Interest check: World War II era superheroes of heft (M&M 2e probably)

[Kolbrandr]

So the basic idea here is that you’re basically the JSA (pre spear of destiny retcon thingo)/Invaders equivalent in WII, the big supers of your day fighting on the front against both human troops and whatever inexplicable horrors/supermen/crazy science things the Axis flings in your general direction. You’re not likely to change history, but you are likely to be the sole reason history doesn’t go falling off a cliff into a gigantic fire just beneath said cliff. Also the fire has been lit on an oil slick that is ontop of a lake of acid. Also swimming in the acid are giant acid proof sharks. But for your heroism, goes the world, is what I’m saying there (no pressure!).

There’s going to be a bit of rambling preamble here out of my experiences to date on Ell, so bear with me.

Ramblings:

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So, particularly after several recent experiences around the internet that boiled down to expressing some interest in a particular game/playstyle/character I wanted to play, a GM responding “sure!” then ultimately offering dead zero nothing like what I had expressed interest in at all.. (but I digress) I’m once again in that place of “the only way you’ll experience the games you’re looking for is if you make/run them.”

The problem of that of course is that I don’t really believe, especially in system games, which are my preference, in playing a player character in a game I run.  I just don’t personally think it works, it mostly  in my experience results in people humouring a lot of self-indulgence from on high  because they really want to game. The problem of avoiding that however, is that when you’re running something that you also really wanted to play, you have to fight not to feel a bit resentful about people coming out of the woodwork, sometimes in droves depending on what you’re offering, to play a thing that you yourself don’t get to.

It’s an issue and part of why I think finding pbp GMs outside of basic simple standard stuff can be so difficult, despite how much player interest there is to find. How to deal with it? Well I find that it basically boils down to “do I like the idea of this setting/game/whatever enough, such that the notion of providing other people who also like it with some shared space in which they can mess around feels rewarding of itself past any other issue.”

This though leads to a related issue, a lot of the genre stuff I feel the above about are old/obscure things, or things that require a solid amount of investment/creation work. So Aberrant, Elder vampire games set in the Dark Ages, high scale pathfinder where people design an entire noble house that plays of the themes of an established setting, that kind of thing. Which runs into either a very small player base that does not survive standard pbp attrition (the first thing), or not even making it past character creation as people fall off mid design (the other two). To really give things a try then, it requires hitting the space somewhere between more broadly appealing, but still also interesting to me to run.

Why the rambling? Because I want to be honest and forward about my headspace here and because my habit of going “let’s try something that actually gets to use the more powerful corners of a setting that you otherwise only get to read about and never touch!” means I’m pretty sure people will put up with being hostage to rambling in exchange for potent characters of stuff ;p

Okay! Supers games! I like the idea of them, I like the very idea of supers gaming, specifically with the potential for both operatic epic bombast and incredibly personal moments all together, everything that flows inbetween those two poles, the notion of the fate of the world riding on choices and heroism, all that sort of thing. 

I think there is extremely fertile ground for something like superheroes in World War II, which is why it has a fair bit of exploration. By the same token, it’s WWII, and I don’t want to be all Golden Age blithe about that being a rough experience. I’d like to basically exist in a middle ground that acknowledges the darker aspects of things as things that exist without forgetting that you are all the same playing superheroes. So not full bore Iron Age grim, but not full bore “Golden Age Superman”. More a sort of somewhat dinged bronze age, if that makes any sense. Hope, but a tempered hope, that allows for that tragic things are going on and are likely to be experienced in some fashion, but at the same time acts of heroism and nobility are as well.

Also, y’know, I want you guys to be able to beat the crap out of the Axis and not feel miserable while you do ;p

The points would be pl 13, 230. And I’m likely to use Mutants and Masterminds 2e simply because I have way more material to loot way more npcs from (era appropriate ones no less), I like it slightly better than 3e, there’s less conversion work for me, there’s a system for fighting whole groups of soldiers and their stuff and etc.

Setting wise, I haven’t firmed that up yet. For instance, I’m probably going to steal characters pretty liberally from the Algernon files without exactly using its setting (don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it, it’s basically just books of npcs and stats that make a GM’s life easier). I may even completely change faces names and etc, so extra don’t worry about it.

I mean, generally for comic book settings as far as their in character shticks, World War II is the first era where superhumans really emerge into the public consciousness, and I do want to run with that. So in loose terms, definitely a setting with multiple origin types (science, magic, aliens, whatever), where weirdness has always been a thing, it’s just only now becoming a huge thing, with a just before it era of mystery men that I will say was closer to something of full gonzo Tom Strong type of era (you’ve never heard of Tom Strong? That is sad. Basically like if the pulps had people with crazier and more explicit superpowers than they did)

I’m also being less firmed up on setting because I want you guys to feel free to define things a bit with your characters if you want to go that way, within reason. Maybe you firm up the shape/definition of a particular mythological pantheon, or a secret program, or branch of a spy organization, or hidden civilization that birthed you, or that kind of thing.

The basic notes would be these:

Setting Start and underlying shtick: It’s 1940 and you are a superteam of various men, women, robots, superintelligent gorillas or some entity sympathetic to the cause, somewhat desperately gathered together by the Allies in the face of Nazi ubermensch programs and all that sort of mess. You’ll fight them militarily on battlefields and superpowered commando type strikes, you’ll fight their intrigues, you’ll do the occasional really awkward press things locally and abroad for sake of morale and fundraising. No, the Americans have not entered the war yet, so, odds are, you are not American (*watches my having just killed this game before it started* I kid. But I do want to explore the notion of that you’re potentially all from other lands/identity makeups as a thing, along with issues that might arise, so forth. Even if that land is Atlantis or Asgard or something. Probably be Canadian if you want to be from North America at this point, is what I'm saying). Russia has a treaty with the Germans at this point, so you’re likely not Russian either (hey look! I neatly sidestepped the whole “so what if one of us is answering to Stalin?” issue. I am so clever.)

How much history do I need to know? Effing none, other than you know, a general outline at most. I am not myself a historical expert, though I’ve read up a bit on things and will provide what I hope to be some semi decent detail of how things are going and where you might be headed to do things with stuff. Though frankly, I myself am likely to make some mistakes. Don’t worry that you need to know anything in minutiae. It’s not going to be to the point of gross historical inaccuracy, but you’re playing superheroes, that is already grossly inaccurate. Things will be a wee might fluid, if not to the point of, say, Vandal Savage overthrowing Hitler and replacing him or something like that. If you do know history, hey, that’s in fact fantastic, definitely use it to flavour your character, that would be really cool in my view. Just don’t expect perfection from me on that end as a GM (or anything close to perfection).

Are there suggested character thematics? There are kinda! So basically, however complex your character may be (and I do like complex characters, sure) I would like there to be a central, easily expressed anchor on which that complexity hangs. So for example, see the characters here (I’m not using them for this in any way, they’re just examples) https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=252906.0

Gareth boils down to “Supersoldier of the Round Table”, The Dragon Knight is “Dracula fights for the Allies!”, The Steel Sage is “supergenius powersuited Chinese patriot” (granted within the tragic context of her era), Zephyr is “superspeed Jewish teenage girl partisan” even Maugris is basically “Byronic hero medieval wizard” I would also like you guys to supply something of a supporting cast and a few suggested villains.

Character points? Pl 13, 230 points as noted. Enough to go both powerful and broad, ideally. Don’t give me a sheet yet, this is just an interest check.

Posting limits? If you can’t at least do three per week, please don’t even note interest. Even if this means no game happens, that will be vastly less frustrating for me than to get a game going and basically have people just barely respond to anything.

Smut? Okay, so, cards on the table with this being World War II. If someone has a Nazi fetish I do not want to know.  With that said, I mean the war, right? Soldiers getting into affairs with the locals, people striving to find some feeling of normalcy or intimacy during the hell of wartime, hell, even pinup girl art, those are things. That’s even without getting into any sexual tension within the team itself and those they interact with in both positive and negative ways. I’m happy to remember that this is indeed Elliquiy, but generally speaking smut will be spun off into its own threads, and if you expect it from npcs I’m playing in villain interaction ways, it will super never happen with the Axis sorts in any way I will especially detail the details of. It’s just not something I can rp out, to say it directly. Design some kind of “third party messing around” thing if you’re hoping for that sort of thing. I’m otherwise thinking NC-Human would cover things honestly, though I’d entertain suggestions for beyond that.

Group size? Depends on interest expressed and then picking applications once it hits a formal application process really.