How do you name a City?

[red_eagle123]

For all those world creators out there, how do you come up with names for cities? Do you try to just come up with something that sounds good, or do you come up with a generic 'non-real world' name (IE: Star City, Central City, Coast City, Gotham City, Metropolis, etc)?

If you had to rename Detroit after the catastrophe, how would you go about doing it? Just idle curiosity on my part, I'd be interested in hearing the thought processes of other world creators.

[Asperion]

Most of the time that I will run a game, I prefer to use some city that I create. Since I usually place the city in the same general area that we live in everyone ends up having a large amount of say in the way that the city is set up and the name. This leads to some extremely strange names and cities that the players travel to and the beings that they meet. In my last campaign the city that everyone was based in was called Chizlaun. The city was located one hour northwest of Flagstaff in Arizona. We used a similar process with other cities that everyone traveled to. Some of the names are Gaeristan in India, some long forgotten hidden city located in Iraq.

[dei1c3]

OK, it may not be the most original thing, but I like a good "DC-esque" city name and so usually go with the format of "[Descriptor] City" such as Central City and Coast City.

My current campaign is set in Pacific City, which is basically an LA-sized city located where Seattle is in real life. I've also used places like...

- Silicon City (a huge city of the future spanning from San Francisco to San Jose)
- Liberty City (Philly)
- Patriot City (Boston)
- Iron City (Pittsburgh)
- Confederate City (Atlanta)
- Monarch City (London)
- Imperial City (Beijing)
- Commerce City (Hong Kong)

For Detroit, I'd do something like Motor City, Border City or Lakes City.

Chris

[Collector]

What about New York?,

[Crusader108]

In my campaign world, I also went the DC-esque route for city naming (not sure I like it though...too much of a Marvel fan and spend too much time translating to real world equivalents)

Examples of my campaign cities include:

Gold Coast City (my campaign setting) --- Houston
Tea Port City ---Boston
Capital City---Washington DC
Liberty City---Philadelphia
New South City---Atlanta
Los Disneys---Orlando
Sun City---Miami
Delta City---New Orleans
Gateway City---St Louis
Hudson City (borrowed from Dark Champions)---Chicago
Lone Star City---Dallas
Tinsel City---L.A.
Motor City---Detroit (pre-Millenium City sourcebook)

[Thirdbase]

Originally posted by Collector
What about New York?,

How about old York?

Seriously, I just use real cities and ignore any mistakes that I may make.

I have always hated the artificial DC cities.

[death tribble]

I can understand calling American cities by the DC system like Coast City etc but renaming London Monarch City ?

No, no, no. This will not do.

[Hermit]

Originally posted by red_eagle123
For all those world creators out there, how do you come up with names for cities? Do you try to just come up with something that sounds good, or do you come up with a generic 'non-real world' name (IE: Star City, Central City, Coast City, Gotham City, Metropolis, etc)?

If you had to rename Detroit after the catastrophe, how would you go about doing it? Just idle curiosity on my part, I'd be interested in hearing the thought processes of other world creators.

I prefer to read about real cities, I prefer to GM using fictional ones ;) Hypocracy, but it works.

As for naming, I have used different methods...

1) Look at the Geography "Welcome to Two-Rivers!"

2) Look at other cities in the area, and go in that vein. I named a fictional city in California "Las Santos"

3) I decided there was a fictional founder or favored citizen for this fictional city, and named it after him/her. This is especially neat if your game world has Golden Age (or sooner) heroes who would be in the running. "MEGABERG: Population: 246,900" :)

I suppose you could even use the last as a way to make PCs nervous... "Zoriastian City? Kind of a funny name for a town in Columbia, isn't it?" ;)

As for what I would have renamed Detroit? Well, Millennium City has grown on me... but other options might be:
New Detroit (sounds like something out of "Buck Rogers" doesn't it?)
Memorial City (Make it more a place based around homage to the fallen heroes and citizens than looking to the future)
Defiance, USA ;)

[Osprey]

Originally posted by Collector
What about New York?,

DC calls it "Gotham City"
yep - you read that right

I Live in Tampa Bay.
In My campaign, It's called "Palo Fuego"

The process:
1) "Tampa" is rumored to be an indian word : "Fire Stick"
(Indians first saw muskets there)
2) Florida has a lot of Spanish culture.
3) "Fire Stick" in spanish is "Palo Fuego"

[dei1c3]

Originally posted by death tribble
I can understand calling American cities by the DC system like Coast City etc but renaming London Monarch City ?

No, no, no. This will not do. LOL! You probably wouldn't care for what we called Paris then.

As for New York...now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever set a campaign or scenario in New York. Instead, I tend to make my cities the "New York of their world". For instance, when I lived outside Philly, we played in Liberty City, which in that world was the largest U.S. city instead of New York.

Maybe, being from Boston originally, I am biased against NYC. :D Or maybe because Gotham City is already a great name. If I had to, I guess I could call it Apple City or something.

Chris

[Blue Jogger]

If I had to rename Detroit, I would go with something that would inspire new hope like Iron City, after all don't they still have iron factories there?

[megaplayboy]

"Our city is named after its founder, Louis Campaigne, a great French-American. No one could ever remember the 'e' at the end, though, so we dropped it."



:D

[assault]

Originally posted by megaplayboy
"Our city is named after its founder, Louis Campaigne, a great French-American. No one could ever remember the 'e' at the end, though, so we dropped it."



:D

I like! :)

It even makes perfect sense.

On alternate New Yorks: obviously both Metropolis and Gotham City are New York in drag. In fact, prior to 1941, there were explicit references locating Batman's activities in New York. I'm not sure exactly when Superman's home town was named Metropolis, but it wasn't in Action Comics #1. The city there is unnamed, but it seems to be intended to be New York. (or perhaps Chicago? Did Chicago have high rise buildings in the late 1930s?)

As for Australian cities: there was an interesting little TV series made a couple of years back called 'Cybergirl'. (It's being repeated at the moment on Saturday mornings.) It's a kids' show, involving an alien 'cyber-replicant' that runs away to Earth, pursued by two other more primitive models. The title character then becomes a superheroine of sorts, though she doesn't actually use her powers much, since they tend to draw attention from her hunters.

This is explicitly superhero genre material. It was filmed in Brisbane, Queensland, which was renamed 'River City' in the series. This allowed the producers of the series to Americanise aspects of the city (but nobody would be fooled), while, of course, allowing various city officials to be protrayed in a negative light...

Anyway, I've been toying with the idea of using 'River City' in my universe for a while. Whether or not I do, in the context of the present discussion, I would like to stake a claim on the name: River City is in Queensland, Australia.

So there.

Alan,
posting from Drayton Swamp, 130 km from River City.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

This may be hard to believe, but I stole the name of the campaign city from the movie "Mothra". In it, the title monster attacks a fictional city which looks a LOT like New York. The city....Newkirk City...kind of stuck a chord with me and I used it for the start of my campaign.(The group has since relocated to Millennium City.)

Rob

[Rook]

I use a fictional name only for the city in which the campaign is set. My campaigns have been set in a fictional city called Olympus. It is situated on the east coast somewhere south of Washington (it replaces Norfolk, VA in my campaign world, though I never really say this).

If you want to rename several real cities, I would recommend looking up city nicknames and basing their new names on these, if possible. This is how DC came up with Gotham City (and possibly others).

[Publius]

I use Crescent City, which is located along the Great Lakes and kind of rolls up Chicago and Detroit into one. I have used the name Kingstown for a fictional city in the past. I usually just pick something that sounds good to me at the time, although player input is welcome as well, it is by no means the sole determining factor. Nothing is worse that choosing a name that you later come to hate or gets slapstick ("Gopher City" was suggested by one wag of mine). If there is something noteworthy about your city, founded by a Superhero for instance, than that might well influence the name of the city but you might also remember that sometimes resources/industries change and thus these aspects might have little reflection on the city's original name (unless it was renamed sometime in the past).

I also use the same method (sounds-about-right, player input, etc.) for the name of neighborhoods within the city more often. Crescent City for example has Brimstone Alley, an evil looking (and smelling) section of the town where the ne'r-do-well set often gather. Keep in mind that cities are rarely monolithic, they usually have neighborhoods, or other subcommunities with independent flavors. Sometimes this will have a racial/ethnic dimension, but there are also class and even religious based divisions of neighborhoods or sections within the city. If you have a lot of super-types there might even be a section where the congregate (or even specific subsets, like the magic-types). The real reason I use fictional cities is to tap into that source, so that players can develop a sense of the city through the mosiac of these tiny portions. Give them distinctive names: Glassier Park, Ironwork, Brickstone etc. so that the players will become interested in a wealthy man who has made frequent visits to Brimstone Alley under cover of night, or the hobo whose firrst layer of clothes originally came from a shop in Glassier Park and seem to have been tailored.

[Osprey]

Originally posted by assault
On alternate New Yorks: obviously both Metropolis and Gotham City are New York in drag. In fact, prior to 1941, there were explicit references locating Batman's activities in New York. I'm not sure exactly when Superman's home town was named Metropolis, but it wasn't in Action Comics #1. The city there is unnamed, but it seems to be intended to be New York. (or perhaps Chicago? Did Chicago have high rise buildings in the late 1930s?).

*Ding*
Chicago is Correct!
(Though there is a smaller city in real-world IL named Metropolis)

For Detroit: Is "Motor City" too obvious? :)

[Stray Cat]

A long-running campaign with three GMs in our group was founded several years ago. We called it the Tri-City campaign. The Tri-City area is vaguely somewhere in the megalopolis between DC and Boston. The three cities that are in such close proximity are named Metro City, Golden City, and Highcastle.

We've also used real cities. My current campaign city is Miami. Another gm is gettin ready to revisit his New York campaign. The east coast is crowded for us. We've also had several west coast campaigns that we'll eventually return to. We have had major crossovers from almost all of them. I guess that sort of thing happens when ya play with the same group for more than ten years..

Another gm is creating a city in the Great Lakes region called Superior City. (I think it's near the real-world city of Duluth, and it doesn't hurt that there is already a municipality named Superior in that location.)

I've considered moving my Miami campaign to a fictional city too. I must say I was very impressed with Green Ronin's Freedom City sourcebook. I think it was the generic nature of the material that appealed to me.

Cat

[umbra]

Just be careful when making up cities, I had a former GM who thought the name Massengill sounded nice for an Amber game (not realizing where he had heard it before). He never lived that one down...

[Peregrine]

My fictional city (originally created some ten years ago, real time) is called Trinity City, located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, at the site of real-world Cairo, IL. The name of the city came from its history (as it grew ahistorically from extra railroads run into the area both antebellum and later) when the area suffered less from the Great Depression than cities further east, and FDR made a speech during the 1936 elections praising 'this trinity of cities' (at the time they were Cairo, IL, West Cairo, MO, and South Cairo, KY). Within six months each city had renamed itself Trinity City.

Ultimately, the three cities merged under one municipal government, but that's a tale for another day. :)

[st barbara]

To "Assault" So when the "Danger Alert" goes of in your hero's headquarters it starts singing the appropriate song from "The Music Man" does it ? ("I say you've got trouble, right here in River City")

[assault]

Originally posted by st barbara
To "Assault" So when the "Danger Alert" goes of in your hero's headquarters it starts singing the appropriate song from "The Music Man" does it ? ("I say you've got trouble, right here in River City")

Why yes! However did you guess?

In fact, of course, we have a _much_ broader selection of tunes than that. One of the disadvantages of being superheroes in a comparatively small city is having a lot of time on your hands. Recording show tunes is just one of the ways of dealing with this problem...

:)

Alan

[AnotherSkip]

Hmm I took Dernver and renamed it:
"Den City, the Diamond of the Rockies!!!!"

and how can you take _one_ of the cities in Texas and name it Lone Star City????
I'ts not bad, mind you, just kinda wondering how you could keep from slapping every one of the Lone Star State's cities with that title.....

[dei1c3]

I think the best way to avoid it is (with apologies to any Texans here) to have some kind of horrible tragedy destroy all but one of the cities in Texas. ;)

I'm just KEEDING!

Chris

[death tribble]

I'd just give Texas back to the Apaches.

And no I'm not kidding.

[Gold Rush Games]

I agree that where the city is located can (and should) have an influence on the city's name.

We took that into consideration when coming up with the name of the city in San Angelo: City of Heroes (http://www.goldrushgames.com/sacoh.html). So much so that the city's history includes notations about the founding of the city and the name (including the quirky misspelling that stuck). ;)

[dbsousa]

New Britain, CT is nicknamed "Hardware City", because Stanley Tools used to make them here. Now they make them elsewhere, but they are still incorporated there.

[rayoman]

Well, I have to say that I live in The River City almost all my life. It is commonly called on the maps, Louisville, KY. :) There is a little annual race that is run the first Saturday in May.



Originally posted by assault
I would like to stake a claim on the name: River City is in Queensland, Australia.

[assault]

Originally posted by rayoman
Well, I have to say that I live in The River City almost all my life. It is commonly called on the maps, Louisville, KY. :) There is a little annual race that is run the first Saturday in May.

That's OK, Louisville can be renamed Springfield. :)

Hmm. Well, there are a couple of Real World(TM) London's out there, not to mention at least two Perths, and a bunch of others. There's even a town named Texas a little way down the road from here.

So I guess duplication is OK. Still, it does cause a few problems. I'll see if I can think of a better alternative Brisbane, but, of course, River City does already have a pedigree of sorts.

For what it is worth, Toowoomba is known as the Garden City. It's original name was Drayton Swamp. Drayton was the original town, which is now a suburb. A dray is/was a kind of very large wagon drawn by bullock teams. They were the pre-railway freight movers of choice around these parts. The swamp has long since been drained, but the bitter, twisted and cynical have expressed opinions to the contrary. There was once a local independent publication called Frogtown.

But none of that helps with Brisvegas. Oops. Well, yes, Brissie is sometimes referred to as Brisvegas. The name became especially popular during the late '80s, when it was demonstrated that Brissie had a thriving illegal gambling industry. Now there are various forms of legal gambling all over the place.

But, unfortunately, I still can't quite see Brisvegas as the "official" name of a Champions Universe city.

Oh, and Brisbane is pronounced "Brisben". Calling it "Brisbayne" tends to mark you off as a dumbyankee. Melbourne is pronounced "Melben" too, not "Melborn". And then there's Wagga Wagga.

Alan

[Domino]

I've had a campaign city based on New Orleans for some time, and I called it Crescent City, because it's sure known more as the Crescent City than the Big Easy. That name was seemingly conjured out of thin air when the movie of the same name came out.

I've used Circle City for Indianapolis, and Second City for Chicago as well.

[GenreFiend]

Count me among those who prefer made-up cities for the main setting, but real cities for the rest of the world. But I never say, "Well, this place replaces such-and-such." I just leave it kind of vague. As for naming them, I either use a geographical feature, the place's role in the campaign, or just something I think is cool. For example, my last campaign was set is Seacoast, Texas. Seacost was misnamed, as it actually wason the Gulf Coast, but the name stuck. I also was planning to run a Golden Age game set in Campaign City. This would be a fairly large East Coast city somewhere between Washington, D.C. and New York City.

[John515]

The area I live in is essentially a bunch of small cities all right next to each other (Norfolk, VA Beach, Chesapeake, Hampton, etc) In my world, I changed it so that all of these cities were basically boroughs of a big city. A bigger, unified city would be better able to attact business and industry, etc, so I thought that it would've grown into a major metropolitan area over the last 75-100 years or so. This way, I can have well-know points of reference for the group while still creating a fictional setting.

[GenreFiend]

I once tried to use my real home town for a campaign. But I had a hard time figuring out why six superheroes and dozens of villains would suddenly show up in Asheville, N.C. (population about 70,000 IIRC).

[assault]

Originally posted by GenreFiend
I once tried to use my real home town for a campaign. But I had a hard time figuring out why six superheroes and dozens of villains would suddenly show up in Asheville, N.C. (population about 70,000 IIRC).

I generally assume that supers appear in clusters.

Obviously this is most likely where there is a common source for powers, such as a mutation emerging in the local genepool, an alien baby being rocketed to Earth accompanied by glowing green rocks, weird experiments, or just a costumed loon being fixated upon by other costumed loons. On the other hand, once a weirdness magnet develops, other weirdoes flock to it: mad scientists, mutie hunters, hostile aliens and so on.

Quite a lot of oddity can happen in quite a small town. On the other hand... it's at least a little difficult to believe that all this lot would be residents. It's more likely that most would come to town with some goal in mind, fail or succeed, leave, and never be seen again. Kind of like a TV episode. A smaller group could be residents, of course.

Then again, I must admit that I am straining to think of ways to keep _six_ superheroes busy in a town like Asheville, or Toowoomba, which is about the same size. It's rather likely in the Toowoomba case that they would be heading off down to Brisbane at fairly regular intervals - if only because they could.

I think I would prefer to run a smaller group in a smallish town. Of cause, that's not always an option. Unfortunately, nor is it always an option to go with a "Buffy and the Scooby Gang" structure, which is the other way of toning down the excess superness. Hmm.

Of course, I suppose you could always go with a Mutie School idea. The heroes have been gathered together to work on a common project (receive training, or whatever). The villains have come to interfere with their efforts.

Yeah, that's probably one of the better general cases. No doubt there are others, but it doesn't matter.

You are quite right - running campaigns in small towns can be quite awkward. For that matter, running campaigns in small _countries_ can be a bit iffy too! On the other hand, clustering your heroes is usually a bit easier in this case.

Why does New Zealand have such a high population of superhumans? Because of a mutation that emerged in the population 150 years ago...

Why are there so many supers in Toowoomba? Because Atom Man started training young supers once he retired from active adventuring...

Easy.

Alan

[Stray Cat]

This is how my first Champs campaign started out. The PCs were all from Oklahoma City or had reason to be in the vicinity. Part of the explanation for why so much was going on in the middle of nowhere was discovery of a large vein of metal from an ancient asteroid impact. At this point we have said the metal was actually uranium, so suddenly Oklahoma City has something worthwhile to export. But I may retcon that and make the material some nifty substance or superalloy. (Any suggestions?)

Cat


Originally posted by GenreFiend
I once tried to use my real home town for a campaign. But I had a hard time figuring out why six superheroes and dozens of villains would suddenly show up in Asheville, N.C. (population about 70,000 IIRC).

[Asperion]

I had a similar problem at the time that I created the campaign that I was running. The city that everyone was in was around 50,000 in size. This size is too small to make a supers population of any real size. I was able to solve this problem by before the principle villain in my campagn realize that he needs to do something to keep the go-gooding busy-body heros busy. The method that he used was similar to implimenting something similar to the Great Super Villain Contest before he got the heros together. Despite this there was sufficient evidence that states that the great benefictor was not as great as most people (including the PCs) believe him to be. He was able to time everthing so that the villains started appearing at the same time that he was able to pull the heros together. In addition the PCs were not the only heros that were brought in. The thing that set them appart from the others is that they were the most powerful and most of the time they were the first ones sent in, especially to the most dangerous missions. Most of the other NPC heros were built on 100 points instead of the 250 that the PCs were built on.

[PhantomGM6101]

Originally posted by red_eagle123
For all those world creators out there, how do you come up with names for cities? Do you try to just come up with something that sounds good, or do you come up with a generic 'non-real world' name (IE: Star City, Central City, Coast City, Gotham City, Metropolis, etc)?

If you had to rename Detroit after the catastrophe, how would you go about doing it? Just idle curiosity on my part, I'd be interested in hearing the thought processes of other world creators.
:cool:
I base my city by combining names or substituting names for current cities:
Newark NJ = New Arkham NJ
Raleigh=Capitolis NC
Durham = Bull City or Med City
Philadelphia PA= Patriot City[from Freedom Force,what else?}

Just think of a name that is associated with the state or the city and subsitute that name for its actual name in your campaign.