Barf Forth Apocalyptica

barf forth apocalyptica => Apocalypse World => Topic started by: benhamill on April 09, 2013, 12:07:49 AM

Title: Interesting Place Names
Post by: benhamill on April 09, 2013, 12:07:49 AM
The rule book mentions, incidentally in examples, a few interesting place names: The rag-wastes, the burn flats. And, of course, there's the famous Hatchet City.

I wonder: What interesting place names have you had at your table? Holding names, regions, bunkers, whatever. Let's share.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: noclue on April 09, 2013, 01:30:58 AM
We had a hardhold set up around an old drive in theater called "Now Showing..."
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: Krippler on April 09, 2013, 10:46:49 AM
Temple of a Thousand Sins: hocus temple in an old water tower. Not very sinful to be honest.

The Mirror Waste: glass desert with many calm pools of reflecting water. Beautiful but still radioactive.

Welcome to: a hardhold in the swamps runs like a giant BBQ-party that just keeps going. My favourite part was the Wheel of Justice which the hardholder rolled when someone was caught doing a severe crime. We simulated it with a D6:

1: legs cut off and thrown to alligators
2: outlawed in 10 minutes
3-4: hard labour and some lashes
5: lose a limb and roll again
6: free dinner and a night of hard partying!

The hardholder rolled so many 6's he actually went bankrupt and started rigging the wheel.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: Pheylorn on April 15, 2013, 05:00:10 PM
Naming Holds is one of my favourite parts of MC-ing Apoc World. Here are some of my favourites.

Outpost 86 - An old oil rig in the middle of a desert. Need to climb the ladders and stair along the sides to gain access.

Pigeon - Used this a couple times but players always avoided it. Dunno why.

Crow's Town - Used this name a bunch.

Lights - A town with a working wind generator and christmas lights and other various bulbs used to light it up at night. aka "Blow Town"

Maiden - My personal favourite as it was my Hardholder's Hold. A cruise liner moored in a swamp. Got it's name from the signs on it that were announcing it's Maiden voyage.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: Pheylorn on April 15, 2013, 05:00:53 PM
My favourite part was the Wheel of Justice which the hardholder rolled when someone was caught doing a severe crime.
Also, this is amazing!
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: noofy on April 16, 2013, 09:49:32 PM
My favourite part was the Wheel of Justice which the hardholder rolled when someone was caught doing a severe crime.

'You know the rules in Barter Town! Break a deal, face the wheel'.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: truemyth on April 16, 2013, 10:10:15 PM
We had town at the base of Mt. Rushmore that went by "Four Faces."
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: Nic.W on April 17, 2013, 02:16:00 AM
Carneville, a nonoperational cruise ship that served as headquarters for a band of raiding cannibals.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: Marsh_Fauna on April 24, 2013, 02:10:20 PM
When we play, I map what the players see and do on a huge piece of water color paper. Between sessions I take it home and add color and finer details, which includes place names.

The hold the players look out for is called Hopeton, because one of the players is a touchstone. The marshes they discovered in the early days of the game is Doghead Marsh, after a now dead warlord. The luxed out holds north of them are collectively called The Shattered Jewels. The center of town is just referred to as The Clock Tower because it is the dominant strategic position. River Witch Alley is where crews of cannibal pirates used to hunt before the players murdered them all. Zuto's Sword is the name of an island where important character growth occurred, a player switched from Faceless to Hocus there and left their sword stabbed into the ground kinda like the sword in the stone.

I really enjoy naming things after the players and their deeds.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: Krippler on April 25, 2013, 04:30:23 AM
The Valley of the Dead - A closed off valley with strange people living in it. Some of them are known to have died before but they have no memories of that. They drink a pink goo that bubbles from the ground in the valley and waste away within a month without it.

The valley houses an automatic cloning machine that operate according to a mysterious program. The clones use slightly different amino acids for their metabolism which are supplied by the pink goo.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: hanklevoncrankle on April 25, 2013, 11:42:33 AM
"The Dug-out"; Fortified settlement build around a baseball diamond...local watering hole is the "Bull-pen"

"The Heap"; Ruins & junkyard directly outside the Dugout. Looks like a large town hit by Tsunami debris…A really-really Dangerous place… the salvage gets better the deeper you go. In the heart of the area is a massive crashed Air-ship of the golden age.

"Stone-wall"; Walled city of sin in the wastelands

"Black-Bone"; Nasty little town run by a gang of slavers/cannibals led by Wolf

"The Slops"; Derog. name for the slums of a larger city

"Coin-Town"; the local market

"Fugee town"; Squatter camp outside the wall. The residents (refugee's) are barterless and desperate. Mix of folks from all around. Small time traders, peddlers, murders, workers, whores, junkies, the crippled and the sick, and....cultists…
Got the idea from the "Fugee's" in Children of men.

HankleVonCrankle

 
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: AlHazred on May 08, 2013, 09:35:44 AM
My game had "Dam Big" - the mostly-intact but gummed-up remnant of the Hoover Dam. They never did find out what kind of critters lived in the cloudy lake behind it, since they spent most of their time dealing with the scum of "Lost Vision," the remains of Las Vegas, not far away. In hindsight, I should have just called it "Lost Wages," since I don't think I ever hit the right note with the town.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: Anaphory on May 09, 2013, 10:04:39 AM
The hardhold of Colonel is called You Sir Force's Pendleton, and the two symbols of the local god You Sir Force, which can be seen in many places in the hold, are a single white star on top of a stripe of bacon, and pieces of cloth showing one quarter sky and three quarters bacon, therefore he must be a god of sky and bacon, so he is prayed to for rain and good pig hunts.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: benhamill on May 10, 2013, 09:15:20 PM
I ran a short sort of experimental few sessions. The PCs lived in The Oasis, named after what used to be a restaurant named after an actual oasis. Nearby was a smaller hardhold named Rock Town and, further away, one named The Tank.

A ways out of town, there was a place called Ippin Dep, which is known for being a nice place to score some serious jingle, but is also rumored to be cursed. Before the apocalypse, it was a Shipping Depot.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: Margolotte on May 22, 2013, 10:39:25 PM
I've played with:

Alison's Alley - a fortified housing block
Bargers - don't mess with them, they work the toxic river

The Luxor - the decadent and dying Vegas casino of the same name
The Garden - where the Maestro'D set up shop
The Pits - where the refugees wound up
Mom's Place - not somewhere you want to be
Terminal 2 - the remaining part of an airport

Silo 54 - an empty missile silo
Silo 39 and Silo 58 - neighbors

Gannison Island - in the middle of a swamp

The Hull - half an oil tanker, now a rave party with rooms up top

The Windmills - huge sections of incomplete windmills on a mountain ridge
Vally Camp - a trading post
The Mine - just what is says

Gover Mitney - the rest-stop along Governor Mitt Romney highway, most of the letters rusted or shot away
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: JasonT on May 23, 2013, 12:56:38 AM
We're playing in our own city (greater Boston area, mostly Somerville/Cambridge). So far place names have been based on actual locales, but reinterpreted by post-apocalyptic locals.

Summersville (Somerville Prospect Hill)
The Armory (neutral zone bar in Somerville armory, used as cafe/arts space IRL)
Hillzone (one of the other hills of Somerville)
Reverence (Revere, where Brace Win set up a holding/cult)
The City (downtown Boston, where the maelstrom is strongest)
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: hobbesque on May 23, 2013, 11:07:27 AM
We're playing in our own city (greater Boston area, mostly Somerville/Cambridge). So far place names have been based on actual locales, but reinterpreted by post-apocalyptic locals.

Jinx! Us too.

Ours is a cold apocalypse where survivors huddled in underground "cores" which formed the center of many of the current-day settlements. There's "the Yard" (Harvard Yard), inhabited by Yardies, run by someone bearing the inherited title of "Conductor" ever since ex-MBTA employees came on top in a power dispute. Nearby, the PC Chopper Lobster has converted a boathouse in to his own holding, the "Lobster Pot." There's "the Beaverhold" centered around MIT (whose school animal is the Beaver). The neo-neo-classical "Romulus" rules out of Government Center (an actual name of a T-stop). "Lady Belmont" rules feudal-style from the ex-suburb of that name (specifically the McLean hospital). South of the frozen Charles river (just "the river"), the Sox tribes live in "the Fens" (actual modern nickname), brutalizing outsiders and each other with wooden clubs.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: JasonT on May 23, 2013, 03:34:07 PM
Jinx! Us too.

Ours is a cold apocalypse where survivors huddled in underground "cores" which formed the center of many of the current-day settlements. There's "the Yard" (Harvard Yard), inhabited by Yardies, run by someone bearing the inherited title of "Conductor" ever since ex-MBTA employees came on top in a power dispute. Nearby, the PC Chopper Lobster has converted a boathouse in to his own holding, the "Lobster Pot." There's "the Beaverhold" centered around MIT (whose school animal is the Beaver). The neo-neo-classical "Romulus" rules out of Government Center (an actual name of a T-stop). "Lady Belmont" rules feudal-style from the ex-suburb of that name (specifically the McLean hospital). South of the frozen Charles river (just "the river"), the Sox tribes live in "the Fens" (actual modern nickname), brutalizing outsiders and each other with wooden clubs.

Everything in this post is excellent. I'd steal it myself if it weren't for the fact that several of the places you describe are overrun by people who spit black stuff and may or may not be possessed by ghosts.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: Krippler on May 23, 2013, 09:34:47 PM
In a recent game we had a trainpocalypse and the players had to stop their train for some minor repairs but pressing on would mean one of the cars would break down. As usual I flip to two random pages in a dictionary to see what comes up. Obviously another train would show up behind them.

Unstoppable Emperor

The Unstoppable Emperor is a 50+ car train headed by a huge black locomotive decorated by a two story tall bronze statue of a naked man holding a whip and a sword. The cars are three stories tall with the topmost floor just being huts and sheds built on top of the cars. It is a city in its own right with half a thousand permanent passengers and a feudal aristocracy that see to the running of the train.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: benhamill on May 23, 2013, 10:42:50 PM
The Unstoppable Emperor is a 50+ car train headed by a huge black locomotive decorated by a two story tall bronze statue of a naked man holding a whip and a sword. The cars are three stories tall with the topmost floor just being huts and sheds built on top of the cars. It is a city in its own right with half a thousand permanent passengers and a feudal aristocracy that see to the running of the train.
Oh. Em. Eff. Gee. YES.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: Scrape on May 29, 2013, 02:10:52 PM
Our mountaintop hold throws their garbage and bodies over the edge of the cliff. Years of this created The Garbage Wastes, who knows what is out scavenging there.

There was a little village based inside a crashed airplane. It was called Flyby.

There's an old amusement park on the outskirts, all the kids live there and call it Neverneverland.

Of course the sewers are standing but not functional. People call it The Dark and swear something lives there.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: azrianni on June 13, 2013, 11:23:56 AM
Was (briefly, sigh, my own fault) in an online game in a town called Gaga. Apparently a weathered, partial billboard outside the town had once been advertising a Lady Gaga concert.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: David Jay on July 22, 2013, 11:20:26 PM
Our apocalypse took place in a mostly flooded, equatorial central Florida. We main holding was in the University of Central Florida (most of the players' former school and workplace) and most of the names were taken from the area:

Versity City (main holding)
Lockheed (military city)
The Strips (airport)
Inktown (home of the psychic tree squids)
Jessup (one of the highest concentration of alligators IRL, spawning ground of mutant gator-ish things in ApoWo)
Magic Kingdom (Disney's creeping fascist empire)
Drownedtown (flooded downtown Orlando)
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: Withers on July 28, 2013, 02:16:50 PM
At the minute we're in post-apoc Vatican City fighting off Godzilla sized leviathans, demons and angels...

Hortus ab Meretrix = Garden of the Whore, or Maria's Place, strictly speaking the nicest place in town.
Angelus Cor = Angel Heart, which is more literal than you'd think.
Excrucio Vallis = Torture Valley, "the town of justice and self reflection".
In Sanctus Loculo = The Holy Coffin, the Pope and his inner circle never survived the Big Whatever, but no one comes back from his pad, either...
Felix Futuis = Lucky Fuck, holding of our brave, kind, good and heroic players.



Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: Krippler on August 08, 2013, 10:15:57 PM
Myrmidon's rest is a new town built on a flattened hill. It lies in the intersection of three major hardholds and is a big marketplace filled to the brim with dojos, fighting schools and various gangs. Nobody rules the town and major internal conflicts are usually solved by public duels.

Custom - Warrior code

The Arcology is a domed hardhold with see through glass. It has kept on trucking since before the apocalypse but some crucial system is broken forcing contact with the outside world (either a crack in the dome from which vapor escapes or broken down hydroponics). The inhabitants dress in stark color coded uniforms like mooks in a Bond-villains fortress. They look down on outsiders but are naive to the Apocalypse World. Their patrols have excellent weaponry, 4-harm stuff or better and they wear combat vests with the ability to revive the fallen. They are very afraid of death and they will retreat if they suffer more than 1-harm unless on some important mission in which case they are usually lead by their stay at home leader the Mindputer.

Fortress - The Arcology
Collector - The Mindputer

Arcologist combat vest: 1-armor defibrillator refill hi-tech
An NPC taking 2-harm wearing this vest will likely survive long enough to get proper care. A player character wearing this rolls+1 should they have taken 6-harm as if an Angel tried reviving them. The vest has enough juice and medicine for one charge.

When presented before the Mindputer for the first time roll+hot. On a hit you are allowed to breed, on 10+ you can't decline.
Title: Re: Interesting Place Names
Post by: nagasadow on February 07, 2014, 10:37:12 AM
Dremmer hung out in Fort Kroger for me, with Ambergrease north up in Soledad. Pass Easterly was a watchpost to the east, Angel Beach was on the river, Utter Perfection was demolished, Access Road was a multi level (megaton like) town, and the prewar underground megaprison of Marta Tarsus lay south, unopened.