Silver Insanity

Josh pointed me at a blog post An Ultimate Supers RPG that described the following sequence to build a shared basis for a superhero setting. The inspiration was the Ultimate Marvel universe, which took the long history of Marvel and used it as inspiration to create a unified setting to tell new stories in.

1. Get Microscope.
2. Get your group together.
3. Play several sessions of Microscope to establish a comics history.
4. Have one of the players become the GM.
5. Let the GM break the history down and make a “reboot” of that setting.
6. Set up the PCs as “rebooted” versions of each player’s favorite hero from the history.
7. Play as a standard Supers game in your system of choice.

While Microscope looks interesting (based on an RPG Geek review), I'm not familiar with it and I'm not eager to buy new books and learn new rules just so that I can run/play in a completely different game.

Here's my take on it, using DC and Fate as an inspiration instead of Microscope. Much like DC, these eras are completely unrelated in universe, although people can feel free to use early versions of characters as historical or alt-universe versions if it makes sense.

Golden Age: Superheroes are wild and strange, and generally in their own comic line, unrelated to anything else. This corresponds to a brainstorming phase. Everyone comes up with heroes and villains. Short descriptions, nearly anything goes. This is to create a shared pool of ideas to draw from for the next phase. Also to establish the tone and kind of game everyone wants to play.

Silver Age: Heroes start coming together, their powers locked down to a specific set (Superman doesn't use Super Hypnosis or Super Weaving anymore.) This is a series of VERY short games, a scene or two each. Use the Fate Accelerated rules with On the Fly character creation. Someone comes up with a villain's plot and the group picks a series of heroes and/or villains to add to it. The point here is mostly to tie down these characters' aspects and skills and to get a feel for who works together and who doesn't. Tell stories and develop quips. Don't feel limited to using your own characters. Even here, nothing is set in stone.

Modern Age: A large, sprawling shared mythos where all the characters need to actually make sense together. This is the real game. The GM chooses what bits they like, what the 'reality' of the world is: where do powers come from, what is the setting, is this a supers team or Aberrant or what? Each person picks their favorite character from the Silver age and "retcons" their new history. I'd suggest something like Fate's shared character creation just so everyone knows exactly what's been changed and how the new iterations of the characters fit together.

This looks like fun! I am definitely interested. Said interest may not prove practical depending on how the game gets run, but definitely interested.

Well, part of the idea is that every time I run a supers game... It lacks the shared history that happens in other superhero comics. And that... really does help. The goal of this is just... for the players to go "Hey, I remember that character, that's a cool use of him."

In case you were wondering: Actual Comic Ages

Although, I like Brian's versions.

• Proto-Superhero
• The Golden Age of Comic Books (1938)
• The Interregnum (1945)
  • The Comics Code (1954)
• The Silver Age of Comic Books (1956)
• The Bronze Age of Comic Books (1970)
• The Dark Age of Comic Books (1986)
  • The Iron Age of Comic Books
  • Post-Crisis (1986)
  • The Great Comics Crash of 1996
• The Modern Age of Comic Books (1996 or 2000)
  • New 52 (2011)

My thought was to do the brainstorming on here... just for fun. It's unlikely I'll run one of these within a year, but... hey, this is a creative outlet with friends... right?

My thoughts:
1) We don't need a formal ages things... I used decade by decade when I wrote up the Mystic Knight but, seriously, it's mostly just diceless creative fun.
2) Occasionally, in person games get cancelled or delayed due to people missing out... How about we use this as an inspiration for some one-shots? That way, when the game actually happens, we can draw from this shared mythology?
3) Unless otherwise stated, anyone can add on to anyone else's creation. Want Mystic Knight to have been t-bagged by Hitler, go for it... (Okay, please don't do THAT...) But, comics have odd stuff due to executive meddling, strange marketing (Did you show up on a cereal box? Was the character defeated by the Trix rabbit in some 80's health propaganda?), weird editing (pink Star Trek anyone?), or just bizarre circumstances. If you just wanna do the snark, do it. At the worst, it means that when game runs, we can have some odd in-jokes.
4) Join in, have fun... think about the character you might want to play in a superhero game (you DON'T have to play him...) and then think "How would a comic's company screw up his backstory?" That's kinda what I did with Mystic Knight; it was both fun and made MK stronger in my mind.

I forgot the biggest executive meddling! Hostess Fruit Pies!!! (Seriously you HAVE to see this!! The Breaking Bad one... Constantine... wow...)

Note: Some people have been REALLY intimidated by this... Post ideas. This is mostly a shared brainstorming session. (That's a lot like what Microscope is.) So, half-finished ideas, etc... anything you want. I'll try to put together a FAQ for it.

In case you haven't realized, just to be clear. Anything in this section is 'previous comics'. The actual game itself is a remake / elseworlds tale that uses the other parts as inspiration.

For those in my new game, anything posted here is non-cannon. Only stuff that actually shows up 'on-screen' counts as real. However, these are, once again, an attempt to give a deeper mythos to the game. Also, so we're less tempted to just copy marvel and DC characters.