11 thoughts on “Even a team of low-rent newbie supes needs a place to hang. How have people handled HQs?”

  1. Like, as a player or as a GM? I haven’t gotten to play enough for it to come up, but as a GM I just ask the heroes what their hq is like and how they get to and from it between crime fighting sessions.

    This has netted a repurposed subway station with Young Justice style teleport hubs, an even edgier Batcave running on nineteen eighty-something technology, and a Greco-Roman-Art-Deco palace in an alternate dimension that sucks in its current master and guests more or less at random. The first two are Mentor bases, the latter is a Sanctuary.

  2. First game I ran, I dropped “your grandfather’s golden age base with steampunk supervillain squatter” as the result of a Legacy’s 10+ on their start-of-session-move. Second game, they just hung out in the Doom’s house, because her family had a nice house and everyone else was in dorms or interdimensional refugees.

  3. They’ve inherited an old, 70s era anti-alien-invasion bunker that the Protege’s Mentor snapped up after killing the corrupt businessman who owned it. Protege’s Mentor is Bronze Age. I figure I’ll use it to pick at their relationship, even when the Mentor isn’t around, and to put the protege in compromising positions where they have to justify their Mentor’s behavior.

  4. Well I’ve been in about 3 days. The one I GM, the base is a sunken ship the players kept from a group of villains who attacked. The second was essentially a night club-it was the only private place they had to chat. The latest one is in the sewers, which has really bad cell reception.

  5. Love the fact that the first descriptor for the sewer isn’t stinky, wet, poorly lit, or cold, but terrible cell phone reception. That is SO today’s kids. 🙂

  6. A few good ones:

    -A warehouse that was condemned when the team almost destroyed it in the “How did you meet?” fight. It was bought up by the Atlantean’s embassy as a front for trafficking surface artifacts.

    -The Nanomachine Doomed’s Garage

    -The Mentor’s Mansion (with the protege basically living in the poolhouse)

    -A base underneath the school, implied to be one of SEVERAL secret bases built down there

    -A penthouse apartment belonging to a never-in-town globetrotter. The Delinquient paid for with tons of hacking; we made the Outsider clean the place in order to live there.

  7. I find that if they don’t have someone who comes with a base (like a Protege who picked that option, or a Doomed with a sanctuary), I ask them leading questions to emphasize that their starting base isn’t exactly up to snuff.

    “So, at least three of you go to school together, right? Is that what you use as a meeting place, school? Like, the AV room?”

    “So, you’re from all over the city, right? Where do you meet, and who does it put out to get there?”

    And definitely, as other’s answers above have pointed out, integrating as much of the backstory or actual characters as possible is the right move. For example, the Legacy’s folks can totally give them a base, but (especially since it’s not a straight-up feature of the playbook) it probably comes with wicked strings attached. Like all those security systems installed in the base that let your parents watch you if they’re worried.

    I’ve seen “bases” be club spaces at school, garages, abandoned buildings or subway stations, bowling alleys, or just people’s houses.

    I like asking the questions about the base after finishing with the “When our team first came together” part, especially leading into the all-important, “So, what’s your team’s name? Cuz if you don’t have one, you know, I’m good with naming you on behalf of the media…[insert terrible name here].”

  8. I haven’t actually run it yet (might get to tomorrow though!) but my plan is for the first session to involve a member of a disbanded Golden-age team who sees the PCs as potential successors and invites them to use her old base. Definitely with strings attached, starting with having to deal with the malfunctioning security system…

  9. Todd Zircher we have incense to help with the smell (not very well). Also, my character is a robot so can’t smell anyway. But yes, first world problems.

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