There's a thread on tBP about a superhero setting, where a poster posed a challenge:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=306106

Here's the gist of the setting:

QuoteYou and eleven others are cosmically powered supers (JLA level) in a world that hasn't had to deal with super powered individuals in almost a century and which even then was dealing with individuals much less powerful than you. In addition to the twelve, there are an unknown number of others who have slightly heightened abilities and minor powers.

At least for the time being, though this may change eventually, the police and the world in general probably don't have sufficient power or technology to hold the twelve in jail. They also don't have any sort of power draining devices yet. They could eventually hurt or kill any one of you with sufficient fire power, but it wouldn't be easy.

At least three of you are planning to be heroes (in our game Nicole with matter control and transformation powers, Pietria with magnetism powers, and Ricky a brick with density increase and I think gravity related powers).

The challenge is: You and your team have managed to knock out and capture one or more of the bad guys. Now what?

After a couple of rather mundane (IMO) -and to be fair, I would have anwered the same way  - TonyLB comes up with this:

QuoteThere are only twelve. That's not a population. That's not even a group. That's a pantheon.

You treat members of your pantheon with respect, even if that means leaving them free to kill thousands of people, because a no-holds-barred grudge match between members of the pantheon will kill millions. And maybe you treat them with respect because the twelve of you are not like other people.

Now I'm okay if the heroes say "No, despite our great powers we are still just like normal humans. We shouldn't value our connections with the other eleven (the only ones who can ever understand us) above our connection with normal people. We shouldn't consider ourselves above the law, or special in any way. We're just normal people with extraordinary responsibility." That's a cool statement. I respect that.

What I'm not okay with is if they say it immediately, as an unquestioned default position. Then I'm completely unconvinced (as audience) that they really have the courage of their convictions. I'm convinced that they have merely a lack of imagination.

So if the protagonists aren't asking those questions themselves ... wondering "Hey, with only twelve of us, wouldn't it make much more sense for each of us to take over a part of the world and do the best we can to help it out, rather than leave people of far less vision and power in authority?" and similar questions then some of the other twelve should ask the questions.

Where's your Magneto, your Doctor Doom? Where's the person who looks at their power and says "Man, I can make the whole world better, as long as I'm willing to break a couple dozen rules that were never intended for someone like me anyway"?

Maybe that's not the way that you want things to go in your game ... maybe the heroism of the protagonists doesn't need to be proved, it's just a baseline assumption of the genre. That's cool. I'm just spouting off from my personal position, and if I were involved in this then the question of whether the protagonists were heroes (or even human) would be front and center. YMMV

This reply is right up there with some of the coolest responses ever given on tBP. A couple of my other gamer friends read this and we got to talking about supers in rpgs. The whole idea of supers being apart from humanity or struggling to understand what humanity means to them - and I'm not talking about in a cool mutant or WW -ish way - really got us, thinking about various ideas for a supers campaign where this theme plays a major role. Two questions were discussed :

What kind of superhero would your world (wherever that may be) give birth to ?

How would this being react to it's enviroment?

So, any thoughts?

Regards,
David R

Ever read Kingdom Come[/quote]? The reason I ask is:

QuoteThere are only twelve. That's not a population. That's not even a group. That's a pantheon.

You treat members of your pantheon with respect, even if that means leaving them free to kill thousands of people, because a no-holds-barred grudge match between members of the pantheon will kill millions. And maybe you treat them with respect because the twelve of you are not like other people.

That is almost word for word how I would sum up a significant part of Kingdom Come. (If I had been smart enough to come up with it that is!) What do men think of super men? Gods who walk among us? What happens when these gods neglect or ignore their obligations? What happens when the rest of the world feels alienated by these gods?

It's something that has always intrigued me.

Aberrant from White Wolf put that up front, but perhaps less brilliantly than the summation. Essentially the nova (supers) faction known as the 'Terragen'... by many lights the bad guys, viewed each Nova as a soveriegn power in his own right, and 'baselines' as utterly unimportant.

Very badly handled, if you ask me, setting that mentality up as a default and making its adherent increasingly inhuman, as it robbed the position of its meaning.  Every aspect of the Terragen was designed to reinforce the bad guy aspect. Divis Mal, the Manifesto, the murderous Uber-NPC's that dominated it...

I've always wanted to run a supers as gods campaign. I've never managed to set something up which reflects said theme/concept. TonyLB's post kind of summed up, what I'm aiming for. Something along the lines of Moore's (?) Miraclemen...maybe.

I want to run a campaign where the moral dilemmas heroes face are not easily understood by mere mortals or they (normal humans) think that whatever problems heroes face have very simple solutions.

Something along the lines of Heroes know they are apart from humanity but yet can't escape viewing their problems through a humanistic lens...okay, not making much senes here...will post something more coherent...later.

Regards,
David R

John #37 was born in a tank.

Theoretically, he is human.  The child of one of the many slaves in the Anakan outpost located in what was once known as the Cascade Mountains.

But the experiments the Anakans performed on him made him something more than that.  In their search to create an even greater slave, they put every bit of their scientific knowledge into enhancing him.  Making him stronger, more endurant, with more willpower to push through tasks no ordinary servitor could perform.  

But the genetic therapy that made him the incredibly capable being that he is also counteracted the docility treatments that were supposed to keep him a passive underling of the technocratic state.  

One day, he knew something was not right.  And then he escaped.  Fleeing the compound, he roamed the wastelands of the darkened Earth, he searched through cities, seekign to learn who he was, what he was.

He learned of mankind's former greatness, of the days when it dominated the Earth.  From the diary of some long dead reporter, he learned of the day the sky went dark, and of when the Anakans poured from the Earth to declare their sovereignty over the world above ground.  

He wanted to help.  These were still his people, changed as he was, and he wanted things to be better, like they were in the old days.

Eventually, he began to find the scattered settlements of those not serving the Anakan Empire.  He offered to help them, to help them fight the things that stole their Earth from them, to help them reclaim the world and be a great people again.

But they didn't want his help.  They feared him, feared the symbol that he might represent, the proof that he might represent.  Humankind wanted to prove that it was worthy of survival, and hiding in the coattails of a superbeing was not a way to prove that they themselves still held that great human spirit that had once led them to dominate the world.  

So they rejected him.  Cast him from their villages and towns.

But he is still out there.  He still dreams of the same dream the rest of mankind does, and so, in the dark, in the secret, he still helps them.  Most of them never know it.  In time his existence becomes legend.  A strange man, weathered by the lonely wastes, who sometimes comes to the aid of hunters and scavengers.

They know him only as the Darkwalker.  The one who wanders in the black.

In time, some even take to following his example.  Roaming the wastes alone, seeking to understand the harsh wildland, and helping out the more "civilized" men, often subtly, often in ways they do not even know.  

In turn, their shadowy presence throughout the wildlands only serves to keep the legend alive, and he becomes a different kind of symbol, one that those who shunned him did not expect.

One of hope.  One who embodies the idea that any man, if posessed of enough courage and strength, can change the world for the better.  

And so was mankind reborn.

Quote from: J ArcaneOne of hope.  One who embodies the idea that any man, if posessed of enough courage and strength, can change the world for the better.  

And so was mankind reborn.

Good stuff J Arcane.

Reading your post makes me wonder though, when does a superhero rpg morph into something else? I've always messed up the more mythic aspects of superhero rpgs and in the end had to turn the whole campaign, into a modern day fantasy fable

Regards,
David R