I have been trying for most of this past year to get a SWADE game going, SWADE being the current edition of the Savage Worlds universal tabletop roleplaying game, Savage Worlds Adventure Edition. Of course, you can't just say "hey, let's play some SWADE!" like you can say "hey, let's play some D&D!" and have folks understand what's going on, there are just too many settings and genres you can play around with in an RPG like SWADE, you've left out some vital information to your potential playing group. For my own planned SWADE campaign, I have the thought to Game Master (GM) 3 rotating settings (which I have been calling The Revolver in my head, in honor of The Beatles album of the same name) - the classic Deadlands setting that started it all and I played all the way back in the 1990s when it first came out; a super secret setting that I want to use to introduce my players to both SWADE and this world setting (trust me, this being a secret fits this particular setting so well); and last, I want to play the Super Powers Companion. By the title of this post, I'm hoping you realize that I'm going to be talking about that last setting, but first some background.
My own personal history with comic book super heroes RPGs started with the venerable Champions, more than 20 years ago as I type this. Champions is known for being able to create most anything you will find in a comic book, but that same modularity makes the game very complicated and very hard to get into for new players. But I had a really good group that knew the system very well, and I was not a new player to RPGs at that time, just new to Champions, so we played some epic campaigns (which is what you hope for when playing a comic book super hero RPG). Huge cinematic action scenes, bombastic monologues from evil overlords, fantastic costumes - everything you have come to expect from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and the better parts of the DC Extended Universe) and comic books of the past 100 years or so. Whatever we found cool, in TV or movies or comic books, we played it. We played a sci-fi setting where I had found an action figure where someone had crossed Marvel's Venom with the xenomorph from the Alien movies. I wish I had saved that image, as all I can find now is this action figure, but it doesn't seem right. Anyway, for this sci-fi Champions game, that is what I played, this creepy alien with teeth and claws and faster than thought. And it was a ton of fun.
Which brings us to today and the new Super Powers Companion (or SPC for ease of typing). SPC, much like Champions before it, is merely a set of rules with a generic comic book setting because neither the folks behind Champions nor Savage Worlds/SPC could afford to pay the copywrite for any of the big, well known universes. Instead, in addition to the generic settings that are like an amalgamation of all the well known comic book universes, both rule sets give you the tools to file the numbers off your own preferred comic book setting and play however you want. You want to have a team up between Polverine (with his high healing factor and hyper-titanium skeleton and claws) and Stuperman (with every superpower known to comic book reading fans) facing off against the forces of H.U.D.R.A., who has infiltrated the government and every facet of normal life? Given enough time and interest, you can make that happen, and as long as you don't try to sell your creations to the public at large, no one from the parent corporations are going to show up at your doorstep with offensive legal instruments. Offensive, not as in "I am offended" but as in "attack" or the opposite of "defensive".
I've been thinking about what setting I would run for quite a while now, even writing another post here on the blog long before the latest version of SPC came out, and while that other super heroes setting I came up is interesting as a mental exercise (or a setting I would use if I were to start writing my own comic books... yes, writing, as I have the same drawing skills that the Universe gave to doorknobs), but not something that I think a group of players would find terribly entertaining to be dealing with. So, the answer is, then which set of caped super heroes - because that is what I want to play in SPC, caped (or no capes) super heroes, and more in the vein of the Modern Era (or late Bronze Age) of comics, with a grittier, more realistic sandbox to play around in. I could use the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is pretty easy to relay to your players, you can tell them to watch all of the movie trailers (as intimated by many episodes of the Savage Interludes podcast, including the most recent one (at least, that I've listened to), which has got me thinking of what I would do with SPC) and that will give them all the in-universe setting information you need to know. You could do the same with the DC Extended Universe, if you want to use that setting and characters more. Or you could do the same with the comic books, if you don't like how the movies portrayed those stories. Do you like The Boys or Jupiter's Legacy or Sweet Tooth or Paper Girls or Walking Dead or one of the hundred others of comic book inspired/adjacent TV and streaming shows that have come out in the past 2 decades. Or to put it a different way, do you want to run a caped super hero BIF BAM WHAMMO fest? Or a murder mystery? Or a zombie apocalypse survival horror? Or a sci-fi alien bug hunt? Or anime mechas flying across an alien solar system? Or fighting the demons of Hell as a holy agent of Mother Church? You can play a wide variety of settings and story types, and find examples of them in comics and other popular media. Now, if you have a setting/story combo that already has a Savage Worlds setting book (like steampunk meets magic in the Wild West, otherwise known as Deadlands) or other popular tabletop RPG (like a medieval fantasy as seen in The Legend of Vox Machina - yes, world, Dungeons & Dragons has long cornered that market, no need to keep messing with the formula), save yourself the struggle and just play that game or SWADE setting instead.
What have I been thinking of going? Definitely been wanting a caped/un-caped super heroes in the classic vein of the big team books (Justice League, Avengers, X-Men, The Authority) but whose world and stories am I wanting to dip my toes into? I have been watching and reading a lot of Invincible lately, and I really like the world setting and the big story twist (don't know what that twist is? if so, and you like comic books, then you are the only person on the planet who doesn't know the twist in this tale... and I won't spoil it for you, but really, it's one of the best I've seen in any form of modern media) but I got to thinking about what I like from the book/show and how I would use that in my SPC game. Obviously, the twist is the big draw... but if my players know what the twist is, and I introduce them to the characters direct from Invincible, will there be any surprise or will they groan the minute I set the stage for them, first session in the campaign? That's what I'm afraid of, the twist in the story is great, but if you know it, it's hard to ignore and pretend like you don't know it, and it's just not as entertaining.
My options, as I see them, are i can use the characters of the setting, minus a couple of the key players directly involved in the twist, and play around with them. Or, I can take some of the other stories and plots from the series that don't intersect the twist, and put them on completely different characters so the party members who are familiar with the comics won't peg to it just by an NPC's name. That last one would mean I would have to come up with characters that are new and don't come from the Invincible universe, but I am okay with that. Part of what made Invincible so popular with readers and then viewers is how familiar it feels, like the creators worked hard to make all of the characters vaguely familiar, all the normal archetypes you've been reading in comics forever, just with the serial numbers filed off of them. That does mean there are not a lot of memorable characters in Invincible, but it does mean I can use the generic set of supers and villains the come in the SPC, just rename them a bit and start playing with them how I want.
I think the biggest theme I'd like to appropriate is starting the party in high school, possibly even a Hogwarts-like boarding school for budding/potential supers. Or maybe not a high school, that may be too young for my tastes - other than my knees working again, I would loathe going back to high school - maybe instead go for a college for supers experience. I could steal ideas from Strixhaven and East Texas University (ETU), as they're more collegiate, though if I stick with high school I could also use parts of PS-238 and My Hero Academia.
Another theme or group I want to use comes direct from the comic book (we haven't seen them in the cartoon, maybe just a passing mention) is the Lizard League. Think Cobra from G.I. Joe, except with a lizard theme and some super powered villains at the top of the hierarchy. I could go with either group name or come up with my own, but they'd make a great arch-villain group at many of the lower levels of the campaign, and they can expand their powers and numbers as necessary.
I also really like the Martian/Sequid problem seen in both the cartoon and the comic - basically there are people living on Mars, well, underneath Mars' surface, and these Martians are super-powered beings compared to us mere mortal humans. They can change their shapes, assume the shapes of other beings like doppelgangers, even stretch themselves out like Mr Fantastic and Plastic Man. The Sequids are an alien race that crashed onto Mars generations ago. They are race that share a hive mind, but can only connect to each other when they are attached to the neural pathways (nerves, spinal columns, and brains) of another being, which they dominate and use to augment their own mental powers and as vehicles. Fortunately for the Martians, due to their shapechanging powers, the Sequids can't interface with them, so the Martians have enslaved them for physical labor ever since the Sequids arrived. That is until the United States gets it into their head to send a manned mission to Mars, because of course the Martians on Earth haven't told anybody what is going on back on Mars, and the Sequids take over one of the astronauts... and all hell breaks loose. Reskin the pertinent details - they're not on Mars, they're on Europa, and the Sequids don't look like calamari, they look like cockroaches drawn by HR Giger and called, I don't know, Skrixlings. Whatever you want to paint it up as, the base idea is still the same and you get to play with it so your players don't see it coming... but when they realize what you're "stealing", they feel pretty smart and they're still enjoying the game.
Of course, if you feed your players something familiar, and they think they know what source material you're copying, it's so much sweeter when you show them something else that seems like it's from that same source. But then, when they get that "ah-ha! I know what this is!" look in their eyes, you show the twist and go a completely different direction with it. The subversion I'm pondering has to do with the big twist in the Invincible setting, and, without spoiling it, I want to show my players what they think is that very twist... but then change it so goes completely different. That change in the familiar, that subversion of the expected, that is where the payoff lies, where you give your players what they think is inevitable, and then make it something else. Trying not to spoil the big twist in Invincible but still making it understandable for those of you who know what said twist is - first off, the father and son don't exist in this version of the setting, or even the "dab of paint and a new name" alternate version, that's too close and anyone who knows the twist will spot it quick. Second, turn the twist around - the father (or his people, you could do it without him ever showing up) isn't the bad guy, so when the good guys from Invincible do show up, they give the same warning about the father, but only to lull the world into a false sense of security, because they're actually the bad guys. Or another option is to set up the world exactly as it appears in Invincible (minus the father and son), and instead of the good guys coming forward with their deceit, have the father (or one of his people) come forward and give the good guy "we're here to save you" speech, same names as in the comic/cartoon. Remember, bad guys think they are doing good deeds, so even though they give the good guy speech, the players (at least one at the table will have realized what setting we're playing in, and will recognize the father and his people) will be convinced they're the bad guys and try to fight them. And either lose to them, or drive them away. At which point the "good guys" show up, oh, here, let me help you up... PSYCH!! We just conquered Earth! At which point it either becomes a guerilla war type struggle, the rebels versus the evil empire, or go straight into the classic Necessary Evil campaign.
So many good ideas to steal, er, appropriate, no, still not right, pay homage to, that's the ticket! Pay homage to, so many good ideas to honor and hold up and admire... and twist and abuse for my own sick little entertainments. What? That last bit was out loud? Crap, gotta put a volume know on that inside voice control...
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