Setting ideas

[Revenge of the Bjorn]

I hope to start a Mutants and Masterminds game by summer and I can't seem to get a good idea for a setting. So I want anyone who wants to, to either help me or just put up what you're settings are. Even if they're nothing like what I want to do it puts the ideas out there, and who knows what could be useful.

I intend on asking my players what they want to do, but fairly consisently they don't know or care. So I'm gonna start planning it now. I also hope to teach one of my players to DM so I can play once in a while. Anyway, I hope to create a setting for relatively high powered characters, our games tend to end up fairly light-hearted, and I'd like to have an excuse to draw from mythology, but I don't want the temptation to be too much(because I might also want to start a campaign with players as young deities using Upper Krust's upcoming Immortals Handbook.). So far the only decision I've made is that I want the PC's to be the first superheroes, and I'm toying with the idea of uniform origins. Sometimes it sounds cool, some times it seems too limiting. Any advice at all is welcome. Thank you all so much for putting up w/ my long-windedness.

 

[Macbeth]

Heres my recommended comic book reading for campaign ideas:
Top 10
The Authority (Original series)
Planetary
JLA (up to and including the Maggedon story)
Watchmen

Top 10 sounds particularly good for your tastes, except that it is a world full of heros, where the PCs would be nothing special.

 

[Teflon Billy]

A muc-overlooked source of comic inspiration that is really, really appropriate for RPG's is Stormwatch, by Warren Ellis (I think).

Think of Stormwatch as a UN Peacekeeping force of Supers working out of an orbital space station, commanded by a man who would send them all to certain death if he flt it would save the world.

It's a good comic on it's own, but it would make a fantastic RPG supplement.

Aslo of note...

• Astro City
• The Ultimates
• Top 10

 

[Stormborn]

Have the PCs be very iconic versions of a typical ancient pantheon (Morrison wrote the JLA like this). Give them about a dozen choices of types, let the players make characters who are at least thematically fitting to a few of them and NPC the rest.

Whether they know they are avatars of an ancient pantheon or not is up to you, based on how much you want to limit the players. It could be that the spirits of these old gods have reawakend and are influencing mortals in this one city (where their artifacts are currently in a museum) to take up certain kinds of images while grnatign them powers.


Let their adversaries be the evil half of the pantheon and mythological creatures that are also springing up.

With each passing year more and more people can gain powers, filling in the ranks of the minor gods.

Build up to your own major Ragnorok event a la Kingdom Come/Crisis or keep it lighter and do a Secret Wars type where the Ancient enemy of all gods has shown up and wants to play with the new versions of his old adversaries.

 

[Revenge of the Bjorn]

That's definately a cool idea. and one I'll have to kick around a bit more. A few other ideas are starting to form in my head, and I'll put up an early form of my idea in the near future. Anyone else with anything to throw out feel free to.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

Well, the initial idea for my M&M idea takes place on Neo-Atlantis, an artifically created island nation. It's the most technologically advanced nation on the earth. They primarally import food and export technology. With some of the best educational institutions on the earth, they've extended invitations to selected students from around the world for a full scholarship education.

However, someone isn't happy with the island. Encursions of people in power armor, enhanced special forces soldiers, and heavy weapons poliferation are giving the special police division all the work they can handle. Even worse, Neo-Atlantis's known protector, The White Knight, hasn't been seen since his retirement.

Due to the presence of an ailien artifact, the head of Osiris, people with latent abilities are awakening. When a group of students begin manifesting strange abilities, they have to try to balance out the safety of the world with balance in their lives.

In essence, I was going for the whole "Magical Girl" anime with a few more strangely dark moments. I can dig up my notes if you're interested.

 

[Breakstone]

I've always enjoyed the superhero-setting of The Tick, in which being a superhero is just another lifestyle choice...

 

[Revenge of the Bjorn]

Sorry this took so long, but after a long thought process I think I've reached GM burnout, so I'm letting someone else take over. But I did have a cosmological idea before, so I'll post anyway in case someone else wants to use it. I never got the chance to fully fill it out, but what it was, was the idea that all the bigger features of nature (mountains, forests, islands etc) would be ruled over by a spirit, and these spirits would be ruled over by 4 spirits (for the 4 traditional elements) who would then be ruled over by the Master of a planet. All the Masters of planets would then answer to a council of maybe like 5 or 6 Masters of Reality (Credit due to Black Sabbath here). And superpowers would come from control of the natural spirits. And that's as far as I got.