As the seasons change and the wheel of the year moves inexorably onwards, a young man's thoughts turn, inevitably, to RPGS. Well, the thoughts of the younger men anyway. I'm feeling about 80 over here. But some members of the collective (who presumably are only feeling about 60) have expressed the desire for playing a new RPG game. And one of them said:
Quite fancy something rules-light...and theme-wise I'm feeling superheroes or modern horror (zombies, etc.)
Which got me thinking.... Why not both?
Now, I would imagine that most of my purely theoretical audience would be asking how such a thing is possible. After all, super heroics and horror are fairly antithetical to each other as themes go. Super Hero type games being primarily about empowerment in a fairly literal fashion, whilst a fairly major factor in the essence of horror is making everyone feel vulnerable or even helpless. But I figure that the two can actually complement each other quite well. After all, how much more helpless and isolated can you make your characters than by them being able to cope with most threats far better than the average person, and then taking that away? When the PCs can cope with almost anything, the one thing they CAN'T just punch into submission becomes a lot more threatening. Especially when you remember that it's not like they can really go anywhere for help to fight whatever it is that's threatening them. Who could possibly out fight a super hero? You're already the strongest, the fastest and the smartest. Where can you go from there but down?
And then there's the matter of Zombies. Now, I don't really know if zombies even count as actually horror anymore, being so relentlessly played out at every conceivable opportunity. But there's always a place for legions of punchable cannon fodder even if you can't make them properly scary anymore. And more to the point, you know who else other than zombies really loves to clamber out of their graves and shuffle around as a perverted mockery of their former selves?
Fucking SUPER HEROES.
This would be a great metaphor for the comics industry if it wasn't so damn popular.
So, there's the start of something possibly interesting. Superheroics, zombies, vast and implacable cosmic horror that regards man as little more than insects and supermen as slightly more interesting insects that it may want to pull the legs off in an idle moment.
Actually now that I come to think of it, my previous iterations on Overpower settings had a pretty strong horror element to them as well. So I reckon I should be able to fit this all together into an interesting enough situation to start with. And oddly enough considering that I'm undoubtedly a Marvel guy, the place we're starting is with The Death Of Superman.
I haven't actually READ any of these comics, but it's amazing what you can pick up through cultural osmosis.
I suppose since we'll be pulling in themes of zombies and resurrection it's entirely possible we may stray into Blackest Night territory. But I haven't actually read any of those either and know even less about the plot, so who can really say for sure?
Other someone who's actually read the books, obviously.
So, anyway, where should we begin?
An interview with the (retired) super villain Laserian.
"Most people think the world ends overnight. Here today, gone tomorrow. Armageddon is strictly a special delivery package. But that's not really the case. It comes by degrees. Bit by bit, piece by piece things come apart. You could ask The Entropist, if he wasn't still in maximum security sedation. Of course, he'd probably try and kill you before you could actually articulate the question, but that just goes to prove the point really doesn't it? We all know where things are going. The only real surprise is on how much worse the journey is than we ever imagined. But I guess if you really wanted to draw a line in the ashes and pick a moment where we can say "It began here" it'd be the day that Captain Helios died. That's the moment. That's when things REALLY started to go wrong. I mean, yeah, he stopped Terracide where nobody else could. I mean, who else? The army dropped 3 nukes on that thing in total. THREE. I ask ya. You would have thought they'd have worked it out after the first one, but no. some people don't learn from their mistakes. I guess they figured there just wasn't enough glass and radiation out in the desert.
Anyway, so the worlds greatest hero and the worst monster ever known managed to beat each other to death. 500 miles of pure destruction, who knows how many dead? Civies, capes, hoods, cops and soldier boys alike. But it was stopped. And then the problems really began.
Sure, we were all grateful to him. The League Of Dark Intent even sent their own honor guard to the funeral. Some say it was a mark of respect. Some say it was just a PR move. I mean, M.A.N.T.I.C.O.R.E. managed to annex 3 states during the crisis by offering the civies protection. Three again! That's marketing for ya. But me... I wonder if they'd some idea of what she was planning. I mean, if anyone was gonna know it was them. They always knew. And really, with all the capes that were attending did they really think anyone would be trying to cause trouble?
But yeah.... You all saw the news reports, same as the rest of us. What little footage made it out before the attack anyway. Right before the coffin was due to be locked in the monuments stasis vault she sweeps in out nowhere to steal the body. We'd always figured that The Queen Of Tarot had a thing for Cap, but no one thought she'd lose it like that when he died. She said though, didn't she? That he deserved better. That she wouldn't accept it. But that's your stages of grief thing, right? Anger and denial. But whatever it was she was doing to his corpse before the cameras cut out must have been pretty serious.
And then, 32 minutes later when the army got it's shit together enough to send a unit out.... Well, a scene of carnage is all the news would say. For the networks to show that much restraint in their reporting only makes me wonder just how terrible it was, that even they couldn't bring themselves to show it. Everyone was dead. No body, no Queen. Although from what I here their still trying to I.D. all the parts even now.
Of course the powers that be blamed the League. But then they would, wouldn't they? Because nobody wanted to consider the alternative.
And that seemed to be that. We went back to the status quo, as best we could. Everyone was shaken up but what had happened. First with Terracide's rampage, and the the funeral day massacre. But there schemes to scheme and banks to rob. Time and tide and all that jazz.
And then, a few months later, some kid in Mexico confuses hi Pyrokenesis for invulnerability and pisses off a cartel. After the army finished mopping up the site they found the kid, catatonic right in the middle of it all. Only living body for 3 miles, although the bullet holes in his skull would normally suggest otherwise.
Don't looked so shocked. Yeah, I know about that. I may be retired, but I still have contacts. I also know that they were picking bits of Armoroids suit out the ground for a MONTH after the funeral. And I also know there's only 3 guys who ever managed to crack that armour. Want to guess who at least 2 of those were?
So yeah, from there it starts to snowball. Some other idiot with shadow powers tries to rob a bank but learns that stray bullets can kill you just as easily as if they're aimed. Next thing you know the authorities are calling in Flameburst to sterilize the area. It's not often you see THAT word on the official paperwork. Crazy thing though. They offer one of the 20 most dangerous hoods in the country a pardon for doing them this one little favour. A favour which, let's not forget, was one of her favourite hobbies before Flender put her away. And yet afterwards she ASKED to go back in.
We all know why NOW of course.
These little outbreaks kept happening though, didn't they. A cape or a hood would go down, and suddenly it's all containment zones and undisclosed civilian casualties. And slowly but surely the truth starts leaking out. Little by little your carefully constructed protections started to crumble. Until eventually there's just enough rumor floating around for some of the crazier hoods to try a practical experiment. It was going to happen anyway, but Deathpact did it first. Jumped off a building and showed the world what really happens when we die.
We come back. But we don't come back alone. Fuckin' ZOMBIES man! I mean, real ones. Hell, even old Voodoo Bob always just used brain control chips and cheap theatrics. But these fuckers... Well, we've all seen it. They ain't got anything in 'em except hate. We come back, and the bodies nearby fill up with hate and start walking.
I know what it is you want to hear. I'm guessing that no one else is crazy enough to say it, that's why you came to me. Although I don't know WHY you're all having such a problem with this. 3 years ago New York was attacked by a 150 foot Tardigrade. If you can accept that then how come you don't wanna admit that she brought him back? She went and did it, who knows how exactly, but she brought the Captain back from the dead. And when she did it SHE LEFT THE DOOR OPEN. Maybe it's because you don't like the idea that your finest hero might just have reduced a couple of hundred people to a fine paste and taken off for parts unknown. Or maybe it's the fact that it looks like all your high and mighty ideas about heaven are so far off the mark that you're gonna have to invent a new class of zip code to quantify just how wrong you are. But that's the facts as far as I can see it. And you've got a bit of a problem now, don'tcha? Because whilst you can stop the zombies if you've got enough flamethrowers or whatever, you can't stop the cause. Because the cause is us. And WE COME BACK. And every time we do we're just gonna make it that little bit worse.
So, Mr Agent or whatever you're pretending to be today.... What do you plan to do about it?"
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