When to set a "historical" supers game? (read OP before answering poll)

[Starfox]

I voted for times with fuzzy history like the mythical era and dark ages.

You don't want to play mighty supers in wars, its just too disruptive. Or you have to make the heroes subject to a chain of command, this could work, but you have to tell the players this is your premise.

 

[Committed Hero]

Way back in Pyramid Online, Ken Hite wrote five supers seeds set in historical periods:

Marvel Heroes in Imperial Rome
DC Heroes in Renaissance Italy
99 Muslim heroes - one for each name of Allah - in the Crusades
Civil War
Indian Wars.

Each one sounded great.

"The alien craft fell to earth in 1452, rocketed from a doomed planet. Raised in the small village of Vinci by Gianbattista and Marta DiChiente, Calli learned to fight for truth, justice, and humanitas -- now he is the metropolis of Florence's greatest defender, the Star. (His childhood playmate, sadly, has become a twisted genius bent on revenge -- feared artificer Leonardo Lector.) Each city has its own brightly-caparisoned hero, complete with secret identity and superpowered nemeses. The Raven hunts criminals in the back alleys of Rome, while serving on the Curia by day as a wealthy noble cardinal. Chain Lightning runs criminals and condottieri ragged in Pisa; the Emeraldist joins him when Milan is quiet. The Atlantean patrols the seas of Italy from an under-water palazzo beneath Venice. Silver Athena dispenses justice (and protects women) while ruling an island of Amazons near Sicily. Occasionally, all these heroes team up in a Legion of the Just, sponsored by enigmatic politician Niccolo Machiavelli -- usually to defeat invasions from France, Spain, or Venus, but sometimes to foil the plots of villainous alchemists, mercenaries, gods, and so forth. Slowly, the Legion is uniting Italy -- how will that change the world?"

 

[Autumnal]

It struck me what would push Classical Greek/Roman/etc supers toward the tropes: if they’re all commoners. Which means that the moment they cross someone aristocratic, they’d be up ancient naughty word creek…if their identity were known. And their associates would be open to reprisals as well. That gets you secret identities and dramatic costumes in one fell swoop.

 

[Reynard]

It struck me what would push Classical Greek/Roman/etc supers toward the tropes: if they’re all commoners. Which means that the moment they cross someone aristocratic, they’d be up ancient naughty word creek…if their identity were known. And their associates would be open to reprisals as well. That gets you secret identities and dramatic costumes in one fell swoop.

In Rome in particular, emergent supers could embrace gladiator inspired costuming. Maybe Super Zero is in fact a gladiator that gets powers.

 

[Autumnal]

I didn’t think of that, and like it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The single best RPG campaign I ever ran was set in an expanded version of Space:1889’s world, run in HERO 4th (circa 1900) in Austin back in the 1990s. Part of why it worked so well was that I had STRONG player buy-in.

I revisited the setting in the early 2000s with a different group in D/FW, using Mutants & Masterminds 2Ed (circa 1914). It flopped, in part because there players were not as invested, and there were elements of M&M that rubbed everyone the wrong way. But there was also a fundamental disconnect with the setting for several players.

So while I VOTED for Age of Exploration/Steam/Industrial, I suspect the REAL answer is “the era you & most of your players vibe most strongly with.”

 

[Reynard]

The single best RPG campaign I ever ran was set in an expanded version of Space:1889’s world, run in HERO 4th (circa 1900) in Austin back in the 1990s. Part of why it worked so well was that I had STRONG player buy-in.

Out of curiosity, did you actually run it as a Supers game?

 

[Autumnal]

After I read Gotham By Gaslight, I tinkered with a Legion of Super-Heroes by Gaslight founded in 1900 when three young supers save R.J. Brande from assassins as they’re arriving in New York City. I drew inspiration Donna Barr’s amazing Stinz for inspiration in handling little Ruritarian countries and communities along with “lost world” locales and such. Wrote some of it up for Interlac, an LSH amateur press association. I should tinker with it again, maybe. It’s a good era, with room to make the world better before the world wars descend.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Out of curiosity, did you actually run it as a Supers game?

Absolutely!

In the HERO version, the PCs were essentially a super SWAT team for a multinational policing agency with interplanetary jurisdiction. At least one PC was wealthy and had a secret crime fighting ID.

The M&M version was centered on a school akin to Xavier’s in Marvel or PS 238.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I voted Renaissance. One, because that was the highlighted period of art--painting, sculpture and the like... where the human form took on extreme artistic importance. And superheroes (with body types and costuming) are very much about the peak human form and colorful design, so I could see people like Michelangelo painting panels of the superheroes of the time on walls and such. Second, when you think about the technological ingenuity of someone like Leonardo da Vinci and his designs of things like flying machines and armored vehicles... he's very much a potential character archetype for your Tony Starks of the world. Thirdly... Italian theater (specifically commedia dell'arte) was all about archetypical characters wearing brightly colored costumes and distinct masks, which could have easily resulted in superheroes taking and adapting those ideas into their costuming and masks as well.

Returned to say this would be my next option after the ones I actually voted for, and for mostly the same reasons.

Were I a player in such a setting, though, it would be difficult for me not to play a “Da Vincean” techno-armored hero known as The Tortoise…

EDIT: La Tortuga