Welcome to the Hidden Mid-West

A familiar but unique location.

Note

For our play testing we constructed a fictional City and its associated details mostly to avoid the trap of player knowledge distracting from a GM's story. For anyone familiar with the 'not-Chicago' regions of Illinois, the city will feel familiar. The details presented do not rely on the city being in Illinois. Feel free to relocate it to your preferred region as desired.

It can also provide a springboard or template for developing your own unique urban setting.

Shelford, Illinois

Founded in 1851, Shelford is not a pretty place but it possesses the kind of functional dignity that a mid-western city develops when it has been useful for a long time without becoming important. The downtown is a mix of 1920s commercial brick, 1960s civic architecture and recent streetscape improvements that have partially worked. There is a river walk that is genuinely nice for six months of the year. The other six months are brutally cold and the wind off the river makes it worse.

Shelford is traditionally a place that people are from rather than a place to which people move. However, the University creates a steady influx of students that discover, four years in, they've put down unintended roots.

Ransom Falls, Illinois

Ransom Falls is a county seat that knows what it is: the biggest town in Carver County. Its downtown main street runs six blocks between the county courthouse at one end and the community center at the other.

Half the storefronts are occupied. The half that are occupied include a regional hardware franchise Hendrix Home Supply, a pharmacy that has been in the same family for sixty years, a clothing consignment shop, a farm co-op service office and Ironweed Brewing, which opened in 2018 becoming the thing Ransom Falls is known for to people outside Carver County.

The other half of the main street storefronts are not exactly vacant. Some are in the slow process of becoming 'something', a couple of them have fresh paint and no signage yet. This is the quiet commercial optimism of a town that is trying.