Yes, comics have done pretty much anything, but I mostly don't want to hear about standard modern-day supers campaigns. If someone ran an "elizabethan supers" campaign, that would be something interesting to hear about, for example, to see how it turned out.

RPGPundit

I'm working on a character for a strange new superhero genre game that's in development. He's called "Super Max" and he's a hero for a class of people who don't normally have one but often need one: Prisoners.

When the entities gave powers to selected humans to test them, the guy who would become super max was an innocent man wrongly convicted. He was given powers that in ways were related to prisons or in fighting against the prison system.

He is simply put stronger than a prison. He can smash thru prison walls, tear doors and bars out, defeat numbers of armed guards, is resistant to prison issue weapons and has things like taser touch, teargas breath and the ability to take years off people's lives by aging them as punishment for wronging people in prison or with the prison system. As a last power, he has the lethal injection bite.

He's the hero who fights for the wrongly convicted, the abused prisoners and against people who do wrong to others in or thru the prison system.  
 
A weird character but original. I'm half expecting to be asked to test a new superhero system and am doing him up as a test character.

Quote from: RPGPundit;410640Yes, comics have done pretty much anything, but I mostly don't want to hear about standard modern-day supers campaigns. If someone ran an "elizabethan supers" campaign, that would be something interesting to hear about, for example, to see how it turned out.

RPGPundit

Have you read 1602?

It really is quite good. Neil Gaimen with art from the guy that did Origin.

Quote from: jibbajibba;410699Have you read 1602?

It really is quite good. Neil Gaimen with art from the guy that did Origin.

Yes, I did read it, and it was fairly good, albeit contrived.

RPGPundit

I am going to limit this to campaigns or mini campaigns I actually have run or played in.  I have about 52 other campaigns I want to run.

Deep
Paranormals occured with a bang a few years back. After several interviews it was determined that each and everyone had a NDE (Near Death Experience). They awoke with strange abilities, often related to their "demise". They are all over the social and political spectrum, so there is no united paranormal front. Many have adopted the guise of super heroes to confront those that would utilize their powers for illegal gain. (I mean that is what you are supposed to do right, get powers and fight crime?  What do you mean this is illegal? )

It has been found that they are actually "dead". They no longer seem to have a metabolism: they do not age, nor need to breath, eat, or other events, except when they want to. Eventually their body language shifts to one of perfect stillness. This can be unnerving to people.  

This looks like a 4 color campaign, but does not come across that way.  Then when they find out they can't die... eventually recovering from just about anything... well...

Guardian's World

There have always been paranormals, creatures of magic or odd energies, mages, and even psionics. Given the events of 1066 when magic was broken to save the world (Evil was about to take over, so they broke the magic field of the world so they could not "win"), magic was first cloaked and reality itself magickally changed to avoid references to paranomral (the vatican has a special vault that hold real manuscripts that would actually change if removed). Since then magic has returned to its normal strength. (The Victorian Age was when it properly returned), but the forces of The Cabal have kept it under wraps. Even the increase in psionic gifts that began in the 50s and exploded was kept under wraps, as they were indoctrinated into the secret lodges and their view of the world. They key to The Cabal were Guardians - world powered mages (psionics, and even creatures) that kept the world safe and the secret cloaked.

The Cabal noted the number of increased psionics and managed to keep it barely under control. However at the same time, the number of higher powered beings - "meta class" - began to exist. In the 40s, there were 2, in the 60s there were 12, in the 80s there were 80. These metas did not manifest like classic magical or even psionic talents. They are not always timely recruited. The Cabal had been lucky so far that Guardians have kept thing under control. Yet more metas are appearing, even standard/ classic paranormals are getting more powerful.

Guardian, as the world came to know him, suffered an accident. He lost much of his magical ability, but developed alternate broad spectrum psionic abilities. He had been arguing for "The Reveal" the time where the hiding of magic and such would be over. He was dismissed from his guardian circle, as no longer being a proper mage.

Then there was an Earthquake in San Francisco. Guardian, knowing it would happen, had been prepared. Dressed in an iconic superhero costume, he began to rescue people. He saved people on the Golden Gate while it partially collapsed. He rescued people in the city. He worked the entire peninsula. He made sure he was caught on film. He made sure he was going to be interviewed by the local TV station. He made sure that the local CNN affiliate was going to interview him that night. He did an impromptu message via a phone camera and the net for paranormals to come out and help people. A few did.

He knew he was gong to die, assassined by The Cabal, but managed to survivie the two attempts and reach the interview. In it, he explained he had been helping people from the shadows since he was young and that mass death was not a reason for hiding anylong (nobody should die because I did not want to get caught on a phone's camera). He explained that paranormals existed but were afraid what humans would do (citing Nazi's blackmailing Werewolves to fight for them, then killing off their families (thus leading to the collapse of the Russian Front), witch burning, etc, etc). So he asked for paranormals to quietly "come out". He said he dressed in this uniform so people would understand who he was and what he stood for. He spun it in such a way that he did not out "everything" but let the paranormal community selectively out itself.

Some did, many took a wait and see approach. A few "heroes" appeared, to show their paranormal/ meta abilities and help when a meta/ paranormal threat publically rose up.

The approach was working. About 8% of the paranormal community and 25% of the meta community outed themselves. About eight were costumed heroes. More and more public paranormal and meta threads had occured and these outed people (with some quiet help from the rest) managed to keep these events from doing massive damage.

While the sometimes helped with normal crime, most costumed heroes only came out when it was a meta or paranormal threat.

Then a giant monster invaded New York. Guardian flew via plane (because really it was faster than his flying at 80mph) to new york. He engaged the monster and helped keep the innocents out of the way. He did an passioned plea for help, for someone to help him deal with this.

Nobody came. They were afraid of their own injury or the cabal held them back.

Guardian died that day. His broken and bloody body caught on film. His last moments captured as an iconic moment of history.

New York was one of the primary clusters of paranormal activity in the world. It was more than enough. It is said that 85% of the paranormals and metas in the city and areas around stepped up that day. Some put on costumes, others just put on sunglasses and were in regualr clothes. They fought this force of nature and won. Most faded back into the shadows after that. A few stayed for the camera and vowed to become Guardians in his memory.

Thus The First "Super Team" was formed. Others came soon after. The world was changed due to one man's sacrifice.

Superheroes are really mages, werewolves, vampires, (other monster kin), psionics, and the rare meta. They may dress up in costumes and emphasize only parts of their powers, but that is what they are.

Knights of the Shards

This comes up as a mostly human fantasy campaign, with a traditional good kingdom (or set of), some enemies, possibly fey enemies, all in the Arthurian mold. You can even play it as a straight fantasy game for a while.

The Great Heroic King (or his Wizard or his Champion) fight the Great Evil for possession of a Starstone - a magical crystal that fell to the earth. He who owns it will have the power of a God. While they are fighting over it, it breaks (the good guy probably breaks it so the bad guy can't have it.) Tiny crystal bit disperse over the world.

If touched by a sentient being, it will merge into them. It makes no difference the size of the piece, so that piece of sand you brushed off your tunic or the trebuchet rock sized grant the same thing. It will grant them special abilities, akin to super powers. (Sometimes animals or plants will be effected, but it rare).

We can have a flying knight with a swords of fire he can create. We can have a knight who runs fast as the wind. We can have an ex thief made a knight who has the abilities of a cat. You get the idea.

Thus Shards, those with a shard, become The Heroes. Most become Knights because they are defending the realm. (The Robin Hood one... maybe not). Thus we have Knights of the Shards defending the realm against the Evil things created by the Bad People's Shards. (Perhaps they discovered a way to pull shards out of animals and plants, sometiems transfering them to...)

Slip Dreamers

When you go to sleep you leave the mundane world behind. While this is true for everyone, it is more true for you. When you wake up, you wake up as a super hero. You go through his/ her "day", then when he/she goes asleep you wake up as you. This is not quite every night, but nearly. (In fact, if you take a night off from these dreams, the next time you dream as a hero time will have passed.)

They are incredibly intense dreams. Perhaps they take a bit too much of your life up. Somedays, you actually stop at the library and research the problem your hero is having. Thus equipped with a chemical formula, a memorized city map, or some other piece of knowledge, you can help solve the heroes problem.

Then, one day, you recognized a woman who looked just like one of your "fellow heroes". She was startled when seeing you. After a few moments of awkward conversation, you call her by her superhero name, and she responds with yours. It is real. Kind of real anways.

You see, Slip Dreamers live other lives when are asleep (they slip in), as an occult ally will explain to you. You live two lives - your waking life and your dreaming life (it is hard to say which is real, but the one where time is continuous is usually the best bet).

For a short time your group gets together on both sides. Everything seems great. You are vastly more effective because you are utilizing awake time information.

However, then people start shooting at you (seemingly random). Other bad things begin to happen. Some slip of the tongue or clue happens, you realize that some of the super villians are slip dreamers as well. They have come to the conclusion (or at least the hypothesis) that if they kill you on the Earth Side (Day Side, Wake Side), you will die (or be no more) on the Superside (Night side, Sleep/Dream side).

Oh, and a villian's mask slipped and you caught a brief glimpse of his face. He is your bosses boss. He may not know you in the real world, yet.

Now you have two "games" going - one with heroes and one with mundane regular people. One side will effect the other.

The Children of the Knight

The names have been changed to protect the guilty

This is your classic super hero world (though other options are possible), with one exception. The world's greatest detective and vigilante is dead.

You are his legacy, the various sidekicks, ex-sidekicks, close allies, and possibly even friendly semi-antagonists of an extremely well-known, respected, and feared hero called the Knight. He was once their mentor, boss, friend, father figure, and maybe soemthign else.

Now the players must work together to solve the crime (which should not take too long) and keep The City the Knight treasured in one piece (news of his death means the criminals and villians think the city is unprotected). The characters will have a deep and convaluted history with each other... think 40 years of comic continuity that will make a soap opera seem simple. Every character must have a dramatically charged relationship with each and every other character (rivalries (personal, sibling-ish, and professional), deep bonds, romantic relationships, bitter falling-outs with each other and the Knight himself, etc). These people will have a hard enough time working together; they will have to save the city too - from supervillian mob wars (and an impending disaster).

Most characters are non-superpowered vigilante types, maybe with each one emphasizing a different aspect of their mentor's skills: investigation, stealth, martial arts, gadgetry, etc. Some could be non-powered characters (like police captains or such). Those who want to spend a great deal of their starting character points just to have the privelage of having low level super powers that would of fit in a Knight's comic series, can do so (so they will be both low powered supers and low skilled supers).



Okay, never ran this one.. but really want to...
Glyphs

It was March 12th. Many of the marked noticed it immediately, others took a week. The glyph appeared somewhere on the body. Usually it was the palm or forearm, but others had theirs appear on the face, shoulder, spine. (A tiny minority have them appear elsewhere). Roughly 7% of humanity were marked with one of six marks. The marking was concentrated more on the the younger end of the spectrum, but other than that, it went across the entire ethnic, social, and economic spectrum. (there is a vague concentration towards the northern pole).

Normally the glyph is invisible to most people. Sometimes the glphys fade into visable appearance (more on that in a bit). Those with glyphs can see them all the time.

Originally, The Glyphed were no different than everyone else. A few of them noticed enhanced skills or superior physical, mental, social, spiritual, aspect. It was not great.

The intelligence community picked up "chatter" about the glyphs. They began to follow up, more seriously than any other facet, as the psuedoscience community followed it with the vengance. (Supposedly UFO abducties supposedly have a higher incidence of Glyphs). It was mostly a statistical thing. Threat accessment was indeterminate. After assigning a few of their own agents (who were glyphed), they begain to follow up.

Then special abilities began to appear. People began to express abilities beyond their profile. People began to express vastly superior abilities, some of which push the evelope of human abilities. Athletic records were being broken, though not shattered. Certain performers crashed into the charts. The interesting ones were the technical expressions, engineers starting making notable incrimental breakthroughs.

Some Glyphed are expressing psychic powers (One of the glphed agencies is one of them.) Pyrokinesis, telekinesis, and a few other odd psychic powers are expressing. Other paranormal abilities such as acceleated healing, recovery, or even some celluar shifting, are allegedly occuring. It is interesting that the specific Glyph does not correlate to the ability manifested. These "powers" do not seem to be growing. It just took time for them to finally express themselves. (Once you get to a certain point total)

Use of the outer edges of the their abilities or the glyphed psychic powers seems to make the glyph visable to everyone.

Every glyphed individual manifests either one sharp ability, a broad spectrum of related abilities, or just an overall increase in abilities (one of the glyphed agents).

So why are there six "teams" or "armies" being formed on the Earth? What intelligence marked these people and why?

And why did two random glyphed indidviduals just "go at each other" on the streets of London?

My current BASH game is cold war era (1952) combined with HPL style horror, mixed with a little bit of Kirby style cosmic. It will end with a trip to a future (1982) Snowball Earth.

My traditional campaign setting is in the 25th century a couple of centuries after a nuclear war. Most of the Earth (except for a few cities and their surrounding areas) is uninhabited or overrun by mutants. There is all kinds of crazy shit going on in space too (stuff like a Mars colony gone strange after being left on its own for a couple of centuries post apocalypse).

I'm thinking about doing something similar to Kirby's run on Thor, wherein the characters just go on a crazy trip through funky psychedelic space maybe looking for some heroes that vanished at some point in the past.

I like Children of the Knight. Sort of an Outsiders game after they found out Slayne was posing as the Batman for a year.

My first Marvel Super Heroes campaign, back in the late '80s, was based in my home town and everyone played themselves with superpowers.  A second version of that I ran in the early '90s, "Wimpy Tales", had everyone playing themselves without much in the way of superpowers.

My current campaign is a bit more traditional, with a group of fighters, magic-users, and superheroes raiding hideouts, beating up mobsters, and taking trophies.

Elders was a Hero system campaign set in 1990. I had each player create a heroic normal character from the 1920s, with no powers. I then had each player role a d20 and add 89 to the result for additional skill points with the restriction that they could not have more than basic competence in any skill unavailable before 1960. I then(secretly) used an adaptation of a GURPS aging table in order to make them make resistance roles against aging, one for each additional skill point they had over seventy resulting in various physical and mental disabilities (including stat reductions related to age).
The reveal to the players was that they were not playing pulp heroes in the 1920s but rather former pulp heroes now aged between 90 and 109 years of age confined to a retirement home outside of Santa Barbara; they were participants in an illegal anti-alzheimer's drug study and have been each granted 300 character points to spend as they please to make superheroes plus Life Support vs Aging.  They can use the points to off-set their age related infirmities, if they choose, but not on skills and I did not allow instant change or other powers that allowed for immediate disguise.
It was similar to my standard supers games in other respects, but I have never been a fan of "they fight crime" and use it only sporadically.

I've been playing with the idea of a 1950s game - men in suits - with special abilities. Mostly ex servicemen who didn't have enough points to muster out after the war. I've run it once - essentially re-running one of the Planetary plots http://www.lategaming.com/2009/01/14/last-nights-game/

The concept of Horror Heroes I also used the Whispering Vault for after building the campaign in Kult originally.

All the supers games I've been part of were very much DC/Marvel influenced. I like fighting costumed supervillains, though.

Quote from: Aos;411000My current BASH game is cold war era (1952) combined with HPL style horror, mixed with a little bit of Kirby style cosmic. It will end with a trip to a future (1982) Snowball Earth.

My traditional campaign setting is in the 25th century a couple of centuries after a nuclear war. Most of the Earth (except for a few cities and their surrounding areas) is uninhabited or overrun by mutants. There is all kinds of crazy shit going on in space too (stuff like a Mars colony gone strange after being left on its own for a couple of centuries post apocalypse).

I'm thinking about doing something similar to Kirby's run on Thor, wherein the characters just go on a crazy trip through funky psychedelic space maybe looking for some heroes that vanished at some point in the past.

Pretty awesome, I have to say.  I've often thought of doing a Lovecraftian-style supers campaign (something not too unlike Hellboy, I suppose... actually, when I first found out about Hellboy it kind of took the wind out of the sails of that idea).

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;415427Pretty awesome, I have to say.  I've often thought of doing a Lovecraftian-style supers campaign (something not too unlike Hellboy, I suppose... actually, when I first found out about Hellboy it kind of took the wind out of the sails of that idea).

RPGPundit

I always wanted something where hideous things offered powers for their own ends, but it was the only way to face greater evils.

Sort of Strikeforce Morituri meets HP Lovecraft.

Quote from: RPGPundit;415427Pretty awesome, I have to say.  I've often thought of doing a Lovecraftian-style supers campaign (something not too unlike Hellboy, I suppose... actually, when I first found out about Hellboy it kind of took the wind out of the sails of that idea).

RPGPundit

If you ever decide to give it a go anyway, and haven't read them yet, the BPRD spinoff series is great and, for RPGs, probably even better inspirational material than the main series.

Also: Lobster Johnson