At the Dawn of an Age of Wonders - Some Thoughts on a Superhero Campaign



I received some discussion, both within and outside my gaming group when I mentioned my desire to at some point dive into Hero System and Traveller. I've a few further thoughts on those two settings and I figured I'd explore them a little bit more. The earliest I see a new game would be the late-March/early-April time frame, fitting in with my grad school schedule.

Given I'm currently doing a science fiction game I figured I'd mull over some thoughts about superhero campaigns. It may just be a thought exercise but what GM doesn't like such exercises...

I've grown to think that what one sees in superhero television shows of late make for a good model to emulate. I've been working my way through Arrow and The Flash of late (I'm about a year behind...) and have also seen the Netflix Daredevil and Jessica Jones series and I've found I really like the feel of such shows. In these settings the heroes are not unique but they are extremely special. In a fantasy RPG you have the luxury of starting small, with the characters beginning in a village and slowly gaining familiarity with the world around them. I think that is a good model to follow in a superhero setting. The challenge with starting small is that in a world with global communication superbeings are going to be a known entity pretty quickly. And when I say global communications, it doesn't have to be the Internet - newspaper wire services would be sufficient to see a story spread across the globe pretty quickly.

To my mind, the best options are to have a campaign at the dawn of a supers age or to have a campaign where supers have been rather rare. The DC Comic Earth 2 did both of these - issue #1 started with Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and Robin. And that's about it. Issue #1 then removes all of them from play, setting the stage for a new "Age of Wonders".

Consider shows like The Flash where an accident gives both the hero his powers as well as creates his opposition. This is a great way to kick of a campaign, with everything being new to everyone. I also like the Hell's Kitchen as portrayed in Daredevil and Jessica Jones - in the aftermath of alien invasion as seen in The Avengers, large parts of New York City were destroyed and are being rebuilt, though Hell's Kitchen is a nest of corruption. The alien invasion also has a nice effect of being a major point of divergence and doesn't correspond to any historical event. It also makes for a great explanation as to the source of superpowers. It can be set at any time in history and can even be a campaign unto itself.

So picture this... an invasion, from far, far away, maybe even from another universe. It is defeated, but entire cities are in ruins and being rebuilt. Some sort of mystical or biological virus was released into the atmosphere, the key to unleashing superpowers in a very select few, much like the virus in George R. R. Martin's Wild Cards. There's rumors of aliens still loose in the cities, but hopefully that's just rumors. It needn't have even been a successful invasion - picture a single invasion ship arriving out of control and slamming into New York City, spilling its pollutants into the atmosphere. Or a transdimensional portal briefly opening and unleashing a plague of chaos, only to close again. In both cases it's not so much an invasion but an event which would go on to have a longer-term impact as humans begin manifesting powers. And always the worry of the aliens returning. If there's not some who survived and are trying to reopen the connection home....


Image Credit - Earth 2's Flash (Jay Garrick)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jules Verne Translations That Don't Stink

Image
Shortly after I graduated from college R. Talsorian published their fantasy steampunk RPG,  Castle Falkenstein. Having missed out on Space: 1889  when it first came out this was my first steampunk RPG, though I had been exposed to the genre by Gibson and Sterling's novel The Difference Engine (a novel which, though I though I found the setting compelling, I did not particularly care for - must reread some day). Jules Verne was one of the authors in the inspirational reading section of Castle Falkenstein.  Heck, the game also made him into France's scientific advisor, having him responsible for their massive Verne Cannons  which formed a sort of nuclear deterrent.  With that in mind, one Sunday afternoon I was at a Barnes & Noble bookstore my new girlfriend (now my wife of nearly 16 years!).  On a whim I decided to pick up a Jules Verne novel. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . That night I started reading it, never having read any of his works b...
Keep reading

Stepping Away and a New Beginning

Image
After maintaining this blog for nearly seven years (an eternity in internet time), I've decided to step away from it. When I first began I wasn't 100% certain what it would be about. For a while I thought it would be a blog related to OSR type RPGs but I found my own tastes not firmly rooted there. Looking at the history of the blog, I see a lot of Call of Cthulhu which is hardly surprising. However, some lack of consistency definitely made it tough for me find a defined niche and over the past few months I've been giving some thought to starting a new, more narrowly focused blog. The imminent end of Google+ played a part in these thoughts, with much of my traffic coming from that site. I write because I enjoy writing, but I do enjoy growing an audience. My plan to start a narrowly-focused blog took a turn when I had the opportunity to join the  Rolling Boxcars  blog. Talking with the contributors (one of whom I game with on Discord already) and going through thei...
Keep reading

Using the Force in D6 Star Wars

Image
Defending yourself with just 1D in Sense is not easy, as Luke discovers when training with a remote. My previous post discussed the proto-D6 System as found in the Ghostbusters RPG. For those unfamiliar with the D6 System and the way it does the Force (or for a brief review) the essentials are: You roll a bunch of six sided dice against a target number, typically ranging from 5-ish (easy) to 20 or even higher. Your rating is listed as something like 2D+2 which means roll 2d6+2. By default, most normal/non-heroic people have 2D in most stats.  Starting heroes will might have their best skill be at 5D or a touch higher. You can take as many actions as you want in a round. However, taking two actions in a round reduces all dice codes by 1D, taking three reduces all by 2D, etc. Starting with Force skills will lower a characters starting attributes. Unlike most skills they start off at 1D. There are three Force skills - control, sense, and alter. Control lets you contr...
Keep reading

Developing Boston for 1920s Call of Cthulhu

Image
While Chaosium has produced sourcebooks for many locations in Lovecraft Country (Kingsport, Arkham, and Innsmouth) as well as non-fictional cities of the 1920s (such as New York City and New Orleans), the nearby city of Boston, while being featured in many adventures, has never received its own full sourcebook. The most common era for my Call of Cthulhu  games has been in the 1920s - some campaigns have been in New York City while others have been in Lovecraft country. For those in Lovecraft Country, many adventures have been in nearby Boston. Over the years I've slowly been building up some expertise in the area and I thought it might be of interest to others gaming in the same setting - whether with Mythos horrors or a purely mundane game. First, let us investigate those official sources. While Boston has found its way into many adventures, I can think of two sources where it has been given a fair amount of detail. First, The Unspeakable Oath  double issue 16/17 has ...
Keep reading

Balancing Classes in Swords and Wizardry

Image
DM: "The box is the size of a small trunk; it is latched but not locked."  Dougal: "I'm looking for traps on the box."  DM (rolling for Dougal's "find traps" ability. The roll indicates that Dougal has failed to find the poisoned needle in the latch.) "You don't find a trap."  Morgan (the group's leader): "Black Dougal will open the box."  DM: "Black Dougal, you find out that you missed a tiny discolored needle in the latch. Roll a saving throw vs. Poison, please!"  Dougal (rolling): "Missed it!"  DM: "Black Dougal gasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead."  Fredrik: "I'm grabbing his pack to carry treasure in." Game balance. It's a tricky concept in RPGs. D&D 3rd and 4th editions made a very strong effort to balance the character classes with one another as well as to balance encounters. For my purposes, they went too far. A...
Keep reading