Good places to have battles...and stuff

[Dragon]

I was just wondering if anyone out there had any ideas for truely fun and exciting places to have battles or encounters.

For instance: I used the mall in Alberta Canada once, the one with the golf course, theme hotel, and theme park -inside- the mall. The worlds largest mall. I did a lot of research and presented the group with detailed descriptions and photos, and their own amazement and 'omg' factor matched that of their characters. I know there has to be other places like this.

Other places I've used, or thinking of using, are train yards, oil refinery, candy factory, old delapidated brick school houses, disney land, ancient ruins, and Tokyo.

I mean everyone uses old staples like high rise office towers, penthouse apartments, sewers and old steam tunnels, and sometimes jungles.

I personally like the 'wow' effect.

[Maelstrom]

In a Zepplin, full of hydrogen.
On top of a subway car.
In a steel foundry, full of the molten stuff.
In a portion of a space station, a few minutes from hitting atmosphere.
In a trench barely half-a-meter wide.
On a bridge over a gorge.
On top of the Cathedral at Notre Dame.
Alcatraz Island (when it still existed)
Transamerica Pyramid
An abandoned artillery site atop the Marin Headlands.
Up and down the Golden Gate Bridge
In a tidal tunnel beneath the city, and the tide is coming in . . . .

[psm]

The Alberta Canada mall is a pretty cool idea. I might have to use that.

Other choices you could use are:
Roman catacombs
Undeground Atlanta
Petrobras Offshore oil rig
Monterey Aquarium
Roppongi Hills (a bit cliche)
Alaskan Cruise Line
Cern (especially the particle accelerator)
International Space Station
Florida Underwater caves (Devil's ear/eye)

Thats all I can think of off the top of my head.

[psm]

Alcatraz Island (when it still existed)
Transamerica Pyramid
An abandoned artillery site atop the Marin Headlands.
Up and down the Golden Gate Bridge
In a tidal tunnel beneath the city, and the tide is coming in . . . .

I'm guessing you live in San Fransicso;)

[SKJAM!]

The Cursed Springs of Jyuusenkyo

The Wood Between the Worlds (Narnia series)

The Finger Museum of Giant Props

On a network of ropes above an active lava pit (or alligators, or what have you)

The Mall of America (like the one in Canada, only bigger)

The Cherry-Spoon Bridge in the Walker Sculpture Garden

A minature golf course (while shrunk)

A minefield

A boxing ring with electrified "ropes" that shrinks at the end of every Turn.

[Blue]

My favorites I've ever run...
On the outside of an airplane
Freefalling without parachutes and no flight powers
In a room with a reflective surface (Ricochets galore!)
Hall of Mirrors
In the air pocket of the hull of a sinking ship or submarine
The classic "Colliseum" fight is a nice refreshing change sometimes. Two foes one-on-one in the open.
You may have noticed the first two were falling oriented. To complete the "flight cycle", I'd like to have a hero and a villain inside a large crate that is falling from a great height, just to see if they're cooperate or duke it out :)

[Doug McCrae]

A minature golf course (while shrunk)Good one!

[SirViss]

For more mundane scenes, but still cool ideas for places to have interesting battles:

RPG.Net Action Scenes articles (http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/collists/action.html)

[Maelstrom]

I'm guessing you live in San Fransicso;)

Nope, but I set my game there. No one wants to play in Podunk.

"Look! The locals are tipping cattle! To the Batmobile!"

[Dragon]

OOO you guys rock. My players are going to love some of these places. Thanks!!

[Hugh Neilson]

For instance: I used the mall in Alberta Canada once, the one with the golf course, theme hotel, and theme park -inside- the mall. The worlds largest mall. I did a lot of research

Then you should be able to call it "West Edmonton Mall", rather than "the mall in Alberta". :rolleyes:

[Hugh Neilson]

For instance: I used the mall in Alberta Canada once, the one with the golf course, theme hotel, and theme park -inside- the mall. The worlds largest mall. I did a lot of research

Then you should be able to call it "West Edmonton Mall", rather than "the mall in Alberta". :rolleyes:

Oh, and Alpha Flight beat you to it - they had a story set there in their first series.

[winterhawk]

The grounds of a palatial Bel Air home, swarming with ghurkas, and I lost my utility harness...

The Las Vegas strip at rush hour, the Hoover Dam, an abandoned airfield in the desert. Oh, and downtown Vegas where the battle accidentally knocked out power to the Bellagio for a week. ;)

The top of the Sears Tower, the old Water Tower (the mystical heart of Chicago), the Field Museum and the Oriental Museum, and probably the 'holiest' site in Chicago to some Chicagoans...Wrigley Field the night before the playoffs. (Don't ask me, I'm a White Sox fan, but my players are all rabid Cubs fans).

[BNakagawa]

A church. During a wedding. PC involvement optional, but recommended.

[megaplayboy]

A mall parking lot, a shipping district full of train cars and truck trailers, a construction site...
a martial artist's nightmare and a brick's dream :)

[Trebuchet]

Some places we've had combat in our campaign:

Easter Island
A lost Mayan city in the jungles of Belize
The Eifel Tower
Inside a sunken nuclear submarine 600' down
On the deck of a freighter
A Turkish palace
Inside a dirigible
Io

[Bunyip]

Twickenham rugby stadium - the fight took place just prior to the start of a World Cup game. (This was a few years ago; there was a nice touch at the end when England players Paul Ackford and Wade Dooley - both serving police officers at the time - placed the captured felons under arrest.)

[dbsousa]

Most museums have tourist maps that will help you create a good battle map. Pre 9/11, I wanted to create gamer's maps of real locations in NYC. Post 9/11 it seems like a way to get your very own FBI file.

[JeffreyWKramer]

Malls, museums and casinos are all fantastic places to stage battles. They offer neat stuff to throw/break, things you have to be careful about breaking, multiple levels, and most of the time plenty of bystanders to get emperiled (and thus need saving). Whenever I go to a new mall or museum, I look for brocures that have maps and pictures; museum websites can also be helpful in this regard. I staged a fight in Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History in one long-ago but still-remembered CHAMPIONS game - dinosaur and mammoth skeletoms, Egyptian mummies and other artifacts, valuable gems.. lots of fun to be had there.

SPIDER-MAN 2 showed us, of course, just how exciting a fight atop/inside an el train can be. I've also done fights aboard standard trains (including the Orient Express) in western games and CALL OF CTHULHU.

Fights onboard airliners can be great. Prison fights are good, too.

[Ghost who Walks]

Ones I've used
~Reunion Island, in the Indian ocean (Aquatic aliens invaded)

~The great Canadian invasion of Newfoundland (its fisherman had declared their independence)

~Fidel Castro's House

~Bill Gates House (the supercomputer went crazy)

~The Alien moonbase

~A wedding, where ninjas attacked

~The ruins of Mogadishu

[Trencher]

On an oilplatform at sea during a storm
In a house on fire
In the middle of the highway
On a crumbling bridge
I a pine forest at night time, and the moon is not up....
On a frozen river, with wisps of mist clinging to the water
In a disco
In an abandoned prison
In a gold market in a Arabic country
In an abandoned soviet military complex out on the frozen tundra
In an ancient ruin of a Tibetan temple, now a bird roost.

[Magmarock]

I mentioned this in another thread: Try holding a brick-only bash in a wrestling ring (roughly 2 x 2 hexes in size, only square it off). The ring would be reinforced to handle the superbeings, so make it tough.

Surround with a full audience of normals, add bricks and voila! Interesting times. ;)


Mags

[Dragon]

Ah, for the record I did call it the West Edmonton mall in my game. Their website has an interactive map and everything. Except I used it in a mixed White-wolf game rather then a Champions game. But I used the place name as most people wouldn't know what mall from what if I just used the mall name. Sorry for my assumption.

And I didn't know Alpha Flight used it. Did they use it recently? This was run around 6 years ago.

And yeah a casino would be neat too I think. I tend to do what JeffreyWKramer does. My friends....my non-gaming- friends... think I'm weird for picking up maps of everything I can when I can. Fire escape diagrams work good too.

In a recent game we used one of the aquariums in Houston. Everyone ended up falling into a shark tank.

So many good ideas....I don't know where to start :)

[psm]

Nope, but I set my game there. No one wants to play in Podunk.

"Look! The locals are tipping cattle! To the Batmobile!"

Where the hell is Podunk??

Anyway, a few other cool places in SF if you haven't used them yet would be:
SFMOMA
Fisherman's Wharf
Ghiradelli Chocolate Factory
Point Bonita Lighthouse
the section of the Bart that goes under the Bay
Presidio Bluffs

[fbdaury]

*The underground part of Montreal
*The Japanese Shrine at Nagoya during New Year's Day celebrations(I've always wondered what someone would look like after getting hit with an O-Mochi mallet :) )
*Vancouver's Sky train, while in motion above the streets of the city
*The half abandoned but super-cool International Village mall in East Vancouver
*Across the length and breadth of Prince Edward Island(would take about a turn for a speedster to cross the whole province)
*A running battle along the top pf the Great Wall of China
*In the underwater tunnel that connects Detroit with Windsor, Ontairio

[fbdaury]

And I didn't know Alpha Flight used it. Did they use it recently? This was run around 6 years ago.


Back in issues 24-25 of the original Byrne series, the last issues he wrote and drew before leaving the series.

[Dragon]

Ooo If your game is set in SF a good source book for that is Bay City. It was written a while back for the fuzion system, but has scads of info on places in Bay City...skyline bars, courthouses, libraries, a 20's style resturaunt (which I'm SO going to use one day), along with maps, odd places, and of course famous places. It also gives NPCs and a bit of background on most of the places listed in the book...even if its only ol reverend clark from the First Universalist Church....did I mention he's corrupt? Says so right here :)

Its all in all a good buy for a SF based game if you're not actually from that city and don't know it as well as a native would.

[PoorWandering 1]

My favorite was the old Paris Operahouse. With a performance in progress. Neither the pc's nor the other side could interrupt the opera. The back story on this is rather complex, but the night did culminate with several pc's and baddies on stage, in costume, trying to ad lib Wagner. It went down in history as "A Fight at the Opera."

I think the key is to not make the location a backdrop, but but to involve the players in the place. Another fun one was a low speed car chase along a traffic clogged freeway.