OK, as you can guess from my recent posts, my group is looking at starting a Supers game once we're done with our current campaign. Everyone seems cool (or at least not against) ICONS, which is what I'd like to run with.

It'll be my first non-one shot ICONS campaign, so I've been building up the setting, and my daughter and I have been having a lot of fun coming up with some villains and some basic backstory on the world (nothing too shocking here; the first Supers appeared around WWII; your standard tropes are pretty much all in place).

So, here's the hook for the setting. I'm fully aware there's nothing new under the sun, so I'm sure someone has done something like this. I'm looking more for feedback:

Since the advent of superheroes around the time of the opening years of World War II, there has been the Ultra-Virus, an incurable affliction that infects and kills only the superpowered. Cases have been 99.9% fatal, and so, early on, Ronald Hallax, wealthy inventor and CEO of Hallax Industries (as well as the superhero known as the First Silver Knight) cryogenically freezes several infected superheroes, pledging to thaw them out once a cure has been developed.

Years pass, and the world goes on. New generations of supers come, and still some are afflicted with the Ultra-Virus, with no cure in sight. Hallax's son, Harald, has continued the family business, and still cryogenically freezes some of the superheroes, convinced that one day a cure may be found for this terrible affliction.

Flash forward to the present day. Cromwell City's main superhero group, the Restorers, have been turned into dark versions of themselves by a cosmic artifact of immense and malevolent power. They defeat all other supers of consequence in the area, and crime and chaos run rampant.

Ronald Hallax's grandson, Samuel, was not only CEO of his family's company, but the Third Silver Knight as well. He was crippled attempting to stop the Dark Restorers from their wave of terror. Alone in his lab, he works feverishly, and attains an apparent breakthrough, creating a treatment that will cure the Ultra-Virus. Cromwell City needs heroes that can stand against not only the Dark Restorers, but the countless other threats it faces as a major metropolis. He heads down to the cryogenics chambers, to containers that have remain frozen for decades...

Basically, the idea is that through this, a group of disparate supers from the Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Neo-Silver/Modern ages could be brought together for a campaign. I love the idea of the clashes in a group as a late-30s detective with the ability to down a potion and leap super-distances next to a 50s American legend, a 60s angst-ridden mutant, an early 90s gritty anti-hero, and a modern street-level super trying to make a go of it as a super-group. I think a lot of the group friction and fun would write itself, though of course it could also get out of hand. It would also be a blast to see what the group came up with for it. Of course, I'm sure the Ultra-Virus treatment would somehow find its way into the hands of the minions of evil-doers that have been frozen themselves for these many years...

So, has anyone done anything like this? Obviously "man out of time" stories like Captain America's are not rare, but I'd like to see it applied to an entire group. I'm not enough of a hardcore comics reader to know if it's been tried, but I'm more concerned about how it would come across in a campaign. Thoughts? Comments?

Moved to design/dev--probably a better fit here. :hatsoff:

That's pretty wild. I guess the one concern is that by giving everyone the "man out of time" shtick you are kind making it less special. Not a big deal really.

Sounds fun with the competing views of morality, violence, and their approach to heroism, as long as the players can deal with the complexity and have some ability to move along an axis, since you may not want the ultra grim deciding the handling of things.

the hardest part will be acclimating the old supers to the new world.  Some of the frozen heroes may be considered villains by modern standards, or be the parents of arch enemies in the new world.  I'd just let them:

A:  Fight it out between them
B:  Keep them in separated rooms until they adjust
C:  Have the history of the world "downloaded into their brains somehow

Just some thoughts

Quote from: rway218;585970the hardest part will be acclimating the old supers to the new world.  Some of the frozen heroes may be considered villains by modern standards, or be the parents of arch enemies in the new world.  I'd just let them:

A:  Fight it out between them
B:  Keep them in separated rooms until they adjust
C:  Have the history of the world "downloaded into their brains somehow

Just some thoughts

I definitely think the intro would be interesting to play out. I could see it get wild very quickly, especially if you're waking up, say, a 2-ton gamma-radiated behemoth that's been frozen since 1971.

Quote from: Silverlion;585948Sounds fun with the competing views of morality, violence, and their approach to heroism, as long as the players can deal with the complexity and have some ability to move along an axis, since you may not want the ultra grim deciding the handling of things.

Yeah, that's the only worry about having the gritty guy in there. I think I can solve that by explaining sort of the default assumptions of the campaign beforehand, but you definitely don't want things devolving into Bucky watching in horror as Spawn and Punisher dismember bank thieves.