Imagining a superhero setting.

[the_david]

I'm hit by a sudden burst of inspiration, so I want to put some quick ideas in black on white. Nice guy that I am, I'm allowing other people to read my thoughts and spew their criticism or add their ideas to the pool.
The theme is superheroes, and I'll formulate this as a Q&A.

Q: What system are you using?
A: For now this is just an idea in the back of my head, and it doesn't really matter yet.

Q: What kind of setting is this?
A: Superhumans in the modern world. The idea is to make a world in which you can tell every kind of superhuman story.

Q: How do humans gain superpowers?
A: People all over the world suddenly gain superpowers. This is not unlike the white event from New Universe/New Universal. The event is a mystery, and could be caused by anything. It's also not unlikely that some terrible accidents happen during or immediately after this event.

Q: How do normal people react to people gaining superpowers?
A: This would depend on a lot of factors, and may depend on which part of the world you live in. The government could hunt down superhumans, or force them to register their powers. Superhumans could be forced to work for law enforcement. Other countries could be taken over by superhumans, and some might just accept that some people have superpowers now. Anti-superhuman hategroups might form rather quickly.

Q: What's it like to have superpowers?
A: Some superhumans become celebrities, some will become superheroes. Others might stay in the closet, and some will become despots and crimelords. Not all superhumans are created equally however, and only a small percentage of the small percentage of superhumans would be able to influence world changing events.

[GorinichSerpant]

Mutants and Masterminds is the system you need for this. It's designed exactly for this kind of setting.

Other then that, what you really need to come up with is interesting heroes and villains to populate the world.

[the_david]

Mutants and Masterminds is the system you need for this. It's designed exactly for this kind of setting.

Other then that, what you really need to come up with is interesting heroes and villains to populate the world.

There are other systems designed for this kind of setting. I'm not gonna spend money on yet another book with 300+ pages of rules.

You may have missed the point, but this setting is about the entire spectrum of superhumanity, not just the heroes and the villains.

[QuintonBeck]

Been kicking around some superhero setting ideas myself but not committed enough to make anything so contributing here seems good.

My first question is what kind of powers are we talking about? After all, not all powers are created equal just as all those who gain powers may not see the full utility of their power. Before I can delve too much into the various ideas I've had I need to know what you're thinking as far as range and breadth of powers being granted.

The other thing I've thought about is a setting a few decades after a similar to your idea Event that granted power. In this setting the "best" powers willing to work with the governments have formed a sort of government sponsored Justice League/Avengers and work with a setting version of SHIELD except this organization is less about identifying and monitoring other powers but indoctrinating or imprisoning threats. It leans towards despotic but I'd had the idea that a few world threatening super villains has caused the world to embrace the containment of supers so unregistered supers are more or less reviled.

It would seem natural to put players into the role of unregistered rabble rousers but my thought was to place them in a sort of stormtrooper squad mix of low-power supers and teched out normals sent on missions to detain or eliminate unregistered supers, whether voluntary or suicide squad idk. Whether this dived off into flipping against the organization and whether that in turn proved to be a bad move would be something to evolve with the campaign.