I've been thinking about running a superhero game again. I always think that I haven't run one - it's just the ones I have run have been a little lackluster - I really had no idea what I was doing when I ran Wild Cards in high school, and my Authority game was amusing enough but I feel like it was hampered a bit by my own fanboydom.
But this will be my first M&M game, at least, and I'm blessed enough to do it in the age of second edition. Presently the concept is a teen supers game (a la Hero High) in a setting where it's illegal to use powers before age 18. Naturally, the PCs are exceptions to this rule. This is generally inspired by a variety of "on the run" teen team comics, like Gen13 and Runaways, though it takes its own liberties with the genre. I'm also inspired by comics like Invincible, Young Avengers, Dynamo 5, and, of course, the original X-Men.
But, in my mind, to get the comics feel, you need a decent "shared universe". You obviously can't rebuild something like DC or Marvel from scratch, but you can take what they've done as a framework that makes something both familiar and new, like many alternative superhero comics like Invincible do anyway. Freedom City does this already to a great extent, and though I may mine it for NPCs, I'd rather build one much more my own. I really haven't done a game using my own setting, and so this is a fun opportunity for me to attack the idea. So let's get to it with a random collection of ideas:
The Visitor was an alien superbeing that visited this Earth during the 1930s, and remained until the 1960s. He fought criminals, saved people from disasters, battled the fascists, and cooperated with the US government in helping create the first human super-soldiers. While not vastly powerful, he made a potent impact in the world more psychologically and technologically than physically. After leaving, his son, The Native Son, continued on until the 1990s, when he was slain. The Native Son, however, has left a legacy in the form of several other heroes that carry on the tradition, though none as prominently as their forbears.
The 1001 Knights were a vigilante organization that started in the 1940s, funded by a mysterious millionaire who had sworn to strike fear into the very heart of crime after the loss of family. Extremely well-trained, armed with cutting-edge technology, and with a seemingly limitless budget, the Knights represent a strictly illegal but widely feared organization. While the actual number of Knights is unknown, it's generally agreed it falls well short of the proclaimed number, as only several dozen costumed figures have actually proclaimed the mantle of the Knight.
The Menagerie is a criminal organization that has existed since the 1960s, almost as an answer to the Knights. It specializes in the creation and organization of animal-themed villains, though the core leaders of the group rarely commit crimes behind illegal superhuman design and activation, though they could be convicted for aiding and abetting, conspiracy, and other technicalities of their work. Though they originally just relied on gadgets and prosthetics to equip criminals, nowadays they can do everything from genetic splicing to totemic infusion. Some heroes have also resulted from their efforts, turncoats and escaped test subjects and the like.
Paradoxia is what happens to time and dimensional paradoxes, a series of realms both bizarre and familiar. People and things have vanished here - often of importance or connected to superhuman events. It is believed a mysterious group known as the Journeymen occasionally spirit a person here, and members have appeared proclaiming to protect the fabric of the universe. They have generally ensured time and dimensionally-displaced people do not remain long, though they have taken natives as well - though generally the forgotten and lost. Some realms in Paradoxia are also populated with those from other dimensions, either taken in a similar fashion or "rescued" from destroyed worlds.
The Numina are where gods reside. Though gods can affect our world, they can rarely have grand effects without taking on an avatar - a human host. To them, past wars that nearly destroyed the world make them hesitant to interfere, and this is enforced by quite nearly every pantheon head. There are ways for them to "cheat", though, and villainous gods often seem to find ways to flaunt their defiance by appearing on Earth in other ways. In their own realm, their machinations and wars are vast and cosmic, and pantheons exist much like rival clans, though there is much more intermingling these centuries than in millennia past.
I have some ideas on the premier super-team to put down here - now I just need to remember them...
