Bases and Places

[Hermit]

I like places,
places where you can see hero faces,
my favorite places are bases.
Where do you like your places that are bases where you can see hero faces?
Do you like them way up high?
Floating S.H.I.E.L.D. Like in the sky?
Do you like them under the waves?
Listening to Atlanteans rant and rave?
Do you like yours in outer space!
Where you can say Hi to a passing alien race?
Would you put it underground?
And listen to the gopher sounds?
Would you keep it in the city, is your building ugly, or oh so pretty?
Is your team base in the wild?
Fearing only a nosey cub scout child?
Is your base floating on the water?
Like a little black duck, just doing what it oughta?
Is your base lonely but defended?
Is it vulnerable but well befriended?
Do you keep your HQ secret from prying eyes?
Or did it win the Better homes and bases first prize?
Bases, Bases, so many kinds,
so I just want to pick your minds.
What kind of bases do you choose?
Tell me, tell me , and I might stop acting like Seuss

[Speedball]

It had to happen eventually--ruling the boards was ultimately too much for poor Hermit... :winkgrin:

[Hermit]

Well, in truth, this thread (and bad rhyme) was posted in the past before these boards... but it had been so long I thought I'd give it a shot again and get new views. Besides, in large part due to a HERO Central game, Bases are on my mind anyways.
;)

[Speedball]

I assume you mean Games of Chance, in which you're playing Gaze? Yeah. That base issue just won't seem to settle itself...

[Hermit]

I assume you mean Games of Chance, in which you're playing Gaze? Yeah. That base issue just won't seem to settle itself...

Chiefly :)

Though I have a few other campaigns I'm in as a GM.

[zornwil]

I tend to like underground bunkers, but am not passionate on any one type of base.

In our current supers campaign, the base for the team is built into the salt mines under Detroit. And so are others'. It turned out the "next door neighbors" were a cell from Magneto's organization.

[death tribble]

If you like a headquarters does that make you a basehead ?

[Hermit]

If you like a headquarters does that make you a basehead ?

Ouch, that one had punch. :)

[Dr. Anomaly]

When I first started reading that, I was expecting it to be one of those "song spoofs" that are preriodically so popular, and I thought it was going to be a take-off on Billy Joel's "The Stranger". :)

[Hermit]

I've always liked the "In space with Teleporters" approach myself. The Justice League is not my favorite team, but they have had the coolest base, IMO, and I'm not talking about that basement in Detroit. :)

[Fenixcrest]

I tend to prefer flying-island/flying-fortress type bases, or outposts in some funky pocket dimension (possibly mounted on some floating rock in said dimension :D )

[Sketchpad]

I'm a fan of water bases, whether they be islands or underwater :)

[Cancer]

Big fancy labs,
Strong-armored walls,
A safe place to sleep,
A room to take calls.

VeeTOL Hanger,
Danger-room gym,
Super-proof cells,
Sidekick named Tim.

1200 Points! Ack!
Big bases are nice,
Where a super is home,
But I can't pay the price.

[Hermit]

Big fancy labs,
Strong-armored walls,
A safe place to sleep,
A room to take calls.

VeeTOL Hanger,
Danger-room gym,
Super-proof cells,
Sidekick named Tim.

1200 Points! Ack!
Big bases are nice,
Where a super is home,
But I can't pay the price.

Buy it independent, cuz it's true
It will be much cheaper
Till VIPER takes it from you.

[Matt Frisbee]

Ouch! Enough with the couplets already!

Hmmm...bases. Oh, yeah. As the GM I usually have to design these things. It's usually the first sign that whatever campaign I'm running is about to fold up like a house of cards...

The only base I've actually designed as a player character was for a dark avenger of the night type in a powered suit called Nightowl, who took up residence in the old Montogomery Elevator testing tower in the Quad-Cities. As I remember, it had a lauch catapult for the hero (gliding, not flying, and it was a long glide slope to cross the Mississippi); an automated medical clinic; a situations room for monitoring police, military, citizens' band, amateur radio and broadcast radio and television frequencies; an A.I. with extensive files on known supers and super powers in general (for quickie answers to tough questions) as well as a criminology lab for analyzing stuff the hero "borrowed" from crime scenes. It was one of the older incarnations of the game, but I think I paid for it by "banking" most of my experience points for several sessions.

In campaigns I've run, the bases have been in numerous land-based buildings (a converted warehouse, a refurbished water tower and the top two floors of an office building), but one of the more intriguing locations suggested by a player was the conversion of a moored freighter to a base.

One of the coolest bases I designed was a mobile command post that was a converted tour bus (armored up and augmented with a gas turbine engine) which could drive itself in an emergency to "the scene of the crime." It was a pain in the butt to build, but it saved the characters' collective posteriors more than once. :)

Matt "Still-crunchin'-the-numbers" Frisbee

[TheRavenIs]

I have had many kinds of bases in the years that I have played Hero System. I have been part of a team that had a 'Public' HQ, not that my C liked it, he hated it. He was smart he hard two of his own, one in an abandoned subway station in Chicago, and another under he's home outside the city, like Batman.

Had an orbital base. Had an underwater base. Had a mobile base that was a submarine, one was like the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, another was a space craft/station. One was in a pocket dimension, that could be mobile and reached via X-Dim move.

Right now am in three hero games, two different worlds. One game has mutilple bases in multiple cities. The main base in that one is like the Xavier School, and the first team's HQ.

In that same game universe, The base is a large space station, but we also have a mobile base that is a huge Battleship.

In the other universe, so far one base. Middle of Montana, underground and known by the military, but not under it's control.

My personal favorite type of base is a mobile one with a pocket dimensional accessable via X-Dim Move. Actually going have one of those in the main game universe. It's going to be connected to an old VW Bus, that has been altered itself and the base within it.

[Hermit]

My personal favorite type of base is a mobile one with a pocket dimensional accessable via X-Dim Move. Actually going have one of those in the main game universe. It's going to be connected to an old VW Bus, that has been altered itself and the base within it.

That one I'd like to see the stats on someday.

[Big Willy]

Wasn't there a Doctor who story where the Master's TARDIS was disguised as a horsebox? I remember reading the Target novelisation and thinking what a cool idea: get out the back, walk round to the cab and drive about..!

[zippercomics]

I'm about to start running a campaign where the base is an old farmstead outside of the city proper. I've tried a lot of different kinds of base locations, and since this one was plausible and new, I thought I'd give it a shot. Standard stuff, really, but I like the idea - for some reason - of a hero team sitting around a small oak table, having coffee and working out battle plans with salt shakers and cow figurines.

Okay, maybe not THAT rustic, but just something lower tech.

Comic wise, I like the Ultimates' Shield base that sort of hovers in the sky. It just doesn't seem pratical to me in a lot of situations, though. Not like it's hard to see, and if it gets shot down, there's three dimensions of geometric horror as the thing comes crashing down. Say what you will about underground bases, but generally, destroying one of those doesn't run a big risk to the community at large.

[TheRavenIs]

That one I'd like to see the stats on someday.


I promise that once I work it up and get my GM's approval, I will do just that.
When my GM told me her idea, yes a female GM and a darn good one, I was like OK!!!. She made this gamer happy.

[Hermit]

I know it is bad form to bring back ones own thread from the dead, but interstingly enough I am now trying to decide what sort of bas a group of superheroes in my New Con game will get. The group is informal, so this would be more of a muster point place for them to wander into and out of independently. Provided by UNTIL and the City both, it will probably be pseudo public, to draw fire from villains and such.

[BoloOfEarth]

I've run games where the heroes had:

(1) A typical office building, a secret base for the heroes.

(2) A former oil rig towed up to just ouside NYC's harbor.

(3) A public base, again like an office building but with underground levels for the danger room.

(4) An uninhabited island base (actually a dormant volcano, 'cuz volcanoes are neato) which the heroes teleported to and from via secret teleport pads in the campaign city.

I've always wanted to run one with the heroes in a mobile base (like an airship, or maybe a submarine).

[Trebuchet]

I know it is bad form to bring back ones own thread from the dead, but interstingly enough I am now trying to decide what sort of bas a group of superheroes in my New Con game will get. The group is informal, so this would be more of a muster point place for them to wander into and out of independently. Provided by UNTIL and the City both, it will probably be pseudo public, to draw fire from villains and such.That's pretty much all our base is: a muster point. OTOH, it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for a millionaire in the early 1930's. :D

We have a nearby campus for an international philanthropic organization with laboratories and the like where most of the team members work in their Secret ID's when they're not traveling around the world stomping bad guys. Makes a good cover.

BTW, we used to jet around the world in our überjet. What do you call jetting about the world when you're using an anti-gravity-drive vehicle? Graving?

[TheRavenIs]

I promise that once I work it up and get my GM's approval, I will do just that.
When my GM told me her idea, yes a female GM and a darn good one, I was like OK!!!. She made this gamer happy.

Well the idea is the same but now the base is a fancy sportscar. I will add the .hdc file and .html as attachments later.

[Blue Jogger]

Bases that I've used.

Secret Underground Headquarters under a convenient "abandoned" warehouse, with the secret enterance via broom closet and the door disguised as a brick

International Space Station, this involved a misguided villian group called the Trekkies. Their mission is to bring Earth's closer to First Contact. They got involved when Firebird (a supervillian not unlike Dark Pheonix) knocked the International Space Station out of orbit. The Trekkies decided this to interfere (Prime Directive obviously doesn't apply) and wanted to install upgrades. So rather than fighting Firebird, the heroes ended up fighting Trekkies who thought the heroes were villians.

The Wardrobe - A typical college dorm room for two, except the wardrobe leads to the tattoo parlor downtown (linking the two bases together via a specialized teleport gateway).

The Hall of Justice - Looking exactly like the Saturday Morning Cartoon, it was quickly discovered that this should be the headquarters that nobody that we cared about lived in. It was specifically designed to be THE building that supervillians wanted to trash, therefore protecting the libraries and universities.