I have been thinking about this for awhile and I think it is time to open up the floor for some suggestions on how to handle it.
I adore comic books and I want to write and run, sometime when I’m not planning a Ravenholme event, a near-future campaign where people with superpowers are a very real and very present part of society. Having a storyline, villains, plotlines, and other such tomfoolery wouldn’t be a problem at all.
The big issue, of course, comes down to the powers. I am not sure how to faithfully run a super-powered game with the resources at hand. With that in mind, my principal questions are as follows:
- How many people would be interested in playing in a game involving superpowers, given the physical realm’s obvious restrictions to powers like flight and weather control?
- Would people be happy, perhaps even more interested, playing in a game where the “powers” on the side of the PCs are somewhat toned down in terms of flash and fry-- on the order of Heroes, or some of the Less-Uncanny X-Men?
- How would people suggest that powers in need of greater special effects be handled?
My general idea is to write a campaign setting that doesn’t necessarily demand that every PC be a super-powered character. There would be separate races-- human, android, alien, mutant, etc.-- which would come with their own bonuses or gifts built-in, and buying a self-styled power would require purchasing it as an advantage. With this in mind, other kinds of characters could be created and contribute just as much to the storyline-- buy a bunch of weapon skills and military training instead of a laser-eye-blast, and you’d have someone like the Punisher. Get some science and craft-type skills and you can have a mad inventor with a robotic arm. The story would be self-contained, breathe on its own and not necessarily require the presence of a great number of super-powered people to function. I suppose at the base of it, the idea would be to take some of the emphasis off of the powers so that the game doesn’t suffer from them being so difficult to bring to life.
tl;dr I want to write and run, or assist in the making of, a near future low- to medium-powered superhero campaign, which focuses on internal conflict and character growth just as much as, if not more than, combat with super-strength and eye-lasers. Please suggest how to overcome the obvious physical boundaries and chime in with your ideas for how to handle the subject matter.
Edit: Logistically, if I wanted to see this get off the ground by the end of the year, I’d probably want to write up and package a debut event with a co-GM, and then hand over logistical control and a write-up of the setting and its major plotlines to that co-GM, thus allowing me to stay creatively involved but focus my time on running more Ravenholme games.