Mutants & Masterminds 2e

[Ephiral]

Hm. What sort of tone are we aiming for here? Silver age? Iron age? Modern?

[eternaldarkness]

Hm. What sort of tone are we aiming for here? Silver age? Iron age? Modern?

Very much Iron Age to Modern Age, as those are the eras I know and love.

[Ephiral]

I can do modern, but prefer to avoid Iron in my character design. Too many Hard Men Making Hard Choices, too much Liefeld, and nobody looks good in that many pouches.

[eternaldarkness]

I can do modern, but prefer to avoid Iron in my character design. Too many Hard Men Making Hard Choices, too much Liefeld, and nobody looks good in that many pouches.

Keep in mind I'm trying to stay away from 'yet another supers game' and lean subtly toward a more horror-inspired setting, with influence from the likes of authors like Lovecraft and Stephen King, and games such as Eternal Darkness (My favorite horror game ever, as my name implies).

The way I intend to inject the horror is not by constantly doing awful things to the PC's though; on the contrary they will be too powerful and competent and benefitting from the patronage of the horrible entities that make the world a scary place for everyone who isn't so blessed.

They will be superhuman in a world that desperately needs them.

[Ephiral]

Oh, I'm totally on board with that. When I talk about Hard men Making Hard Choices, I'm speaking of a very specific sort of narrative - kinda the antithesis of what you're aiming for in a way. The sort of story that says "Yes, they did these horrifying things, but that was totally justified and right!", and the characters rarely suffer for these choices or even seem to question them much. The apotheosis of this in comics was probably The Boys.

[Foxy DeVille]

So character creation-wise are we going with PL 10 and 180 pp fer sure? And what sources are allowed? I'm kinda eager to start whipping some stats for a Korean race queen turned living arsenal...  8-)

[Muse]

  I'm excited too. 

[Ephiral]

Aaaaand I have a concept, with a nice uncanny-valley feel to it, places to escalate to horrifying ends, and tentative numbers-on-a-sheet to support it based on the PL 10 180 PP idea. (Understand we're still in the knocking things around stage, I just really love character design and think I've got an interesting idea to play with.)

[eternaldarkness]

So, as we draw closer to the time when I'll be able to kick start this thing I have come up with a few setting elements that I want to run by you guys.

First the cornerstone of a supers game, powers:

I envision a few basic categories of powers, those being:

Savant: Powers, which are really non powers. These are the mundane skills taken to superhuman levels (Batman, Hawkeye, the Punisher) type of abilities - they don't count as powers for purposes of mechanics (unless they are built as powers) and should generally bend but not break the limits of what a mere mortal can accomplish. Savants in the setting will be recognized as such once their talents become known, and certain parties will be aware that the reason they've suddenly begun appearing in huge numbers is because the awakening of the old gods has, as it always did in the past, fundamentally altered the boundaries of what is and isn't possible.

Descendant: A subcategory of humanity that is capable of directly wielding superhuman powers because it's in their blood. This comes from having an ancestor who was a god or one of their nonhuman creations. These are your mutants, your science accidents like Spiderman, and your outright aliens. A very small portion of the human population has the genetic potential for superpowers, but not all of that portion get exposed to the catalysts that activate their specific powers - and the conditions required are unique to each individual, though proximity to other descendants seems to somehow raise those odds.

Wielder: Powers derived from an external source, be it an ancient magical weapon, a suit of power armor, or a chemical concoction that grants powers when you ingest it. The universe goes out of its way to not part a wielder from their source of power permanently, though it can and has happened before. These Powers should obviously have the Device flaw.

It is possible and probable to have powers from more than one category. Peter Parker had spider-powers, but he was a genius who concocted his web fluid and invented his webshooters himself: a fine example of a Descendant/Savant.

These are categorizations that are widely known and accepted in the setting among those who are in the know about such matters.

I'm working on the gods now. I need to make them just right...cthuloid, but still comprehensible and compelling on a level that would make you go 'I can see why this eldritch horror has followers'.

[Muse]

This is exciting. 

I like this arangement of origins, it's just the sort of thing I was hoping for.  :)

[Ephiral]

Sounds great to me. I'm actually all for people in-setting having a working vocabulary to describe and categorize this stuff because, well, humans do that.

[eternaldarkness]

Glad you're all liking what I have so far. For the old gods, I'm going to borrow heavily from Call of Cthulu and my favorite horror game ever, Eternal Darkness. I'll get some details about them and the setting tomorrow. Right now I have a whopper of a headache.

[bend]

Still a spot? I love the concept and I have a perfect character in mind, though she leans more towards iron than modern. but I guess someone has to play the antihero right?

her name is Vendetta, and as a descendant of a people who was wiped out by the Old Gods, she was chosen to battle them and avenge her ancestors.
She's a former soldier and approaches the battle as *the* war, and she's the avatar of a being created from the collective sorrow and death of her people, embodying their desire for revenge. She fights with a mix of conventional weapons and deadly.combat magic.