Forum

The setting description puts a lot of emphasis on the vertical nature of L.A.

It seems normal to have 500 story buildings. ("As upon that foundation has grown a sprawling metropolis 500 stories high, all built like stilts upon the concrete roots of a city of survivors." p. 93) Floor 100 is the cutoff between the haves and have-nots.

For comparison, the Empire State Building (6th tallest in the U.S.) is 102 stories. Burj Khalifa, the IRL tallest building on Earth, has 163 floors and is around 830 meters tall.
So at 500 stories we are talking about something three times as tall as the Burj Khalifa and rising thereby to around 2.5 km in height. Low clouds are below 2000 meters. Mid-level clouds are at 2-5 km.

Considering the weather ("The city is perpetually overcast in swirling mist and air so polluted that some people need masks just to breathe outdoors. Even on the few days when the city isn’t battered with bitter winds or sheets of rain and snow, you’d still need to drive two hours inland just to see the sun." p. 96) surely we cannot even see the tops of these buildings unless in a spinner? Or maybe those on top of the 500 story skyscrapers can see the tops of their neighbors? But pedestrians cannot really see, even from floor 100, the new Wallace HQ "dwarfing the nearby Tyrell pyramid" (p. 112), as we cannot see the tops of either one of these buildings.

But that's not really my question. I have two:

1. Why is this 'verticality' necessary? We are told there is a lack of space, people do not even have kitchens in their homes. There are 30 million people in L.A. in 2037 (Core p. 127) but in 2019 there were 106 million (Blade Runner movie trailer). With such a drastically smaller number of people from 18 years ago and "borders stretching from San Francisco to old San Diego" (p. 105), why did they need to build vertical so much? Mexico City IRL has 9 million people in an area only slightly larger than current day L.A. We would need to triple that, but there is much more area available in 2037 L.A., too. And Mexico City's tallest building is 62 stories. Is our only justification that we have rich folks who want to live above floor 100 and can afford a few floors just for themselves and their families? Or does it have something to do with the megacorps wanting their customers concentrated?

2. What are the consequences of building 500 story buildings? Having elevators for all the people and all the floors would take too much square footage. There is not enough parking for spinners on the roof, either.

• Spinner bays every few floors or for every unit? Maybe we need 500 floors because every rich person will have one floor just for their vehicle collection?

• No going anywhere you cannot fly to? Rich folks essentially trapped inside their own buildings?

• Parks, amusement parks, etc. built into most skyscrapers for recreation, with artificial sunlight, of course? Also adds to the need for more floors.

• Skywalks and even full-on concrete decks connecting buildings at some levels, e.g. 100? Essentially blocking out the sky for those below. Which may be a good thing.

I did note that the Starter Set adventure did not really utilize or discuss the vertical nature of the city much. I wonder why.

I also noted that the Blade Runner's "Home Sweet Home", studio, where "You’re not exactly spoiled with square footage either." (p. 111) is around 70-85 square meters (750-900 sq ft.) when you measure it. That's about double the size of any studio apartment I have ever lived in.

I think that this is a flavor thing more than a realism thing. Uber-tall buildings have a lot of problems, as you noted. I think the idea would be that if the population explodes but the surface area of the Earth doesn't change then going taller is the only way to expand.

I agree it's somewhat ridiculous and does not even match what is shown on screen. For my game, I decided to ignore that number (though it never came up in play anyway).

I really like the Blade Runner RPG, but I think its setting description chapters are the weakest part of the core rulebook. Luckily, they are not really needed if you have watched the movies!

I agree it's somewhat ridiculous and does not even match what is shown on screen. For my game, I decided to ignore that number (though it never came up in play anyway).

I really like the Blade Runner RPG, but I think its setting description chapters are the weakest part of the core rulebook. Luckily, they are not really needed if you have watched the movies!

This^ all of this. I was about to write my own response but then after reading this I see all the same points I would have made have been made. I too dropped the "verticality" aspect from my game. To me that was just a poor attempt at some ham-fisted symbolism gone literal (social stratification by floor). It is not necessary to the world and the adventures so far. The strength of the game is its fidelity to the movies. When it tries to branch off too far from those sources, like with the 500 floor thing, it weakens.

I won't argue that anyone should use the verticality described in the game; that's for you to decide, of course.

But the very large buildings absolutely are in the films. The buildings (in the first film in particular) are often deceptively large. I say 'deceptively', because many of the ones shot on location are of course nowhere near the heights described in the RPG, but those buildings are shown in at least some cases to almost literally be under the much larger buildings that we see the spinners fly past. Those (model) buildings are also deceptively big, as they appear to maintain the proportions of much smaller buildings. This gives the impression that they are scaled differently to what they are. But if you look at the classic Geisha billboard, judging by the windows along the side, that billboard itself is in the region of about 80 floors high (and on a building with both the top and bottom out of shot).

Deckard's apartment is floor 98, and there's no indication when he's on his balcony that he's anywhere near the top.

Here's an interesting article about the design:
https://theasc.com/articles/blade-runner-set-design

which includes quotes from Syd Mead:
“I made a sketch of the typical new city where we had the World Trade Tower-size building which is now old and the new buildings going up past 3,000 feet high. Then you start to build an entire elevated network of connections because decent people don’t live below 60 stories above the ground. So the street level becomes an access corridor and really nothing more. "

(According to Wikipedia, the Burj Khalifa is about 2700 feet tall)

Underneath that quote, included with a bunch of concept drawings, is a shot of the Bradbury building in the film, with the far, far larger buildings in the background, and you can see how they increase in size and overhang whatever is underneath them. They are absolutely vast.

The same article describes the Tyrell building as 700 storeys (though it's not clear who is claiming that number).

In BR 2049, many of the buildings were models, made by Weta. There's a video where they describe the exact scale of the Wallace building, and it comes out to about 3500 metres tall. That's metres, not feet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLxxbfsj8IM

Do you need to use these big buildings in your own games? No, of course not.
Are they realistic sizes? Nope.
But they ARE in the films.

You may well be correct that such tall buildings are in the movies: I haven't checked the exact measurements, and I do think we should look at the average height, not obvious exceptions like the Wallace Building, so I'm not 100% convinced, but I think you have a point here.

But what matters to me for gameplay purposes is that those huge Skycrapers are there as a backdrop, not as the main locations where the stories take place. In that they are similar to the offworld colonies: Places that exist, but a typical Blade Runner will never visit - except in very unusual circumstances (like when meeting Tyrell/Wallace). And I prefer setting descriptions to focus on the parts that come up regularly in actual play and give a feel for the everyday experience, not the exceptions (those can be detailed in adventures).

Your view of the setting and what is and isn't easily accessible to Blade Runners may vary, of course.

Great discussion, and thanks for the links.

The massive buildings are all the 'Archology' concept I believe, as seen in a lot of cyberpunk settings - Judge Dredd's block-wars, etc. The recent Altered Carbon series had nice shots of your air-cars landing on the penthouse lawns above Bay area clouds.

So 3.5km for Tyrell Corp Pyramid looks about right to me too. But in terms of gameplay, all the rep-unit need is the relevant floor's and apartment plan. Leave SWAT and uniform LAPD to handle the runners, and forensics the leapers, but a crowded corridor, sky-lobby and emergency stairwell or lift shaft is a great place for the chase and fire-fight rules

DX