How do you name a City?

[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. 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 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]

I'll be using an alternate version of a real city

 

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]

Using your real-life city.

 

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]

Re: Using your real-life city.

 

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]

Re: Using your real-life city.

 

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.

[PhantomGM2602]

Re: How do you name a City?

 

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 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.