If you live in London, or have spent a lot of time there, or are very familiar with it, you’ll probably — at some point — find some things about our version of the city that don’t seem right, or that differ from the way they are in the real world.

While we’ve tried to make the in-game London an accurate representation of the real-life city in most respects, we’re well aware that we’re not perfect — we’re a very small team trying to cover a very large and dense urban environment. In addition to the just plain mistakes, there are two major reasons why something might not be quite what native Londoners would expect it to be.

Real World vs. World of Darkness

The World of Darkness is a worse place than our world. Things that have gotten better over the past 20-30 years in real-world London may not have improved here because of the various malign influences at work — some of them may even have gotten worse. And that’s true across the spectrum of wealth and income; wealthy areas can go downhill, too, whether because of increased crime and lawlessness, or because they’ve become more of an Orwellian urban dystopia.

All of this is by way of saying: we know that, for instance, Eltham is in a better state today than we’ve depicted it in-game. We chose to depict it that way not because we hate Eltham, but in the interest of dramatic license, and we ask that if we’ve done that to somewhere in the city that you’re especially fond of, you try not to be offended by that. Of course, if we’ve gotten something completely and obviously wrong (like putting St. Paul’s Cathedral south of the Thames), please let us know so that if it’s not on purpose, we can fix it, and if it is on purpose, we can make that more clear.

Representational Space

What do we mean by representational space? At a basic level, it means that our London is not a street-by-street reproduction of the real-world city. London is a city two thousand years in the making, rising from a single Roman encampment to a collection of sites, villages and small towns, converging into a sprawling metropolitan area with a history longer than some civilizations. Add to this the forces of Empire, colonialism, immigration, modernization and multiple levels of supernatural existence, translate all that through the lens of the World of Darkness, and one ends up with a densely-detailed city even compared to many other national capitals. 

In essence, we’re “translating” London into a playable space over time, similar to how a stage set works in theater. This means that we don’t cover every inch of everything, but it also means that the geography of inner London is built and ready to develop. We’ve taken a borough-by-borough approach to the city as a general framework, which we narrow down into neighborhoods and streets with the priority of having as much broadly-playable space as possible. As time goes on, we’ll narrow in on more intimate spaces, neighborhoods and particular streets, individual public venues and private holdings. 

We realize this approach has positive and negative effects — sometimes the geography is ‘wrong’ on purpose, and sometimes we simply get it wrong by accident — but we feel it’s the most practical way to deal with the enormous task of getting London into a playable state in a reasonable timeframe. 

The grid is and will always be a work in progress. While we will continue to pepper the city with pubs, clubs, cemeteries, bookstores, derelict spaces, the subterranean, the Umbra and the Dreaming to layer in the multiple realities of our London, building spaces our players want to see and have scenes in is our top priority. Much like the real-world London, this city will continue to expand through logical, illogical, straightforward and allegorical growth, decay and renovation, always as a collaborative and story-driven effort with players. Experiencing the city as a process is to take part in its future and tell its stories — your stories — and this is what we seek to represent in the game.

IC vs OOC Presence

Most of our public grid is constructed with loose restrictions on where characters are allowed to go at the code level. The reasoning behind this is that we know we can’t foresee all the possible reasons why people might want to go somewhere, or why people might be invited by a friend into a location that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get to, and so on. Rather than create situations where staff might need to step in just to let someone move into the next room, we’ve chosen to trust our players to act like grownups.

Therefore, please do not assume that your OOC ability to reach a location necessarily means you’ll be able to reach that location IC. Non-vampires who don’t have a reason to be at Elysium will not be admitted, and may well be forcibly removed if they don’t take their refusal with good grace. Mages are not typically permitted to stroll onto the bawn of the local werewolf sept uninvited. We have made an effort to mark locations that are the property of one faction or sphere in the room names; please be cognizant of these and be realistic about your character’s ability to go to them. If you find yourself in a place where you don’t, IC, have the ability to be, politely excuse yourself OOCly to the other players there, explain that you took a wrong turn, and leave ASAP.

Conversely, players who are in a location specific to their characters are obliged to respect this policy. Do not assume that a mortal character object entering the Elysium room equates to the character IC entering the room. Clarify politely with the player that this is an IC restricted location, and if necessary contact staff to adjudicate the situation.

At all times, players are expected to behave with respect and consideration toward one another, per the Player Code of Conduct. Remember, this is just a game.

IC Politics

There is just no way of getting around it: translating real-world politics into in-game politics is always a contentious subject. While characters may of course espouse any political positions they wish to, that still leaves the awkward question of what the actual political situation of the game world is like.

Our default assumption is that, this being the World of Darkness, whoever is in power — in the UK, in the US, everywhere in the world — is worse than their real-world equivalent. Whatever party they might belong to and whoever they might claim to represent, they’re pretty much all corrupt and beholden to interests other than those of their constituents. Politics on the national level has no winners among PCs, and the only way to make real, positive change within the context of the game is to keep one’s efforts focused on the local level — London, or better still an individual borough or even neighborhood of London.

Therefore, we would ask that characters not evoke real-world politicians of any stripe. References to national political figures are best kept in the context of the distant, remote, uncaring group of people who play for different teams but have only one set of interests; the sort of group that — in the World of Darkness — really does control all of them.