What's Your Favorite Campaign Premise You've Never Gotten To Play?

[thorr-kan]

<SNIP! Using established characters in your own univ

Nice!

I agree that using existing characters, either PCs or NPCs, is a great hook. It gives you some background and player familiarity. Setting it in your own world allows you to, well, make it your own.

I had a similar idea years ago for running a Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP game in a universe where Superman 1 & 2, the Keaton Batman movies, the first two X-Men movies, the first two Fantastic Four movies, Superman Returns, and the first Spider-Man trilogy were all the super hero canon. In real time. Iconic figures, recent developments, easy access to the media.

Your idea sounds better thought out.

[Relonious]

Starfinder-ish

The classic races discover Starfinder FTL, and slowly start exploring the universe.

The first adventure would be recovering a remote space station and stablish a forward exploration point. Following adventures would be about discovering the races from starfinder one or two at a time.

The setting would be different but stealing everything from corte books.

[vasilidor]

Games I want to run:
A marvel/dc game where everyone is trying to figure out how a nobody villain (more of a forgettable henchman) got the tools to kill Superman. Plan is to use FASERIP. players can use premade characters from the classic marvel forever site or create their own hero. Superman is off the table for obvious reasons.

A X-com inspired game of Palladium's mess of a super hero game, with the ninja and super spies. not played because holy crap that systems a mess.

A normal person to super hero game of BESM. every one starts out as a relatively normal human (or close enough) and gains super powers over time. whether because of DBZ style training or magic or on going mutation would be players prerogative. The opposition is your stereo typical evil empire, run by a guy who treats the evil overlord list as his bible.

For DnD/pathfinder: Empire of the Lich King. He has one goal, total extinction of everything, because life is suffering and he is the mercy bringer. your job is to stop him.

For Shadowrun: You are Section 9, Public Security, an anti-terrorist offensive task force. Based in Tokyo, Japan.

Games/Characters I want to play:
Ghostbusters. BESM or the official Ghost Buster RPG (It was a thing). Maybe as a FATE game... I have run this one as a BESM game, but I want to play it too.

The one where I am a run away space prince. Setting does not matter as long as I get a starship that works.

The guy that just popped into existence. When the game starts the other players get to see him pop into existence for the first time. he has no history and no one, not even the gods, knows how he came to be. He has all the skills, gear, and knowledge listed on his character sheet.

Teachers at the magic academy, keep the students safe from the forces of evil.

[Morgaln]

Scenario:
The Robots (the PCs) have been awakened. Their human masters are all dead or disabled or something (perhaps in cryo pods). Some crises has happened and the robots are tasked with solving it. The intelligent robots have been assigned directives by their masters that they realize are not conducive to the success of the project, but cannot ignore them. The scenario is them trying to accomplish the goal while technically adhering to and without technically violating their directives.

This one reminds me of a premise that a friend of mine had but unfortunately hasn't gotten around to GMing yet:

The master is dead. In typical mad scientist fashion, he finally attempted an experiment that went wrong and he didn't survive. The players are typical characters to be found in the mad scientist's lair: the apprentice, the familiar, the created monster, the servant. It's their job to figure out what to do now that the one in charge is gone. Did I mention the angry mob carrying torches and pitchforks that is approaching the doors right now? Better think fast...



Here's another one that's been stuck in my head for years but hasn't seen the light yet:

Everything revolves around the Great River. The Great River is a roughly ring-shaped body of water with a strong current; basically a river that flows in a circle (there would have to be a magical reason for that, it's not something that could form naturally). The area around the river is thick jungle with an impassable mountain range on on side and a vertical drop of several miles towards the sea on the other; in other words, it's an ecosystem completely isolated from the rest of the world. The river is the major source of food; there are numerous small settlements on its shore, The river is vast enough that it takes months to go a full circle and the current is strong enough that going against it for any length of time is difficult with the available technology (wind and/or muscle power).

A culture of river-faring people has developed in this area; people who mostly live on boats and keep going around the river, trading with the villages and bringing news from one village to another.
The characters would be the crew of one of those boats, meeting new people, dealing with obstacles (ranging from obstructive officials and floating debris to attacks from pirates), exploring the occasional ruin in the jungle and helping the villages they visit with various small (or not so small) problems they may have.

[Quertus]

Games I want to run:
A marvel/dc game where everyone is trying to figure out how a nobody villain (more of a forgettable henchman) got the tools to kill Superman. Plan is to use FASERIP. players can use premade characters from the classic marvel forever site or create their own hero. Superman is off the table for obvious reasons.

A X-com inspired game of Palladium's mess of a super hero game, with the ninja and super spies. not played because holy crap that systems a mess.

A normal person to super hero game of BESM. every one starts out as a relatively normal human (or close enough) and gains super powers over time. whether because of DBZ style training or magic or on going mutation would be players prerogative. The opposition is your stereo typical evil empire, run by a guy who treats the evil overlord list as his bible.

For DnD/pathfinder: Empire of the Lich King. He has one goal, total extinction of everything, because life is suffering and he is the mercy bringer. your job is to stop him.

For Shadowrun: You are Section 9, Public Security, an anti-terrorist offensive task force. Based in Tokyo, Japan.

Games/Characters I want to play:
Ghostbusters. BESM or the official Ghost Buster RPG (It was a thing). Maybe as a FATE game... I have run this one as a BESM game, but I want to play it too.

The one where I am a run away space prince. Setting does not matter as long as I get a starship that works.

The guy that just popped into existence. When the game starts the other players get to see him pop into existence for the first time. he has no history and no one, not even the gods, knows how he came to be. He has all the skills, gear, and knowledge listed on his character sheet.

Teachers at the magic academy, keep the students safe from the forces of evil.

1) I would totally play Superman (ie, the Necromancer who brought him back, the scientist who cloned him, etc). Or any of lots of other characters

But what would be really funny is if we all looked at that scenario, and we *all* played Superman.

2) does this BBEG *make all those mistakes*, or actually avoid them?

3) can we join the Lich King instead?

4) "just popped into existence" could be a fun, "who am I" exploration for the character…

5) what's the gameplay look like for your magic teachers game?

[SimonMoon6]

A marvel/dc game where everyone is trying to figure out how a nobody villain (more of a forgettable henchman) got the tools to kill Superman.

So, he just bought some kryptonite on the black market?

Killing Superman's not hard. Even a wimp like Batman can do it. Heck in the "Batman vs Superman" movie, Superman effectively dies* three times (once to Batman kryptonite, once to a nuke, and once to Doomsday) while Batman doesn't even die once.

I guess that assumes kryptonite's easy to get. Back in the pre-Crisis days, anybody involved in organized crime could get some, but in the post-Crisis days, it was a bit harder to come by (but you didn't *need* it as much since Superman became a lot less powerful).

*Note: I'm not saying he "literally" died three times, just that he effectively (as in figuratively) dies three times. He loses three times so absolutely and completely that he might as well have been dead. Because everyone knows that Superman is a complete and total loser and you can't be cool unless you wear black and live in your parents' basement like Batman.

[vasilidor]

Kryptonite is supposed to be hard to get. Lex and Batman can get their hands on it because billionaires. but the news reel would show Superman suffering the effects of kryptonite poisoning followed by his head coming off followed by guy appearing out of thin air with a sword as his invisibility wore off. Superman was at a public speaking event. And I want Superman to stay dead. Thor would be on the table for playing though.

the big bad guy tries to avoid them. that is what the list is about.

only if you want the campaign to end with all life ending, He is set to win if the Heroes fail.

That is part of the point of the guy out of nothing. the other is sometimes I cannot think of a back story and The GM wants a three page paper or something. (I have had that happen to me).

I have no idea as to what the gameplay in the teachers of magic would look like other than there is something trying to kill the students and some of said students have the self preservation of the fictional lemming.

[Psyren]

Too many to have a "favorite" but here's a few:

- A group of immortal Elan manifesters existing across a setting's history (think The Eternals) and nudging it occasionally, and when a big shove is needed against a major threat, they activate their Unimind (Metaconcert).
- A group of bards, all with different archetypes and performance styles, form a traveling band/troupe. This includes 2 melee bards, dps caster bard, rogue bard, healer bard etc.
- A low-magic setting that relies on a combination of Path of War, chi, alchemy, and Automatic Bonus Progression in place of magic items and traditional spellcasting.
- A cyberpunk dystopia that uses Starfinder mechanics but emphasizes urban adventures and corporate espionage over space travel.
- A Sentai-style game that uses Starfinder's ship and crew mechanics to pilot a giant mecha instead of spaceships.

Starfinder-ish

The classic races discover Starfinder FTL, and slowly start exploring the universe.

The first adventure would be recovering a remote space station and stablish a forward exploration point. Following adventures would be about discovering the races from starfinder one or two at a time.

The setting would be different but stealing everything from corte books.

Note that a lot of the Starfinder races (e.g. Lashunta) and the Pact Worlds planets (e.g. Castrovel) do exist in regular Pathfinder if you'd like to start the space race there.

[SimonMoon6]

Here's another one. This one I haven't thought too seriously about, but occasionally I think about it. This started off when a player mentioned that he felt like he was playing a "zero sum" game. So...

Zero Sum Game

The game system would probably need to be something like GURPS where there are lots of different disadvantages worth points that you can use to buy your ability scores, skills, powers, etc.

The idea would be this: in order for characters to ever gain new abilities, they would have to find a way to gain corresponding disadvantages worth the same points to buy those abilities. Player characters don't advance normally and would have a limit on how many disadvantages they can start with. And after the beginning of the game, players can't just add disadvantages because they want them; they have to be a result of in-game actions.

So, players would be encouraged to do stupid things like jump in a pool of radioactive waste or whatever. Yeah, you may get really sick or something, but maybe you get the power to fly now. Players would constantly be looking for ways to take on new disadvantages, just so they can gain more powers.

I haven't really thought this through and it may be a really stupid idea. It might work for a one-shot at least though.

[Calthropstu]

You know what I'd like to run?

My world specific time travel theory as a campaign. There is an off world device that resets the world to a specific time. The party is given the reset button. They have to get offworld to activate it because the world is disintigrated in the process.

Their goal is to prevrnt (catastrophe) and as they continue, they become aware someone is working against them who is also aware of the resets.

[SimonMoon6]

That reminds me...

D&D Time Travel game

The PCs are at the edge of human-settled civilization. The nearby territory used to be controlled by goblins until some great heroes wiped them out and scared away the survivors. However, strange lights have appeared at night at one of the nearby mountains where the goblins used to live. The PCs are sent to go check it out.

The PCs go into the tunnels and after a lot of exploration, they find a way into the deepest goblin tunnels, where huge chambers are full of decaying tapestries and other signs that goblins used to live here. The tapestries and wall carvings show their great goblin civilization arising from nothing, until at the end, a great catastrophe arose when adventurers (who have a passing similarity to the PCs) showed up and wiped everybody out, despite the best efforts of a goblin hero with a staff with a purple crystal at the end.

As the PCs continue to investigate, they run into an incredibly old goblin, old beyond the lifespan of any normal goblin, perhaps kept alive by magical means. He is holding a staff with a purple crystal at the end. He shouts something like "Not you again" and prepares to attack. He is actually a high level wizard or sorcerer, but he is incredibly feeble, so his stats are really low and he has no other equipment to speak of. The PCs should be able to win initiative and kill him before he can do anything useful. Even if they can't he will waste actions casting spells as if the PCs were high level threats instead of 1st level nobodies. For example, he'll start off casting Disjunction to get rid of all the defensive spells that he expects them to have, even though these 1st level PCs probably don't have much of anything to get rid of.

When the PCs finally kill him, he lets go of the staff which falls to the ground. The purple crystal shatters and releases a purple light and the PCs find their surroundings somewhat changed. (If they try to capture or interrogate him or something, then the crystal spontaneously activates anyway.) The dead goblin has vanished but the room seems cleaner. The objects decorating the room are no longer broken or decayed.

The PCs are now back in the past, hundreds of years ago, when goblins ruled the countryside. They have no allies. There are no other humans for hundreds of miles. And they are in the middle of the goblin civilization. How will they survive?

During their adventures, they will run into the young version of that goblin wizard who will be a recurring enemy. And because that idea probably won't work, he has lots of identical looking siblings to take up the cause if he is killed prematurely... or goblin clerics to resurrect him. The PCs will constantly run into him but always they manage to escape from him or he escapes from them.

Basically, the PCs need to find a way to return back to their own time. The only thing that could possibly help would be that purple crystal. But both the PCs and the main goblin enemy are seeking it out... and the goblin probably finds it first and puts it on the end of his staff, giving him magical time powers.

Eventually, the PCs probably wipe out the goblins and maybe the goblin wizard gets so tired of the PCs that he uses the staff to send the PCs far away (back to their own time? or some other time?).

[Starbuck_II]

Steam powered mechs like Dragonmech.
The ancient War of the Magi... When its flames at last receded, only the charred husk of a world remained. Even the power of magic was lost. In the thousand years that followed, iron, gunpowder, and steam engines took the place of magic, and life slowly returned to the barren land. Yet there now stands one who would reawaken the magic of ages past, and use its dread power as a means by which to conquer all the world.
Before the game there's stuff about the war between Wutai and Midgard, Mako experimentation, Ancient technology or 'breakouts', including possible omens of Jenova's awakening

Basically, a merger of all the Final Fantasy games happened.

There are four main kingsdoms.
Background affects stats (which kingdom you came from)
Kingdoms:
Concordia: People have tiny statures 2d12 inches shorter than rolled.
+2 Dex. Dodge as a bonus feat. Kingdom has treaty with metallic dragons and they come to protect at times.

Militesi Empire:
+2 Int, +1 skill./level, +50% ASF even divine (exception bard/armor casting)
Relies on tech not magic due to weakness at using it. Also alchemy.

Dominion of Rubrum
+2 Cha, SR 11+level vs hostile spells. Relies on magic, arcane casters.

Lorian Alliance
+2 Str, Toughness feat, People have big statures 2d12 inches taller than rolled. Path of War users.

[noob]

ASF even divine (exception bard/armor casting)

You could rename it to spell failure then since ASF means arcane spell failure right?

[oxybe]

Deep deep down?

TMNT after the bomb, the palladium game. I've got multiple sourcebooks for the game i've never used.

[GideonRiddle]

Limited Magic (Global Warming but magic) 3.5
The premise is that Magic is a Finite commodity and is running out. Epic Level Spells have failed and creatures that survive on Magic are shutting down or dying. Magic users that use Divine Magic or modified magic (i.e. Alchemy from FMA) are getting by but, everyone is basically panicking. The party is hired by Wizard who has a plan to link Magic to another Plane and sends them half-way to the Astral Plane. They are still on the starting Plane but, shifted slightly to the Astral Sea. They would then experience the world in a sort of ethereal way (i.e. cold biting wind would be air elemental piranhas. etc.)

Post-Apocalyptic Souls 3.5
This was something I created Prior to hearing of the Souls games.
The world runs on a cycle. Evil rises and Heroes defeat it, stronger Evil rises and defeats heroes and stronger Heroes rise to defeat it, etc. After millennia a Wizard reaches a state where he basically is 'all powerful' and brings forth a Golden Age of Peace. No Evil rises. Every time that Evil should have risen it doesn't. After 1000 years of peace an unstoppable army of Evil starts claiming the world. Basically an Evil as powerful as the Wizard should have been, before becoming 'all-powerful', realized that he couldn't defeat the side of good and started collecting the new Evils that kept popping up and built an army that could not be countered.
The Wizard then made a magical room that seeks the worthy and offers the power to claim and wield souls. The BBEG has rearranged the world to throw off the natural inclinations of the races so they can't fight back easily (i.e. Dwarves are in the position that Elves usually have and aren't able to adjust.) An Age of Darkness occurs and Heroes are found by the Wizard's Room.
As the Players defeat creatures they can collect their souls to give them abilities and power up the other souls they collect. If they die their soul is replaced by the strongest Soul the have equipped. It went well when we played, but IRL kept getting in the way.

[McGarnagle]

The campaign I'd like to run some day comes out of the oWoD, it would be the story of how the Sabbat took over Detroit, which in my version of the WoD was a Camarilla city until 1984. In terms of feel I'd be shooting for the Detroit from The Crow, although there wouldn't be any interaction with any of the characters from the movie.

The PCs would be the Sabbat pack that does all the ground work in the years leading up to the takeover. Part of that would be that they invent this thing called "Devil's Night" during which they can indulge in overt mayhem. During other times of the year they might have to be a little more careful, but there would always be that night where they can really cut loose.

The time frame is 1979-84, when the Tigers win the World Series, and with a little artistic license it could be the case that there's basically two solid weeks of rioting in Detroit from the time when the '84 Series ends until Devil's Night of that year, and that's when all the War Parties show up and the really heavy fighting would go down.

[Bohandas]

All of the PCs are intelligent magic items

[McGarnagle]

All of the PCs are intelligent magic items

Oh, that's a good shout, I picked up a copy of Wield several years back but I've never got the chance to play.

This reminds, another game I've picked up but never gotten a chance to play: Night Witches, which is about the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, an all-female regiment of the Soviet Air Forces that caused havoc against the Germans during WWII. It kind of reminded me of if Only War were set during WWII minus all the Psyker-y/Warp stuff.

[Luccan]

Based mostly on OA classes and races:

The Tiger That Ate The Moon

Five-hundred years ago, a powerful human empire performed a bloody ritual to make its emperor immortal. A dark tiger Spirit was born from this ritual, huge, savage, and powerful. it devoured the Moon spirit. The greater spirits struck the world and humanity in particular with terrible power and mostly retreated. In the wake of the Moon’s disappearance, the lesser spirits formed a new moon. Without the presence of so many good and neutral spirits, the land is beset by dark monsters and wicked supernatural forces. Humanity survives in small kingdoms controlled by brutal lords. Vanara, Korobokuru, and Hengeyokai are largely in hiding from possible capture. Ratfolk have risen as the new favored species among the greater spirits, but this has driven them into conflict with the declining humans. And the Tiger still stalks the night for unsuspecting mortals and spirits.

Spellcasters are either hunted out of fear or brought under the control of a ruler. Those that escape often wind-up despots themselves or otherwise find a position to act as the power behind the throne. Samurai enforce order through violence everywhere that isn't effectively a theocracy, where stifling order is enforced via Sohei and Monks from the ruling temple instead.

Kinda bleak, most of the relief comes in small scale victories; saving an independent town, relocating a band of Hengeyokai, and calming an angered spirit are more likely goals than overthrowing an evil king or especially saving the world from an age of darkness.

[vasilidor]

oh, I have also wanted to do something based on thundaar the barbarian. If you know the cartoon.

[EggKookoo]

oh, I have also wanted to do something based on thundaar the barbarian. If you know the cartoon.

In general look and feel, Thundaar is how I visualize D&D anyway...

[LibraryOgre]

All of the PCs are intelligent magic items

Isn't that just Warforged?

[Jay R]

The Misplaced Genre

The DM's introduction to the game states that we are playing Champions, with low-powered superheroes. It's the 31st century, and you are a group of heroes traveling to earth to try to join the Legion of Super Heroes. Since it's the Legion, there are no powered suits or gadgets of any kind.

Design a 100 point normal who has a 50 point power or multi-power. Since it's the Legion, don't try to build a balanced character -- each member is supposed to have one power. A multipower is limited to a closely related set of powers (fireball, stream of fire, heat environment, for instance).

Since they are leaving their home worlds, their Disadvantages cannot included Hunteds, Watcheds, or DNPCs. Perks cannot include Contacts or Favors or any kind of connections.

Their characters will meet on the spaceship going to Earth to apply.

They will never reach Earth. On the first session, the ship is caught in an an unknown space warp, and is pulled into a different universe. All gadgets slowly stop working. The ship lasts just long enough to crash on a planet, and then no modern device will ever work.

Magic works; modern electronics does not work. The culture is medieval. There are dragons, orcs, wizards, etc. They are not paying Champions. They are playing Fantasy Hero¹, but each character has a single unique power (which the denizens of that world will consider magic).

---
¹ Same system, but set in a fantasy world.

[NorthernPhoenix]

I'd certainly love to run a DnD game that was in the low(er) magic, swords and sorcery genre style. Never have (yet) though.

[noob]

I'd certainly love to run a DnD game that was in the low(er) magic, swords and sorcery genre style. Never have (yet) though.

Magic items and magic traps and magic locations and magic everything content in dnd does not helps at doing that.

[Bohandas]

Oh, that's a good shout, I picked up a copy of Wield several years back but I've never got the chance to play.

I was thinking D&D 3.5 actually. And I forgot to mention that all the PCs would also have psionic classes.

The difficulty of course is determining the proper LA/ECL, and also how many racial hit dice they would be considered to have for the purpose of being effected by HD-gated spells and effects

[Bohandas]

At some point I'd like to play a campaign set in the world of the classic computer game Master of Magic

[Lord Raziere]

A lot if we're being honest.

Any Game of the following:
BESM, Legends of the Wulin, OVA, Tenra Bansho Zero, Anima Beyond Fantasy, Tianxia, Dresden Files, Spirit of the Century, Kerberos Club, Mindjammer, Monarchies of Mau, Gurps 4e Infinite Worlds, Nobilis, Rocket Age, Heroines of the First Age, Godbound, and Starfinder

But if you want something more specific....well hm, now I think about it I more want to play characters than specific campaigns. hm. my mind is full of possibilities but so little focus for them that I go all over the place and can't really decide on a favorite. my best campaigns are ones that with play the expectations of a universe and explore different interpretations, examining/questioning how they work and what they are like rather than playing them straight. especially ones that I with assumptions that I think are faulty or don't reflect reality. so my favorite campaign I've never played would be open to doing a lot of that, and I'm not sure how to describe it.

[Trask]

I have never played in a campaign that earnestly tries to emulate classic, epic fantasy tropes.

Dark Lord's Vengeance is the working title of a (completely conceptual) campaign that basically retells the Lord of the Rings but in the D&D milieu. That sounds generic, but I've honestly never played a campaign that went anywhere close to the tropes of LotR, and I think thats a shame because its basically the Ur fantasy story, and I think it would be fun to actually play through those tropes instead of just file them away as too generic to touch. And of course since its a D&D retelling we should change up the elements and put our own creative spin.

So yeah, lets have the Dark Lord, also known as the Prime Evil, whose phylactery was stolen from his fortress in the abyss by a Mad Wizard after the Last Battle. For helping, humans were given their first Kingdom, but after generations everyone has grown lax and it is thought that the Dark Lord is gone forever. Of course, when he was killed, his lieutenants (the four Elemental Evils) have continued his work from the shadows, and maybe they even don't want him to return, having grown comfortable with this arrangement.

The phylactery is found in a random dungeon treasure hoard by the party, they are completely unaware of its true nature, but an evil Thieves' Guild that supplanted the more neutral one before is being run by servants of the Dark Lord (death knights maybe?) are searching patiently for it, and eventually they will catch wind of it, or find out that the PCs had it (hopefully they didnt sell it to a random guy!). The only way to undo its power is to take it to the deepest pit of the abyss where it was created, and it is said that there are still functional Astral Gates in the forgotten places of the world that could take one to the abyss.

Hell, to make it even more EPIC you could have the party start off as heroes from the world where the Dark Lord won who find a way to go back in time and undo the past, having a second shot at saving the world.

That sounds really fun to me.

[Quertus]

At some point I'd like to play a campaign set in the world of the classic computer game Master of Magic

Woot woot! Master of Magic is an awesome game! Feels like the forbidden lovechild of D&D, MtG, and Civilization.

Um… out of curiosity, what would you picture that looking like? Are the PCs playing summoners, champions summoned by one summoner, village heroes trying to protect their neutral town from the rampaging monsters (some from crypts, others from the warring summoners) or what?

The Misplaced Genre

The DM's introduction to the game states that we are playing Champions, with low-powered superheroes. It's the 31st century, and you are a group of heroes traveling to earth to try to join the Legion of Super Heroes. Since it's the Legion, there are no powered suits or gadgets of any kind.

Design a 100 point normal who has a 50 point power or multi-power. Since it's the Legion, don't try to build a balanced character -- each member is supposed to have one power. A multipower is limited to a closely related set of powers (fireball, stream of fire, heat environment, for instance).

Since they are leaving their home worlds, their Disadvantages cannot included Hunteds, Watcheds, or DNPCs. Perks cannot include Contacts or Favors or any kind of connections.

Their characters will meet on the spaceship going to Earth to apply.

They will never reach Earth. On the first session, the ship is caught in an an unknown space warp, and is pulled into a different universe. All gadgets slowly stop working. The ship lasts just long enough to crash on a planet, and then no modern device will ever work.

Magic works; modern electronics does not work. The culture is medieval. There are dragons, orcs, wizards, etc. They are not paying Champions. They are playing Fantasy Hero¹, but each character has a single unique power (which the denizens of that world will consider magic).

---
¹ Same system, but set in a fantasy world.

Huh. My first thought (although arguable horrible in Champions) was massive intelligence-based science / tech skills, and matter manipulation power (or sneak in 2 powers, and make a "Matter Sense" as part of the matter manipulation - is that in keeping with the spirit of the league / legion / whatever?)

Then I read the twist.

Which made me really curious: how would you have responded if you actually ran the game, and someone presented a similar concept? (Or would the twist be part of the elevator pitch?)

(I'm assuming that if someone's power were purely biological, like "my race has wings" or "my race regenerates", that it wouldn't be viewed as "magic")

Also… conceptually, some of those Disadvantages and Perks still make sense. Especially DNPC. The DNPC could be on the ship, or could represent that your character just naturally ends up with "a girl in every port" / someone who needs their kind of saving tending to end up around them / etc.