Out of Narrative - Disclaimers, Explanations, and the Like

"There's whiskey in the jar, oh..."

Before I get too far into things, I wanted to take at least one post to sort of lay stuff out so that I don't have to at a point when I'm working on evoking a certain mood or using a certain "voice."

Union City Confidential is going to act as a repository for an idea I had way, way back when. Basically, I wanted to create an entire website around a World of Darkness version of Omaha, NE. Some of my favorite books from the older White Wolf lines have been city books, especially San Francisco by Night, which gave readers a look at a commonly known city with a heavy supernatural slant. With sourcebooks on a diverse range, such as Berlin, Hong Kong, Tokyo, etc, I really dug how one could look at a historical event with a new viewpoint knowing that vampires, werewolves, and whatnot could have had an influence on them. Sadly, I never really found the time to do World of Darkness: Omaha back then and the old World of Darkness lines wrapped themselves up (until recently, with the 20th anniversary and 5th edition stuff, but that is outside the topic). Then White Wolf & Onyx Path Publishing created a new line of World of Darkness books (which have now been rebranded Chronicles of Darkness) of which you can find a listing of published materials and "child lines" if you're so inclined on the internet.

Flash forward to now. I've been looking at returning to some of my original ideas with a couple of new twists.

What is Union City?
So, Union City is the Chronicles of Darkness reflection of Omaha. The name was suggested by my sister-in-law's awesome husband, because of how big the railroad is/was in this town, and that actually gave me a whole flood of other ideas to darken the town up appropriately (ignore what you've heard about all the corruption - that's only the mayor's office).

Why not just call it Omaha?
THAT'S A FUCKING GOOD QUESTION! Serious answer though - the city books have been a huge favorite for me because, with only a couple exceptions, they've all been cities that I've never been to, or that any potential local players I might find probably haven't been to/aren't intimately aware of.

Why does that matter?
Well, let's say I'm running a game set in Omaha and a player wants to go to a gun range and I say, "okay, there's one nearby at blah blah blah streets" and then the player, who may or may not know Omaha as well as I do goes "wait, there isn't a range in that neighborhood!" That's an extreme example, but the big point of calling it Union City, versus just using Omaha, is that allows me to have a familiar setting where I can use things in broad terms that my readers and/or potential players will understand, without worrying about a detail not matching up in the real world. Also, there are plot points in Omaha that won't match up with things that I want from Union City, such as our lack of an asylum (I'll be using some stuff from WoD: Asylum at a later point for some fiction, just fyi) and the relative youth of our city versus the East Coast. Plus, the supernatural is -probably- not real and I'll be making some shit up as I go. I actually call this the "Supernatural Effect" after an episode where the boys were supposed to go to the intersection of "Wabash and Lake" in Lincoln NE - there is no intersection of Wabash and Lake, it's a Matrix reference, not a real world location.

What is Union City Confidential?
Here you'll find a variety of things related to the Chronicles of Darkness in Union City, most of which will be short stories that feature a recurring cast of characters and locations. In addition, I'll be throwing together brief "lay of the lands" to roughly map out the town, especially with the addition of things that don't have real world analogs.

What is "Out of Narrative"?
I'll abbreviate this as OON for any post that is in a different "voice" than Union City. Basically, if I'm throwing up fiction from older World of Darkness games (like the couple Hunter: the Reckoning pieces I have, or Blood & Silk: Breath of Fire IV), I'll use that as a warning that I'm slightly off topic. Same for posts like this one, and also if I want to do "out of universe" stuff, like character sheets/backgrounds for the aforementioned recurring cast. If there is no OON at the start of a post title, just assume that you're reading an "in-universe/in-character/in-setting" piece.

Game Lines?
Oh, so you don't want to look them up yourself. I get it. Alright, to start with, I'm mostly concerned with "blue book" or main line Chronicles of Darkness mortal characters. Hunter: the Vigil adds to that, in some instances, whether I actually look at a mortal character in the "cell system" of H:tV. As I'm doing "lay of the land" posts, you'll see stuff from all current CoD lines (core, Beast, Changeling, Demon, Hunter, Mage, Promethean, Vampire, Werewolf) BUT not Mummy: the Curse. The reason for that is Mummy doesn't really fit the narrative of the town, and they're a pretty small group, but there may be a reference to one passing through in the late 90s...

Books that I have DTF copies of:

Disclaimers?
Yes. I do not own any White Wolf or Onyx Path Publishing title. This blog is not a challenge or an infringement of their intellectual properties, nor do I benefit with any remuneration for having this. It's actually a bit of therapy for me. In that same vein, any real world corporation or entity that I do mention, such as stores or gas stations or manufacturers of product, I'm utilizing as a familiar brand to readers and not in any way to challenge their IPs, either.

Will you quote Metallica lyrics at the start of every post or nah?
You know what? Just for asking, fuck yeah I will. And also because my wife hates Metallica.

2019 Edit;
What is Fallout Wasteland Warfare and how does it relate?
Fallout Wasteland Warfare (posts marked FWW) is a table top miniatures and roleplaying game following along with characters and ideas from Bethesda's wildly popular video game franchise. It has absolutely nothing to do with Union City at all, but it made more sense putting the posts here than with my BattleTech blog, since I have far fewer normal posts thanks to my constant writer's block hah.. Also, anything marked FWW will NOT have Metallica lyrics added, so enjoy.