Champions: One Earth (Bayport Megacity)

In the grand tradition of DC locations for super-hero teams, I've chosen to base the campaign in Not-The-San-Francisco-Bay-Area, Bayport MegaCity.

Much like the TV show, Streets of San Francisco, players will investigate and adventure across the entire Bay Area (and adjacent locations thereabouts) as the campaign unfolds.

Since my campaign is a mix between the investigation-structured Gumshoe game systems, and traditional super-hero cliffhangers and confrontations, I felt that naming it Bayport was a nice tip of the hat to my earliest introduction to mysteries and pulp adventures: the Hardy Boys. Calling it a MegaCity also conjures up the feel of an infusion of cyberpunk elements into the Northern California feel of the campaign setting -- which works with the West Coast presence of well-known DC & Marvel companies like WayneTech, S.T.A.R. Labs, Stark Enterprises, Rand Corporation, LexCorp, Roxxon Corporation, and so on.

That being said, I'm not slavishly following the naming of the roads and streets and areas. I'll be gleefully abstracting areas and renaming them for their flavor: seedy docks, colorful and mystical asiatowns, steel-and-glass skyscraping cityscapes, and all the stolen flavor of NorCal tourist spots.

GAMING RESOURCE -- San Angelo: City of Heroes

Now, the copy I have is for an older edition of Champions / HERO. This one from DriveThruRPG is actually for M&M and Action!System.

After a few of my adventures are completed, I'll be cribbing from this lovely superhero city supplements, one that feels so fleshed out that it'll hopefully bleed into my campaign and come across as an integrated & interconnecting setting. Written by Patrick Sweeney and Mark Arsenault, this setting has always impressed me by the way it communicates the feel of a lived-in superhero city.

Of course, it'll be a patchwork job with another city setting sourcebook...

GAMING RESOURCES -- Champions: Bay City Sourcebook

Yes, I did buy the Fuzion series of books. As a fan of both the Hero System and R.Talsorian's Interlock System (Cyberpunk, Mekton, etc.) how could I not pick it up?

Anyway, this little beauty sets up a series of locations and NPCs in the actual San Francisco Bay Area (slightly changed by the dangers of being in a super-hero universe), making it a joy to pick and choose locations for my players' characters -- residences, favorite restaurants, contacts, and backdrops to adventure!

It's also relatively easy to convert to the Hero System, because of the lineage of the ruleset.

With both of these, and the locations to be established by my initial adventures, the ingredients for the setting of the Bay Area MegaCity are complete. They just need to be mixed together in the course of a storyline to really feel solid.