Brian Rogers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
subplotkudzu) wrote2010-05-07 08:18 pm
subplotkudzu) wrote2010-05-07 08:18 pm
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Supers Prospectus
Long time, no post. Anyway, I'm starting to noodle around the edges of next year's prospectus, knowing that a lot of the voting will be eaten up by the Gaslamp Fantasy game (I'd call it a Girl Genius game, but one option is having it be set somewhere radically different - such as British Colonial India - or with a completely different history and supporting cast, so I have no guarantee that it'll actually be a GG game). I'd like to get back to running a supers game for a while, so I'm thinking of putting 3 supers options on the prospectus.
First, an Avengers What If game set immediately after Kurt Busiak's run on the book: the Kang war has just concluded, along with the destruction of Washington DC and the decimation of much of Europe. Because of these events, 9/11 didn't occur (the Kang war was ongoing in the Avengers on that fateful day, so that makes a perfect explanation for the break point). Players would be able to pick any of the vast array of Avengers, with a primary team member and a secondary one on detached duty somewhere (in Busiak's run the Avengers had started taking a global response stance, with people available as first responders around the world and in space). Picking a Major character (i.e. someone who has their own book, such as Captain America, Iron Man or Thor) means you don't want a ton of interpersonal subplots but do want the occasional spillover plot from your own off screen title. Picking a Avengers Always character such as Scarlet Witch, Vision, Wasp or Hank Pymo means you're all about the interpersonal subplots and will be providing me with thoughts as to a character development arc for the year. This is an attempt to officially test out some of my supers observations now that I've written about them and gotten them shoehorned into other people's published products. This would, logically, be run in the Marvel Super Heroes RPG (the old FASERIP system).
Second, the Hero and the City, where the PCs are a main hero and his group of agents working in a city that is heavily but not totally corrupted and in desperate need of heroic action. Whether the PCs are vigilantes taking down the underworld or icons trying to lift the spirits of the common man is up to them. Inspirations are clearly Doc Savage and or the Shadow, but the feel of the city will be a little bit Batman's Gotham and a little bit early 80's NYC as portrayed in the various Marvel street level books. The city itself will be a fictitious version of NYC, perhaps Isola from the 87th precinct books. The objective on this one is to see if I really can, as i have claimed, run a game with a single uber-hero and a group of agents (rather than the usual dodge of having the uber-hero be an NPC because of the old saw that the PCs all have to be equivalent power level) by managing spotlight time and emotional/personality differences rather than skill specializations (which is part of how Buffy handled that problem, in that most of the scoobies could do things that the Buffster couldn't). I'm not sure what system to run this in yet. I have a lot of Dark Champions sourcebooks, but I'd almost certainly make them useless with my penchant for non-optimal, normal characteristic maxima designs.
Third, "He Escapes who is Not Pursued", which chronicles the actions of the FBIs Paranormal Cold Case file. Super humans appeared on the scene 1/1/2000 and the world has had some time to adjust to their presence, including the ones who are massively powerful icons of truth and justice (or national prestige). The FBI has organized a small squad of supers whose powers lend themselves to police work and investigation to start clearing out decades cold case files: especially kidnappings and murders that don't have a statute of limitations. The feel would be something like Planetary meets CSI (or Castle, any of the innumerable other detective/police shows out there) . My hope would be to close out a mystery every session, with the main story arc being the relationship between the characters, or perhaps the uncovering of a larger conspiracy or the perpetual hunt (about 20 minutes of play each session) for a prolific but vanished serial killer to act as a narrative thread. Jason is pushing for me to try out Mutants and Masterminds, so I'm leaning towards that as the system here, again with the power level of the campaign being the ceiling of any ability rather than the near mandatory floor.
I'm curious as to any opinions people my have.
Tomorrow, I post the write up to my recent ZoZ game.
First, an Avengers What If game set immediately after Kurt Busiak's run on the book: the Kang war has just concluded, along with the destruction of Washington DC and the decimation of much of Europe. Because of these events, 9/11 didn't occur (the Kang war was ongoing in the Avengers on that fateful day, so that makes a perfect explanation for the break point). Players would be able to pick any of the vast array of Avengers, with a primary team member and a secondary one on detached duty somewhere (in Busiak's run the Avengers had started taking a global response stance, with people available as first responders around the world and in space). Picking a Major character (i.e. someone who has their own book, such as Captain America, Iron Man or Thor) means you don't want a ton of interpersonal subplots but do want the occasional spillover plot from your own off screen title. Picking a Avengers Always character such as Scarlet Witch, Vision, Wasp or Hank Pymo means you're all about the interpersonal subplots and will be providing me with thoughts as to a character development arc for the year. This is an attempt to officially test out some of my supers observations now that I've written about them and gotten them shoehorned into other people's published products. This would, logically, be run in the Marvel Super Heroes RPG (the old FASERIP system).
Second, the Hero and the City, where the PCs are a main hero and his group of agents working in a city that is heavily but not totally corrupted and in desperate need of heroic action. Whether the PCs are vigilantes taking down the underworld or icons trying to lift the spirits of the common man is up to them. Inspirations are clearly Doc Savage and or the Shadow, but the feel of the city will be a little bit Batman's Gotham and a little bit early 80's NYC as portrayed in the various Marvel street level books. The city itself will be a fictitious version of NYC, perhaps Isola from the 87th precinct books. The objective on this one is to see if I really can, as i have claimed, run a game with a single uber-hero and a group of agents (rather than the usual dodge of having the uber-hero be an NPC because of the old saw that the PCs all have to be equivalent power level) by managing spotlight time and emotional/personality differences rather than skill specializations (which is part of how Buffy handled that problem, in that most of the scoobies could do things that the Buffster couldn't). I'm not sure what system to run this in yet. I have a lot of Dark Champions sourcebooks, but I'd almost certainly make them useless with my penchant for non-optimal, normal characteristic maxima designs.
Third, "He Escapes who is Not Pursued", which chronicles the actions of the FBIs Paranormal Cold Case file. Super humans appeared on the scene 1/1/2000 and the world has had some time to adjust to their presence, including the ones who are massively powerful icons of truth and justice (or national prestige). The FBI has organized a small squad of supers whose powers lend themselves to police work and investigation to start clearing out decades cold case files: especially kidnappings and murders that don't have a statute of limitations. The feel would be something like Planetary meets CSI (or Castle, any of the innumerable other detective/police shows out there) . My hope would be to close out a mystery every session, with the main story arc being the relationship between the characters, or perhaps the uncovering of a larger conspiracy or the perpetual hunt (about 20 minutes of play each session) for a prolific but vanished serial killer to act as a narrative thread. Jason is pushing for me to try out Mutants and Masterminds, so I'm leaning towards that as the system here, again with the power level of the campaign being the ceiling of any ability rather than the near mandatory floor.
I'm curious as to any opinions people my have.
Tomorrow, I post the write up to my recent ZoZ game.
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But the system or the setting don't do exactly what I'm aiming for - the titular hero is great in combat, but she's poor at research, can't perform magic, and needs emotional support/external validation and therefore requires a Watcher, a neo-Wiccan and a cheering section. She _doesn't_ really need more combat assistance, but the GM can always add in more monsters to make a back up combatant useful. The only reason the system stands out is because of the usual gamer instinct that everyone has to be on par in combat because combat will take up such a large part of games.
Doc Savage, on the other hand, is great at combat, research, science and is emotionally secure. That doesn't make the Fabulous Five useless however, and they _should_ still be viable PCs. But gamer instinct doesn't run that way.
I want to see if I actually can run this sort of game (rather than ones I've already run, such as a Star Trek game with a powerful captain and command structure, or supers games where one character's powers do, on a raw power level, outstrip the other PCs. Those I know I can do, and can therefore discount the common mantra amongst gamers that they "can't work". But I haven't actually run a "Doc Savage (or Shadow, or Argus, or Judge Dee) and his Agents" game, and I''d like to.