Which big American city is the best setting for adventure?

St. Louis.

It's got a nightmarish ghetto and crumbling late 19th century factories like Detroit, lots of occult/Masonic influence like DC, a history of a crazy 1990s mob war between blacks and Serbian war criminals, and great barbecue.

Plus, just to the northwest of the city, there's an underground nuclear fire that almost nobody knows about, and right across the river in East St. Louis, there's the ruins of a lost pyramid-building civilization that practiced human sacrifice.

Isn't NYC and boston like 5 meters appart?
Seems a bit cheap, could've shown us some other city.

Good old MARTA.
Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta.

So basically, DC is Sigil, Detroit is Dark Sun, St. Louis is Mystara

LA if you want to fight Minotaurs, as I'm pretty sure there's at least one on the city planning board there

I don't see the best adventure city on this map?

Wait, no...it's on fire.

>>more trees than other cities (make it feel like a real adventure)

That is one thing I do enjoy about the city. No matter my job site, I get to lookout the window and see plenty of trees or parks. I'd lose my mind if all I saw for 8 hours was glass, steel, and concrete.

>East St. Louis

Good call. East St. Louis makes Liberia look like Switzerland.

>I'd lose my mind if all I saw for 8 hours was glass, steel, and concrete.

As a Southern Californian, I can vouch that you would lose your mind. Why do you think so many of us are ravenous liberals? All that metal's affected our brains. The signals disrupt alpha wave cadence!

I'm drowning in dreams! Help me!

It's a 3 hour drive.

New york, just be careful with what part. Different areas have super different vibes and all around feels to em

As much as I would like to sell you guys on my beloved Minneapolis, we're probably not it.

I'd suggest Honolulu as one not yet mentioned.

404 REPRESENT

Gotta go with San Francisco for best all around yes, I'm biased

It's got Silicon valley for tech shenanigans and wealth;
A large bay for high speed boat chases/monster attacks.
An unused prison where the worst of the worst were housed.
Ports/industry
A fancy college (Berkeley)
Variable geography (forests, mountains, fog, beaches, desert, and urban sprawl depending on different areas of the bay)
A major government lab studying nukes (Lawrence Livermore Lab)
And a propensity for natural disasters [earthquakes]

What else could you ask for?

It's actually become fairly peaceful, since everyone is dead.

Underground labrynthine maze or sewer

Going anywhere in Memphis is already an adventure. Every time you step into the city limits you take your life into your own hands. Sometimes it even follows you home.

>58199125
Just go to LA and you'll get an above ground one with the city layout

Don't forget weird shit like the (now destroyed) Equadome (just west of St Louis proper), the old TNT Works on the Northside, the only insane asylum on Arsenal Street, and the rail tunnels downtown.

Have any of you ever been to Houston
>4th largest city in the US
>no zoning laws so all the buildings are mixed together hap hazardly
>the freeway system has no shoulders and is the same size as Connecticut also people drive the same way as the people in GTA
>it has 44 hospitals
>theres a china town a mexa town a hipster town and a black town all in city limits
>there is literally sprawling industrial chemical parks not 10 miles from city center
>there is no subway but miles of underground tunnels connecting major medical centers to the business parks
>to the south east is a resort island town with 120 year old buildings and pyramids
>I lived in a town called Baytown thats only claim to fame is its chemical plants and the largest gas station in the world.
>Houston is that city that every body has herd about but no one really knows whats there
pic related is it compared to Connecticut.

for bonus here is Texas vs europe

Seattle's underground has alot of potential.

btw that gas station has 96 pumps

Also for reference the population of
Germany alone: 82.67 million
Texas: 27.86 million

>Which big American city is the best setting for adventure?

Cincinnati, because gaming in a 19th century setting is actually really fun.

I know right
the greater Houston area population
is 6.22 million alone

And let's not forget The Jungle, Seattle's no-mans land

I was in Houston last year

It was 1 highway and on both sides were endless mini-malls

it truly is a hellish landscape

>What else could you ask for?

Affordable housing

The netherlands and belgium together have about at many people as the whole of texas.

Then considering how many people are in Houston alone, it kind of makes me wonder. I've never been to Texas, but judging by the numbers there don't seem to be a lot of people in the rest of the country.

Texas is great but dont go to Baytown its like a bad meme man I need to excape

Fresh water

Juneau is comfy but with no road access and borders lots of wilderness.

>I lived in a town called Baytown thats only claim to fame is its chemical plants and the largest gas station in the world.

Oh, hey. I remember wargaming a scenario that targeted Baytown while I was at Annapolis. I was on OPFOR and we basically hijacked an oil tanker inbound to the ExxonMobile station, dumped a bunch of oil to get a good fuel-air mix in the holds, loaded it with a ton of explosives, and popped it nearby Alexander Island; since the Port Authority can't do full-spectrum checks of inbound ships, just a basic deck search and a radiological sweep, we stood a good chance of getting a whole mess of conventional explosives - augmented with the FAE in the holds - through to the target.

With the winds sweeping north from the Gulf, we basically ended up demolishing a square mile of the EM station in the initial detonation, causes subsequent fires and sympathetic detonations over more or less all the rest of the facility (which is something like 4 or 5 square miles), and blowing chemical smoke all the way up north to Humble and west to Pasadena, forcing evacs of that entire area. Essentially killed all shipping traffic north of Morgan's Point for months.

>technically we had the resources to grab a pair of ships, but the ship coming in the next week, intended to target Texas City and thus trap response vessels behind Galveston Bay, got randomly picked up by the security network. Win some, lose some.

>that's a really vulnerable and gigantic facility sitting there next to a whole lot of civilians.

That was also the plot of Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Honestly, I'm surprised there's been no terrorist attacks on the Texas Gulf. It seems like an obvious target.

Really? Neat, I'll have to go look that up. I haven't played any of those games.

And in general US infrastructure is ridiculously vulnerable. 3 good-sized truck bombs hitting a few bridges (2 across the Mississippi and one across the Ohio) and you can kill about 20% of all daily truck traffic in the US outright, and the backups on the other highways will screw the rest. Or attacks on harbors using shipping traffic, as mentioned. The Chesapeake is particularly important and vulnerable.

The problem is terrorists prefer to cause, well, terror. Not make militarily-useful attacks. So they fuck up civilians every once in a while, and don't hit infrastructure. That was one of the guidelines about that wargame series: "what if Red Force suddenly improved by several IQ points and realized that by hitting infrastructure, they could cause almost as much terror and destabilize the government as a bonus?"

Anyway, to OP's question, I also nominate Cincinnati/Northern KY, for the same reason mentioned. It truly is a backwards hellhole trying desperately to masquerade as a real city.

Fair point, although we are limited to American cities. Still it wouldn't be too hard to have a section of the city get "buried" in the 1906 quake or something if you want to explore underground.

It hurts because it's true

Chicago has a higher murder rate than any other city. every other rust belt city is doing shittier than Chicago or Detroit. Cleveland has a city that catches on fucking fire. new orleans has yet to fully recover from katrina, which happened a decade ago. nyc, los angeles and san francisco are nearing a bubble burst, as real estate prices and rent rates price out anyone who doesn't make 100k a year. south beach miami is full of homeless people and drug addicts.

detroit is at least recovering - those "ruins" have been purchased and are being renovated or torn down.

vegas will always serve its purpose, and is still affordable to live there

BAAAAHSTAAHN IZ WIKKED AHHHSUM

detroit is classic dieselpunk, with art deco aesthetic.

how bad can it really be? the entire PNW was the whitest area i've seen in my entire life.

I lived in Kemah, TX. Half way between Houston and Galveston. It was really kickass.

Rio de Janeiro

I mean, FFS, the city is corrupt on all levels and a fourth of the population - over a million people - live in slums (favelas). From hardcore crimes and gang warfare, through politics, to downright urban fantasy settings, everything can easily fit in there.

Caracas, Venezuela. Capital of a broke-ass country. Ruled by a corrupt, pseudo-communist government. Civil unrest. Higher murder rate than Mogadishu. Higher kidnapping rate than Bogota. Drug cartels. Oil resources. Giant slums. Toilet paper traffickers. Hot latino chicks. Seems perfect for a cyberpunk setting.

Baytown annon here
as someone who lives within a mile of those plants I have thought the same thing many times as well

...

I don't live in Houston (Just nearby, about an hour away), and I don't know how it'd compare to other cities in the US since I've never been to any except Dallas, but I'd still like to see someone do something with the town as a setting.

Terrorists often aren't the brightest bunch. Also, US terrorism is mostly domestic, going for either the fed or things that make aryan baby Jesus cry. A refinery is neither.

Which is the biggest?

>1990s mob war between blacks and Serbian war criminals
Wat

NYC in population, LA in size.

Just remember, if you cut Alaska in half, Texas would be the third largest state.

whats your point

>Mostly glaciers instead of land.

idk about a tabletop adventure, but the Bay Area always seemed like a great setting for a pokemon game
super variable geography for different biomes (fire pokemon around mt. diablo, grass in the valley and marin, water in the bay, ground on the fault lines, rock in the caldecott tunnel, dark in the seedy parts of SF, etc.)
many different rival factions (Stanford vs. Berkeley, 49ers vs Raiders, Giants vs A's, etc.)
tech companies to make porygons and shit
it fits together really well in my head

Nobody knows what’s there because there isn’t really something like “Houston.” I lived there for almost two decades, most of it in the Clear Lake Area. It’s fucking nuts. The city has the density of suburbia. Land is too cheap. It’s only a city in a vaguely cultural sense, what with the time and difficulty it takes to get from anywhere to anywhere.

>New York
>anything but Chaotic Evil

Having driven through it, Houston feels like the infinitely sprawling outskirts of a city rather than a city proper from the road.

Though for the past couple of years I've wanted to run a CoC game set in Port Arthur. That place has a palatable air of depression permeating it; it just screams "everyone's a member of an apocalyptic cult."

The Big Easy, no contest

Boston.

t. someone playing a game set in Boston.

>Cleveland has a city that catches on fucking fire.

If you're referring to the lake catching fire, that happened 50 fucking years ago. Get over it.

No. Your city is shit, and so is everyone who lives or has ever lived there.

You don't get to shit talk Cleveland and hold Detroit up as misunderstood. They're the exact same shit, them and every other midwestern shithole.

New Orleans, Detroit, and the Golden Gate Bridge specifically.

The only worst city than yours is Detroit.

Source: youtube.com/watch?v=ysmLA5TqbIY

Speaking as a Canadian....The best city for a tabletop adventure is obviously Vancouver.

>A deep criminal underworld with strong connections to both the United States and all of Asia.
>Insane rich people accommodations all around. Vancouver downtown is a massive tourist sink
>1/3 of the city is Chinese/Ambiguosly Asian meaning you can pull in Chinese mysticism or fight the yakuza.
>It”s a coastal city. Cities on the coast will always have more campaign/asthetic options then landlocked cities.
>It’s also got a river running through it. Cities with rivers have more campaign/aesthetic options then cities that fon’t have them.
>This place is literally built on the base of a fucking mountain prangs and it is all fucking gorgeous. Not even an exaggeration here, some parts of Vancouver will literally end up in the shade from the mountains.
>You are never more then an hour of driving away from a deep forest for the DM to hide all his secret badguy bases and wild cults in.
>Vancouver’s downtown east side is ‘Detroit but all wet.’

Nobody asked you, leaf.

What, no Seattle?

Sorry, OP here. The city in question has to have a professional hockey team, and Vancouver only has the Canucks. Sorry.

Not even close to true, Alaska is only 5% covered by glaciers.

Shadowrun is basically (meant to be) "Seattle - The Game". There is lore about many places especially Germany (Berlin, Rhein-Ruhr), Hong Kong and Japan but the core setting is Seattle.

I guess most here are aware of that but if you don't know much about Shadowrun and like Seattle, give it a try.

Sounds like a decent place to live, but you're not really selling it as "best city for an adventure".

And I hate to break it to you, but most large American cities have trains, drug problems, and an aquarium.

It's Cleeeveeeellaaannddd
Come on down to Cleveland town everyone!

Shadowrun Seattle is barely Seattle. I've been toying off and on with running a delta green campaign in and around seattle. It's got a spooky underground, a large and weird homeless population, a lot of tech and medical industry, a large university, and very near by you have a lot of weird tiny towns with strange, inbred hillbillies.

Seriously, the Washington coast is fucking spooky.

I'd also like to do some historical lovecraft set in 20's Tacoma, there was a lot of bootlegging and Shanghai -ing going on at that time, I just haven't committed the time to researching it yet.

well, I've never been to Seattle nor the US of A. So I only know it from Wikipedia, Google Maps and the futuristic artwork from Shadowrun. Of course Seattle from today is more of a district in this setting but I thought i'd give my 2 cent.

You seem to know your shit though, the lovecraft idea sounds interesting.

>>A deep criminal underworld with strong connections to both the United States and all of Asia.

I am saddened and shocked that there aren't many crime dramas set in vancouver

>a large and weird homeless population

This. I've lived in the northwest my entire life and I'm just used to bums that look like grizzled backpackers just hanging around downtown

Trips speak truth.

Cleveland tourism-mind

Alright Veeky Forums, what's the best city for each setting?

>Superheroes
>Lovecraft
>Vampires
>Monster Of The Week
>Cyberpunk
>Mecha Battle
>Kaiju Attack
>Heist
>Alien Invasion
>Zombie Apocalypse
>Russian Invasion
>Crime Drama
>Urban Wizards

>Kaiju Attack in the USA
>anywhere but San Francisco

>Superheroes
NY
>Vampires
LA
>Cyberpunk
Seattle. The rain sets the perfect mood. Also Shadowrun.
>Heist
Chicago
>Alien Invasion
Washington DC
>Zombie Apocalypse
Miami
>Urban Wizards
Las Vegas

>Superheroes
New York
>Lovecraft
Boston
>Vampires
New Orleans
>Monster Of The Week
Houston
>Cyberpunk
Seattle
>Mecha Battle
Las Vegas
>Kaiju Attack
San Francisco
>Heist
Chicago
>Alien Invasion
Los Angeles
>Zombie Apocalypse
Atlanta
>Russian Invasion
Washington DC
>Crime Drama
Baltimore
>Urban Wizards
Philadelphia

Just make all the bad things happen to San Francisco, and call it good. The more dead liberals, the better I like the game.

Its only called that by Americans and then usually only by Americans living in NY.

>Capes

Washington DC. They're all politically sided.

>Lovecraft

Actually I'd say Anchorage, believe it or not. Not ancient, but snow, ice, natives.

>Vampires

Oh, no, not NO. Possibly Miami, WW did it in the 80s.

>Monster of the week

LA.

>Cyberpunk

Of course Detroit.

>Mecha Battle

Houston. Crazy climate helps visualizing it.

>Kaiju

Seattle. During the rain.

>Heist

Las Vegas, right on the Strip's casinoes.

>Zombies

Salt Lake City. I mean, zombies need something scarier than them, today.

>Russian Invasion

San Fran. Just for the sake of being different. It probably wouldn't matter that much, if it's still on cities.

>Crime Drama

Atlanta or some other southern.

>Urban wizards

NYC.

>One would ask the same with Europe, but I guess it would derail the thread

>underground nuclear fire

I do believe this calls for a storytime, user. Tell us more.

ozarksfirst.com/news/manhattan-project-part-3-fire-nuclear-waste-in-landfill-present-problems-for-stlouis-region/364497674

Jacksonville.

It is like being in hell already.

>tfw from the biggest city in the United States that no one has ever heard of

Biggest how? Someone above you posted Jacksonville so they have sheer size covered.