Welcome to Midvale

Over the last few days, I've been in Iowa City with my daughter for a diving camp at the University of Iowa. It's been a  little tiring, but a lot of fun. I've enjoyed driving around the city, walking around, spending some time at the waterfront, and seeing part of America that I have no experience with. It is both very similar to, and quite a bit different from, the world of Western New York that I know.

But, everwhere I go, I have the same thought - this is how I always pictured Midvale. Granted, this is a city in 2024 and not 1984, but the feel of the city, its layout and landscape and topography, is very much what I envision when I think of Doc Stalwart's home town of Midvale.

It's got this inherent dissonance between modern and traditional; it is proud of its farming heritage, but there's a Starbucks on every corner. 

Nowhere was this inherent dissonance on greater display than in a street concert we walked through last night. As we moved through a crowd of white people sipping $6 smoothies and eating $10 ice cream sundaes, the band emoted about how the heartland is hurting and the coastal elites don't care... and people nodded and sipped their smoothies. 

In Buffalo, I can drive a few blocks and see HURTING. I see it. A lot of it. Go through my school district for ten minutes, and I see people hurting. It's pretty clear. I haven't seen the whole of Iowa City, but I've gone out of my way to go out of my way driving around, and I'm not seeing it. I'm seeing a lot of comfort and peace and stability. So, I'm not sure where this mindset comes from.

But I could see it wearing on Doc. Doc is a patient man - probably to a fault. He is able to see the other's side - also maybe to a fault. But I would think that being surrounded by some people who always feel like they deserve just a little bit more than they have, and that others are others are always unfairly taking from them, would wear him down. I would think that after another meeting where the mayor asks him if he could just 'help out a little bit more' than he does he would finally decide to go someplace where the needs are genuine. 

It is the birthplace of Doc Stalwart, but he just cannot live there. I love that his boyhood hero is heartland - this is something that is core to his character. He is rooted in the heartland. But, he also cannot stay here forever. Because there is genuine hurting out there.

Meridian Base Map Complete

I've had a busy 4th of July... we are road tripping tomorow, so today is a low-key day of hanging out at home. I'm making videos and maps, and Mary is setting up an Instagram for my game (I HATE Instagram and don't really like Facebook all that much, so Mary is doing the heavy lifting on those for me... which is VERY sweet of her to do). All that said, I finished my base map of Meridian, and I really like it. This is the foundation I'm going to use going forward.

Visually Representing the City

I showed Mary the map I had started for Meridian, and she was... not a big fan. She doesn't think it should look like a GPS map, but an isometric view like the Disneyland and Batman LEGO maps that follow... but to do something on the scale I'm thinking would be... massive. It would be a HUGE project. It would be awesome, but man that would take a few weeks (not that I have a lot of other stuff I NEED to do... but still).

Hello City - Options

In shifting the game (a bit) from focused on my stories to focusing on stories that players could tell, I've been thinking that I'd like to publish a series of adventures (crosses fingers that I FINALLY get this right... it's been my big bugaboo in expanding games in the past - so I need a plan for it to work this time). I think that the adventures will be set in a 'new' comic series from Stalwart Press. The idea is that after Doc Stawlart #250, New Stalwart Press launched a new comic series, "the New Stalwart Adventures", that followed 'new heroes' on 'new adventures' (the PC heroes, in the new adventures I publish). 

While these stories are not limited to one location, I need a default city for the game to build from. I have two cities so far: Echo City (which I detailed pretty thoroughly in Sentinels of Echo City - I mean, it's in the name), and Midvale (which I detailed more briefly in Stalwart Age and then ported over to the World of Stalwart Vol. 1 with some edits and clarifications). I see my options as:

1. Build on Midvale. It's got a foundation in place, and it wouldn't be hard to add some things to it. This is the cleanest option; it's a smaller city with fewer moving parts. It's a great starter location for heroes (that's why it's in the book). However, this is also its biggest limitation; there's only so much to do here, and the heroes are likely to 'grow out' of the city in short order. There is not a lot of intrigue here; the mayor goes to the July 4th Parade and eats too many hotdogs, and his blood pressure is a bit too high. That's about it for local drama.

2. Continue to build Echo City. This is the most well fleshed out of my three cities so far, and there are lots of things I really like about it. There are many places where this setting could grow. However, what I have could also get cleaned up, revised, and moved into the World of Stalwart Volume II... that's NOT a bad idea... also, in terms of tone, this is more Gotham City and less Metropolis. In fact, if I make this the focus on World of Stalwart Volume 2, that gives me more nitty-gritty to build.

3. Design a new city. This was where I started yesterday morning. The drawing above is for a city I was calling Brimsbay, in the Pacific Northwest. I like this drawing, but I can move it anywhere (I'll be finishing and coloring it. obviously... but it's the line art). This gives me a blank canvas to work from. I could also do this with a city I have only minimally mentioned (San Helios or Gap City, for instance). 

4. Design Meridian. Honestly, as I've been writing this post, I've convinced myself this is probably what I should do. It has the most stuff happening, I've already made this the 'most important' city in the game world, and I know that in the future, it's key to other events (if you have read Sentinels of Echo City, you know that it's doomed - at least in one timeline. I have already decided that Sentinels of Echo City takes place in an alternate earth... because I've already diverged from some events there, so it's now a different world. I don't think the Powers Family ever shows up in this reality, for instance). It's been the historic 'center' of superhuman activity, but it's also largely without heroes right now; Doc is off at the North Pole, the Victory Legion has broken up, and the villains haven't gone anywhere. It's a great place to set new adventures, and it's large enough to encompass a lot of things happening. Plus, I could make the arrival of the Messari (and another competing alien race) a central part of the new setting (and the new adventures that take place there)...

The idea is that this city gets its own 'sourcebook' (maybe 16 pages? maybe 24? I don't want to go much larger than that... the idea is that it's the foundation I can build upon as we go)... then the new adventures ("The New Stalwart Adventures") would be set here. The covers would feature the villains doing their villainy, with heroes either not on the cover at all, or at the edges in silhouette (to suggest that these are the PCs of the game). This gives me at least 16 'issues' I could produce before being 'caught up' to the current Doc continuity. That gives me a lot of room to grow.

By the way... I've realized that stealing what Marvel is doing with the MCU and the multiverse saga is probably the best move of all... all of my games and superhero game worlds (including the old Resolute RPG) happen in divergent realities from the main one (Stalwart Earth). So, I now have liberty to cross-pollinate my own work over 20+ years and have it all be interconnected in some grand way. The best thing about Spiderman: No Way Home was that it made all of the Spiderman movies 'canon' (and it will do that with X-Men next, which is a brilliant move). It's a way to honor the messy history of comics and make all of that work, and all of those stories, still matter. 

Fort Morovar

Fort Morovar is the starter home base for heroes in Timbervale. It was once a goblin stronghold, but humans took it during the Great Reckoning, so now it is home to loggers and frontiersmen who see Timbervale as a great resource waiting to be exploited. Of course, the various races of the forest, the druids that protect it, and the goblins who were kicked out don't see things the same way, but we can't all be happy, can we?

FYI, This is the first post that I'm affixing tags to... I figured as I near 150 posts, that I should really start thinking about organizing this blog for posterity (or at least for people who might want to actually use it as a game resource!). I'll be going back and tagging some previous posts as well (maybe all of them ultimately) for a better user experience.

Your tears of joy are thanks enough.