Century station

[Riftmaker]

Where is Century station located in the US?

[SpiritInterface]

Where is Century station located in the US?

From the description it could be Detroit, San Francisco, Nome, Corpus Cristi... It is a major coastal port city that started as a mining town after the American Civil War. So you could place on any coast you want.

[Glistam]

It has no official location. It's up to the G.M. to decide where the city is located. This was left vague on purpose to emulate comic book cities like "Gotham," "Metropolis," "Coast City," "Central City," and any others I didn't list.

[NMI]

In the artwork, the maps show Gramercy Island being in the waters to Century Station's east, so feasibly, it should be:

East Coast of Texas
Along Northern half of Illinois, putting Gramercy in Lake Michigan.
Along the southern half of Wisconsin
East Coast of the USA.

[Glistam]

The Century Station book has this to say about Century Station's location:

Location Note: In game terms, one of the few aspects of Century Station deliberately left blank is its location. It is a coastal city in the United States, but after that, exactly where it lies is up to the Game Master. It could just as easily be within the crowded Northeastern Seaboard as it could be on the coast of Oregon or the Gulf of Mexico (Texas, Georgia, Florida, and such). Or, it could inhabit a fictional island somewhere. It doesn't really matter, just so long as its location fits conveniently within the boundaries of your campaign. Another reasons why the location is left blank was to pay homage to the great super-cities of comic book lore, such as DC Comic's Metropolis and Gotham City. Even though those cities were metaphors for real places such as New York, the fact that their precise locations were never nailed down lent a fantastic air to the places that went hand in hand with the equally fantastic champions and villains within the city limits.

Now that same section also says this about the city:

The city consists of a coastal, metropolitan lowland blocked off by Rattle Ridge, a low and thin system of hills that acts as a natural wall separating the inner city and the sprawling suburbs and farmland on the other side.

So basically: It's a coastal U.S. city. The map for the city shows that the city itself is to the West of its "deep coastal waters." The coast itself runs diagonally from Northwest to Southeast (like a backslash \ ) for about 30 or so miles (with an indent in the middle), but the U.S. coast doesn't have a lot of places where such a situation exists. Combine that with the rest of the description (coastal lowlands followed by a series of low hills) and its history (founded as a silver mining city right after the Civil War) and you really can't place it as analogous to any specific U.S. city.

[Reagren Wright]

There is an optional adventure for the city to be hit by a category six hurricane (Boris) so that to me says there is a strong
hint of putting it on the east or west coast.Second Gramercy Island Prison is an island so the idea of it in the middle of Lake
Michigan . Then again it is left entirely up to the G.M. Personally I always have it in Florida for my adventures.

[NMI]

There is an optional adventure for the city to be hit by a category six hurricane (Boris) so that to me says there is a strong
hint of putting it on the east or west coast.Second Gramercy Island Prison is an island so the idea of it in the middle of Lake
Michigan . Then again it is left entirely up to the G.M. Personally I always have it in Florida for my adventures.

I didnt say it was a plausible place to put Century Station off the coast of Lake Michigan, merely that based on the maps provided where they show the coastline on the east, Illinois/Chicago & Wisconsin are potential possibilities.

Could always change the Island to a modified Barge Ship - a floating prison if you will.

[The Artist Formerly]

Mentions Hurricanes, so US east coast.

Though when the book first came out, we were arguing about this a lot. We west coasters were sure it was on the west coast, with a silly map, and the east coasters were sure it was over there. Bill wrote it so it could be anywhere you need it, though.

[Razorwing]

The funny thing about the Century Station maps is that there is no direction indicator telling us which way is North.

Why is this important? It is important because this means you can twist and turn the map in any direction you want or need to put it virtually any place in the world. Just because the coast like is shown to be on the right in the map doesn't mean a thing without knowing what direction the city is actually facing.

Okay... maybe there are directional references in the various neighborhood descriptions, but those are easy to change if needed. So could any directional reference on a map if you want to get technical... but since there are none on the maps, it makes it easier to place the city anywhere you need it to be.

[SolCannibal]

Where is Century station located in the US?

From the description it could be Detroit, San Francisco, Nome, Corpus Cristi... It is a major coastal port city that started as a mining town after the American Civil War. So you could place on any coast you want.

Ok, Detroit is a port city in the Lake Michigan, but aint calling it "coastal" a bit much?

It has no official location. It's up to the G.M. to decide where the city is located. This was left vague on purpose to emulate comic book cities like "Gotham," "Metropolis," "Coast City," "Central City," and any others I didn't list.

Yes, it can be pretty much anywhere if the GM is in the mood to tweak. In one of my games it is AN DERELICT ALIEN SPACESHIP being repurposed as orbital watchpost and research center, with a sector dedicated to imprisoning alien criminals and invaders...

Or as my players call it "SDF-1 meets DS9, with a piece of Farscape stuck in, to make a hero's day to day life even more miserable." Love these guys.

[Galroth]

Where is Century station located in the US?

From the description it could be Detroit, San Francisco, Nome, Corpus Cristi... It is a major coastal port city that started as a mining town after the American Civil War. So you could place on any coast you want.

Ok, Detroit is a port city in the Lake Michigan, but aint calling it "coastal" a bit much?

It has no official location. It's up to the G.M. to decide where the city is located. This was left vague on purpose to emulate comic book cities like "Gotham," "Metropolis," "Coast City," "Central City," and any others I didn't list.

Yes, it can be pretty much anywhere if the GM is in the mood to tweak. In one of my games it is AN DERELICT ALIEN SPACESHIP being repurposed as orbital watchpost and research center, with a sector dedicated to imprisonning alien criminals and invaders...

Or in my players call it "SDF-1 meets DS9, with a piece of Farscape stuck in to make a hero's day to day life even more miserable." Love these guys.

Detroit is not on lake Michigan. It's on the other side of the state. It's actually on the Detroit river (odd I know), which connects to lake Claire which while being a big lake isn't one of the Great Lakes. So no, Detroit is definitely not a coastal city.

[Daniel Stoker]

Chicago or Green Bay would work though.


Daniel Stoker

[SolCannibal]

Where is Century station located in the US?

From the description it could be Detroit, San Francisco, Nome, Corpus Cristi... It is a major coastal port city that started as a mining town after the American Civil War. So you could place on any coast you want.

Ok, Detroit is a port city in the Lake Michigan, but aint calling it "coastal" a bit much?

It has no official location. It's up to the G.M. to decide where the city is located. This was left vague on purpose to emulate comic book cities like "Gotham," "Metropolis," "Coast City," "Central City," and any others I didn't list.

Yes, it can be pretty much anywhere if the GM is in the mood to tweak. In one of my games it is AN DERELICT ALIEN SPACESHIP being repurposed as orbital watchpost and research center, with a sector dedicated to imprisonning alien criminals and invaders...

Or in my players call it "SDF-1 meets DS9, with a piece of Farscape stuck in to make a hero's day to day life even more miserable." Love these guys.

Detroit is not on lake Michigan. It's on the other side of the state. It's actually on the Detroit river (odd I know), which connects to lake Claire which while being a big lake isn't one of the Great Lakes. So no, Detroit is definitely not a coastal city.

My bad, did a quick look online and misinterpreted the incomplete parts i got. Anyway, even worse then.

[Glistam]

It has no official location. It's up to the G.M. to decide where the city is located. This was left vague on purpose to emulate comic book cities like "Gotham," "Metropolis," "Coast City," "Central City," and any others I didn't list.

Yes, it can be pretty much anywhere if the GM is in the mood to tweak. In one of my games it is AN DERELICT ALIEN SPACESHIP being repurposed as orbital watchpost and research center, with a sector dedicated to imprisonning alien criminals and invaders...

Or in my players call it "SDF-1 meets DS9, with a piece of Farscape stuck in to make a hero's day to day life even more miserable." Love these guys.

That sounds like a pretty awesome game. I'd love to hear more.

[jaymz]

I put it in the Mass, Conn, New York state area. Simple.

[SolCannibal]

It has no official location. It's up to the G.M. to decide where the city is located. This was left vague on purpose to emulate comic book cities like "Gotham," "Metropolis," "Coast City," "Central City," and any others I didn't list.

Yes, it can be pretty much anywhere if the GM is in the mood to tweak. In one of my games it is AN DERELICT ALIEN SPACESHIP being repurposed as orbital watchpost and research center, with a sector dedicated to imprisonning alien criminals and invaders...

Or in my players call it "SDF-1 meets DS9, with a piece of Farscape stuck in to make a hero's day to day life even more miserable." Love these guys.

That sounds like a pretty awesome game. I'd love to hear more.

Well, it all started with a mistake on my part - early on when i was starting the game i read of a place called "Century Station" and, possibly due too much Aliens Unlimited & Skraypers in the head, misinterpreted it as Century Space Station, an international research center and orbital watchpost, but later on i would bring on some extras and the reveal that "the station" was actually the captured ship of a cabal of alien invaders of the 50s-60s that was disputed for a few years until a common agreement on how to explore the damn thing was settled through the UN's Security Council, so the crew and the occasional authorized supers would spend at least as much time exploring the place or dealing with nasty surprises from its diabolic systems as actually observing the solar system or potential alien threats.

Or at least that's what was known about it back then... about this time i came across the "a fifth portal to Dyval was found located in the sewers of a place called Century Station" reference in Dimension Book: Hades. While it made me think i might have erred somewhere, decided not to give a damn and just add detail - the PCs would find out through a number of adventures how deeper the mess went.

The invaders in the 50s-60s were not its actual makers, but just the most successful among the many waves of settlers/prisioners randomly rifted into the depths of its holds through the ages. A techno-sorcerous monstrosity built by a crew dead or gone long before anyone inside the thing knew (or admited to). Think some of the supernexus described in Rifts, like Calgary or St Louis, but with cyclopic TW-ruins everywhere and hard vacuum around it - not exactly appetizing for all crowds, eh? The "mutant clone armies & etc" the crew and several supers had been meeting and fighting for decades? Some were communities of refugees with no way out, others were the servants of beings with enough technical or esoteric knowledge to exploit the places transdimensional qualities for trade, espionage, infiltration - and rifting seemingly endless troops of faceless goons, with Solobaid, the deevyl's enclave in the station, being the worse of the lot.

Then i decided to actually take a look at the Century Station book and found it surprising simple to adapt and mine stuff beside the directions i had taken - "autonomous district" was upgraded into "autonomous protectorate" but a lot stayed the same under a lens of international intrigue and backroom dealing between governments and business trying to cash in as much as they could. And due to how i was enjoying the background buildup and because i love throwing a mess upon the PCs, i decided to play out my own versions of the arrival of Alpha Prime and the Bloody Sunday - and things got bloodier and messier by spades.

When things settled down, lots of alliances and betrayals went through and it looked like armageddon had nearly passed the planet twice over, governments fell, cities burned, the Covenant lost far more resources in the system than it imagined possible and one of reasons Dyval didn't take the whole system was a supervillain depopulating a part of the United States in a "rapture" that empowered the awakening of an empire of undead martians.

The international ultimatum, as one can guess, is a much more delicate, paranoid and tense thing, with authority in Century Station divided between UN (powered and non-powered) watchdogs, a Covenant enclave (that tried to take over the Station, failed but couldn't be quite pushed out), the Solobaid enclave (that receives reinforcements from Dyvval to hold the position) and the "Century Veterans", those heroes, villains and settled aliens/d-bees who weathered enough of the crisis to trust each other far more than arrogant or corrupt external authorities with no idea of the mess the place is, with silent but present support of the undead martians, what's a whole different can of worms in need of settling...

[everloss]

When I played in it using HU, I think it was put somewhere along the Gulf of Mexico. Just seems to fit in the South because of Diego Verde.

I use Century Station now (with a different name) as a location in my current campaign using a non-palladium system, based on 14th century Europe. It's the largest, most technologically advanced place on the planet, with a population larger than that of most nations. The empire that controls the land surrounding it allows the city to operate mostly free, with a tax against the nobility that control the city (who pass it on to the citizens). A religious order is about to carry out an Inquisition/purge to attempt to clear out the crime and decadence. The outerbelt freeway is an ancient defensive wall, and anyone born within it is cursed to never leave the city. Neighborhoods and districts are mostly the same. Since the city doesn't extend past the wall, it is built up, rather than out. So lots of gigantic structures in Midtown and Society Hill.

I've turned the map 90 degrees clockwise to fit geographically within the game world.

I consider Century Station to be one of the most useful RPG supplements ever made for any system.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Glistam has already quoted the book. In short, it's "Where ever the GM needs it to be". Coastal in general but you could put that many different places. Either of the coasts, or yes on the Great Lakes (People seriously underestimate how big these things are) Or even on the shores of a lake somewhere else. You're not constrained to real world geography. If you need a big ol Lake in Kansas and want to put it there. then have a party. Or put it on the shore of a river. They're all over too.

[The Artist Formerly]

I'm up and down on Century Station. It has some great ideas and some really terrible ones. So we tend towards looting ideas and transplanting concepts and sometimes entire districts to other locations.

[SolCannibal]

Fictional cities are always great setting tools, as you mine bits of pieces to make up your own, or port one version or another whole cloth in your own 'verses.

Once relocated Gotham City, Metropolis and a bunch of DCs imaginary cities across Canada, Australia, British Isles and other english speaking countries as joke "first move" into a slightly more international homebrew world (based in a initial mix of Marvel-DC expies with a bunch of homebrew connecting or redirecting the dots).

[Warmaster40k]

Do to experiments with dimensional technology century station is no longer located in a fixed location.

[glitterboy2098]

Do to experiments with dimensional technology century station is no longer located in a fixed location.

it is now next door to Springfield, USA

[SolCannibal]

Do to experiments with dimensional technology century station is no longer located in a fixed location.

it is now next door to Springfield, USA

Which one?

[Warmaster40k]

Do to experiments with dimensional technology century station is no longer located in a fixed location.

it is now next door to Springfield, USA

Which one?

Yes

[SolCannibal]

Do to experiments with dimensional technology century station is no longer located in a fixed location.

it is now next door to Springfield, USA

Which one?

Yes

Just as i thought.

[Matt]

Springfield...almost as common as Greenville!

Lately I'm using the city of Seaboard as my new game setting was inspired by the Atlas Comics line that lasted from '74-'75.

[Pepsi Jedi]

I use the "Excelsior School" or "Excelsior Academy" in many of my games. Not for 'cities' but as an analog for well known comic tropes.

[Hunterrose]

Anyone have a pic (official or otherwise) of the Silver City Skydome? I'm trying to wrap my head around the shape and porportions described in the book. The closest I can imagine is the Los Angeles Westin Bonaventure with an additional 20 story dome on top of it....

The Skydome, an experimental building consisting of a
10-story foundation, eight support columns (which also
house elevators) filling an otherwise empty 30-story
space, and a 20-story "habitation module" on top of the
stilts. How this building keeps from falling over is a
wonder of modem architecture but numerous folks suspect
some kind of alien technique was involved. The
building is a commercial complex on the bottom and the
lower 10 stories of the upper module. The middle 10
stones of the upper module are residential, and the top
10 stories are enclosed by the world's largest geodesic
glass dome, which encloses a massive greenhouse
and biopark.

[EugeneHann]

Not for 'cities' but as an analog for well known comic tropes.

[SolCannibal]

Anyone have a pic (official or otherwise) of the Silver City Skydome? I'm trying to wrap my head around the shape and porportions described in the book. The closest I can imagine is the Los Angeles Westin Bonaventure with an additional 20 story dome on top of it....

The Skydome, an experimental building consisting of a
10-story foundation, eight support columns (which also
house elevators) filling an otherwise empty 30-story
space, and a 20-story "habitation module" on top of the
stilts. How this building keeps from falling over is a
wonder of modem architecture but numerous folks suspect
some kind of alien technique was involved. The
building is a commercial complex on the bottom and the
lower 10 stories of the upper module. The middle 10
stones of the upper module are residential, and the top
10 stories are enclosed by the world's largest geodesic
glass dome, which encloses a massive greenhouse
and biopark.

Kind of like this perhaps? The "support columns filling an otherwise empty 30-story space" bit got me thinking of that me thinking of that kind of retrofuturistic aesthetic.

[RockJock]

I always used CS as Houston ish.

[Warshield73]

I always used CS as Houston ish.

Living in Houston for 25 years now I just never got a "Texas" vide from the description. East coast of course works best given all the descriptions and history so you don't need to change anything. The west coast is easy just make a few changes to description and say it was hit by a rare typhoon. I mean the description of a silver mine sure doesn't sound east coast to me so any location needs some work.

I almost always put it on the west coast somewhere between San Francisco and LA or North between San Francisco and the Canadian border. One place I thought would be a good location was on Lake Huron right on the Michigan/Ontario border and make it a truly international city governed by bother nations or even NATO if you want to do some Cold War stuff.

[matt.reed]

I put my CS in Florida, essentially replacing Miami or so.