Second Rat Games' new product, People, Places, and Things: You Are Here, is a good assortment of varied, systemless locations for any modern day role-playing game. It derives its name from the 29 different locales it presents, each with a full description (place), a cast of regularly-appearing characters (people), a list of equipment in the area (things), and a short list of scenario hooks. Each of the 29 places also includes a map, made in Dundjinni. The crowning glory of this print product is that it includes a CD with a .pdf of the entire book and the maps, made to be printed on a 5 ft./inch scale, for use as a battlemap in play.
Inside the Book
There are no chapters in People, Places, and Things, so it's not easy to separate up along those lines. Each individual locale takes up, on average, three pages, including the in-book map. Each is also divvied up along these lines:
Hours of Operation: Most of the places discussed are local businesses, and this section displays when they're open. It occasionally gives more information, like when the "Cornerstone Church" holds service. In fact, all of them are but the one personal residence, which lists "n/a" for this category.
Proprietor(s): The person who runs the business, organization, or branch, or who owns the home.
Cash on hand: Clearly enough, this describes the amount of money available on the premises. It is usually separated between money in the registers, any better-protected funds (in an office safe, or in the vault for "Riverton Bank"), and any other potential sources of loose cash (the occasional package in "USPS"). The use for this information seems dubious. In the case of robbery or a protection racket, the benefit is obvious, but the scenarios in which this information if valuable might be limited.
This doesn't make it a bad thing, of course. Additional information can't hurt unless it takes up a great deal of space or is boringly presented; this is neither.
Security: Any security measures the business takes to protect itself, including cameras, locks, safes, alarm systems, bouncers, and anything else.
Pawn-able goods: If it can be stolen and sold, it is in this section. Between this and the last two entries, this book spends an appreciable effort preparing GMs for the inevitable casing and robbery of each location.
Again, this isn't a bad thing. The book is presented so that these places can be used in games, and that makes it quite likely that they will feature in something dangerous and out of the ordinary. Please see the...
Impromptu weapons: Whether they are the spindle, license plates, and gumball machine at the local DMV or the scissors, razors, and broom at the styling salon, they are listed here. The entry is not exhaustive - enterprising GMs and players will be able to think up their own effective, off-the-cuff weaponry - but it is happily inspiring. It's even fun to read, thinking of how each object could be used to inflict some well-deserved punishment.
Description: This is a basic description of the business, its location (the "bad" part of town, near the college campus, etc.), and business as usual, whatever that may be. It also gives a brief rundown of the building's layout. It is worth noting here that all places are largely indoors. A couple restaurants or cafes have outdoor components, but only the parking garage could be considered an all-outdoor location.
Regulars: The few people one is most likely to find at the given location are all given writeups here. It usually includes one employee, one customer, and one person who could be anything. They aren't as formulaic as all that, but it's a general pattern. The regulars' descriptions give enough detail for a GM to effectively run them as NPCs. They seem like they would serve well as local color, even if the location is only incidental in the course of the game.
Scenario hooks: This section contains a series of situations involving the location. For example, the scenarios for the "Pic 'n' Pump" are (1) an employee is having difficulty with her estranged husband, who may come around to make trouble; (2) the owner's husband is terminally ill, and the owner has fallen into serious debt with unsavory characters; or (3) the unorthodox drugs she has used on her husband have not saved him, but they have given him a moderate form of precognition. This is exemplary of the scenario hooks in general. There are usually three of them, and one of them is, almost always, of supernatural or super-scientific origin. Or, occasionally, both.
An odd note: The authors have a strange fascination with the power of suggestion. Looking at the 29 locations, five of them have a scenario that makes people highly susceptible to suggestion, whether through a special blend of coffee, curious well water, implanted chips, light patterns at a dance club, or pulsing laser light.
This section isn't all it's cracked up to be, mostly because the scenario hooks do not "hook." Although each is interesting and has a good deal of potential, none provides any suggestions on how to bring existing player characters into the situation. A hero could walk into the Pic 'n' Pump and hear the woman behind the counter moan that her husband is stalking her, but only a true altruist would offer to do anything about it. This section would be better defined as "Potential secrets" or "Behind the scenes."
The Map: Not actually a section defined by the book, each map takes up one page, with varying scales to make it possible. Sad to say, the maps don't always work. Most of the time, it's reasonably easy to tell what everything is from the image on the map and place's description. But sometimes what an icon represents just isn't evident. There are other small discrepancies: there are, for example, a couple missing offices on different maps. Additionally, the maps did not always print out well in the book. The dark colors used for some floors often just appears as "dark and visually obscuring" in the black-and-white book, and the black color used for walls obscures the also-black-but-differently-shaped doorways.
This is where the .pdf comes in. The product can be purchased as a .pdf, but the CD included with every hardcopy purchase goes a long way to redeeming the problematically-printed maps. The maps are in color on the computer, making them easier to look at and, at times, interpret.
The section on maps wouldn't be complete without a look at the maps included for battle-map printing. Second Rat Games claims they tried to keep the ink expenditure to a minimum, but they still covered every floor of their maps with tiled floors (some of them are vivid purples!), when they could have kept them blank.
But what were their alternatives? The old Campaign Cartographer dungeon expansion may have been cleaner and much more ink-friendly, but it certainly wasn't as easy to interpret and it wouldn't have been easy to size appropriately for printing scale. Are the new CC versions any easier to use, and have they grown more detailed? A hand-drawn, carefully-scaled map might be very nice, but it likely becomes cost-prohibitive. In the end, Second Rat Games probably did the right thing for them. It just seems more likely that a GM will sketch out the room on his own battlemat rather than print out the ones the publishers provided.
Summary:
The Good: This is a good resource that any GM running a modern or near-future campaign can use to just drop a locale into his game. The "regulars" in each place make it easy to drop (and remember) some names and give them a little bit of background. Between the notes on available cash, salable goods, and potential improvised weapons and the recurring supernatural scenarios, GMs running action or mystery/occult games should find this even more useful. Correspondingly, a GM who has no interest in either type of game would find this less useful (although it drives one to wonder what, exactly, the GM is interested in running).
The Bad and Ugly: Well, the maps aren't very pretty, it's sometimes (but not too often) hard to tell exactly what is what, and they didn't come out the best in the print product. There are also a few editing errors, but many fewer than a typical early product from a fledgling RPG publishing company: this is a pleasant surprise, and should be in the "Good" section. But there's a little bit in the Good section that should be down here, so everything evens out. This may also be the place to mention the art. It is sparse (most graphics are devoted to the maps), but there is usually one small piece for each location. The thing is, they look like clipart. They may be clipart, even though there are two people credited with interior art. If it isn't clipart, those fellows are masters of the clipart-style, leave it at that.
In the end, this is a decent resource to have around if you're running a modern game. After all, you never know when the players are going to stop in a random part of town and say, "What's around? I want to hang out someplace." The only issue is price: Don't throw down $20 for the book in print unless you really (a) like the feel of paper between your fingers when you read or (b) hate reading off the computer. After all, the .pdf is not only cheaper, but actually better. That the print product comes with the .pdf version goes a long way to make up for it, but it only ends up being worth it if you fall into category (a) or (b), above. The .pdf, on the other hand, deserves at least some of your money.
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