How it's your superhero setting going? What system are you using? What kind of stories do you like?

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ahh superhero game, the game i want to run but the players are taking the concept too seriously to ever pick it.

its a shame, I've been wanting to run a lighthearted superhero game for years.

maybe i can re invigorate the idea, HONEY! get my spandex!!

I run a game with my little brother and his friends and they were into it. They didn't ask for anything serious and I enjoyed the relaxed and cartoony storytelling.
Maybe you should run a session to your son or something like that.

They were also incredibly surprised by all the options they had at their disposal. Like "so I can throw a chair to the robot and break the wall?"

Used Savage Worlds

The setting was the Necessary Evil-campaign.
Not many heroes left in the world. Only villains trying to defeat the aliums.

Penguin suicide bombers and cyborg T-rex on combat drugs made for interesting events.

On the other hand, I don't know why are you afraid of running a serious superhero game. You know the players will joke and laugh at the serious shit
Unless your playing online

>penguin suicide bombers
You monster

I'm running a campaign based on Escape from NY but with interdimensional monsters outside NY, so NY is now one of the last havens.
The only problem is that one of my players didn't actually "get" what the game was about and packed like 13 different powers

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Thank you.

The invading aliens used them to patrol Antarctica.

My players are wary of penguins in campaigns ever since.

Is it still a superhero setting if folks just happen to have superpowers and some use them to be do-gooders? Or must they be caped crusaders who go out of their way to battle designated "villains"?

I had an idea this morning for a superhero setting.

Basically, it starts with a typical sprawling capeshit metropolis full of superheros and supervillains. The lead scientist for the city's superhero prison creates a force-field machine that in theory will isolate the prison and keep all the superconvicts safely locked up. However, something goes wrong, and the force field encompasses the entire city, cutting it off from the rest of the world. The device can't be shut off/ reversed because of reasons, nor can any of the supers puncture the field. The A-lister superheroes were all coincidentally outside of the city when the device was activated.

The game would start a few years later, after most of the civilians had been killed or enslaved by various supervillains (or former superheroes turned bad), and the city had become a post-apocalyptic warzone.

I don't know.. It's clear that systems like Mutants and Masterminds favours the most capeshit approach (parangons vs designated villains), but I'm using it to create an action thriller and it works fine.

Sounds fucking awesome. But where are the stakes? What makes the plot go foward? What is pushing the characters to do anything?

Also, how do you guys get food? Do you get outside info?

That sounds like an incredible idea. I think I will get it in the future.

What level of letality do you like in your games?
My players want over the top gore.

I am happy to contribute to the amusement.

I also recommend lavish use of sounds from Pingu mixed with explosions.
"Noot-noot!" *KABOOM*

kek

Also, one of the penguins got affected by radiation from Nuclear Ninja and somehow began to reform after having been blown up and would seek out the protagonists and try to blow them up on occasion. As far as my players know, it's still out there.

Oh, hey!
That's Zed13's stuff. I have the Masks-game that he illustrated. Haven't checked the rules out yet in any detail, though.

>Nuclear Ninja
rad as fuck

>Nuclear Ninja
His nemesis better be Atomic Samurai or something similar.

Actually, yes literally rad.
A side effect of the blasts from this Villain-Turned-Hero was a chance of contracting cancer.

Atomic Samurai...hmm. If I ever revitalize that campaign, I shall have him appear.
Thanks for the tip.

I ran two parallell campaigns, one in South America and one in North America.

Other supers were:
Upgrader (Gadgeteet guy)
Psyren (seductress/psionic)
Jaguar (master thief)
Keyzer Söze (yes, that Keyzer Söze)
Decibelle (Sonic blast lady)
Major Maxim (from Danger Girl)
Cobra Commander (who may or may not have been the real one).
Dr. Mekano (Cyborg, undead mad scientist)

NPC's:
Jenny Cide and her sidekick Toxine (Guess their theme)
Disguizor (Tranny with a bazooka)
Mad Bomber (Just what it says on the can)
Dr. Herbert West
Professor C (Busty blonde mad scientist who took over and ran Isla Nublar after the Jurassic Park-disaster).
El Commandante (South American cyborg quisling working for the aliens, running concentration a camp for supers).

I had planned to have a third (or more) campaigns on other continents run parallell to these two but it never quite happened.

What'd an Australian super hero/villain be like?
Captain Abo?

Captain Kangaroo, a mutant Kangaroo who leads the Australian resistance.

I like it!
Also, wasn't that an old children's show?

Can something be done with Bunyips?

It depends
I played a straight capes game where the "No Killing" rule was in effect. I put that in quotes because there were still deaths in the big alien invasion that happened at the end, for the general lethality think Marvel and the MCU, most heroes don't want to kill but casualties are sometimes unavoidable though it's only the faceless minions that ever seem to die

Recently however I have been in a Warriors&Warlocks style M&M game where the lethality is cranked up to classic D&D levels in that all characters are assumed to die in battle though again the villains always seem to escape at the last minute

mutants and masterminds

MCU kills villain all the time.

Can you use M&M to run videogame inspired campaigns?

Hey look, it's Arcade Knight if he were a samurai.

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Yes.

youtube.com/watch?v=x2qRDMHbXaM

When did Carmen Sandiego learn magic?

GURPS. Ended a while ago. It was grand.

Supers settings are the best possible setting for a GM who wants to run a new game every other month since you can put pretty much anything you want in the setting and it wont be too jarring. Fucking mental, recommend to anyone who's not run one.

>When did Carmen Sandiego learn magic?
She didn't learn magic.

She stole it.

Has anyone here used Weaver Dice before? Is it good?

It's not terrible, there's still stuff missing from the rules since it's a work in progress which makes it alright for what it is I guess, there's not much to say other than that it's playable without being offensively bad.

In it's current state it wouldn't be my first choice for a superhero game but It's alright enough that I don't mind using it when playing on that one official IRC.

One thing I heard getting recommended a lot when it comes up is to just use the character creation part (which honestly is the only thing that is unique and matters about that system anyway and is basically finished) and restat the results in another system to actually play.

I'm running a game in the Worm setting, based off Weaverdice. It's my second campaign but I have a lot of fun plot ideas for it. Unfortunately it's currently on hiatus since I really need one group to all meet up at the same time which has proven...hard. I just need to have that happen at least once a month, not even once a week. Every other one is them pursuing their own goals, or group goals or things like that.

I like the dramatic stories, as does my villain, who isn't so much a physical powerhouse but a person who pulls the strings behind the scenes (with powers to match that)

So things being more dramatic in the rp is natural. She does everything that she does for more "conflict", even if it hinders or threatens her long-term plans.

So it's the first 10 arcs of worm, with Coil as the villain?

Have the opposite problem.
Running a gritty low level game, and the players have sort of quit, because it's too intense.

Pretty much yeah. Two groups, newly recruited. One "bad guys/rogues" and one "good guys/PRT".

She's playing them both off against each other in the hopes of pinning blame on the both of them.

>Not the american military

Oh! This is a thread that exists, how nice!
I was about to make a thread about some tg super hero stuff, but one is here, perfect.

My setting is going great, thank you for asking. I am working on various super teams that preexist in the world, enough mini blurbs and news type things that if someone ever turns on the tv or picks up a paper I can roll on a chart for 'Super stuff happening in the world'.

One of my questions I've been dwelling on for days though, and I was going to ask /co/, maybe I still will, What Laws would exist in a super hero world.

Registration acts, stuff like that.
Right now I have an age limit, no one under 16 can go out heroing. The Mercury Act of 2026 saying no heroes can enter the middle east (ISIS took over, and is holding the region hostage) and while vigilantism is still frowned upon, you cant just dump crooks and criminals on the steps to the police station, you need to knock on the door and tell them what you caught them doing.

If ya'll are interested in WD, there's an IRC channel actually
irc.parahumans.net #weaverdice

That news chart idea is brilliant, I should steal that.

I straight up lift from 80s and 90s Marvel. Enough people around here know nothing but the movies, so I've been safe.

I'm set up to join a game of MM in the Marvel Universe and I'm not looking forward to it.
I know nothing about Marvel and I've got no idea what to expect when it comes to the world and making a character.

Marvel is shite.

Worm is best.

Everyone hates mutants and lives in NYC

Modern Marvel is shit, 80s Marvel is a cool place.

Pretty much every civilian is stupid as shit, and will not appreciate you.

It's going. The GM's still agitating for some of the players to get their acts together and start on some of the world building. Myself and one other player had our concepts put together pretty early, and we ended up making villains for each-other. The GM wants everyone to do that, but it's hard getting the final drafts of the other characters this far out. But, everyone should have at least one villain they put together, and one someone else made for them.

It's a strange thing, the game's not likely to start soon, but still, the sooner at least character concepts (not sheets, just who they are and so-on) are done, the sooner everyone can start thinking of shit. Which is kind of important. Little hard for the GM to work everything together when one only has 2/5 of the team on a pretty solid basis.

I could have guessed that from the movies.
Just from that one scene when that lady tracked down Iron Man.

FTFY

I usually go with registered heroes And vigilantes being different things.

Registered heroes have more restrictions about the use of force, Mirandizing, requiring a warrant etc. But get legal protections and perks.

Vigilantes tend to be more paranoid about thier secret identity, if they have one and use more excessive force, often racking up a body count.

It also varies from city to city, just how registration/vigilantism works. Some police forces actively hunt vigilantes as much as villians, others look the way so often there's no discernable difference between the two.

>Myself and one other player had our concepts put together pretty early, and we ended up making villains for each-other.
I really like this idea.

My current GM is using a similar thing, with every player encouraged to 'run' a villian behind the scene. If the players encounter the villian, that player runs him/her instead of their hero for a session.

You have no idea. Once during a crossover event the Avengers concluded that the only way the Justice League could possibly be as loved as they are in their home universe was if they were fascist dictators who enforced it.

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I was expecting someone to turn those into glowsticks but this is also perfect.

GURPS Supers.
And it's literally about bunch of dudes who punch things until they no loger move, because that's what my players want to do and do best.
But then again, we gave this a shot having all huge disdain toward capeshit, so it might be our own biase toward the subject.

That is the saddest thing I think I've ever read about superheroes.

>want to play a superhero campaign
>will never ever find a GM
I'd like to fucking die

>Taking turns as GM with each new campaign
Literally 40+ years old solution for the problem.

The JLA thought the Avengers were self-serving vigilante assholes because they didn't have all the crime on Earth under wraps. It was great. Cap and Superman, being the moral focuses of their worlds, HATED each other.

lemme rephrase
>will never ever find a GM/players/group that I can stand for more than one session because every time I've made an attempt to find one either on game finder or on roll 20 or anywhere some hyper autismo has fucked it all up

Running an M&M 3e game.

The Axis won WWII with the power of black magic, super tech and a series of uncanny coincidences. They, along with the USSR (who never got involved in the war) control most of Europe, Asia and Africa. To finish the war, they nuked Seattle and San Francisco with a super substance that rendered most of North America uninhabitable. The United States is now mainly comprised of the New England region, New York and PA, along with a smidge of New Jersey.

The game picks up in 1992, where a coalition of non-Axis nations has developed a program to use the previously mentioned super substance to give people superpowers. The party is made up of: a bitchy goth telepath/telekinetic, a spunky teleporter who will probably eventually be the setting's Tony Stark, and some kind of Alex Mercer-esque transforming abomination. Basically three random assholes picked up off the street and told to work together for the good of the free world.

Mostly I just wanted to make a setting where I could run ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING and it would fit. Taking goofy/pulpy situations and playing them totally straight is my bread and butter.

You seem very knowledgeable.
Do you have any tips on what would make a good Marvel character for a newbie such as myself?

Very few heroes are beloved by all. Cap is probably the only one that got a free ride from the press and even that ended eventually. Being a hero in Marvel means life sucks, but you fight on anyway. Sometimes you get laid, find love, make new friends, but it is going to end with you beaten down and have to get right back up.

>want to run a superhero game
>everyone in the group enthusiastically agrees
>they all proceed to roll up nothing but dudes with tacticool gear and guns and mercenary attitudes

If they wanted a game of Shadowrun instead they could have just asked.

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I meant character options but that information is helpful.

Play a spider hero.

Spider heroes are everywhere in the Marvel universe.

Well, that depends on your game's power level. You got gods like Hercules and Thor. You got superhumans like Spider-Man and the X-Men. And you've got peak humans like Captain America and the Punisher.

They run the gamut from sci fi to cosmic fantasy and there's usually plenty of excuses for an alien or metahuman to be in New York City at any given time. It has a reputation for super heroes and villains so folks move there to make a name for themselves or join up with some super team or just to help out. If you can't think of an origin, be a filthy mutie. They manifest their powers around puberty or in response to trauma or a need.

Mutants do seem like the easiest option.
They're all over the world and their powers can be anything.

Just remember that the world hates and fears you. They tolerate super heroes more than muties and that's saying something. That said, most heroes are alright with mutants and they have their own community, until a writer decides to blow it up to return the status quo to that hated and feared bit.

You do not want to be a mutant. Being a Marvel mutant blows on so many levels. Not only does the public hate you, but the Brotherhood and the X-Men expect you to join up with one of them and do your duty for mutant kind, and will not leave you alone about it. And you never know when some reality altering psycho will say "No More Mutants" and make you drop dead.

One of my character concepts was actually a mutant with wind powers who hated the mutant factions and fucked off to be an independent hero instead. I only really made him up to spite a friend of mine who loves the X-Men, because in case you couldn't already tell I don't like the X-Men.

To be honest it might be the best option for me.

One option I thought I could make was a wizard.
Partly because I like wizards, I liked the Doctor Strange movie, and I liked the animated Strange film I watched years ago. And I know that there are more of them out there than just Steven Strange and the Ancient One's students. There's Doctor Voodoo, Shaman, and sometimes Doctor Doom as well.

Or I was thinking of making a Ghost Rider. I know that there can be more than one of those as well. I've seen that image of a bunch of them in trucks chasing down something posted on Veeky Forums before. As well as the one from Japan. And Robbie... but I don't think he's like the rest.
My problem here is that I don't know how Marvel treats religion (aside from yep there are angels and demons) and just what the ghost rider's powers are. The wiki is of no help.

Isn't Storm well treated in Africa?

Here's a bunch of mutants statted in the greatest comic book simulating RPG, Marvel Heroic: mediafire.com/file/kx3iodm56fg5qya/Marvel Heroic RPG - Civil War - X-Men.pdf

Religion is still played straight. There are plenty of heroes across all denominations but there is actually The One Above All who created the multiverse akin to the Judaeo Christian God, but no one really knows about Him.

If you want a Ghost Rider character I would do it how Robbie does it. Pick a vehicle, give it some supernatural powers (driving up or through walls, auto-pilot, etc) and of course you get the hellfire shit.

As for religion, I think the Christian god does exist in the Marvel universe, but so do a bunch of other gods.

it can go either way honestly, I'd recommend not copying 1-1

As for my game, it's in wild talents. The setting is this future city that got hit by something called "The Awakening". Basically it's a what if rapture got mixed with the zone from stalker, and we threw in multiple political ideologies instead of just utilitarianism.

My party is currently a trans sound manipulator (power was caused because lack of hormone treatment made her voice start to revert. As a result her specialty is concealment and auditory illusions, recently picked up a sort of echo location ability), a wolf shapeshifter who makes smaller wolves (doesn't remember how he got his power, but has a compulsive need to be the "alpha" of any group he's in. luckily he's really dumb, so he's easy to play), guy who makes a new character every week, mercy from over watch, Travis touchdown from no more heroes (they're really lazy with char gen), and a boring dude who manipulates gravity.

recently they just got out of market street where the theme was basically utilitarianism and wealth inequality due to automation and over abundance of future tech, and the arc boss was almost a straight rip off of jack slash from worm, but with an entirely original supporting cast.

They also found out powers might be shards of an elder god. so that's fun

I haven't kept up, but Storm was well treated in Africa because they thought she was a goddess thanks to her OP weather powers.

Mutants and Masterminds.

Still debating if I'm gonna run a Golden Age game about fighting mobsters and Nazis, or a Watchmen-style Dark Age parody adventure.

Just because I didn't specify, the PC's here would also be villains in a standard cape setting. as would the leading merchants.

The entire city qualifies as post-post-apocalyptic, but things are never more than a few bad days from going back to square one.

in fact when the arc began, market street was quarantined because the other factions didn't believe the merchants would hold things together, and they didn't want the chaos spreading,

That's why the PC's were called in. At this point they had just claimed their own district (we'd been playing for a while at this point), and they were able to make a deal. the gist being that they were expendable, and they were very *very* good at the whole controlled chaos thing.

So they given the run down, kill jack, keep the merchants in power so they can keep selling to the rest of the city (market street was the most intact district, and had some serious tech centers), and just try to keep people calm (labor riots were a daily thing at this point.)

The party pretty much failed at everything except killing jack.

So far its just mostly a list of heroes, hero teams, villains, villain teams, anti heroes and serial killers (so the news wouldnt report them, but just the MO, its up to the players to string stuff together), and stock price fluctuations (a lot of companies are run by hero/villains with some degree of genius).

also I got 90% of my content from a gm buddy of mine who ran this before.

the market street arc was actually almost straight from his notes come to think of it

>LOOK OUT
>IT'S THE BLACK TERROR
>AND TIM