(The) superhero LARP

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:

  1. 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?
  2. 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?
  3. 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.

I am glad you included Non super human heroes, i would be interested but I hate games where you have to buy your abilities, but thats just me, lets not make it an issue.

In mordavia there were super human powers, they were called magic, I reckon the only way to play these kind of powers would be to use some of the magic casting techniques.

then again you could do a game where evry one is a “Hero in training” so they have to learn thier powers, rather than having them from the outset.

That would mean that there are only a few high powered heroes in the game.

That sounds good to me. I once ran a Marvel tabletop game where I told everyone to roll low-powered humans, and I assigned them mutant superpowers as the story unfolded-- they played out their own origin story. It went over very well. I’d love to incorporate that but I’d give people the option, I think.

As far as buying powers, the system obviously isn’t written up yet, but I had the idea of giving each starting character a handful of Origin Points, which would work somewhat like skill points. Being a Mutant, for example, would give you a free superpower, allowing you to spend your Origin points on something else like advanced martial arts training (expensive).

In addition, equipment would be similar to the Mordavia system of buy-each-event, but would range anywhere between a kevlar vest to a suit of fully-functional power armor. One could spend an Origin Point to permanently buy an integral piece of equipment (like the set of power armor, or a sword, or whatever) that one may not economically have access to (Your Punisher character will ALWAYS have that AK-47, your ronin will always have his katana, etc.). The offset of course being that this item becomes distinguished from others and its sentimental or practical value is greater.

How about a mystery men style game. The main heroes are off doing . . . something, and the lesser ones have to step up to the plate to fight Casanova Frankenstein, and his henchmen, the Disco Boys!

[quote=“FauxCyclops”]
Your Punisher character will ALWAYS have that AK-47, .[/quote]

The punisher used an M4 not an AK-47, but i see where you are going

I told the cyborgs in Nibelungen that they could do anything they wanted as long as they could physrep it. So you want to be able to lift cars and throw them? Be my guest, but you’re responsible for making everyone believe that’s what you’re doing!

Nobody took any outlandish cyborg abilities. My point is that this is a HARD one!

I can think of a bunch of ways to make “abilities” happen but they rely on everybody knowing what your ability is and agreeing to play along beforehand. That sucks because there’s no element of surprise and every other player is subconsciously guessing what you might do next. Hrm.

Setting it in modern day makes a lot of sense to the setting but only makes the special abilities harder. Actually, let me catch you on Messenger about this because I have a solution but don’t know how to explain it without giving away secrets I haven’t figured out how to not be secrets yet.

Matt and I actually already have this idea and setting somewhat written up but I’d like to try and attempt the subject matter seriously before going in that vein.

Standing-In-Doorways Man, anybody?

I think a number of real powers are very easy to achieve. Powers over the mind. Immunities (from things that have to be phys-repped anyway, like violence). Physical person-to-person powers.

I would limit powers to things that can be WYSIWYGed if you want it serious.

I have decided that I’m going to write a system and run an experimental debut game sometime in the next few weeks-- I can easily juggle this and the Ravenholme day game, and an overnight superhero event would only cost me about $50 to put on, if that.

More details to follow, I may set up half the players on an invite basis and then fill the remaining slots with whoever wants them.

Info about the test game here.

The game has been tentatively named 2014 and a test game will run on the 16th of june. I am wanting for a few more crew, if anyone is interested. (See above link)

I may post the skeleton rules engine here for people to check out.