So, what superhero campaigns have you run whose premise was not your standard "DC/Marvel-esque heros in the modern era doing standard DC/Marvel things"?

RPGPundit

I am officially hijacking this thread.

Revel in the glory, bitches:  Villains and Vigilantes is back in the house, with Jeff Dee in charge of the artwork!

You don't get much more "not Marvel/DC" than that.

Closest I've ever come to running a superhero game was an abortive attempt at starting a campaign with The Whispering Vault... which remains high on the list of something I'd like another shot at.

Oh, unless you include pulp era heroes like The Shadow, The Spider, The Crimson Clown, etc... much more street-level... went well with tarted-up variations of Call of Cthulhu.

What superhero campaigns have I run whose premise was not the standard "DC/Marvel-esque heros in the modern era doing standard DC/Marvel things"?

Wow, that would be pretty much every superhero game I've ever run. And even some of me other games tend to shade into super-heroic power levels.

In other words, even my many of my fantasy games aren't so much "1st level hobbit leaves the shire" type deals, and instead the characters are more like Elric of Melnibone, or Corwin of Amber (meaning unusual characters possessed of great abilities/weapons/powers).

Quote from: StormBringer;409841I am officially hijacking this thread.

Revel in the glory, bitches:  Villains and Vigilantes is back in the house, with Jeff Dee in charge of the artwork!

You don't get much more "not Marvel/DC" than that.

It is awesome to see V&V back again, I'm a big fan of Jeff Dee's art work.

Although, I'm thinking you can get further from Marvel/DC than that game goes. It still seems like a fairly standard supers premise to me. Modern Earth, Spandex, Super-Heroes vs Super-Villains, etc . . .

Quote from: warp9;409847It is awesome to see V&V back again, I'm a big fan of Jeff Dee's art work.

Although, I'm thinking you can get further from Marvel/DC than that game goes. It still seems like a fairly standard supers premise to me. Modern Earth, Spandex, Super-Heroes vs Super-Villains, etc . . .

Most likely.  I think not being tied to any franchise is a really big step in that direction; I would have to agree that V&V doesn't really go much farther than that step right out of the box.  The important part is that the game provides for a very different kind of supers game than Marvel or DC.  As I recall, the early ads in Dragon showcased some of the NPCs, and several of them were not Wolverine-level.  I think most of them were just barely Vulture-level.  

Aside from that, random ability generation?  Fuck yes.

I once played in a superhero game that was a Scion-hack. Basically all hero origins were tried to the gods, sort of like Thor or Wonder Woman rather than the more being the more conventional eclectic mix of alien-vistors and freak accidents victims and natural mutation based heroes.

I never run supers games; I love the genre, but it's a hard sell for my group.

But if I did, I'd try my hand at Pinnacle's Necessary Evil campaign, using Savage Worlds or maybe BASH UE. I like the idea of villains, forced to act as heroes; it reminds me of the early Thunderbolts (Marvel) run. There's a lot of potential for comedy, and pathos, and everything in between.

I once played in a superhero game that featured a music producer villain named Spin Doctor, a racist martial artist named Caucasia, and a guy named the Day-Eater whose weakness was that he couldn't eat bacon in the daylight.

As you might have guessed, it wasn't a very serious game.

I've run a game where super-powers seemed to be symptoms of an STD (Actually transfer of psychic energy during the act combined with a retrovirus that was an STD.

 The idea was that an alien species had been escaping from invaders. The retrovirus had infected them and had killed off most of their males. The females were human enough to be attractive to humankind. (Like the Kree, funny skin colors, which were often disguised.) The starship leaders demanded a quarantine. But rogue elements landed anyway, and started a plague. The retrovirus lay dormant unless exposed to the psychic energy of the species. Which humans didn't produce. The result was more silly than serious. Despite the aim, of making it frightful. (Sure the sexual aspect might seem silly but more than a few people died from the transformations the virus and energy put them through.)

The whole thing dealt with conspiracy, fear, etc. The players didn't take to it with the level of consideration.

I also am working on running a game which might be seen as superheroic but is more Post-Singularity "humans" doing stuff in the wider universe.

Quote from: StormBringer;409851Most likely.  I think not being tied to any franchise is a really big step in that direction; I would have to agree that V&V doesn't really go much farther than that step right out of the box.  The important part is that the game provides for a very different kind of supers game than Marvel or DC.  As I recall, the early ads in Dragon showcased some of the NPCs, and several of them were not Wolverine-level.  I think most of them were just barely Vulture-level.  

Does the lower power level really make things that different? I can think of a number of examples, especially in Marvel, where the characters didn't have that much in the way of powers.

Quote from: StormBringer;409851Aside from that, random ability generation?  Fuck yes.

That is an interesting observation. But, for myself, I'll take something I have a bit more control over.

Quote from: The Butcher;410015I never run supers games; I love the genre, but it's a hard sell for my group.

I'd say that your own avatar suggests an example of a different kind of "supers" game.

Rifts is a game of exotic characters set in a different kind of setting, where the characters are not at spandex clad supers fighting standard super-villains on modern Earth.

Personally, I don't like all that much of anything about the super-hero genre, other than the cool powers. And a lot of the supers games I've run, look quite a bit more like Rifts, instead of taking place in a more standard super-hero setting.

Years back, in a D&D game, after the PCs ran afoul of the law, they assumed "secret identities" and rebranded themselves as golden-age style superheroes, with masks, capes, logos, etc. -one of them (a drow Fighter/Thief) became "The Black Elf," another (a Cleric) was "Mister Sunshine," with his sidekick "Mountain Boy." (A dwarf, I think.)

Just jumped in tonight on a friend's 1930's campaign using Mutants and Masterminds 2e. I'm Motoman, the Pride of Detroit, aka Bosco Philips (M.Eng, Howard University '27), and I'm trying to prevent a fascist, white supremacist coup led by C.R Wright, Henry Ford, and a transvestite, psychopathic general named Raider.

Tonight, myself and my partner, Mr. Smoke, an ancient German elemental opposed to the Nazis, confronted the Star-Spangled Man, a widely-beloved national icon who had been seduced / hypnotised by Ilsa Freud, a Nazi temptress (despite being Sigmund Freud's niece), into delivering speeches across the American heartland decrying plots by Jews and communists and advocating fascism as the only political system capable of resisting them.

The speech was in a legion hall outside of Dallas, so I wasn't allowed in (due to segregation & also being in a giant, unremovable car-battlesuit) until Mr. Smoke caused a panic during the speech by transforming into his eponymous substance. I then walloped the Star-Spangled Man unconscious using the super-strength generated by my experimental four-cylinder engine to "d'ypnotise" him.

Since this is a pick-up game, I know the current DM would love to play the Star-Spangled Man, so once this arc wraps up, I may take over. If so, the plan is to send the PCs to rescue the US' ambassador to Shangri-La, who has been kidnapped by Jaffer Malik Hassan (the Arab Prince of the Sirocco) on behalf of Mao Zedong as part of a plan to turn the City of the Ascended Masters into the first People's Republic of the Astral Plane.

Quote from: warp9;410072I'd say that your own avatar suggests an example of a different kind of "supers" game.

Yeah, I see what you mean. Apparently, Kevin Siembieda is a huge comics fan, and comic book sensibilities bleed through his writing. Rifts does feel very comic-booky, fluff-wise, in spite of lacking most of the usual mechanical attributes of a supers RPG system.

It's spandex-clad, four-color supers that's a hard sell for my group.

In part because they've been soured by a previous, failed campaign run by another member (nice guy, but horrible GM). And those who didn't play, never even warmed up for supers play in the first place.

I haven't run Rifts in a long time, but I don't think it would be a hard sell, particularly to the sub-set of my group which used to play Exalted (also a supers RPG, only set in Console RPG Fantasyland).

Quote from: warp9;410072Personally, I don't like all that much of anything about the super-hero genre, other than the cool powers. And a lot of the supers games I've run, look quite a bit more like Rifts, instead of taking place in a more standard super-hero setting.

Do tell us about these games!