Something interesting about settings for Masks fights: I like a street brawl as much as the next guy, but on occasion I like to set a fight somewhere out-of-the-way, so the heroes, their enemies, and any NPCs in direct danger have a harder time simply running away, and there’s a little more room for people to cut loose with powers. The obvious way to go with this is something like an abandoned warehouse, but I’ve enjoyed coming up with slightly more interesting settings like:
-An abandoned theater
-A run-down bowling alley
-A parking garage under construction, being used as the site of a rave
-An aquarium, just re-opened after a previous supervillain attack
-A performance venue in a park, built on top of the hand of a giant alien robot (the debris from a legendary superhero battle)
What fun setting have you found for Masks fight scenes?
The opera house, nearly ready to reopen after being damaged in a previous super-fight, with the Janus’s dad on site with his construction company.
(It was not ready to reopen on schedule).
Crashed down starship with alien/meta market
Underground military base now used by the bad guys
Alien fungus garden in an old mine
This is part of my notes for Marvel Heroic, but most of it should be adaptable for Masks:
a chase through a capital starship that’s being shot to pieces by another ship
atop the wings of an airplane or the back of a giant dragon in flight
hunting biotech terrors in dark and maze-like catacombs beneath the city
infiltrate a South American drug lord’s mansion and steal something secured inside
you’re in a spooky graveyard, it’s nighttime and foggy, and the dead are rising from their graves
in the face of an incoming disaster the city has been evacuated; do the heroes risk their lives to stop super-villains doing their thing in the otherwise empty city even while the tsunami/shockwave/firefront/death-ray approaches?
a villain has transported the heroes to another realm; they and their minions are hunting the heroes for sport through a fairytale/Dungeons and Dragons realm.
A completely automated Stark robotics factory has been infected by a malevolent artificial intelligence. The robots are running haywire.
Junkyard; a labyrinth of stacked cars, improvised weapons, trapping someone in a car door (ripped-out or not), pulling someone into a car, set up booby traps, the compactor, mean guard dogs
The heroes have been shrunk down to centimeter-scale and have to make their way through the hostile environment of an over-grown, dirty backyard; cats, dogs, bugs, and birds the size of giants. Empty beer cans. Glass shared. Pebbles. Muddy rainwater pools.
Hank Pym did it. “Oh of course he did. ****ing Hank Pym!”
Fight in a dense forest with a medieval castle ruin
Fight on an iceberg. Maybe in the Arctic, maybe the iceberg has been moved or created near the city.
Civilian hostages aboard the iceberg, or the crew and passengers of a cruise liner trapped in the middle of iceberg. The heroes have to get them to safety while villains try to stop them. When the evacuation is underway, introduce a complication – the iceberg is breaking apart.
The ruins of a fallen alien floating hi-tech city in the middle of the desert/the arctic/the ocean.
The Blue Area of the moon, where there is an artificially-mainted Earth-like atmosphere.
Also, check these out for inspiration: darkroom.baltimoresun.com – 34 aerial photos from around the world in 2012
Oh, I forgot. Oil rig fight. Every superhero story needs an oil rig fight.
Not escape proof, but some interesting open areas are stadiums, central train station, city park, metro or school bus depot, and shipping hub (either naval or trucking.)
I had one in the middle of a big traffic jam, with stampeding ghost cows. Also an oil rig fight like 1of3 said, the villains had converted it into a cloning lab. And most recently, the winter dance at the PCs’ school was disrupted by a supervillain student who shorted out the lights!
Abandoned theme park.
Hardware store.
I can see a themed villain using a theme park as a lair or a hardware store as a front.