Let's say you wanted to run a campaign based around a similar idea to the TV show "Heroes"; ie. ordinary people in our modern world suddenly developing extraordinary powers.

What would be the big challenges here, settings-wise, and powers-wise?  What could derail the whole campaign?

RPGPundit

players playing it to much like the tv show or going the other route and breaking out the spandex would probably kill any game dead fairly quickly, specially since the first thing most fans of the show are gonna do is make sylar clones or some other character from the show.

Except for avoiding the spandex, there's no special challenge whatsoever. Of course, some powers should be disallowed right out -- there is little believable way for a character like Sylar to be beaten, and none whatsoever for someone with Peter's power. On the show, let's face it -- some powers are just plain better than others. But most systems already have something in place to balance out different power sets somewhat, so . . . yeah, back to no special challenges.

I think viewings of the various stories told with this basic theme - like The 4400 and Heroes, to name two - would give a pretty clear idea of the sorts of powers to avoid, as I suppose would general familiarity with superhero comics. But I can't think of any particularly unique challenges for the setting, which should be reasonably simple.

You (the GM) must have a doomsday scenario plan, which is to say, an idea of what will happen when (not "if", "when") one of your players does something overtly paranormal in plain, public view. Sure, they'll only be defending themselves, or their mission/plan/desperate attempt/whatever will fail without an overt display of powers, but it WILL happen. Or at least, it will if your players are anything like mine.

There's at least three powers I could see that would be absolutely game breaking: Sylar, Peter, and Hiro's. The time travel is only limited in the series by the character's own hare-brained nature, whereas any player worth his salt would take "time travel" and have utterly wrecked any possibility of a coherent game in about 4 seconds.

RPGPundit

Not to mention that everyone and their mother (literally!) have powers of prophecy, foresight etc.

Time travel should be avoided at all costs. The ability to take powers from people should likewise be avoided, I would think, without some kind of severe drawback. The ability to remove powers - as per Mr Petrelli in Heroes, or Jordan Collier in The 4400 - may be too powerful, although the ability to temporarily suppress them might be acceptable. Also, the ability to grant powers in a widespread fashion - think Danny Farrell in The 4400 - could well be a major problem for some games. Prediction of the future - Maia Rutledge/Skouris in The 4400, half a dozen people in Heroes - is very troubling if the game universe is deterministic, as it forces the game onto a railroad to that point; Shadowrun's solution to this problem is twofold: making the predictions vague to the point of near-uselessness, and using a nondeterministic universe.

Caveat: every group has a different idea of what qualifies as "gamebreaking." I wouldn't have a problem with letting players take overwhelmingly powerful abilities and just letting them run to see what happens. Most games, though, try to limit and balance power; this is even possible with "gamebreaking" abilities, so long as they're moderated by some drawback which is as compelling; the drawbacks inherent in, for instance, Sylar and Hiro [in Heroes], can be reproduced in roleplaying games, if the GM and player are dedicated to accurate characterization and realistic responses from NPCs.

In the end, the GM and players are the only people who can really discern what is workable and what isn't. I can only speculate at what other groups might find challenging, and share what my group - and myself - finds workable.

Quote from: Engine;274368I wouldn't have a problem with letting players take overwhelmingly powerful abilities and just letting them run to see what happens.

Examples: I've played a character in Shadowrun who, due to some mechanical errors in the system at the time, simply couldn't be killed by any published weapon or ability [although I think I could have engineered such a circumstance, if I tried, by involving very high skill levels]. This should have been absurdly gamebreaking, and just kind of stupid, but instead it became a somewhat whimsical exploration of the nature of being, or mortality, of the ramifications of truly exceptional circumstances. Plus, the character's personality was such that he simply couldn't leverage the full extent of the possibilities inherent in his condition.

I have a similar character planned for a game I'm working on, in which one of the characters will be almost completely unkillable. I'm sure if you shot him into the sun or dropped a nuke on him, he'd be a goner, but anything short of that - up to an including being dropped into lava - will just reduce him to a skeleton, which will quickly rebuild the body which is supposed to go around it. Another character in the same game will have access to teleportation of a very powerful sort, with very few limitations, and will eventually get access to a giant shaft of light that shoots from the sky and vaporizes...well, most anything, really. The idea in this case is for the game not to be about mortality or the possession of power, but rather the ramifications of how power is used. All the characters will be significantly more powerful than those around them, and I think it'll be interesting to see what they use that power for.

Immortal, unkillable characters are pretty much the definition of gamebreaking for most people, but I think there are challenges beyond mere survival which are even more compelling, and I welcome those sorts of things in my games. Would I want to do nothing but? Certainly not! I enjoy the full spectrum of power levels, from godlike entity to street kid, and to focus only on one would be to limit the amount of pleasure I receive from gaming.

My point being, nothing's inherently gamebreaking; the differentiation is based entirely on the individuals involved, and what breaks the game they want to play.

In the mid 80s, in the wake of Marvel's New Universe, I did this using Champions. So far I ran a half of dozen campaign in the setting. Three set pretty close to the "Change", three set years later. One the things I tried to do with the game is justify the NPCs reaction realistically as I could.

The big problem was the authorities. Even the good guys eventually went against law enforcement, government, etc. The chaos that even seemly minor powers caused the PCs to become fugitives.

One early campaign had most of the PCs have some connection with the US Government (mostly through DARPA sponsored labs). However when faced with working with some of more hard line government factions even this group wound up being fugitives for a time.

In contrast the later campaign which built on the events of the earlier days were a lot easier to play as the world moved past the initial chaos and there were various options and organization that those with super powers could deal with.

It wasn't as elaborate as say what you find in DC or Marvel the bare bone society, but what I had was enough to make the events of the later campaigns more varied and interesting.

The lack of any social constraints after the initial changes is the main challenge. Once you have your Department of Meta-humans, League of Mutants, etc evolve subsequent games become more varied.

In some ways it a lot like when you have a large group of people come into another country with a different culture. Even for the most law-abiding there is a lot of confusion and problems until things get settled.

Some things the PCs did I remember.

Tried to untangle a accident and accidentally killed a accident victim (critically failed a skill roll).

Accidentally killed a bank robber fleeing an accident (rolled nearly all 6's on damage causing massive BODY damaged in addition to STUN)

Punching out and severely injuring a corrupt Police Officer of Pittsburgh PA.

Getting into a all out brawl and injuring  Federal Agents abusing their authority during a sweep of people with powers.

NOTE: that most of the actions with law enforcement and power I took out of the stories being run about drug enforcement.

Trying to stop a hard liner super working with the government from hurting people and the fight caused massive property damage.

And the list went on.

I wasn't trying to portray government as a bunch of bad guys (despite as popular as that meme is) Just a normal mix of people who are good, bad, and indifferent. The problem came up because powers magnify the impact a single individual can have. Especially when two supers go at it. Instead of a broken car window you wind up with a smashed car and possibility of a building with a car sized hole in it.

The whole thing settled down due to me gaining more experience with the genre and the PCs coming with solutions. Which what I recommend in the long run.

Set up the situation, the change if you will, and see what solution the PCs come up. If you really want to be bold make the PCs the authority who have to deal with all these super powered individual appearing.

I'd propose a conceit used in Godlike -- generally speaking, only one superpower per character.  In fact, Godlike, taken out of the milieu of WWII, might be a really good model for a Heroes RPG.

In almost every superhero RPG I've ever played, there's always been at least one player who created a Swiss Army knife character -- someone with a minor ability for every occasion.  If you stick with just a single power, you're compelled to be more creative in its application, which I think should lead to better roleplaying of that character.

!i!

Depending on how telepathy works in the game, perhaps it.

Setting-wise, I think the big challenge is getting the players altogether on the same page about playing a game centered around self-discovery and not using powers to bash, smash, and maul.

Seanchai