Researching

there's a thread about researching information for your characters... somewhere. i don't recall seeing one for actual boards, though.

i know a lot of people have problems with boards based in their hometowns. i HATE to look at this one board based in my hometown... they TOTALLY trashed it and got everything wrong, based on the assumption that it should be better just because of the ONE thing that it has to offer.

so, when i created my london based board, i tried to do the research necessary for both the species and the city. i spent time asking questions from a person who lived in england [though not london] and i spent hours googling and on wikipedia.

on the flipside, i did not do research for my board based in detroit. everything in there is, for the most part, our own. we named the parks after real parks but the clubs and other things are our own creation. no doubt, we've upset a few detroit locals >.< whenever i do advertise the board, though, i mention that it's "our own version of detroit" since i can't really see calling it au.

and, for the third, i didn't have to do the research because, well, i lived there...

so, my question is, what do you do about boards when it comes to their settings? do you do research on the major cities you base them on [london, new york, detroit, LA, etc]? do you base them in small towns so that they COULD POSSIBLY exist and you just not notice it? or, do you make it a point to just make up the city that you're playing in and make it known that it's your own creation?

if you make it in a fictional location, why? do you prefer the idea of the freedom it allows and the fact that it's less work?
is there a reason to you stay away from cities you know of?

just throw your ideas of the topic at me ;]

I'm REALLY picky about sites that use 'my' cities and/or states as the setting. I once saw a board set in Augusta and they said that it was the most populated city in Georgia, which we should all know isn't true. Even if the setting isn't related to me personally if I notice these really bad errors about a city then I'm that much more tempted to hit the X button.

I know some people just want to open up a site and don't want to be bogged down with the hours of research, but it makes a difference. I've done what you did before where we used the real city and kept a lot of similar locations but then we also have a casino that we made up ourselves and that's where all the employees in the user group work. So there's that mix of making sure everything is accurate and then taking a thing of fiction. I'm okay with that, but when someone tries to say that MY university is in Midtown instead of Downtown then I have problems. Big problems.

So really my thing is to research. I always do it and don't see why people can't do the same thing. You can learn a lot about a city and the names of places just by looking at its Wikipedia page. I've actually done a small town board based off a real town. All of the locations that we put there were all real places found in the town that I saw by looking at a map of the place. Again, things like that aren't hard to find and it looks like you care about the site and the effort put into making it. It also spares you the angry people in the cbox and that's always a good thing.

Hooooly crap, I can't stand boards set in California. They're always on the beach, and everyone is always tan and rich and pretty. And if they take place in towns not typically on the beach, they're still on the beach anyhow. And then all cities are within 30 minutes tops of each other.

So yes, research is magical. I really don't care if you make up your own pubs, schools, cafes, whatever. What I care about is location, climate, and basic important features of the city/town and surrounding area.

I prefer RPing in made-up towns. It allows me more freedom and I don't feel like I'm doing anything "wrong."

This.

Yes. I prefer just coming up with an entirely new setting, sometimes loosely based on some city or the other, but which is solestanding. The reason I do this is because 1) there's never enough research you can do to make sure you get it right with a city in real life -- personally, I wouldn't be comfortable making an RP based off my hometown, because there are still parts of it I don't know, parts I've only heard about. There's not enough information out there to make me feel confident about basing an RP in it. 2) I prefer fictional settings because it allows users to expand, and they don't have to read much. When it's an actual town, people can read your research but they can research on their own; information is presented differently out there and two people might come up with entirely different ideas for the same thing. Strangely enough, I found that by keeping it loose, you keep it simple and clear, no matter how improbable that sounds.

Even though I've been to New Orleans a dozen times, when I made Eternity Bites, I still did the research. Sure, we had a couple of fictional places, but for the most part, everything was where it should be.

I much prefer the fictional settings, because there is just so much more room to add to, so much you can say was 'accidentally discovered' or explored, etc.

This post has been edited by eclectish on Oct 28 2009, 04:27 AM

A lot of people whine about boards set in California. My board is set in San Diego because I know the place first hand. I would have set it in the place I live in NOW, but it's kinda ....not somewhere people would give two craps about. Except maybe the people in the last Terminator movie, since we got a nod. xD

I do prefer people do the research, but I wouldn't ever say I have a BIG problem with the discrepancies. It's more like, wow, they're ignorant. :/

However, I do prefer fictional areas. My zombie rp is set in Canada, and although I did some research, it doesn't much matter, since the world has vastly changed in hundreds of years.

I've only ever seen one board set in my city. It was hilarious. I joined it because it was so lame.

I've never seen nor done a board based on my hometown, though I've thought about it many times because we do have a lot to offer. between the beach that is five minutes walking distance, the multiple high schools with major rivalries, state university and then "Landfall" which is our cities "Bel Air" neighborhood, my town has all the major hallmarks of a "popular" RP board.

However, a canon board that I was on at one point, a House board, made me cringe because of the fact that I used to live in Princeton NJ. While the hospital is ficticious, it WAS based off a real hospital in the area. However it was the locales of everything else that drove me insane, plus the lingo was horribly wrong. For example in Jersey, people don't say "we're going to the beach" they say "we are going down the Shore." plus the beach is ALWAYS called The Shore, unless you are going to a southern beach. Plus, the NEAREST beach is still 45 minutes to an hour away, and thse are the little podunk beaches. That was my biggest pet peeve. That and then all of the apartments and neighborhoods that were supposedly withing Princeton town limits.

Lies.

people who work in Princeton usually live in the small towns surrounding it, like Plainsboro or Lawrenceville. Ugh...

usually all of my sites are canon, so I've never come up on this problem aside from when I was doing a House RP , and while i still did some research for it to make sure about addresses and stuff, it was actually pretty easy because i had spent so much time in and around the area.

When I started one of my boards, I ended up placing it in Rochester because my uncle/aunt/babycousin live there and I know a bit about it, saying as I, oh, happen to live in the state? As far as weather and environment goes, that's a piece of cake- the harder part was deciding if I wanted to go in-depth and name my locations for actual places or just take the places and make them a little more vague:: for example, I turned the mall I visited to get my hair done for my uncle's wedding into just the mall- nothing too fancy about it, nothing different from other malls. Then again, that was easy because most malls in NY are pretty similar to each other and I live near three of them (a fourth was partially demolished and converted to a parking lot and shops)

Novels have taken just about every approach to this. Some set their story in a fictional town, this is especially easy if it's not set in a large town or city, everyone knows the major cities but most don't know of any but a handful of smaller towns, mainly the ones they've lived or visited in.

Some take a real town but change the locations and some other things. Others take a real town and write it down to every real detail they know of.

All are legit. I personally tend to go the fictional route, for both stories and RPing...It just makes it easier, and more foolproof. Not to mention that if it's set in a small town anyway, it pretty much makes no difference from a reader's or player's perspective. In the case of a fictional town I'd base the details largely on real-life things though, like weather, character and such. This way you get the realism, but not the real.

This post has been edited by wynnyelle on Oct 29 2009, 01:06 AM