PDA

View Full Version : Mutants&Masterminds - Human Universe



Rob Knotts
2007-06-06, 04:23 AM
The M&M game I planned to start running soon has fallen into limbo, so I've got some more time to flesh-out a big piece of the background I'd been putting off. Essentially, the game is set in early 21st century earth, 10-15 years after aliens try to wipe out the human race. Why wipe out the human race? Because they produce so many super-powered members.

Basically what I'm trying to do is come up with a pseudo-scifi universe inspired by Kirby and Starlin stories for Marvel and DC. And like Star Wars and Star Trek, those comics have humans or human-related supers showing up all over the universe.

What I haven't quite figured out is why familiar, 21st century Earth gets all the grief (aside from being the easiest place to set a game). Some of my basic ideas:

Earth is the target of angry aliens because pre-historic superhuman cultures (Atlantis, Mu, even pantheons of "gods") left earth when mortal humans became dominant, raising hell throughout the galaxy just 'cause they could.

Main problem: 100-150 thousand years seems like a short time to piss off the whole galaxy/universe, not to mention making godlike human characters (Galactus, The Spectre) seem too powerful for such a short history.

Possible solution: once someone ascends to "cosmic power", time becomes more a reference point than anything else, and as time goes forward the history for "cosmic" character goes further back as well, even before humans went into space, and possibly altering the history of humanity as a species. That's a big deal to work into a story, though.

Most worlds similar to earth produce humanoid races that can develop superpowers, and non-humanoids are attacking Earth before earthlings advance into space.

Main problem: seems a little cheesy (did I mention Star Trek?), and it downplays the potential and power of cosmic characters based speficifcally on earth myths.

Suggestions? Thoughts? Indignant assaults because I implied Star Trek could be a little cheesy at times?

ravenkith
2007-06-06, 09:19 AM
X-Men had a plot that dealt with aliens being pissed off at them:

Turns out that alien precogs had determined that someone would destroy their civilization, and that the one of the X-Men would be responsible.

So:

Simply have the aliens determine that a threat to their empire or the entire galaxy, universe whatever, will eventually arise from the people of Earth.

It works, because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy....the characters become the prophecied 'destroyers'/'disruptors'/whatever, because the aliens act to prevent them from becoming what they fear.

Pretty clever way to make things work in your favor, and doesn't require time-hopping, long involved back stories, or anything else.

BAM! Aliens invade and attack. No-one knows why. Slaughter nearly all the humans. next thing you know, you've got a rag tag band of heroes with loose morals and an evil emperor coming together, as the characters try to survive long enough to figure out why they were attacked, and what they can do to fix the problem.

THE BEST PART:

The world didn't have any superhumans before the aliens showed up. Something they brought with them (a chemical compound in the exhaust of their ships, radiation from their weapon strikes) is what gives the humans their powers, and it intesifies the effect, the longer they are exposed to it.

Not only have the aliens created a self-fulfilling prophecy, they've given their victims the means to execute it.

This approach explains how they can 'level up' as time goes on, and they come into close contact with the enemy on a regular basis.

It also explains why there aren't other, previous heroes in place to defend the earth, or how the new heroes can hope to succeed, when other, much more powerful heroes have already failed.

This also explains why the aliens don't have an army of superhumans ready to pull out the smackdown: the cemical/radiation/whatever doesn't affect their physiology the same way it does ours.

They still have advanced technology that humans just can't operate (don't know how yet), like forcefields and phasers or whatever...they just don't have inherent powers.

But they can, once they figure out where the abilities came from, work on building nullifiers or power removal weapons....

Man, that sounds fun.

MeanJoeSmith75
2007-06-06, 09:32 AM
What about a comic egg concept?
Earth is the incubator of a vastly powerful being that takes billions of years to develop. Human Super powers are a result of cosmic leakage into the ecosystem.

Superior beings occasionally return to the nest to rejuvenate, but on cosmic timeline that could correspond to hundreds of thousands of years. Alien Civs have only recently been able to track their "home Base" to earth.

Variations on this could be prison(Xanth is a great example of this)

Piccamo
2007-06-06, 10:00 AM
Since humanity developed and used nuclear weapons the Galactic Civilization has been incredibly concerned with it. They have been doing calculations and the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used again increases with every passing minute. Humans are too undeveloped for such power and so the aliens have sought to wipe them out.
Unfortunately, the aliens did not consider a rare mutation of a disease when it interacted with one they brought with themselves while they surveyed the landscape. It was lethal to the aliens, incubating and killing within a week. Rather than bring the disease back to their own civilization, the aliens tried to crash into the Earth, hoping to complete their mission of destroying humanity with the disease that was killing them.
The disease reacted differently to different people. Some died, some were immune, and some were mutated. Now the citizens of Earth must learn how to cope with a new division in humanity, while at the same time hope to survive an onslaught from a race they never new existed. Those with the mutations have the same traits and flaws as those without. The big question is: What happens now?

hewhosaysfish
2007-06-06, 10:16 AM
Why does Earth create so many supers? Is it caused by strange deposits of Fgfdsgd-ium in the planets core? It there a high level of Usarjhf-istic energy in the local tract of sub-space? Maybe something mysterious that even the high technology of the aliens can't work out... yet. But whatever it is, it is a property of the planet, not of humanity. The aliens want it, want to capture/exploit/research it.

But there's all these annoying humans all over the place. They won't let you demolish the continent of Australia to get at those Fgfdsgd-ium deposits; their selfish human bodies keep absorbing all the Usarjhf-istic energy so theres none left for you green bug-eyed minions; and the constant noise, traffic and pollution of their so-called civilisation makes it impossible to take accurate measurements. So you'll have to destroy them all... or at least topples their cities and reduce them to Stone-age barbarism.


If that idea doesn't float your boat, I would have to say I like the whole self-fulfilling prophecy thing - if it's appropriate for these aliens to have any sort of prophecy (or precognition or hypercognition or metamathmatical-predictive-calculations or whatever).

And any civilisation/pantheon of superpowered humans that can't piss of a galactic civiliation in a single millenium - never mind 100 - isn't trying herd enough. :smallsmile:

Rob Knotts
2007-06-06, 12:13 PM
It works, because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy....the characters become the prophecied 'destroyers'/'disruptors'/whatever, because the aliens act to prevent them from becoming what they fear.Main problem here is that I'm planning to go with a Kirby-style universe, where one of the main sources of adventure is finding out about superpowered humanoid cultures that already exist in outer space (Eternals, Kree, The New Gods).
It also explains why there aren't other, previous heroes in place to defend the earth, or how the new heroes can hope to succeed, when other, much more powerful heroes have already failed.However, I've already decided the previous heroes were in place to defend earth. Until the attack superhumans had fallen out of favor on earth, with late-20th century cynicism making most people see all superhumans as dangerous loose cannons. When the aliens attacked, they found out that superhumans had already secretly prepared to defend earth, recruiting allies from hidden cities on earth and friendly alien cultures. A lot of older heroes died in the war, but when it was over normal earthling humans had to come to terms with the existence of aliens, the existence of hidden societies, and the real importance of superheroes.

ravenkith
2007-06-06, 12:28 PM
<shrug>.

Hey, if that's the way you want to go, I can't stop you.

But I ask again...how can the new heroes hope to beat that which the old heroes couldn't? When the older heroes were more powerful, more experienced, more everything?

Wouldn't having superheroes in the world radically change the entirety of the history of the human race?

One mutant healer in the right place at the right time could have saved JFK.

Or a mutant blaster could have nailed Adolf before he got really started...

If you put heroes in your world's past, that past must change. If they develop as an accident, and they're brand new, you can say: well it's the world of today, but aliens have attacked and destroyed blah blah blah.

In addition, you can always introduce other alien races once you get the campaign started: start by having the earth invaded by one race, that relies heavily on technology. Maybe they bring some slaves with them, just to show that other aliens exist.

Allow the PCs to acquire super powers as an accident, then use those powers to defeat the occupation force, in the process, seizing the equipment of the alien technologists.

Which would include starcharts and logs.

Some of the logs and maps reveal how vast the empire is, and how small the occupation force really was: since the heroes have had to fight hard just to beat what they faced on their planet...now they realize that the evil empire could simply mass an army to destroy them, and probably will, given time enough.

The only option is for the humans to ally with other star systems/empires that have resisted the evil empire, mass their strength, and try to destroy the armada the evil empire sends against them, crippling the enemy military and allowing the heroes to lead a strike at the center, to depose the madman behind it all: the Evil Emperor, a mutant of his own race, who counts a vague precognition and immortality among his powers (he doesn't die from aging or disease), and is quite hard to kill, even for superheroes.

The heroes use an experimental captured vessel, capable of rapid transit (even when compared to other vessels of the evil empire), that will enable them to meet the new cultures and alien races you speak of...

Just a thought. One I'm going to use for my next campaign.

Rob Knotts
2007-06-06, 12:50 PM
What about a comic egg concept?
Earth is the incubator of a vastly powerful being that takes billions of years to develop. Human Super powers are a result of cosmic leakage into the ecosystem.It's the central plot to one of the few post-modern superhero stories I can stand (not to mention really enjoying it):
The main premise for Earth-X is that earth is one of the planets used to gestate new Celestials, the idea being that the existence of a growing Celetial causes the natives of the planet to eventually develop superpowers. In the Earth-X setting, Galactus consumes worlds that are gestating Celestials, and superpowered natives are supposed to act as a kind of natural defense for the growing Celestial.Unfortunately, that won't really work here. Making the planet itself the most important part of the plot would really work against the plans I have to run about half the adventures on other worlds. If it's the humans themselves who were the target of the alien attack, then I can spread the story to whatever planet (or even dimension) by putting humans there for the players to meet.

Also, one (or actually two) of the superhuman cultures I plan to introduce are based on the idea that superpowers are inherent in the species. The idea is to one culture be the basis for both a peaceful Kryptonian-style culture and an aggressive Saiyan (Dragonball Z) culture. The reason the Kryptonian branch developed peacefully is because they developed thier superpowers without realizing it, living under a sun that kept them from manifesting any superpowers (a reversal of the Superman / yellow sun idea). The aggressive Saiyan branch manifested thier powers as soon as thier species developed them, and rather than advance as a culture they decided to become conquerors.

This was originally one of my ideas for why the aliens wanted to wipe out the pre-super human on earth, but I didn't want to limit the extraterrestrial humans to just the over-the-top Kryptonian/Saiyans, so I need to come up with a wider background for humans being important outside of earth.

Rob Knotts
2007-06-06, 01:01 PM
But I ask again...how can the new heroes hope to beat that which the old heroes couldn't? When the older heroes were more powerful, more experienced, more everything?The old heroes also suffered a lot more casualties during the invasion. Most of the new heroes either weren't around or didn't have powers then.
Wouldn't having superheroes in the world radically change the entirety of the history of the human race?DC and Marvel have managed to avoid that for decades. I realize there are comics out there that revolved around the sudden changes the presence of superhumans would make in human society (you even see it on TV with show like Heroes and 4400), but that sort of setting doesn't interest my players or me.
One mutant healer in the right place at the right time could have saved JFK.

Or a mutant blaster could have nailed Adolf before he got really started...Unless there were also mutants who wanted JFK to die or Adolf to live. It's an old argument, superhumans could have just as easily participated in history as we know as they could have changed it.

Rob Knotts
2007-06-06, 01:05 PM
Unfortunately, the aliens did not consider a rare mutation of a disease when it interacted with one they brought with themselves while they surveyed the landscape. It was lethal to the aliens, incubating and killing within a week. Rather than bring the disease back to their own civilization, the aliens tried to crash into the Earth, hoping to complete their mission of destroying humanity with the disease that was killing them.It's a good idea, but it won't work here. In this setting, humans had a superhuman history before the aliens invaded, the war just forced earth's humans to face up to it.

Rob Knotts
2007-06-06, 01:07 PM
And any civilisation/pantheon of superpowered humans that can't piss of a galactic civiliation in a single millenium - never mind 100 - isn't trying herd enough. :smallsmile:Y'know, I think you've got a really good point there. 10000 years is probably plenty of time for superhumans from Earth to piss off the whole galaxy:smallamused:

MeanJoeSmith75
2007-06-06, 03:23 PM
Didn't know that about the other world. I haven't been reading comic for years, unfortunatly.
Another possiblity is the interation of early life. Perhaps Earth is unique in the universe in its diversity. So much mutation over time and divergent evolution lines. The rest of the universe evolved along more homoginous lines, each planet or solar system had one dominat race/phylum(ie all reptile or mamilian). Only earth maintained a chaotic, mutigenic evolutionary trend. This lead to vast diversity.
This gives all earth origin life a little something special.