shop and make some money. I've been wanting an excuse to use the Black Market book for a while now and this could be it.

Another threat in the area are the Black-Winged Monster Men (Spirit West pg106). They have a small kingdom in Idaho with small pockets in Montana and southwest Canada and often raid other small villages to take in slaves. They have an ongoing war with the Nez Perce tribe.


It's worth a read.

Yeah, that was definitely worth the read. I would hate to run into a group of those! Thanks!