Canon Foundation
Fairport is the urban setting of the main F.E.A.R. crisis, with Armacham facilities, commercial towers, industrial districts, transport infrastructure, and ordinary residents. Auburn is central to the first game's investigation. The opening crisis involves Paxton Fettel and the Replica forces; it has not happened when this campaign begins. [S1, S2]
Campaign Start
Begin seven days before the opening emergency briefing of the first game. This interval is a campaign convention, not a documented seven-day canonical chronology. Use relative dates until the player chooses a character. At this moment shops open, children attend classes, freight moves, and night workers catch early buses home. There has been no Origin explosion, citywide evacuation, or open Replica offensive. Every named living NPC in this packet is still alive. Alma is the exception to ordinary biological categories, as described in her own lore entry.
Treat the first session as the beginning of an investigation rather than the first hour of a predetermined disaster. The seven-day window establishes proximity to the game; it is not an inviolable countdown. A credible intervention may delay, redirect, or prevent an event. NPCs can still act when the player is elsewhere, but major changes should follow causes that can eventually be discovered.
The City People Know
Campaign Fairport depends on a mixture of freight, manufacturing, public services, and corporate employment. Armacham's name appears in contracts, employment histories, and security arrangements. People disagree about the company: a technician can appreciate a reliable paycheck while distrusting management; a neighborhood organizer can oppose a redevelopment plan without knowing anything about psychic research. Ordinary staff do not automatically share the secrets of senior researchers.
Downtown has office workers, hotels, parking structures, expensive apartments, and the headquarters campus. West of it lie residential streets and civic services. Auburn's factories and freight yards occupy the southwest of the campaign map; the waterfront lies southeast. The road network links these places, but rush-hour congestion, restricted gates, and construction can make a short trip awkward. These directions describe this map only.
Give everyday places continuing identities. A cashier recognizes a regular. A bus driver remembers an unusual passenger. A maintenance worker knows which flooded basement predates the latest complaint. Return visits should show consequences: a frightened witness may stop answering, a shop may close after an incident, or a relieved family may leave a message. A city becomes worth saving when the player knows people who live there.
Public Knowledge
Most residents know Armacham is powerful and Auburn has problems. They do not know that Alma exists, that the Point Man is a research prototype, or that military clones can receive psychic orders. News reports should use the evidence available to their reporters. A missing contractor is initially a missing person; an unexplained outage is initially an outage. Officials may give incomplete explanations without every official belonging to a conspiracy.
The campaign can open with three independent leads. A utility inspection finds a new cable entering a supposedly dormant industrial property. A clinic receives several patients with similar disturbing dreams. An office worker receives an access notification for a file they never opened. These are original incident seeds. They need not all be caused by Alma, and none automatically reveals Origin. Ordinary fraud, bad wiring, fear, and coincidence remain possible until evidence narrows the answer.
How Knowledge Spreads
Separate public reporting, agency briefings, restricted corporate knowledge, and GM truth. An NPC only acts on information they possess, can reasonably infer, or receive in play. A successful investigation changes that boundary. Sharing an original file with Jin can produce independent analysis; repeating a rumor to a frightened neighbor can instead create a distorted story. Keep track of who heard which version.
Documents should carry a useful question forward. A purchase order identifies a contractor, a contractor remembers a destination, and the destination contains a witness or a second record. Avoid making every discovery a terminal full of complete answers. Also avoid a mystery that depends on one hidden key: important conclusions should have more than one possible route, such as records, physical evidence, and testimony.
Life Between Incidents
Allow meals, sleep, commutes, private conversations, and professional friction to matter. A companion can be tired without becoming incompetent. A day spent helping a witness may cost an opportunity elsewhere but gain lasting trust. Friendly NPCs have work, loyalties, and boundaries beyond serving the protagonist. The same applies to antagonists: a courteous conversation can be sincere in tone while serving a concealed objective.
Open Player Role
No player identity is assumed. A soldier may enter through an agency assignment, a civilian through a local incident, an employee through an internal request, and a former subject through an unexplained recognition. These entrances connect to the same city. Do not quietly make the protagonist Alma's relative or give them a classified past before the player chooses one. If the protagonist is Point Man, replace the optional NPC slot with the player's sheet.
Campaign Record
At the end of a session record the relative day and time, current location, who is present, injuries and resources, what evidence is secured, who knows what, and which unresolved pressures advanced. Preserve witnessed consequences. The campaign should remember a rescued person or a broken promise even if neither appeared in the games.