So Overwatch has finally persuaded me to run a superhero campaign (which will be in style of the game)

Terrifying thing: The Omnic Crisis used Bastions as footsoldiers, with literal thousands of them on the front lines.

Think about the problems one of them gives a team that isn't ready for it. Now think about 20 of them.

Now consider that there is no given reason besides game mechanics that they couldn't just switch to tank mode any time they wanted.

Tank Mode was introduced really late in the development process, and if you look at Bastion, its parts for turret and recon mode are fully integrated, but its tank mode parts just come out of nowhere, so I'd make tank mode a feature unique to the Bastion with the bird, not all of them.

XCOM + Overwatch = ???

Good tsatse.

Take a look at well written Saturday morning cartoons.

Wakfu, Mystery Inc., Spiderman Unlimited, Avatar, Young Justice. A theme that's pretty consistent is an overarching plot that's procedurally advanced between "one shots." Every session, the players should save the day, while the BBEG's evil plan moves forward a step.

Soldier 76 and Symmetra's shorts both taking place in Brazil and having similar crisis yet different approaches could make for a good example of what you're interested in? Symmetra's a politician and 76 is just a crazy old vigilante but both work toward the "fuck favelas" goal. maybe that'll help you think of stuff?

Symmetra has a short?

Comic.

Ah. Thanks.

I think quite a few of them are functionally superhuman, no?

Tracer can teleport and manipulate time.
Morrison is Captain America.
Reaper is Captain Latin America with spoopy ghost powers (probably nanomachine cloud stuff).
Zenyatta is a robot with legit force powers due to being super spiritual.
Bastion is a robot.
Widowmaker appears to have enhanced reflexes, agility, strength, etc.
Hanzo can summon a spirit dragon.
Genji can summon a spirit dragon and is a cybutt.
Winston is a huge ape with inexplicable Hulk rage.
Zarya has the ability to appeal to tumblr while being super super racist.

Widowmaker is just Talon's pet agent. As far as we know she has no goals beyond completing the missions she's assigned. She's the Winter Soldier: femme fatale edition.

Soldier 76's short took place in Mexico.

Reaper is a cloud of Nanomachines possessing different bodies. It's implied that Mercy accidentally turned Gabriel Reyes into what he is.

Current DM is doing something kind of similar, though hasn't been brave enough to say it's Overwatch inspired. Basically a wing of the UN is dedicated to dealing with setting problems, and employs super individuals including villains who they will grant temporary amnesty to as long as they work for the branch. You can come and go as freely as you please though, but it is a pretty cushy position to have.

He created some setting-level threats as well as has some of us players as villains. So we can either pose threats to one another or team up to deal with something bigger.

It's actually quite interesting in that regard where he has each half of the party competing for public and political favor. The heroes are all about justice and following the rules but are bogged down by all the bureaucracy, where us villains are about getting the job done and trying to act as a deterrent against future problems but are bogged down by laws. At least that's the general idea, as we compete, and depending on public and political favor based on our actions, determines who has more sway in the branch and how things will go. If they can maintain hero favor, then things will be more to their liking, if we can increase villain favor then things will go our way.

Maybe in that regard it's more like XCOM but for super people and not just aliens, rather than a typical branch of the UN. Either way though, it's been surprisingly fun so far, and the DM welcomes our input for things to happen both for our characters and the branch, as well as the setting proper. So far, a few players have created or prompted larger setting threats, which may or may not have been related to their characters.

Yeah, I figured the Mercy thing.

I didn't know he was a bodysnatcher though. I assumed he was constantly breaking down and rebuilding his own body (this being why he regains health from kills - he literally uses whatever raw materials are around to patch himself up).

The body snatcher thing is my theory because it seems to make more sense than him stuffing other organs into himself.

Also, the ending bit from Recall had him flying around as a cloud.

Reaper is super edgy because he's actually Reyes's teenage son trying to avenge his father using his gear and tech he was given by Talon.

Reminder that in a setting of super powered and super scienced people, Road Hog is completely mundane and normal and gets by with the best of them by being a fat fuck.

Maybe he was mutated by austradiaton.

Have you see his face under that mask? He looks like an actual pig.

Pretty sure he's some weird irradiated mutant.

I know people in real life who look like actual pigs.

Possible but we'd need to see some solid proof.

Does this look like the body of a mutant?

I like the idea, scifi superheros with somewhat rational/tech-based backgrounds for having their powers! Sounds neat, and your power level seems well balanced too.

Roadhog is at the upper ends of Human size and strength and then tips it over the top by huffing super gas.

That's not gas, it's paint.

He could also just be 'straylian. I mean, think how bad it is now.

Now imagine how bad it is after a near world-destroying roborebellion.

I fucking love the UN. Not in real life so much, but in fiction the UN is a fucking spectacular organization for stuff like this because there's so many words that begin "UN-" that you can pretty much set the tone of the campaign by picking a fitting backronym.

Going for a light, optimisitic campaign? You work for the United Nations International Treaty Enforcement office, or UNITE.

Dark and Gritty? Try United Nations Tribunal on International Law, or UNTIL.

Are they the villain? You clearly work for someone else -try NATO- but the bad people are probably in the United Nations DEpartment of Military Intelligence and National Enforcement, or UNDERMINE.

Just something to keep in mind.

Pic Related: Average UNITE agent.

You could use the DCAU as guidance. Start with fun and relatively straightforward adventures that also establish your cast, then slowly start to delve into the politics of where the team's orders come from and how much oversight the people should have over them, have good guys make some honest mistakes that turn into nastiness and suspicion, then have a big cathartic battle with an unambiguous bad guy right at the end.

Then, if the campaign runs longer than you thought it would, have a rambling story arc that goes nowhere and features gorilla/human romance.

Mcree is a cyborg cowboy
Junkrat/Roadhog are just criminals but the only "evil" thing they have about them is they hate the roboniggers
Mercy is a mad scientist

Also, they have a careless disregard for human life.

>Zarya has the ability to appeal to everyone while being super super stronk.
img14.deviantart.net/5dc5/i/2016/148/9/b/overwatch_s_zarya_nsfw_by_pixiepowderpuff-da3xo5l.png

Not nearly muscular enough on the torso and legs.

I mean they arent THAT bad in this regard

Well, they're more comedic than anything.

Looking at the comics, you see how legitimate the struggles every other character has are but Roadhog and Junkrat are just insane and played for humor.

Wasnt there entire comic trying to be legit? Only in some sick twisted way since they were psyched to kill some ominics only the CEO double crosses them and them being the psychopaths they are leave him hanging while having planted a bomb in his building.

I'd say there intentions are good joining overwatch and shit butits just they are fucking crazy

Pretty sure that all the magic and shit is just nanomachines.

Reinhardt is a Knight in power armor.
D. Va is a Gamer girl in a mech suit.
Lucio is a DJ with hover skates.
Symmetra is an Autistic Dancer with super-advanced technology. Dem thighs.
Pharah is Egyptian Samus.

If you took it seriously, that's probably what you'd get out of it. But the dialogue isn't really supposed to be serious. However, they aren't really portrayed all that well either.

Reaper is just a walking parody.

His kit is literally

*teleports behind you*
*pulls out dual shotguns*
Nothing personel kid

youtube.com/watch?v=uOVdNpdhSiQ

Reinhardt's a long-lived veteran of combat in power armor.
DVa has a great deal of experience fighting mecha kaiju that kept on assaulting Korea's coast.
Lucio's tech comes from his time as a vigilante and is shit that he looted from Vishkar Corp, the same people who employ...
Symmetra, whose autism is a key part of what allows her to use Vishkar tech to create shit out of hard light.
And Pharah has some top of the line military training and equipment.

I was exaggerating.

But Reinhardt is better described as a Knight. That's literally his whole thing. Symmetra honestly just has OCD like Monk.

have you read his backstory? areas attacked by the reaper are littered with corpses that appear prematurely aged or "drained" somehow. he's not a body snatcher, he's "stealing their souls" with nanomachinemagic

she's 6'5", she's be almost 400lb if she had "bodybuilder" proportions.

Don't tell him that

Nah, she's got some pretty intense autismal shit going on. Comic confirms it.

And Reinhardt might be a little senile.

I'm basing it on the comic. She acts similarly to Monk.

Compared to her arms, the rest of her looks incredibly out of place.

I dunno man, Hanzo and Genji's thing seems like genuine magic.

And IIRC it's been stated that Zenyatta has for real enlightenment powers.

Reinhardt is straight up delusional. In his comic he sees a gang as a horde of armored monsters, and their flamethrower-toting leader as a dragon. He's Don Quixote.

Reinhardt definitely has some mild dementia going on but he's very much a Knight in battered armor.

not really. that's just what a very tall muscular female build looks like.

>I dunno man, Hanzo and Genji's thing seems like genuine magic.
>And IIRC it's been stated that Zenyatta has for real enlightenment powers.
I want to agree with you but Blizzard has gone on record saying there is no magic in the Overwatch universe.

And Mei is WORST GIRL

Maybe it's a Ki thing? Ki isn't Magic.

Show us on the Ragdoll where the Mei shot you with the icicle.

This seems pretty farfetched. The crap Hanzo pulls is out n' out magic. I'd say it isn't some gamechanger for there to exist magic in the world of OW, even though it's a looot more rare and unique than, say, Shadowrun, which is saturated in magic shit.

I'd say OP should go with "rare cases of mystic spoop" which would also be a nice fluff thing, the baddies might be up to something using magic or whatever. Daredevil S01, for example.

66.media.tumblr.com/4921a9bbd478c75f9233b35d15c63c30/tumblr_o88axnJd371tt3053o5_1280.png

She stood in front of me, spammed the I'm sorry line, and punched me into little bits.

"Unexplained phenomena", "mysticism" or plain magic. The name isn't important, just the fact that certain individuals can wield energies and powers that cannot be explained by logic or laws of nature.

>emboldened by the murder of an omnic spiritual leader, a group of British citizens have constructed an EMP device and plan to set it off in the omnic shantytown in King's Row

So is THAT what's happening in that map?

He huffs poison gas to heal, so I wouldn't say he's mundane.

at watchpoint gibraltar, you are either preventing the satellite that would recall the overwatch agents to active duty or you are trying to get it to the rocket so it can actualy get to orbit.

each time you sucessfuly defend, you are creating a timeline where overwatch was never called back to active duty

Tagging Hanzo's and Genji's shit with something else than magic is actually lamer than magic existing in the setting.

Same goes for Reaper and Zenyatta DESU. Especially Zenyatta since a robot having spiritual powers is a nice twist.

Tracer... yeah. Magic.

Everything else can be at least somehow explained with super (i.e. sufficiently advanced) science.

Fucking word filters. "To Be Honest."

That, and half the cast has in-game lines where they take the piss out of his ridiculous edgelord act.

I like Ki better. You have people who are capable of walking across burning coals unscathed today. Why not shooting a dragon?

Tracer IS super-science in the vein of Doctor Manhattan.

>You have people capable of breathing today, why not breathe fire?

When I first played Reaper and he threw away the guns as opposed to reloading I legit laughed. It's not even a bad parody.

I very much agree with most of that, except maybe Tracer and Reaper?

Tracer's abilities don't feel particularly magic, they might all just be some supertech prototype or whatever. And Reaper doesn't really feel like a wielder of fantastic magic either, it's more like he's possessing some alien nano- or life energy-shit or whatever? Dark necron stuff, wherever it came from.
67.media.tumblr.com/f497c7e5684560498a62017320ee0f09/tumblr_o739jqsor41tokdlwo4_r1_540.png

How many people do you know that are capable of walking across burning coals barefoot?

I got the spray where he just has a bunch of shotguns under his trench coat

Tracer is super-science yes and Reaper was covered earlier in the thread.

The dragon powers are likely the result of nanite-laced tattoos. The nanite swarms activate with a particular key word to form a particular function.

If Reaper's a sapient nanite swarm, this is possible too.

Tracer was on a ship designed to skip through time when something fucked up, and now she's chronally unstable. Winston designed her harness to keep her locked into the present and allow her to hop around.

Tracer's powers are definitely not magic.

She's a science accident. She was aboard an experimental teleporting fighter jet when it dropped out of the physical universe for too long. After that she got sliced from standard spacetime and started to flicker in and out of existence at different points in time. That glory thing she wears is something Winston designed to keep her rooted in the present and let her manipulate her personal timeline to an extent.

Reaper isn't magic either. It's heavily implied that Zeigler's nanotech turned him into what he is. He's probably a nanite swarm embedded with Reyes' consciousness.

>He's probably a nanite swarm embedded with Reyes' consciousness.
that would explain the outfit. it helps keep the nanites in one human shaped place

The Mythbusters.

And the endless supply of shotguns are probably made from nanites too...

Makes a lot of sense. I like it.

So Overwatch this month's "I want to run a campaign like X" game, eh?

Well at least it's a departure from Darkest Dungeon and Dark Souls type games.

In the animated short, they made it sound like summoning dragons was a family thing. That's magicky
youtu.be/oJ09xdxzIJQ

Literally uninspired, go away.

But how can the outfit keep them in if it's also made of them?

I don't know, bullshit nano science

>Literally uninspired
Like making campaigns based on flavor-of-the-month video games?

>flavor-of-the-month

Not in the Porn world. That's been going on for ages.

I do hope you're saying that it's the non-arms that look like a muscular female build, because tumblrdyke has pretty clearly always been a MtF with that chin and those arms. That is simply not how a woman's arms develop muscle.

Steroids. Russia would totally juice up its soldiers.

They're all cartoons, man. They're based on TF2. Nobody's muscles work that way.

That's an awful strange way to spell Pharah.

PharahXMercy OTP

Junkrat, Roadhog, Mcree, Pharah, Torbjorn, and Reinhardt also have a comic on that note. Pharah is about national defense against an old super computer/weapon, Tor's after one of his designs being used for foul purposes, Junkrat and Roadhog get a job, Reinhardt fights crime, and Mcree ends up on a train at the wrong time.