Smokey Hollow, PA
Ryan Thomas
Traveler
Welcome to Smokey Hollow, Pennsylvania, 1992. Nestled amidst rolling hills and dense woodlands, it's a town that outwardly projects an image of quiet, small-town American prosperity. The lifeblood of Smokey Hollow is its thriving chemical industry, famous for developing new chemical compounds. This success has attracted new residents, contributing to the town's economic boom.
However, beneath this veneer of success, Smokey Hollow holds a dark secret. The town is infamous for a tragic industrial accident that occurred in 1977, where someone reportedly fell into a vat of chemicals. Whispers still circulate that, ever since that incident, the chemical plant has been secretly conducting tests on people.
Life here revolves around familiar institutions. Hollow High School, with its rather ominous "Grim Reaper" mascot, serves the town's teenagers. Younger students attend Saber School, whose mascot is a squirrel. For local flavor, there's Jeb's Diner, a notable landmark, and even the eccentric "world's largest operational Jeep." Community life is also shaped by organizations like the Masons and "Meat Me Half Way," a local charity run by a well-known butcher. The nearest town, Vanderville, maintains a friendly relationship with Smokey Hollow.
Yet, strange rumors persist. Beyond the chemical plant's alleged human testing, tales include a local guy with pet llamas whose fur creates magical, temperature-regulating shirts. Halloween is shadowed by rumors of a house giving out drugged apples or candy. On Grave Street, locals whisper about house number 304, haunted by the unsolved murder of its owner, John Graves. A nearby bridge on Grave Street is said to host a phantom hitchhiker, a girl who disappears from your car, leaving only a handprint behind. And within the halls of Hollow High, some kids believe the art/photography teacher is a white nationalist, while others are more interested in the gossip about the math teacher and gym teacher sleeping together.
Smokey Hollow is a town where the everyday blends with the unsettling, and where the past constantly casts a long shadow over the present.
This is the town the players and I came up with for our Kids on Bikes campaign, with some of the history and rumors we added.
Comments
I have a feeling that like Chekhov's Gun, that "eccentric 'world's largest operational Jeep'" is going to come into play in the story at some point. An escape vehicle? A mobile battering ram? I'm dying to know!
OK, first off: This is excellent. I was immediately intrigued. That's a big part of any map: "Why should I keep looking?" You answered that one!
So, I have to ask this: Which part of PA? The inhabitants of each of the two halves would probably behave very differently in such a setup. It's a fun situation.
Great work!
So with Kids on Bikes, when it comes to the worldbuilding, the players are the ones who tell me what they want added in the town and what the rumors are going around town. The GM decides on which of the rumors are true and which ones are just rumors. All they told me for one of the landmarks was "The World's Largest Operational Jeep," so getting into the premise of the yes and improv question that this TTRPG loves for the GM to use, I decided to add it. As for what the players decide to do with it. They're all a bunch of teenagers who go to the local high school, so there is no telling, especially knowing how chaotic the group can get.
As for which part of PA, I was thinking maybe west of the Allegheny Mountains, around the foothills where the Susquehanna West Branch runs. That was the river I was thinking is on the map. That's honestly as much as PA I learned about to place this town.
Kids on Bikes was inspired by Stranger Things, The Goonies, X-Files, and other shows and movies like that. And is very narrative driven with the PC's allowed to control the outcome if their dice roll exceeds so much above the set DC. It's also a very rules-lite system, your stat is literally just a dice, the system uses d4-d20 minus the percentile dice. I first heard about it when they ran a campaign of a homebrewed Kids on Bikes system on Dimension 20. I have 2 people who are using this as their first TTRPG, also since it's not as rule-heavy as D&D.