In a Modern Game - what would Map boundaries be like?

Modern games have several distinct hurdles. Whereas Medieval, Fantasy and Futuristic settings are unfamiliar to us, Modern world games are literally where we live. In every game we must experience what is called the suspension of disbelief to enjoy the story. This is why we can overlook the strings that work the marionette and still enjoy a street performance. This is why we can ignore scientific fallacy (at least some of us can!)to enjoy sci fi stories. Medieval, Fantasy and Futuristic games are expected to have unfamiliar elements, and anything strange can be more easily overlooked. However, in a Modern game, the brain and the imagination are much more taxed to make this leap. So it is well advised for us to keep our Modern games as realistic as possible.


However, RPG Maker VX Ace games simply cannot keep up. One simple example will suffice. Can you imagine eventing an actual strip mall? All of the stores, items, etc? You would drive your player nuts trying to make it all meaningful - and of course you would NOT be making a good game to do so. Clearly a Modern setting game needs significant boundaries to be enjoyable. A few places to go, a few things to do. What limitations and boundaries you choose, of course, will add flavor and interest to your game.


To me, realistic city/suburban features are important. So I simply cannot have my High Rise city bordered by the typical tree line. ISTM that the cities around here are bordered by


creeks of note (like Rock Creek Park)


rivers (like the Potomac River) or other large bodies of water


large bridges


really large roads


parking lots full of cars


And if they aren't bordered in that way they simply slowly give way to the suburbs. Unfortunately that won't work in a game!


So I am considering the following:


A monument area


A zoo


A park


But should they never be open? I don't want to have them be interesting!


I want them to be the edge of things.


Thoughts?

Even in Modern times, height still is an effective boundary.  Maybe the entire city is in a valley.  Sure, people CAN leave the valley, but why would they want to?

Military checkpoint, perhaps? 

Highways which are closed off "for construction"?

Collapsed buildings/rubble?

Other significant landscape changes --- a city boundary might be a swamp, ocean, river, etc.

Traffic jam?

Toll booth?  (too bad they don't have any tokens)

I think you could do a strip mall without too much trouble, you just only event the shopping places that are relevant to an adventurer.  You could have a perfume store and have the MC refuse to go in because it stinks.  Or a toy store and just have the clerk say "welcome" and not try to sell anything.  Or just have window displays and not event the doorways, because why would the player need to go inside?

I think a city giving way to suburbs could work.  In an urban setting, surrounding the interesting buildings with houses would be a bit like surrounding the village with trees.  They wouldn't have to be fancy houses, just prefab stuff that overlaps the next house and looks identical with the front door pointing in a direction that makes it impossible to enter or isn't evented.

Usually having vehicles is a very easy one in city-like areas. For dungeon-like areas you could have off-limits barriers and stuff. Even just having npcs standing on the way can do the trick.

Also let's not forget crates and boxes. Lots and lots of them. Oil barrels, etc can work too.

Good thoughts! Thanks everyone! Keep 'em coming!

Something that happens quite often around here is you'll get a big city that is edged by industrial stuff.  So you'd have large parking areas, walled or fenced off sections, rows of trucks, giant storage units, tons of railway that is only used for shuffling cars around but doesn't go anywhere, warehouses with big blank walls, stuff like that.  This stuff is already pretty boring so it'd be a simple thing to use as an edge of the city.

I think, you can close borders with modern decoration stuff, as matseb already said, crates, boxes. I know, that PandaMaru made some modern fences, that are also perfect for walling something off. The same goes for her road block. Road block stuff is a pretty easy solution to close a street so it looks like that there is some construction going on.

Cars are also good for blocking a path. The best is to have a mixture in your border stuff. Houses + decoration + sprites + and maybe a river. With this it doesn't look so obvious that there are borders.

Another solution is eventing. Maybe there is a long big road. Make events at the end of it where the player simple says that he/she doesn't want to travel this big road on foot or he/she says, that this leads to a bad neighborhood and they don't want to go there.

* Roads closed for construction - either on the roads themselves OR because they're, say, putting up a new high rise.

* Road areas blocked off for security reasons --- if the world leaders were meeting somewhere, it's quite reasonable to assume quite a few areas would be cordoned off.

* Areas that the MC feels "aren't safe," --- s/he won't venture into the Bad Areas of Town.  This can also provide interesting backstory.

* The reverse --- areas like Gated Communities, or areas that require some type of ID to enter (Military bases/police/fire stations are good for this)

* Airports --- for obvious reasons people are NOT allowed to wander around the runways

* Other unsafe areas --- maybe the Local Dump smells bad so the MC won't go near

* Power generation plants, water/sewer plants --- the MC wouldn't have ID to get in these

Man, am I glad I asked! Great ideas!

I like using sort of a world map, or in this case it would be a city map, and let the player choose the locations to visit.  That way if I want to make an area that has 3 streets exiting the screen, I don't have to feel like I have to create areas connecting to each street or block them off with random objects and can simply use them as a way to return to the city map.

For doors and stuff I would use different colours or something to differentiate which ones can be entered or not so you can't just go bursting into every house or building you see.  In the case of the strip mall example, I wouldn't make it so you can enter all the stores, but for the ones you can enter they would have flashy recognizable signs.  I would go mad if I tried making every single store, especially if the protagonists have nothing interesting to buy there.  It can also become overwhelming for the player.