There are no superheroes in the city until now (Why is that?)

[assault]

I deliberately ended my last post where I did for dramatic effect.

 

There are any number of reasons why an Instant City could appear or disappear. You can do a lot of interesting things with them.

 

A couple of ideas:

It wanders periodically through time and space.

It's a kind of Brigadoon.

It's something like Atlantis in Stargate Atlantis.

It's a trap! Some Brainiac type wants a sample of humans for his space zoo. See also the old Doctor Who serial "Carnival of Monsters".

It's an experiment. Beings from another dimension are watching.

[Territan]

It wanders periodically through time and space.

 

Fancy you mentioning this, because in the other campaign I mentioned, this is becoming increasingly possible as the hero team is trying to track down the parts of a time machine (of ancient Greek design), and they're not quite sure what they'll do with it when they get it all assembled (but they've got some catastrophically, potentially campaign-endingly bad ideas).

 

The campaign has been through a number of other temporal changes (for different reasons), so things aren't uniform all over. A change to history might cause a city to spontaneously appear. But, because things have been changing around radically, it might be lagging behind other changes made in the campaign, or it might lead them. It might not have magic, or it might have a functioning star-port with ships waiting to go exactly nowhere, or it could be the shattered remains of a settlement of humanity after the Last World War in 1963. (The last one could be the most brain-breaking, so it's sorely, sorely tempting.)

[Ximenez]

I love the boom town because it gets into dirty local politics. If hero teams were based in cities, they would be like sports teams: an expensive luxury showing that a city was "legit." You'd have a group of people who really want the heroes there, and those who think they're more trouble than they're worth (not to mention the civil liberties issues). And what happens if the supers realize that the city officials and leading citizens who brought them to town are the real criminals? It would be fun to have superheroes who are fighting white-collar crime for a change. If super teams are only for really big cities, the heroes could be in the Bay Area, Seattle, Atlanta, Houston...if they're for smaller boomtowns, you could have Charlotte, Columbus, Austin. I like Charlotte because it's built on biotech and the financial industry, so lots of opportunity for fun criminals and an explanation of where the villains could come from.

[freakboy6117]

hmm, sort of a combination of boom town instant city and forgotten history.

 

in the 1950 Champion city was  the glittering jewel in new mexico a planned utopia and city of the future built by Professor Champion world famous scientist adventurer as a home for his advanced research campus and the team of mystery men he had lead through the war.

 

the city had its share of super-villains commie spies and alien invaders The prof and his cohorts kept the city safe from all comers.

 

until one fateful day in 1954 when a maniac in and outlandish costume Appeared out of no where atop the tallest building in Champion city with a strange device pulsing with unearthly energies . the battle was fierce the defenders of the city gave it their all but they where defeated one by one cast down, until only the prof remained atop the tower.

 

in desperate hand to hand with the mysterious foe the other heroes could only watch broken as the fight threw them into the two combatants into the coruscating energies of the device and then as suddenly as it had begun it was over Champion city was gone.

 

the police and national guard forces that where dispatched to investigate found  the rest of the team in the smoking crater that was all that was left of the city it was a great national tragedy the failed heroes and their descendants always had a shadow over them .

 

the crater would be investigated by scientists for decades with nothing coming of it and every year the families and descendants of those lost in the city would gather around the crater in silent vigil. until 60 years to the day the city came back as if it had never left filling the crater to the amazement of those gathered for the annual vigil.

 

now the city of tomorrow is back and a massive government project is underway to bring its population back into the modern world and the descendants of the original team have come to town to atone for there elders sins.

[Hermit]

I really like that.

 

I may even scrap the "New Gomorah" idea I've been working on (I was trying to mix all the elements) and use that instead.

[BlueCloud2k2]

One option I've used in the past (several times) is that the last team of heroes all died heroically (or were left permanently crippled). I tend to rotate exactly who the big bad was (current PBEM campaign was a demon called the Hungerer; in the past I've used a homebrew villain called Kahn the Conquerer (ripoff of Kang the Conquerer), Aliens, Time Travelers, what have you).

 

So the new kids on the block have some pretty big shoes to fill.

[Markdoc]

I too voted Instant City.  I love that idea.  I think it would be even more awesome if infrastructure and people started to appear there as more and more people settle.  Like, say, once it hits 5000 people, all of a sudden there's a police department, fully staffed.  Everyone who works for the police department has a history, address, Social Security number, and the like, even though the newcomers would swear that these people didn't even exist the day before.

 

You could call it "Sim City"!

 

Cheers, Mark

 

Note: as a GM, you could throw the PCs a curve by making the whole thing a simulation. When they work that out, they'd have to escape the simulation and then work out what it's for and why they were being "tested" in it.