[RPGs] Campaign idea: War of the Space Gods

In my last post, I mentioned how the superhero genre can be a whole lot of different things. One superhero subgenre that I don't think really gets enough representation in games is the Jack Kirby mode.

It's a little odd to talk about one dude's work as a subgenre, but when you look at a comic like Gødland or that old 1963 miniseries, it starts to make sense. Kirby had a very distinctive thing going on, and there was more to it than just his art style. The most kirbyesque Kirby works were the ones where he went beyond superheroes and into what I'd describe as sci-fi mythology: the various Fourth World books, The Eternals, Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, OMAC, and others.

I'd love to run a game sometime that mines that vein for setting material, but doesn't actually reproduce any specific elements. Here's what I've got right now.
There are two tiny planets orbiting Earth, each smaller than the Moon, but with as much mass as our own world. And they're both hidden from us. Even their gravity is blocked. The first, Kaliba, is a wild, green planet dotted with soaring white cities. The second, Shath, is a barren, cloud-wrapped world of stony deserts and grim, black cities.

Kaliba is inhabited by a race of living gods. They're largely human in appearance, but an idealized kind of human, with a wide range of vivid coloration, sometimes including patterned skin, or even a metallic sheen. Their eyes glow brilliantly, as does their golden blood. They're very nearly immortal: ageless, immune to all disease, astonishingly resilient, and able to regenerate any damage short of the destruction of the brain or heart. What's more, they're invested with a brilliant cosmic energy that they wield to create a variety of effects. Their power is so flexible that they've never developed technology in the sense that we're familiar with. Their cities and clothing are built through the direct application of their strength and energies. They can also invest simple metal and stone tools with some of their power, or use it to change and sculpt living things for their own purposes. They've populated their world with extravagantly modified Earth animals, and are served by semi-sapient worker creatures.

Shath is also home to a race of gods, but one for more physiologically diverse than those of Kaliba. While still mostly humanoid, they exhibit monstrous or animalistic features as well. Their coloration is just as unusual as the gods of Kaliba, but less vivid, tending towards, dull, pale, or muddy tones. Their blood is black, with a faint iridescent sheen. They are essentially immortal, with less resilience and more regenerative capability than the Kalibas, but they have a tendency to change gradually over time, becoming ever more inhuman with the centuries. They wield a cosmic power of their own, but theirs is dark and murky, and far better at affecting its wielder than affecting the outside world. The Shathen tend to be gifted with powers of shape-shifting, invisibility, intangibility, and the like. Unlike the gods of Kaliba, they have needed technology. Their machines are in many ways more advanced than those of Earth, but are generally bulky, unsubtle, inefficient, and sometimes dangerous to be around.

For reasons that have long since passed beyond memory, the two races of gods have been at war with each other, on and off, for as long as they've been aware of each other. It's a bitter conflict, driven by the same hatred it generates, bereft of ideology or purpose.

The planets of the gods are hidden from Earth, but Earth isn't hidden from them. Both races visited our world often our distant past. The Kalibas were called gods, and devils, and fairies. The Shathen were also called these things, as well as dragons, vampires, goblins, and the like. Both races taught, terrorized, enslaved, and enthralled humanity, shaping our history and culture. But, most of all, they fought each other. Sometimes directly in divine battles that scarred the Earth's landscape for millenia, and sometimes by human proxies, through wars and pogroms and myths that we will never truly understand.

Now, though, the gods call Earth neutral ground, and their endless, senseless war is in one of its colder phases. Humanity has forgotten them, and both races of gods work to keep it that way, both for our good and their own. In the past, the gods' interactions with mortals had done us much harm. And now, as our technology has grown to rival that of Shath--and shows every sign of surpassing it, someday--it's very possible that humanity could actually threaten the gods to some degree.

Of course, by the same token, it's obvious that mankind could be the key to the Kalibas' or the Shathen's final victory, if only they could quietly turn enough of us to their cause. So the war between the gods has become a secret struggle to gain influence on Earth. But, as each side becomes aware of the other's breaches of the treaty, their cold war is heating up.

...Okay, so if that's enough setting info, I'll finally talk about just how this could be played. Naturally, I'd use Mutants & Masterminds or some variant of it. Player characters would probably be a mixed group of Kalibas and Shathen, also possibly Kalibas-Shathen hybrids, god-human hybrids, regular humans who've gotten ahold of powerful divine artifacts, or even regular humans who are just really awesome at stuff. Maybe servitor creatures from Kaliba or robots from Shath, too. Just how these people would know each other and why they'd work together--and, yeah, I'd really rather we have that worked out from the very beginning--would depend on just what kind of mix of characters we end up with. I like the idea of the group being centered around young gods from opposite sides of the line who became friends and hope to end the war, or gods and humans who are breaking the rules to learn about each other. And, naturally, some larger external problem would loom before long, forcing the PCs to stand alone between the warring gods against a threat only they are aware of.

The whole tone I'd be going for with this game is BIG. Epic, bombastic, mythic stuff. Interplanetary adventure, apocalyptic threats, the discovery of secrets older than mankind, divine tragedy, that kind of thing. Not superheroes. Sci-fi mythology.

Would it work? With the right players, hell yes. I can only hope to actually get a chance like that some day.

[RPGs] Campaign idea: The Alliance

My big white whale of RPGs--the thing I think I'm least likely to get to do, anyway--is a superhero game. I think superhero games are especially dependent upon a gaming group's experience with and ideas about the genre. I mean, if five people sit down to play a game, variously expecting it to be like The Tick cartoon, 1980s X-Men comics, Warren Ellis' run on The Authority, the Watchmen movie, and the TV show Heroes, there is going to be some cognitive dissonance. Getting everybody on the same page would be a project in and of itself, and might not even be possible if there isn't enough common ground in the group's experience. My own group ain't really filled with people who read superhero comics, so I'm not sure I'll ever get to do this. But I do like to dream.

This is what I've been dreaming about lately.


The Alliance isn't so much a static superhero team as a loose network of associated superheroes who can contact each other, share resources and information, and work together as circumstances require and their schedules permit. When a case or mission comes up, a team is assembled from the available Alliance members and pointed at the problem.

The gimmick here, game-wise, is that the Alliance is a pool of characters that all the players can pull from on a session-by-session basis. No character belongs to any one player; they're all shared equally. So, of course, the characters would all have to be created cooperatively by the players. And that's where the character creation sheet at the right comes in.

Actually, though, I'd start by discussing with my players what kind of tone and tropes they're interested in for the game. We'd try to establish a target seriousness level, and come up with some example media. Then we'd talk over the setting a bit, see what kinds of components people are cool with (magic? aliens? time travel?) and just how "superhero-ish" characters should get (costumes? spandex? masks? code names? secret identities?).

...And then I'd hand out the character creation sheets, two to a player with a pile of extras. I'd explain all the different bits: "Purpose" could be something along the lines of "glory hound" or "With great power comes great responsibility." "Relationship" could mean a romance or rivalry with another Alliance member, or it could be a civilian NPC friend or family member, or even a recurring arch enemy. "Weakness" might be something like "poisoned by kryptonite," but it could just as easily be "hardened alcoholic" or "dangerously short temper".

Anyway, the deal with the character creation sheets is that each player would write something on their sheets, and then pass them off to other players to write some more stuff on, with everybody freely sharing ideas and talking openly about what they're doing. Hopefully, at the end of the session, we'd have at least two filled sheets for each player, and everybody should have some idea about the whole array of characters they'd outlined.

Then, I'd before the next session, I'd do the actual game mechanics side of building all the characters. I'd almost certainly use Mutants & Masterminds, in spite of the mention of "aspects" on the character creation sheets. I just really dig aspects, and think they can be imported from Fate into almost any RPG system. Also, I think they could be employed here to encourage the kind of ensemble-cast soap opera effect that tends to arise in long-running superhero team comics.

Part of what I'd be hoping to achieve with this kind of character generation is a player mindset that doesn't regard the PCs as representations of the players so much as shared game pieces. As such, they should be easier to sacrifice. Dramatic PC deaths would be a really cool and genre-appropriate thing to work into the game. I'd even like to incorporate some variant of Ryan Stoughton's death flag mechanic to encourage it. (CliffsNotes version: Normally, no PC dies. But you can trade this plot immunity for a temporary powerup, thus very possibly going out in a blaze of glory.)

Will I ever actually get to run this game? Dunno. Might not work too well with my local crew, but I'm edging closer and closer to running a Skype game of some kind, and I know I could find the perfect crew for this game once geography isn't a factor. So maybe. Some day.

Alien invasions for superhero RPGs

Dude called Praetorian over on RPG.net started a thread asking for ideas on what kind of alien invasion to throw at his players in their superhero campaign, and I posted a couple of replies that were so excessive I figured I might as well reuse them here.

Longpost is loooooooong.


Reasons for the invasion

Colonization - Pretty straight forward: The aliens want some lebensraum, and they don't mind taking it from somebody else.

Conquest - This is distinct from colonization in that the aliens definitely want to keep the humans around. Hell, maybe they don't even plan on moving to Earth themselves. They just want to rule us, using humanity for slave labor, or establishing an economic hegemony over us, or maybe they just want to be worshipped.

Slavery - Similar to conquest, except they only want the people, not the planet.

Resources - They've run out of (or just want more of) something they need and we've got, like water or air or some such. They don't really need to conquer the Earth, necessarily, just take a devastating quantity of the good stuff and go.

Food - Okay, this technically falls under "resources", but I'd say that if the aliens came to Earth to eat us--especially if they're only interested in humans, not all the other tasty creatures we've got here--it results in a pretty different scenario. Especially if, instead of just grabbing a few thousand people and running, they want to actually take over and run the Earth like a cattle ranch.

The McGuffin - They want something from us, but it's not a question of basic need. Maybe it's some powerful or sacred artifact that they have to ransack the earth to find, or maybe they're seeking the source of our superheroes' powers.

Just plain theft - The aliens want our stuff. They want to steal our luxury goods for sale on the intergalactic black market, or they want two of every creature on Earth for their zoo, or their emperor is fascinated by our artwork. Hell, maybe they're obsessive collectors with interest in some weird, specific thing, like cars or guns. Maybe they want all our information, so they're stealing books and servers.

War for war's sake - Maybe it's only the fight itself that they're after. Maybe the aliens have some cultural inclination (or religious duty) to go out and beat up on other civilizations. Hell, maybe they even had to sit back and watch humanity become more advanced for a few thousand years before we became worth fighting. In fact, maybe they've quietly helped our development in preparation for the big event, both by sneaking us new technology and by provoking wars.

Sport - The aforementioned Predator option. I'd say this is distinct from war for war's sake in that it's a more individual kind of thrillkilling, rather than a civilization vs. civilization thing. Maybe it's some kind of religious or cultural rite, or maybe it's literally a sport, possibly even televised back on the homeworld. Maybe there are even competing teams, each trying to rack up more kills than the other, or maybe one team is even tasked with defending the humans. Hell, maybe it's not even about killing people, but they just fuck up our shit in the course of their volcano-surfing contest or whatever.

Extreme xenophobia - Due to some very bizarre and horrible religious or philosophical dogma, the aliens cannot allow other intelligent life to exist. Anywhere. They started firing up the war rockets the moment they caught our early radio transmissions.

Fear - Like xenophobia, but a little bit less irrational: They want to exterminate (or cripple) humanity because they're afraid we are or will eventually become a threat to their own race. This might be because we're warlike and almost advanced enough to come and invade their world, or maybe our capacity to produce superhumans makes us potentially far more powerful than them, or maybe we're just some kind of cultural threat: They don't like the ideas their own citizens are getting from viewing our television signals.

Altruism - The aliens are here to take over for our own good! It's just the green man's burden to conquer and civilize less advanced species! They'll rule us and exploit us, sure, but they'll end all war and sickness, too! And isn't their culture just better than ours? We're only resisting because we don't know what's good for us!


Invasion shticks

Shapeshifting - Maybe they use it to disguise themselves, Skrull-style, or maybe they just use it to kick ass, regenerate, and adapt to whatever the heroes throw at them.

Telepathy - A pretty standard trope just to let aliens communicate with people. Of course, at higher levels of power, you start to get mind reading, mind control, subtle mental suggestions, illusions, etc. Hell, if they've got enough range, maybe the aliens don't even need to invade physically!

Mind control - This deserves its own section, as it's not necessarily dependent upon telepathy. Maybe the aliens' whole invasion plan involves the construction of some vastly powerful mind control device, or putting drugs in our water and subliminal messages on TV, or kidnapping important people and implanting stuff in their heads. They might end up doing all their real work through human puppets. The heroes could probably go a long time before they even find out what the aliens look like, which can certainly be awesome. Also, you could all Plan Nine from Outer Space and have the aliens control dead people. Or, a bit stranger, it might only work on animals.

Possession - Similar to mind control, of course, but I'd categorize this as a more personal kind of domination: one alien possessor to one human victim. Maybe the aliens are biological creatures that physically enter or attach to their victims (à la Heinlein's puppet masters or the aliens from the War of the Worlds TV series),

Robots - Maybe the aliens are just self-directing, self-replicating machines. They could conceivably come in any number of purpose-designed forms, and destroying one physical unit might not harm the consciousness that's using it. Hell, all of the robots might have just one consciousness. Also, they might build bodies that can pass as human.

Tiny aliens - It might seem like a weird bit, but with enough craftiness and technology, tiny aliens could be a frightening threat. They might be be very difficult to spot or hit, certainly. Also, they could ride around in big, human-looking robots.

Titanic aliens - This could mean something like Cthulhu, the Celestials, or just the Zentradi. You wouldn't need all that many of them in order to make a perfectly viable invasion.

Alien superheroes - Like the (kind of hilarious) Shi'ar Imperial Guard, it makes sense that the aliens would have their own super-powered beings. Maybe they're the whole invasion force, or maybe they're just there to keep the heroes busy while the alien military does its work.

Divide and conquer - Nothing weakens your enemy more than getting them to fight amongst themselves. You could set up the whole invasion situation with some strife between terrestrial nations or super-powered factions that later on turns out to be orchestrated by the invaders.

Divide and conquer 2 - On the other hand, the aliens might openly court some human faction in a "When we take over, we'll put you in charge of this place" kind of deal.

Energy-based aliens - They might spiritual or psychic entities, ill-defined "cosmic energy" beings, sentient computer programs, or self-propagating patterns of electromagnetic energy. In all cases, of course, the obvious question will be "How in the hell do we kill something like this?"

Fluid aliens - Liquid-, gas-, or plasma-based creatures might have some of the immunities to attack that energy-based creatures would, but would at least be solid matter. Maybe they're shapeless masses that can only be destroyed by powerful energy attacks, or maybe they'd be semi-structures blobs that could only survive in extremely exotic environments.

Mineral-based aliens - That's right: ROCK MONSTERS. Not only would they naturally be insanely strong and resilient, but they could have weird, crystal-based technology.

Hive mind - A classic bit, of course: The aliens are all just parts of a single entity, all linked by telepathy or radio waves or whatever. They might seem insanely brave, as each one is just another body, easily sacrificed for the greater entity's goals. They might be able to incorporate human--and superhuman--bodies into their whole. They might, in fact, have no real unity of species, instead being made up of many different planets' dominated creatures.

Castes - Slightly connected to the hive mind bit, maybe the alien species is divided into specialized, physiologically distinct castes, ant style. The Bugs from Starship Troopers are a good example of this.

Virus - The aliens might deploy some kind of biological weapon, or they might actually be a dangerous microbe. Maybe the only "aliens" the heroes get to fight are infected Earth creatures, mutated and dominated by an alien infection. Naturally, the vector of transmission becomes incredibly important, here, as does the race to create a cure or vaccine. And, if a cure is possible, is it okay to kill infected humans?

Interdimensional invasion - There's no reason the aliens need to come from another planet, right? If instead they come from another dimension, they might be utterly bizarre beings that depend upon--and even bring with them--different physical laws . . . or, on the other hand, they might be humans (or hominids, or other Earth creatures) from a slightly or drastically different historical or evolutionary timeline.

Magic - Maybe the aliens are just sufficiently advanced, or maybe their technology really is some kind of fundamentally different willpower-based reality manipulation that we might as well call real magic. Maybe their actual physical gear (clothing, weapons, etc.) looks--and is--incredibly primitive, but their "magic" makes it possible for them to get to Earth and beat up on armies and superheroes.

Biological technology - This might be an overused bit, but it's still awesome. Living space ships and weapons, aliens that come in thousands of purpose-grown forms, the harvesting and implementation of superhuman DNA . . . lots of possibilities for cool stuff, here.

Energy-based technology - Kinda like magic, sure, but the trappings would be a little bit different. I'm picturing something like the divine weapons of Hindu myth, here.

The aliens are human! - Maybe they're a separate civilization of humans who left Earth (one way or another) thousands of years ago, maybe they're from another dimension, maybe there's some goofy panspermia explanation, or maybe it's just a completely unlikely coincidence.

Politeness - Sure, they have to invade Earth for whatever reason, but they're not assholes about it. They're very sorry about having to kill people, and they're perfectly willing to talk rationally about why it's completely necessary. Maybe they've even got honestly good reasons for what they're doing, which will just make things morally complicated for the heroes.

Factionalism - Humanity isn't a unified species by any stretch of the imagination, so why should we expect other intelligent races to be monolithic, undivided cultures? Maybe the invaders are just criminals or a rogue nations, and other aliens of their species want to protect us from them. Or maybe none of them care about us, but there are groups among them that hate each other far more than they hate us. Or maybe they're nominally united and in agreement about the invasion, but there are some fractures there are the PCs could go to work on, or a more rational faction they could try to make peace with.

Cultural influence - Like Baby Cakes says, "When the aliens come, they will be so great in so many different ways that everything we ever thought was cool will then make us ashamed." If the invasion is public knowledge and drags on for a while (and especially if it's less than completely violent), some people are going to start thinking the invaders are awesome.

Terraforming - If the aliens are planning on hanging around after the invasion (and if they don't really care about what happens to the locals), they might start by changing the place to be a little bit more like home. In fact, maybe the people of Earth won't even know they're being invaded until the sun starts getting smaller and the air smells a little bit like methane.

Life support gear - If Earth isn't perfectly to their liking, it's reasonable that the aliens will be running around with some kind of support system, from simple face masks or goggles, to straight-up space suits or environment tanks. Naturally, their life-support systems are vulnerable . . . but maybe they're actually dangerous to destroy due to the immense pressure, toxic gasses, strange energies, etc. they contain.

[M&M] Martial artist character builds

So, pretty recently, I ran across a post by Rob Donoghue (one of the creators of my current favorite-game-in-the-whole-world, Spirit of the Century) where he laments the lack of good RPG systems for flavorful, diverse, and mechanically-deep martial arts action. And he mentioned that systems where "Martial Arts builds like superpowers" are lacking because they only offer "different color for mechanically identical characters".

And that seems kind of odd to me, since I've always figured that if I was gonna run something with a lot of martial arts focus, I would almost certainly use Mutants & Masterminds, because it would offer a tremendous amount of mechanical variation between fighting styles. So maybe Rob just meant "mechanically identical" in the sense that martial artists in most superhero games would just be built with the same subsystems as any mutant, vigilante, or sorcerer? That would make sense, although it's definitely not something that I'd call a drawback.

Anyway, the whole thing really makes me want to test out M&M's capabilities with martial arts character builds, just to see if I can actually do the stuff I think I can with it. I don't think I've really got time to properly get into such an experiment right now, but I can at least write up a few thoughts.

The way I'd like to start is by taking the classical five animal styles of kung fu and defining them very vaguely (and with little to no regard for their real life characteristics) in the mechanical terms of Mutants & Masterminds. Let's give it a try, shall we?

Tiger Style

• decently high Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution


• high-damage unarmed attacks based on Strike power (possibly lethal damage--Tiger Claw Fist!--and definitely with the Mighty feat)


• low Attack bonus, plus a few ranks of Attack Focus: Melee and Attack Specialization for that Strike power (kung fu basasses shouldn't be any good with guns, after all)


• maybe a rank (or even two) of the Rage feat, or--for a more super-power martial artist--the Boost power (applied to Strength, possibly Constitution)


• Takedown Attack feat, so that tiger practitioners can tear through multiple enemies in their fury


• Improved Block, Improved Sunder, and Weapon Break feats, because shattering weapons sounds thematically appropriate

Crane Style

• high Dexterity


• high-damage Strike power (non-lethal, maybe without the Mighty feat, and possibly even with a Limited: Humans Only flaw, because crane practitioners are striking at pressure points)


• again, low Attack bonus, plus ranks of Attack Focus: Melee and Attack Specialization with Strike


• a few ranks of the Improved Block, maybe some Improved Disarm and Weapon Bind feats (disarming dudes just seems right)


• Improved Throw and Improved Trip feats (knocking dudes down also seems right)


• Acrobatic Bluff and Redirect feats, and of course some ranks of the Acrobatics skill (crane practitioners make dudes hit their friends, but they do it through deceptive movement rather than guile)

Leopard Style

• decent Strength, high Dexterity


• low-damage Strike power (probably non-lethal damage, probably with the Mighty feat, and--here's something cool--with the Autofire extra, which should actually work quite nicely with melee attacks, especially ones with more accuracy than power)


• low Attack bonus, plus ranks of Attack Focus: Melee and plenty ranks of Attack Specialization with Strike


• Move-By Action feat and (maybe) a little bit of the Speed power, for hit-and-run goodness


• Instant Up feat


• the Stealth skill seems kind of appropriate

Snake Style

• high Dexterity


• high-damage Strike power (maybe lethal, maybe without the Mighty feat, and possibly with a Limited: Humans Only flaw, because the pressure point thing makes sense for snake practitioners, too)


• low Attack bonus, plus ranks of Attack Focus: Melee and plenty ranks of Attack Specialization with Strike


• Stunning Attack feat (combined with a powerful Strike, this should be pretty potent, and fits a "venom" theme)


• maybe some ranks of the Defensive Roll and Evasion feats (snake practitioners might not be sturdy, but they're resilient because they're flexible)


• Elusive Target feat, because snakes as wiggly and hard to aim at from a distance


• Prone Fighting feat, because snakes are low to the ground


• a rank or two of the Improved Initiative feat, because snakes strike quickly


• maybe some ranks of the Escape Artist skill, possibly also Medicine, as it fits with the pressure points and venom themes

Dragon Style

• high Strength and Constitution (because one of these these has to be the brick style), and also a decent Charisma


• decent Strike power (lethal or non-lethal, most defintiely with the Mighty feat)


• low Attack bonus, plus ranks of Attack Focus: Melee and plenty ranks of Attack Specialization with Strike


• a few ranks of the Protection power (non-Impervious, maybe with the Limited: Physical Damage flaw


• maybe a bit of the Immovable power, because nobody gets to push a dragon around


• All-Out Attack feat (great resilience means dragon practitioners can throw caution to the wind, sometimes)


• Improved Grab, Improved Grapple, and Improved Pin feats, since the brick ought to get the wrestling abilities


• Fast Overrun and Improved Overrun feats (charging through crowds of enemies all impressively seems right for the dragon style)


• several ranks of the Fearsome Presence feat, also the Distract, Fascinate, Fearless, and Startle feats, and finally some ranks of the Intimidate skill (scary and impressive seems to work with the dragon theme, to me)

There are a lot of other styles I can think of trying--like a monkey style, or drunken boxing, or something involving weapons--and of course things get extremely crazy (and awesome) if you start including blatantly superhuman wuxia-style abilities, which is something I'd also like to play around with a bit. I definitely think Mutants & Masterminds could handle a hell of a martial arts campaign, with characters that are completely distinctive in terms of both flavor and mechanics. And, damn, I'd really love to try it some time.