How to build a supers campaign the easy way
I continue to contemplate the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game, and my biggest stumbling block has to do with whether or not, should I ever run it, to use Marvel Comics' own universe or a homegrown one.
Licensed universes, regardless of genre, have their pro's and con's. The pro's are that you have a background familiar to at least some of your players and a load of pre-generated characters. The con's are that the PC's are relegated to second-tier figures in comparison to the established protagonists, or at least start significantly less powerful than they are. With MHR's very fuzzy ruleset the power discrepancy is less of an issue, but the otehr's remain.
Plus, there's the fact that really well-informed players have a tremendous knowledge of the universe far beyond what the PC's would, and you end up with some meta-gaming issues.
Homegrown universes have the plus of avoiding all the fore-knowledge issues of pre-generated ones, and you can tweak it to look just like you would want (no magic, aliens, or mutants, for example) but have one big downside: they are a lot of work. Unless you have a supers universe where supers haven't existed before the campaign begins, the GM (or excuse me, "Watcher") has to at least come up with the concept, if not the stats, of dozens of other heroes, villains, agencies, etc.
So late last night I'm up because of work and so I'm wresting with the issue of how to do a homegrown supers universe without having to do so much front-end work. And then it hits me: the Justice Society of America.
For those who don't know, the JSA was a superhero team that began in 1940 and featured lesser-known characters that didn't have their own book. Eventually JSA was canceled and then revitalized as an extra-dimensional counterpart to the Justice League, and then finally merged together after the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
In 2006, after a very brief and controversially-aborted run in the early 90's, a new JSA was put together featuring a combination of Golden/Silver Age heroes and various proteges of earlier heroes. These "second generation" heroes spanned former sidekicks, descendants, inheritors of power, etc.
And that's the hook. Have each PC be a second-generation hero of some kind: anything from a reincarnation of a WW2-era hero to someone who just was inspired by the earlier figure. There's loads of possibilities, and that means you have not only a PC, but a pre-existing NPC that can be worked into a story. I might even allow a person was has descended from a villain but has adopted the mantle of a hero. Really creative players could even work an arch-rival of their "parent" hero into their backstory.
And it really works for players who struggle to come up with a "hook" for their characters but instead just slap together an impressive set of powers, and you have a reason for the team to be together.
I have to think on this, but I like it. Comments welcome.
Licensed universes, regardless of genre, have their pro's and con's. The pro's are that you have a background familiar to at least some of your players and a load of pre-generated characters. The con's are that the PC's are relegated to second-tier figures in comparison to the established protagonists, or at least start significantly less powerful than they are. With MHR's very fuzzy ruleset the power discrepancy is less of an issue, but the otehr's remain.
Plus, there's the fact that really well-informed players have a tremendous knowledge of the universe far beyond what the PC's would, and you end up with some meta-gaming issues.
Homegrown universes have the plus of avoiding all the fore-knowledge issues of pre-generated ones, and you can tweak it to look just like you would want (no magic, aliens, or mutants, for example) but have one big downside: they are a lot of work. Unless you have a supers universe where supers haven't existed before the campaign begins, the GM (or excuse me, "Watcher") has to at least come up with the concept, if not the stats, of dozens of other heroes, villains, agencies, etc.
So late last night I'm up because of work and so I'm wresting with the issue of how to do a homegrown supers universe without having to do so much front-end work. And then it hits me: the Justice Society of America.
For those who don't know, the JSA was a superhero team that began in 1940 and featured lesser-known characters that didn't have their own book. Eventually JSA was canceled and then revitalized as an extra-dimensional counterpart to the Justice League, and then finally merged together after the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
In 2006, after a very brief and controversially-aborted run in the early 90's, a new JSA was put together featuring a combination of Golden/Silver Age heroes and various proteges of earlier heroes. These "second generation" heroes spanned former sidekicks, descendants, inheritors of power, etc.
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| JSA Vol. 3, #1 Variant cover |
And that's the hook. Have each PC be a second-generation hero of some kind: anything from a reincarnation of a WW2-era hero to someone who just was inspired by the earlier figure. There's loads of possibilities, and that means you have not only a PC, but a pre-existing NPC that can be worked into a story. I might even allow a person was has descended from a villain but has adopted the mantle of a hero. Really creative players could even work an arch-rival of their "parent" hero into their backstory.
And it really works for players who struggle to come up with a "hook" for their characters but instead just slap together an impressive set of powers, and you have a reason for the team to be together.
I have to think on this, but I like it. Comments welcome.
I like that idea. After all, Wildcat was inspired just by reading about Green Lantern so you don't even have to have any direct relationship or even similar powers or backgrounds. What larks!
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