Map Week: Part 4 - Comic Book Cities in Role-Playing Games

[dewline]

Some of you may have heard of the role-playing games("RPGs", for short, and not to be confused with nastier devices known by the same abbreviation) Champions and Mutants and Masterminds. They're competing products in the super-hero segment of the RPG market. The former's been around for almost as long as there've been RPGs and done a solid job of holding onto their player/fan base, and the latter's doing a damned good job of playing catch-up as rookies go.

If there's one trope that the genre of super-heroes is known for, in comics or games, it's the habit of scratch-building cities that don't exist outside of the stories of the starring characters. And no matter which medium you're dealing with, if you decide to build a fictional city for your heroes and villains, you've committed yourself to doing a map of the place...or one of your customer/fans will do it for you eventually.

I don't have scans handy to link to at the moment, but I can produce links to some of the ordering information sites for some source material from those two lines that I consider outstanding in the best sense map-wise.

For Champions and its spinoffs:

• Vibora Bay, Florida
• Dark Champions: Hudson City

For Mutants and Masterminds:

• Freedom City Map - sadly out of print at the moment, although I'd hope that this will change. Having seen the original version in the Freedom City sourcebook, the map strikes me as an inspired stand-alone product.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, these products are part of what I'd call the gold standard of the moment.

Comments

[thothmeister.livejournal.com]

The Freedom City map just says sold out, though that may not be the case.

With the 2nd Edition FC sourcebook out, hopefully they'll reissue the map too.

There's a third city available for Champions by the way: DOJ introduced us to Millennium City last year.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

One certainly hopes that the Freedom City map continues to be sold as a standalone product. It strikes me as a Cool Piece of Work.