Rosebriar: Overview

Originally published December 8, 2014

In September and October I posted several campaign pitches. The ones that received the greatest response were “You Can’t Go Home Again”, a potential third (capstone) Changeling: the Lost Chronicle for me, and the “Undeath of History”, a weird time travel idea I came up with last year. I’ll be presenting a bit more material for both in the coming months. We begin with the setting for You Can’t Go Home Again: Rosebriar, New York.

Rosebriar is the fictional town I used for my first Changeling Chronicle (appropriately enough, returning ‘home’): Rosebriar. Located in upstate New York, nestled amid the foothills of the Catskills mountains on the eastern edge of the Rust Belt, this town is inspired in equal parts by the family trips of my youth and my experiences later in life in a few small towns/cities in the Midwest.

Game History of Rosebriar:

I 'first' used Rosebriar as a setting for my first Changeling: the Lost Chronicle: Into the Hedge. This ran from 2009 to 2010 (in-game time 2003-2004). It was a fairly typical game in terms of rules and setting with the one major addition being the inclusion of a shattered artifact: a magic mirror. Each piece the PCs recovered gave them dedicated experience toward raising Wyrd. Over the course of the game a pair of True Fae died (one truly), industry in the town briefly shut down, a statue began granting dangerous wishes, and there was a plague of madness.

I later retconned a one shot Mortals game I ran in 2008 (in-game time also 2008) as being set in Rosebriar as well. While it focused mainly on the Edgewood asylum near the town, it also featured an Alice Wonderland theme and a thorn studded alternate reality intruding on our own.

Finally in my second Changeling: the Lost Chronicle: the Price, (running from 2013 to 2014 in real life and 1995 to 2011 in-game time) the characters lives became entangled with a pair of characters (one former PC, one NPC) from the first game. This culminated with a visit to Rosebriar where they discovered that the mirror, now complete but abandoned, was warping the Hedge around the town, making it seductive and deadly to fae. They destroyed it and freed the town.

One major complication to the history of Rosebriar was a rewrite of the timeline by the ex-PC which caused him and his companions never to be taken by the True Fae and eliminated most evidence of the first storyline (exceptions included the magic mirror and the grave of the dead True Fae). So in a very real sense he can never go home again. Expect him to make an appearance.

Means and Methods:

I built this town using the guidelines from Damnation City and it is composed out of 10 districts. I also mined several World of Darkness books: Asylum and Mysterious Places. There hints of material from the Mage: the Awakening book Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss as well some old World of Darkness material such as Pentex. Finally I put many of references to other games I’ve run.

An artist’s sketch of Rosebriar.

Rosebriar in Brief

Rosebriar lies on the eastern edge of the Rustbelt, nestled amid the chiseled hills of upstate New York. A mixture of a picturesque small town and urban decline, this small town very nearly went under early this century with the decline of the chemical company Thornton Industries.

The old rail line roughly defines the northern edge of town, a rusty boundary paralleling the canal. The eastern half of the town is dominated by the smoke stacks of the old chemical plant and steel mills. North of them sits the historic homes of the poor factory workers that worked them, Heywood. These tract homes have fallen on the same hard times as local industry. Just over the river are an ugly conglomeration of box stores, stretching up to the highway that otherwise shoots past the town.

The west end of town once opened up into farms and the small community of Appleton but now hosts rows of identical houses with manicured lawns. To the far west amid the hills that rise above the town, the well-to-do of Persimmon Hill look down on the entirety of Rosebriar.

Moving southwest one encounters the annexed community of Bishopsgate with its tangled streets and suspicious inhabitants. Appleton Community College nestles between Appleton and Bishopsgate. Formerly an agricultural school, classwork now focuses on vocational training. Decades of mismanagement have shrunk the student body and left the college a shadow of its former self.

Just outside the community sits an insane asylum, recently renamed Edgewood Mental Health. Many horrible rumors whisper about the people who died there and the horrible experiments conducted in its past. A series of scandals have rocked the institute in the past decade and the facility may soon close.

Within the center of Rosebriar rots an underused city center. Brightened slightly by a small park and the newly renovated town hall, the central business district sports far too many empty office buildings from 50 years past.

Districts

• Appleton (Suburb): Annexed hamlet, formerly a farming community, now a residential neighborhood of identical houses.
• Bishopsgate (Suburb): Annexed town older than Rosebriar but less prosperous and more insular.
• Edgewood Mental Health (Asylum): An old and tarnished hospital for the insane, rocked by scandal and with tattered finances.
• Heywood (Projects): Originally a housing district for steel workers, it has since become the poorest neighborhood in Rosebriar.
• Main Street and Ravel (Mercantile district): Home of local businesses and small regional chains, now under pressure from the big box stores and the markets of nearby Albany.
• Old Town (Slums): The original town Rosebriar, then its upper class neighborhood, now a decaying city center.
• Persimmon Hill (Nobility Hill): The current upscale neighborhood filled with large houses and gated communities.
• Town Square (Town Square): An island of brightness in a sea of decline. Recently decorated with a statue of a local legend, the Weeping Alice.
• Thornton Industries (Chemical Plant): An old chemical plant that has been running since the 60s.
• The Works (Industrial Works): The rusted engine that powers Rosebriar, now decaying and blighted.

History

Here is a local timeline:

• 2012: Edgewood again in the headlines when it is revealed that most of the staff and patient were purely fictional, either having never been hired or released many years prior. The Board of Directors is indicted for fraud.
• 2011: A statue of local legend, the Weeping Alice, erected in the town park.
• 2008: Edgewood rocked by scandal by the disappearance several inmates and staff. The Board of Directors however quickly squash any investigation.
• 2006: Bishopgate Psychiatric Center renamed Edgewood Mental Health and placed under new management.
• 1999: Maxwell Newman City Center built in an attempt to revitalize the ailing town center.
• Late 1970s and 80s: as manufacturing moves offshore, the metalworking industry that supported Rosebriar’s growth declines and with it the town’s fortunes.
• 1971: Rosebriar annexes Bishopsgate.
• 1964: Thornton Industries establishes a chemical plant in Rosebriar.
• 1957: Rosebriar annexes Appleton.
• 1955; Maxwell Newman, home-grown hero and bomber pilot, elected mayor. He runs Rosebriar during its period of expansion and retires from office in 1987.
• 1940s: Steel industry ramps up production in Rosebriar for the war effort.
• 1924: Appleton College founded.
• 1918: Buck Gold donates his property to the town upon his death. This becomes the Town Park.
• 1908: Bishopsgate Asylum becomes Bishopsgate State Hospital when overcrowding and abuses of patients forces the state to take control.
• 1895: Bishopsgate Asylum founded to relieve overcrowding and establish new advanced in the field of mental health.
• 1893: Buck Gold, local ne’er-do-well, strikes it rich in Alaskan gold rush. He sells his find for a small fortune and retires to his home town.
• 1887: The Blackwell Steel Mill is established.
• 1852: The village of Appleton is established.
• 1820: Last of the Native Americans in the region leave.
• 1809: The drought at Rosebriar abates shortly after a young girl named Alice goes missing. Local legend says she was sacrificed to end the drought.
• 1802: The area around Rosebriar is ravaged by a terrible drought.
• 1796: The town of Rosebriar is established.
• 1680: The town of Bishopsgate founded by Daniel Shepherd.