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A location in a video game that serves as a base of operations. This is where all the main characters hang out when you're not on an actual mission. Typically, it's a relatively safe, enemy-free atmosphere - perfect for relaxing after an exceptionally grueling mission where things got so hard, you wondered if you would ever even make it back alive. It is where you will have free access to:

  • Your Level Selection screen, for replaying any completed worlds.
  • Your latest mission briefing for the next level objective at hand.
  • A place to view indexes of all your gameplay stats, including Achievements, unlockable levels and characters, and various records.
  • A mini-game lounge room (if the game features mini-games) for racking up bonus points, or just to have some friendly, casual fun.
  • Any optional sidequests or errands within Player Headquarters itself that advances the plot of the overall game.

Usually contains anything you need to replenish your Hit Points and the like, save the game, etc. If the player's inventory is capped, this location is likely to have access to a large or unlimited storage container. If your Player Party has an Arbitrary Headcount Limit, this is where you might exchange your party members.

You may not necessarily have it from the start, but it must be easy to access once you have it. You may be able to decorate it or even expand it.

Often mobile, it might be a Cool Boat, a Base on Wheels or a Cool Starship. If fixed, it may or may not be a Hub Level.

Compare Hub City.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Adventure 
  • Your Personal Media Tower in Total Distortion, which you blew your million-dollar inheritance on building, and an additional 1 million to get it and yourself teleported to the Distortion Dimension in the hopes of finding new material for music videos. The Media Tower comes packed with a wide collection of books, sleeping quarters, a high-end media station with Video Phone connectivity to Earth, an elevator chair, a fusion-reactor, and an automatic kitchen that makes food and drink using Food Goo. The catch is, your tower's fuel and food go can run out, and you have to make enough money to keep the place maintained, along with enough food to stay fed outside the tower. Oh, and on high danger settings, your tower can even be attacked by Guitar Warriors on the outside.

    Action-Adventure 
  • Arthur's House in Cave Story. You're locked out at first, and you won't even be able to get to the key until the plot thickens a little, but it then becomes the player's jumping off point for the rest of the first part of the game.
  • Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: Base of Dubaq is where all the early NPCs are, and progressing through story unlocks other bases. Being there also heals you over time.
  • The Dark Tower in Overlord. It's a bit dilapidated at the start of the game, but once you find the vital parts that were stolen from it and some construction equipment, your minions can restore it to it's former glory. Along with the throne room, armoury, and spawning pit, the tower comes equipped with customizable private quarters for you and the mistress of your choice- complete with a vault to store all your ill-gotten gains.
    • Overlord II has the new Overlord working out of the Netherworld Tower. Built into a massive stalactite suspended over a fiery abyss, this tower is even grander than the previous one; along with much more luxurious private quarters and the ability to resurrect dead minions at the minion burrows, you're also given the opportunity to drop offending visitors into the abyss. You can even travel around the Netherworld on floating asteroids!

    First-Person Shooter 
  • The Batcave levels in Batman Doom. Since it's a Doom mod, you cannot go there anytime you want to, but after defeating each end-of-chapter boss you return to the Batcave where you find some supplies. More interestingly, the Batcave has a different, cleverly hidden secret area each time you revisit it. It is also where you fight the Final Boss, Bane.
  • In Deus Ex, the UNATCO headquarters on Liberty Island served as JC Denton's homebase. At least for a while.
  • In Doom Eternal, the Fortress of Doom serves as your home base, located in space overlooking Earth. There's plenty to explore in here, with upgrades and skins hidden behind locks that require Sentinel Keys to unlock. There's also the Ripatorium to do combat with enemies without fear of dying or losing resources, and all your collectibles are stored here for your viewing pleasure.
  • The End Times: Vermintide and Vermintide II have the player characters gather in the Red Moon Inn and Taal's Horn Keep, respectively, between missions in the surrounding region. Features include a level-selection map; quarters for the PCs; diegetic versions of the Item Crafting, inventory, and other menus; and a snarky innkeeper.
  • Inverted in Left 4 Dead (and any other game which is based around escaping a hazardous area), where the whole point is to reach such a place (although the "safe rooms" which start and end the levels may count as they allow you to stock up on ammo, switch weapons, provide a medkit for each person in your party and allow fallen players to respawn once the surviving players reach them). However, going there is not that easy, and staying in these safe rooms for too long can bite you in the ass when zombies inevitably force their way in.
  • The TCA Atlantis serves as this in Unreal II: The Awakening, which you return to after every mission. There's little to explore, but you can talk to your crew.

    Hack-and-Slash 
  • No More Heroes has Travis' hotel room where he can change, watch TV or save the game. He also receives missions via the phone. No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle lets Travis move around and play several minigames, other than occasionally talking to his friends, since the lack of a playable overworld would render all his destinations inaccessible otherwise. And in No More Heroes III, he has a fully-functional futuristic laboratory next to it.
  • Path of Exile features Hideouts, which players can randomly find in act zones and maps (or purchase) and use afterwards. They come standard with a waypoint, stash and crafting bench, and Masters and some other NPCs can be invited here for easy access. In the Playable Epilogue, you'll be spending most of your time here to use the map device to progress through the endgame.

    MMORPG 
  • City of Heroes has fully customizable Super Group bases that allow, among other things, storage of salvage, enhancements and inspirations; teleporters to the various zones; a medical reclaimer where you can resurrect when defeated (instead of the in-zone hospital or worse, a hospital in another zone); access to empowerment stations where you can buff your stats, and more.
  • Free Realms first offered every player a rather small apartment, but soon expanded into offering small and large varieties of houses. All sorts of weird and wacky decorations were offered, and some skillful designers were able to create rudimentary extra floors. Players were able to visit other peoples' houses at will.
  • Mabinogi has the Homestead, accessible instantly from anywhere in the overworld. It can host various crafting tools that are normally found only in a few towns (and Homestead versions never require fuel or a use fee), as well as minor resource supplies like woodchopping blocks, fishing ponds, and herb patches. It also has plenty of cosmetic items, up to and including a floating crescent moon that you can sit on and chat with friends. No storage, though.
  • Phantasy Star Online 2 has the Arks Ship, a spaceship where players can shop for supplies and arrange parties and missions to other worlds. Players can also purchase their own customizable rooms.
  • Star Trek Online plays with this trope a bit.
    • Technically, your Cool Starship is your player character's home base. However, you do not have any storage functions on your ship beyond sending something to your limited Account Bank from your ready room. Your character's personal storage and mail systems can only be accessed at Hub Level's like Earth Spacedock, New Romulus, Qo'Nos, Deep Space Nine and so one or by using a summonable freighter.
    • Players who own playable freighters and the Suliban Cell Ship have one proper as their Cool Starship. The tradeoff being it's a Used Future cargo vessel and not a combat-ready ship.
    • Fleets have their own Starbases and holdings that serve as this. At high enough rankings, players can instantly transwarp to them.
  • Star Wars: Galaxies featured a large variety of non-instanced player houses from small and big regular houses of different styles to sail barges, Sith temples, bunkers, hangars, towers and more. Players were allowed to freely place them pretty much anywhere outside of NPC cities. Many guilds also formed player cities as their base of operations. Players could use them to store items and freely decorate the interior with pretty much all items from their inventories. Those who chose the Structures Trader profession were also able to craft lots of different pieces of furniture for other players. Players of the Trader professions could also use them as shops to sell their crafted items. Additionally, players who owned multiplayer ships like the Sorosuub Luxury Yacht, Y-8 Mining Ship, YT-1300s (like the Millennium Falcon), etc. were also able to decorate them just like their houses and use them as their Base on Wheels.
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic originally intended your personal ship to serve as your player headquarters. This got knocked out of the water when they released Strongholds in version 3.0, however, as not only can you instantly travel to them from anywhere, you can also use them to instantly travel to your shipnote , or to instantly travel to your faction's Fleetnote . The cheapest and most basic choice would be an apartment on your faction's capital planetnote . The next step up is a floating "sky palace" on (above?) Nar Shadaa, useful in that it caters to your characters from both factionsnote . Then there's the Tatooine villa, and most recently, the Yavin IV Temple, both of which cost millions. Guilds can purchase a Guild Flagship, which costs tens of millions in investment, but are totally worth it. Not every Star Wars game lets you chill out on your very own guild star destroyer, after all.
  • World of Warcraft's Warlords of Draenor expansion gives the player a whole hub city, and not exactly a small one at that, take a look. It's not only very ego-stroking, but functional, allowing players to support their professions as well as have NPCs handle other professions for them, send out followers on quests, and can be customized with a variety of guards, banners, statues, and entire buildings. A fully leveled Garrison looks as impressive, if not more, than most towns in the game.

    Platform Game 

    Real-Time Strategy 
  • In some games, to 'win' you need to protect your Player Headquarters. Homeworld is an example (with The Mothership as your Player Headquarters), but there are many others, such as StarCraft.
  • Pikmin has the ship Olimar came in which traveled into high orbit to avoid the nocturnal creatures every night.

    Roguelike 
  • The Pokemon Paradise in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity serves this purpose; the home of your hero and partner, the mission boards, a place to adjust your team roster and a basic shop being there initially. Over time, you're able to expand it into a proper place for Pokemon to live, having them open and run more specialized shops, dojos to power up your moves at, and farms that can grow seeds and berries, among other things.

    Role-Playing Game 
  • Baldur's Gate II had different strongholds for almost every class in the game. The expansion upped it with a private dimensional pocket you could teleport to at will.
  • Grillin Village in Brave Fencer Musashi. Its sequel, Musashi Samurai Legend, has Antheum.
  • Breath of Fire II has Township. At first it doesn't seem like much, but later on in the game you can heal, save and change your party there, the Fusion Dance granny and her shamans move in there, you can invite various people, some of which will open shops or provide other services, and late in the game it is possible to make it fly.
  • Another example is the End of Time from Chrono Trigger, which has a Hub Level, a save point, a healing point and a dock for your Global Airship, a portal to the final boss, and the God of War's crib.
  • The turning point in Cosmic Star Heroine is when you get your own Cool Starship, which houses crew you can chat up for information, buy/sell weapons and shields and most importantly travel to other planets in the Zebanii system.
  • In Divine Divinity you can use abandoned houses for this cause, or buy/rent one after solving a quest.
  • Dragon Age series:
    • The camp in Dragon Age: Origins and Arl Eamon's estate in Denerim during the endgame. Soldier's Peak also serves the same function in the DLC once you clear out the demonic infestation and deal with Avernus; in Awakening, it's Vigil's Keep.
    • Dragon Age II has Gamlen's house in Act I and Hawke Estate for the rest of the game.
    • Dragon Age: Inquisition has Haven for the first act. After it is attacked by the Big Bad, the Inquisition moves to Skyhold, an abandoned fortress in the mountains.
  • In Dragon Slayer, you can return to the house you start off at to replenish your health and, if carrying the right things, increase maximum health and attack power. If you have a ring, you can move the house to a spot more convenient for grinding. You also have to bring the four crowns back there after slaying the dragon, but it's not so easy.
  • In EarthBound (1994), you'd think this would be Ness' house, and you'd be right until you leave Onett and getting there becomes inconvenient. Saturn Valley later takes its place, especially once you get Teleport Beta. Dr Andonuts' laboratory would have made a good HQ if only you could teleport directly to it.
  • Elden Ring gives us the Roundtable Hold, a strange Pocket Dimension of sorts separate from the rest of the map where you can talk to NPCs, upgrade your weapons, visit merchants, and start quests. It's under a binding spell that prevents anyone there from attacking each other (except for one large hall where you can be invaded by an NPC), to prevent the player from breaking game progression by killing everyone. While the exact nature of the Hold is left mysterious, later in the game you can find the Fortified Manor in Leyndell, which looks exactly like the Hold but in an advanced state of ruin.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • The series, in general, has the "kill a person and take over their house" variant. On the positive side, this is an extremely cheap option and will let you take over any house you want if none of the purchasable/buildable options appeal to you. On the downside, someone has to die. Further, depending on the game, putting items into their containers may mark them as "stolen" when you remove them, or the containers may reset, causing you to lose all stored items. Additionally, their bed may still be marked as "owned" even after death, so you might not be able to rest in it.
    • Daggerfall allows you to buy a house in a number of locations. It will allow you to store loot safely and rest.
    • Morrowind:
      • In Seyda Neen, an early side quest has you track down the murderer of a local tax collector. When you find the murderer, you may choose to execute him for his crimes. If you do, you can safely use his shack as your home while in the area. It contains a hammock for sleeping and a few containers for storage.
      • After a certain point in the main quest, Caius Cosades is recalled to the Imperial City. He lets you have his small Balmora house to use as you see fit. It contains a bed for sleeping and several storage containers.
      • In order to complete the quest lines for the three Great Houses, you'll need to build yourself a stronghold. After getting the construction contract, paying for the construction, and taking on a few quests to eliminate obstacles to construction, you are free to move into your new manor. Additional quests build up the area around your house, turning it into a small town complete with at least one trader. You also get quests to kill the people owning the two strongholds of the other two Great Houses, leaving them free to be inhabited (although since the additional quests aren't available, they have less conveniences available).
      • Upon completing the East Empire Company questline in Bloodmoon, you are rewarded with the Factor's Estate. It is a massive mansion in Raven Rock, the mining town you personally helped to grow from nothing.
    • In Oblivion, you can buy houses from the head of any major town/city. Each one is different: the house in Bravil is cheap and kind of run-down, but large; the house in Skingrad is extremely expensive, but it's a massive mansion, and you can get a servant.
    • In Skyrim, it's similar to Oblivion. You can buy houses from the heads of the major towns and cities, but unlike Oblivion, you need to earn the respect of the head through completing quests for the people in their town. Yes, even if you're a well-known Dragonborn who resolved the civil war and prevented The End of the World as We Know It. The Hearthfire DLC allows you to construct your own home at one of three locations, but you must still do the "complete quests for locals" requirement.
  • Exit Fate has Elysium Castle, which starts out with save points, an inn and the ability to swap party members and eventually grows to contain every type of shop, multiple optional minigames, the ability to teleport to and from anywhere in the world and more.
  • Fallout 3 has two Player Headquarters: the Megaton house for good players and the Tenpenny Tower suite for evil ones. Brotherhood of Steel bases serve this function (late) in the first two games. Medical facilities, item storage, even surgery to improve your stats are available.
  • Fallout: New Vegas features a variety of them, including faction-affiliated safehouses, motel rooms in Novac and Freeside, the Lucky 38 and The Tops Presidential Suites, high roller suites in The Tops and the Ultra-Luxe, and — after completing the relevant DLC — an abandoned Brotherhood of Steel bunker and the Sink at Big MT.
  • Fallout 4 has the Home Plate apartment in Diamond City, which can be purchased for the sum of 2000 caps, as well as player quarters in Vault 81 (after completing Hole in the Wall), the USS Constitution (after unlocking the Captain's Quarters either by Master Lockpicking or obtaining the key from Ironsides during Last Voyage of the USS Constition), the Institute (after completing Synth Retention), Listening Post Bravo, and the Prydwen (both after completing Blind Betrayal). The many Settlements around the Commonwealth can also be outfitted as player bases, which come in handy in the updated Survival Mode where fast-travel is disabled, carrying capacity is reduced, and food, drink, and sleep are mandatory. The Nuka-World DLC has Fizztop Grille, Overboss Colter's old residence, which you inherit after killing Overboss Colter and becoming the new Overboss of the Raiders.
  • In the horror RPG Fear & Hunger: Termina, a train and the PRHVL Bop jazz club/bar serve as this, serving as a place to dump off party members, go to sleep, or draw an Old God sigil in.
  • Most Final Fantasy games rather use the biggest Global Airship as a mobile HQ:
    • The Invincible of Final Fantasy III: Airship. This one even had shops in it.
    • The Lunar Whale in Final Fantasy IV: Spaceship.
    • However, Final Fantasy V had the Catapult, the Lost Technology underwaterground base where you dock your Lost Technology airship. With two scientists working for you full time!
    • The Blackjack in Final Fantasy VI: Airship. Complete with a lounge, engine room, bedroom, merchants, and casino! The Falcon replaces the Blackjack later on, but it has fewer creature comforts. Both allow you to change your party.
    • The Highwind in Final Fantasy VII: An airship which even contains a chocobo stable. The game also allows you to purchase a luxury home in Costa Del Sol. You can rest there as a free inn after paying the initial cost. Of course, it costs 300,000 gil, and you'll never spend that much in game purely on inns.
    • Balamb Garden in Final Fantasy VIII: Starts as large military academy, and then lifts off and flies around.
    • The Fahrenheit in Final Fantasy X: Airship. Comes with a merchant and several recruitable blitzball players, and readily accessible from most save spheres.
    • Quite explicitly, the Celsius in Final Fantasy X-2, complete with an item shop.
    • A Mog House (which is a misnomer, as it's really a Mog Room) in Final Fantasy XI allows adventurers to:
      • Check their at-Moogle inventory, which includes a Safe, possible storage space from furniture, and a Locker acquired as a mercenary of Aht Urhgan,
      • Check for any deliveries, which include gifts from players and profits from auctions,
      • Change your job class into pretty much whatever the hell you want,
      • Perform gardening, which can result in possible rare items,
      • Place and arrange furniture, which adds storage space and bonus effects,
      • And even invite your friends in, no matter if the House is a pig's sty or not.
    • Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings takes this and runs with it. It's the only area in the game where nothing is trying to kill you.
  • Kingdom Hearts has a few. Most notably Traverse Town in Kingdom Hearts and Radiant Garden in Kingdom Hearts II.
  • In Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the player gets a home in every area where they can store items, change their appearance, brew potions, create gems, and/or forge armor and weapons. They slowly build in opulence from an abandoned house in Canneroc to a full-fledged castle on the Caeled Coast.
  • Your apartment in Taris, then Ebon Hawk in Knights of the Old Republic. In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, it's a Telos apartment, then again the Hawk.
  • In Legacy of the Wizard, the Worzen family home is the only place to switch characters or save the game.
  • Your house in Legend of Mana is host to your character's orchard, smithing forge and monster ranch, and as you complete questlines, relevant party members will come to stay there as well.
  • Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis has the party claim a communal workshop where you can save and synth items.
  • The Normandy throughout the Mass Effect series serves as Commander Shepard's headquarters where they can talk with their squad, buy/sell equipment or construct upgrades. In Mass Effect's DLC Pinnacle Station, if you survive Ahern's insanely hard simulation, he will give you his house on a nearby colony world. In addition to a cool view, it also has grenade and medi-gel dispensers, and a radio you can use to purchase equipment from passing convoy ships.
  • Metal Walker has various base camps. Some are in fixed locations, but most you can place yourself.
  • In Might and Magic VII the tutorial quest ends with your heroes being declared Lords of Harmondale, with the first story arc after that being to fix up the ruined Castle Harmondale and try to get some actual respect. The role of player headquarter gets shared between Castle Harmondale itself (once fully repaired it has several services, it has a target for Town Portal, and some main quests involve meeting representatives of other nations in the throne room) and Harmondale City outside the door (has a variety of other services, including travel links to other regions).
  • Neverwinter Nights has the various Temples of Tyr.
  • In Neverwinter Nights 2, the Sunken Flagon inn is this at first, succeeded in mid-Act II by Crossroad Keep (which doubles as an Unexpected Gameplay Change). The first expansion Mask of the Betrayer has the Veil Theater. Storm of Zehir, again, has Crossroad Keep, and more specifically your Merchant Headquarters inside its courtyard.
  • The Outer Worlds has the Unreliable, which serves as both the player’s headquarters and their main way of traveling between planets.
  • Pandora's Tower: The Observatory, located not too far from the Thirteen Towers, serves as a safe hideout for Aeron and Elena (who are fugitives). Inside, Aeron can save his progress, sleep to change the time of day, interact with Elena, buy and sell goodies with Mavda, and find and read log entries regarding the game's backstory.
  • Persona 3 has the special MegaCorp-funded dorm where all the SEES members live. Persona 4 one-ups it with the Investigation Team's very classy "secret headquarters," which is the Junes food court. Persona 5 has the protagonists initially use the school rooftop as their hideout, switching soon after to a train station walkway, then finally settling on Café Leblanc, where the protagonist lives, for the rest of the game.
  • In Pillars of Eternity, one of the early story missions sees you seeking out an older Watcher in his keep of Caed Nua. Arriving there, you discover that the keep has been all but abandoned and fell apart after its former master was driven insane by his condition. After he attacks you and you have to put him down, the keep's Genius Loci proclaims you its new master, tasking you with restoring its many, many dilapidated facilities, as well as hiring a garrison to defend it. Once you do, the keep provides safe haven with Resting Recovery opportunities and vendors, as well as a treasury. It also hosts the entrance to the single largest dungeon in the entire game, appropriately dubbed "the Endless Paths". A later patch adds a quest-chain involving the legal ownership of Caed Nua, with a lord raising a claim to it. The magistrates rules in his favour but adds a clause about him having to compensate you for clearing it of monsters and repairing damage, and when he instead storms off in a huff the magistrate passing on the decision says that since the other lord refused the judgement, by default you get to keep Caed Nua. You still end up having to protect yourself from other underhanded means of undermining your rule, culminating in a full-on mercenary invasion.
  • You can get a secret base in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, its remake, and Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. The RSE/ORAS one can be made anywhere there's a marker once you have a Pokemon with Secret Power. In Gen IV, it's in the Underground, the subterranean labyrinth under the Sinnoh Region. You can decorate it and interact wirelessly with other players/visit their bases. There's also the Pokémon Centers, which serve as this to all Pokémon trainers, especially in Gen V onwards, since the Pokémart was combined with the Pokémon Center, allowing you to rest up, organize your team, do shopping, trade/battle with other players (in Gen V) and change clothes (in Gen VI), all under the same roof. Professor Krane's lab in Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness is a bit more straight example.
  • Pokémon Legends: Arceus has Jubilife Village, which is also a straighter example. You can access pokemon changes and buy items at base camps, and you can craft anywhere once you unlock the Crafting Kit, but can only access item storage and report to the captain by going back to the village.
  • Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army has Tsukudo-Cho, which has the Narumi Detective Agency (Save/Review/Push in the right direction (if Narumi's there)), Konnou-Ya (item shop), and under that, the Gouma-Den (Fusion/Healing).
  • Skies of Arcadia has the two ships you travel on, most notably the Delphinus. Vyse also establishes his own pirate base in the latter sections of the game.
  • In Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, there's a place near the GUN base where you can go to replenish HP and PP, and change who's in your current party without having to wait for a plot point. It's not really a hub, as part of the game lets you fly from area to area using the Tornado, and on foot, its area only separates the first area from the rest of the world.
  • The Suikoden series has the non-mobile version; in each game you get a castle (or some sort of similar building) that serves as your headquarters. Once you've recruited the right people, you can quickly teleport between it and the outside world.
  • The Van Eltia in Tales of Eternia.
  • The Lhant Manor serves as a non-mobile version of this in Tales of Graces. The shuttle serves as a mobile version but you have to pay to sleep in it... but can use it to fly around the world for free!
  • Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader: Your ship, a repurposed Imperial naval frigate, acts as your HQ, with the bridge being where most business is handled.
  • The Ultima series as a whole has Castle British, home to Lord British who will provide the Avatar with all the aid he can, including providing healing and level-up services. Ultima IV also offers a hostel within the castle where your party members will hang out when they're not in the active party.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles X has the BLADE Barracks inhabited by the player character, Elma, and Lin, where you can customize the decorations, fine-tune your Skells, go on quests with other players, and start the main story quests. New Los Angeles as a whole also counts to a lesser extent, as you receive almost all other quests and interact with most NPCs there including all the recruitable party members; excluding a handful of BLADE stations and Nopon caravans, the rest of the game world is hostile territory.

    Shoot 'em Up 
  • Star Control 1 and 2 have starbases where you can build additional ships. In the first game, The starbase is just good for cranking out ships. In the second game, you have one starbase that you continue to go to for resupply, story info, and is pretty much your staging ground for the entire campaign.

    Simulation Game 
  • Of course, your house in Animal Crossing games! In addition to being yours to decorate as you choose, it's where you store your items, listen to music, play NES games (in the original), save, and receive your mail. New Leaf adds the Mayor's Office, where you can set ordinances and order the construction of decorations and new buildings.
  • Barn Finders: The titular store, Barn Finders. It's a pawn shop you and your Uncle Billy are running. From there, you can accept jobs via E-mail to collect objects from various barns, spruce the place up, fix and clean items, and put said items on display to sell.
  • Your farmhouse in the Harvest Moon. In several games in the series, you can buy other properties and build smaller houses on them.

    Stealth-Based Game 
  • Assassin's Creed:
    • Assassin's Creed II gives you the town of Monteriggioni (a real life location) which includes your house, the Villa Auditore. It's a pretty cool place, and if you upgrade it, you can earn lots and lots of cash.
    • The series gets other different HQs along the way. Brotherhood has the Assassin HQ in Rome, with Ezio using the money he earns to renovate Rome into a thriving city, then does the same thing with Constantinople in Revelations. In 3, Connor has the Davenport Homestead, bringing in settlers of different walks of life. 4 has Great Inagua, which starts off as a hidden port for the Templars, but becomes a pirate island once Edward takes over. Unity has the Cafe Theatre which starts off as a rundown theater, but after Arno fixes it up and does missions, it becomes a thriving hotspot. Syndicate has the Train Hideout, a moving locomotive the twins use as their base of operations. Either Jacob or Evie hang out there when the player is controlling the other. Valhalla gives us the town of Ravensthorpe for which building it up and expanding it is a major component of the game.
  • Hitman 3's Freelancer mode has a safehouse serving as Agent 47's base of operations between contracts. The main area lets you view mission locations, objectives, and intel on the current Syndicate leader; pick an optional Prestige Objective (except in Hardcore Mode, where picking one is mandatory), and select items from your stash to bring with you into a mission. As you obtain more mastery levels in this mode, you can unlock more areas in and around the safehouse (which can also hold free items you can take with you into missions), as well as cosmetic items for decorating the place (including different vehicles for exiting to missions), and soundtracks for an in-game music player.
  • Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker features the Mother Base, a former oil platform where you can organize your teams into various duties such as Combat, R&D, Intel and also go and do target practice, handy for raising weapon stats at little risk to the player.

    Survival Horror 
  • The Security Room in Dead Rising. Then later on, Carlito's hideout.
  • The tram loading rooms in Dead Space usually contain a store and a save point, but occasionally contain enemies, especially if you're coming back to them a second time.
  • The fast-travel "twin huts" in Radiation Island provide a place to heal up, restock, and sleep in relative safety. You can craft extra chests to store things. A recent update gave players the ability to build their own houses, complete with multiple floors, stairs, and functional doors. The doors open only for the player who installed them, turning any building into a secure hiding place or storage area. Craft enough furniture like tables, desks, chairs, and beds, and An Interior Decorator Is You as a bonus. However, only the inside of a hut is safe; the environs immediately outside may be a different matter entirely.
  • All the save rooms throughout the Resident Evil games. Safety, save points, and access to unlimited storage containers.
  • Silent Hill 4: The Room plays with this. In between the action levels, you can go to your apartment, where you can save, store and retrieve items, and, most importantly, slowly regenerate your health. For the first half of the game, you'll settle into a pattern of entering the apartment, then leaving the game to grab a snack while the health goes up. As the game progresses, a bunch of evil spirits start to move in and can damage you, eventually doing more damage than is repaired by resting. You end up spending as little time as possible there, saving and doing item work at a paranoid pace.
  • State of Decay uses this as a core gameplay mechanic. The player must always have a headquarters, as it is where characters resupply, rest, and heal. A major focus of the main game is settling and upgrading increasingly-capable headquarters locations ranging from single-family houses to warehouses and fairgrounds.

    Tabletop Game 
  • In Changeling: The Lost, characters can build (or buy in chargen with bonus points) a Hollow, one of the Hedge's few civilized areas. Hollows don't have to be shared among the party, but the most elaborate ones can only be bought if several characters share the cost, and most changelings will find it...difficult to obtain a normal house on Earth. There are four aspects of a Hollow- amenities, size, doors, and wards. Players are encouraged to discuss with the storyteller what the former should include note .
  • One use of the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook in Dungeons & Dragons.
  • The One Ring: A company of player characters can use their downtime to establish a "Sanctuary", which can be anything from a remote outpost to an existing tavern in the middle of town. They can spend future downtime there for mechanical advantages like a bonus dice roll to heal Shadow points.
  • The Research Centers in Pandemic. You have a starting one in Atlanta (which is the real life location of the CDC's headquarters), and can build up to five more as the game progresses. They are used for fast travelling without needing to discard valuable cards, and are also required to research cures.

    Third-Person Shooter 
  • Ghostbusters: The Video Game has the titular Ghostbusters' famous firehouse, complete with the fire poles, Ecto-1 in the Garage, and the containment unit in the basement.
  • Giants: Citizen Kabuto not only did this but had the player construct his own, RTS-style, complete with walls, defense turrets and upgrade-dispenser buildings for two of the playable species. The other one just ate everything he didn't throw.
  • Warframe has three different kinds, each of which has slightly different functions. First and foremost is your Orbiter, which you load into whenever you open up the game; it'll let you manage your inventory, fuse and transmute mods, view your Codex, breed Kubrows and Kavats, buy stuff from the Market, refine your Void Relics, launch missions, and more. Next is your Clan's Dojo, which can be designed and customized as you and your clanmates see fit; it'll give you access to trading, research, Alliance management, and just a place to hang out with your fellow Clan members. Finally, there's the Tenno Relays, hubs open to any players that have reached a given Mastery Rank; much like your Orbiter, you'll be able to swap out your equipment and launch missions, but you can also take advantage of the Sanctuary's features or buy something from Baro Ki'Teer on one of his biweekly visits.

    Turn-Based Strategy 

    Visual Novels 
  • In Choices: Stories You Play it shows two rare cases in Visual Novels: in two stories, the player has a Headquarters.
    • In The Heist: Monaco, the player can choose what their headquarters will look like until the end of the story: the abandoned warehouse, a high-tech apartment, or a luxury mansion.
    • in Wake the Dead, the player's headquarters is a former ski resort turned colony. The player can customize it by even giving it a name.

    Wide-Open Sandbox 
  • Jimmy's dorm room in Bully. Later in the game, he gets another five headquarters: a beach house from the Preps, the Nerds' comic shop, the Jocks' clubhouse, the Greasers' pool hall and a Townie-controlled building in the industrial park.
  • The Grand Theft Auto games, starting with Grand Theft Auto III, have the safehouses. You can save, heal and clear your Wanted level in them, and in some games, you change clothes in safehouses too. You usually get one free at the start of the game, and to get more, you have to buy them. Though you usually get a few other free ones along the way (in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas you can count on getting one every time you reach a new part of the state). Grand Theft Auto V walks this back a bit by giving two of the three protagonists only one safehouse at a time; Franklin starts out living with his aunt before moving into a luxurious crib in Vinewood Hills, and Michael, aside from a brief stay in Trevor's trailer, only has his Rockford Hills mansion. Trevor, for his part, actually gets three altogether (two simultaneously); his default trailer, Floyd Hebert's apartment (acquired by force), and then the Vanilla Unicorn strip club that he takes over after killing the previous owner.
  • Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, the Player Character takes over the villa of Big Bad Ramon Solano and converts it into one of these. The villa contains your entire squad, weapon and ammo caches, and a garage, a dock, and a helipad for all of your vehicles.
  • In Minecraft the player has to build everything from scratch: from a simple hole in the side of a hill, to a small house made of dirt, to a colossal castle, which the player can outfit with beds to rest/respawn, crafting stations, storage, plantations and any mechanism the player can invent. Other than being a safe haven from the nightly monsters, of course.
  • The Saboteur starts with one hidden in a strip club, and you gain more as the story progresses.
  • Saints Row 2: Not only can you buy several apartments, wharfs and an airport hangar (and a lighthouse!), The Saints also have a pretty big HQ. You can upgrade your apartments looks to gain style points while the gang HQ evolves along with your progression in the game.
  • The Player Ships in Starbound. Unlike planets, which are tied to the universe they're in (meaning you lose access to them if you're playing on a different player's server), ships are bound to characters, meaning the ships (and everything on board) come with you no matter what universe you're playing in.
  • The headquarters in each X-Universe game starting with Reunion are gained by doing a small sub-plot. The HQ lets you reverse engineer ships (to learn their blueprints), build ships (using learned blueprints and resources), scrap ships (for gaining resources), repair ships (using some resources), and adjust the hue and saturation value on your ship's hull paint (except for Boron ships because of their organic construction). The HQ has a massive storage bay for storing all your crap, 12 external docking ports for capital ships, 20 external docking ports for freighters and corvettes, and a infinitely large internal docking bay for fighters, making it an excellent parking location for your unused ships.
  • The Watch_Dogs franchise features one of these in each game.
    • In Watch_Dogs protagonist Aiden Pearce starts out working out of a room at the Owl Motel, where he can rest and change his outfit. Early into Act 2 the room is destroyed by a group of fixers and Aiden relocates to a ctOS testing site on an abandoned industrial island south of the Loop. Several additional hideouts converted from shipping containers are unlocked throughout the world, where the player can do the same activities in them but are not major parts of the plot.
    • In Bad Blood T-Bone has relocated to a silo in Brandon Docks. In the penultimate mission fixers assault it.
    • Watch_Dogs 2 features a total of 4 hackerspaces, one in a house near Standord university, one in a gym in Oakland, and later, after completing the 'Hacker war' missions, a bunker in Marin County, but the primary base is hidden beneath the Gary's Games & Glory shop, which is where Marcus' allies are usually located and many missions are started. You can do all the same activities as in the first game, as well as change your weapons loadout.
    • Watch Dogs: Legion has only one headquarters, a safehouse seemingly made out of an old Underground station accessible from the Westminster branch of the Earl's fortune Pub chain. Unlike prior games you cannot rest, and you do not need to go to the safehouse to change your loadout, but many missions and side missions are started from there and you can take photos of your team.

    Real Life 
  • Real Life: In military history, many armies have used something like this, perhaps falling back to a fort at night.
    • The Romans were one of, if not the first military power to perfect the art of a portable version of this trope. One of the military feats their legions were famous for was being able to set up a fortified camp to a standardised pattern anywhere they were deployed in a matter of hours.

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