I began this post last year, with a fairly clear idea in mind of how a Mark-of-the-Odd superhero campaign might work. Coming back to it after... 17 months? ...my ideas are less clear.
Some of the issues are discussed the end—genuinely interested in how anyone reading this thinks you can run a superheroes campaign with an OSR mentality... or a "thinking adventures" mentality.
Anyways, I'll continue with the original post, interrupting myself towards the end.
At some point in the mid 2010s a renegade group of Salafists accidentally released an ancient evil, setting off a cascade of increasingly cataclysmic events across the globe. Kaiju-like demons rose from the depths of the ocean, crawled from the dark corners of the earth and descended from the stars: an era of chaos began, and the timeline of this Other Earth diverged inextricably from our own.
Yet in humanity's darkest hour there shone a beacon of hope: a real-life super hero, The Goddess, stared down the daemons... and the daemons flinched. Her antiquated arms—the sword and shield of a classical warrior—struck trues while the modern marvels of the military machinery could not. With the forces of darkness on the back foot, new heroes joined her: humanity fought back!
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| I am fully aware that this is a picture of Wonder Woman |
But this triumph would be short-lived. In her humility, the Goddess entrusted herself to the powers-that-be; in their hubris, they sought to coerce, cajole and control the Goddess into following their short-sighted strategies. Alongside her ablest warriors, she was buried beneath millions of tonnes of lava released from an Icelandic volcano by the daemon Leviathan.
What now for humanity? As the daemon hordes muster once again, will new heroes rise to once again face down the forces of evil?
Yes, of course they will.
Mark of the Odd
Your superhero is an ordinary person with one extraordinary feature: the ability to wield ancient artefacts. Otherwise you are unexceptional.
Roll 3d6 for each stat:
- strength (STR)
- dexterity (DEX)
- charisma (CHA)
You have 1d6 hit protection. At 0 HP roll 1d20: if it is equal to or lower than your STR score, you are critically wounded and will die within an hour if not given rudimentary first aid.
Any damage taking you below 0 HP is applied directly to STR. At 0 STR you die.
Some attacks target your DEX or CHA. At 0 DEX you are paralysed until treatment is provided. At 0 CHA you suffer some kind of delirium or other psychological state preventing you from doing anything other than taking cover or running away.
You are squishy.
Squish.
A Secret Identity
When you use your magical artefact (and we'll get to that) you assume the identity of your Superhero alter-ego. No one must know that it's you, you're a soft target and for various reasons governments need to keep you at arm's length (not least after what happened to the Goddess) . In other words, you can't rely on them to get you out a jam on civvy street, so better that you just keep on being Ibrahim the IT guy by day and only pull out the ~ I R O N C O L L O S U S ~ schtick when there's daemonic hordes to deal with or death cults opening portals to the spirit world with Babylonian tablets.
- job
- personality flaw
You're going to need a boring job and at least one personality flaw.
In order to avoid offending anyone in particular by drawing up a table, I'm just going to offend everyone by suggesting you use your real-life job and real life personality flaw. We've all got one—a personality flaw, that is. I'm not going to be so ignorant as to imagine everyone is in work.
City
It's going to make more sense of all the PCs live in the same city. You don't all have to be from there (or even from the same country! Imagine!) but you're all living here now. Maybe in separate apartments/flats/squats? The government help you out with some expenses but they're not supporting you: that's part of how this works. The heroes must walk among humans, live as they do and suffer the day-to-day indignities each of us endures as a consequence of late-stage capitalism: because perhaps, maybe, when all the demons are dead, there'll be an opportunity to create something new...
Class & money
...on that note: you can be a filthy aristo or an elegant socialite if you want, but that won't confer any special privileges. At some point you did something wrong and the doors which once swung open for you are now firmly closed. Whether your a fallen nob, white-collar office drone or noble prole, there's no trust fund or "bank of mum & dad": at the end of each month you may roll 1d6 to see how many dollars (convert to local currency as appropriate) are left after paying for basic living expenses.
Stuff
You have clothes for your day job and at least two outfits for going out. One of the outfits might be suitable for a "classy" establishment, the other one definitely isn't. You may have a pet or a vehicle, but not both. You don't have any weapon apart from....
The Ancient Artefacts
As described above, PCs have access to a powerful artefact from which they derive their superpowers. It is attuned to them and them alone: it cannot be used by others, except in the event of their death (and only then by a worthy heir).
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| Back in the day, even Thor had a mild-mannered alter-ego |
In addition to one or two specific powers (flight, invisibility, converting sound into disco lights), when the PC assumes their superhero persona their ability scores and HP also increase.
Examples artefacts:
- Aegis of Athena: ancient shield which transforms the chosen bearer into The Impossible Goddess
- The Aegis imparts armour of 6 (as per ItO rules) to the Impossible Goddess. It reflect all beam attacks and gaze attacks back at those making them on a successful dex save.
- Charisma improves by 1d6. No being of human origin my knowingly lie while looking into her eyes.
- Strength and dexterity each improve by 2d6. This also imparts the ability to leap up to 100' horizontally or 50' vertically
- +1d6 additional HP
- When thrown like a discuss by the Impossible Goddess, the aegis inflicts 2d12 damage and always returns to her.
- Trickster's Cloak: Donning the cloak allows the hero to assume their alter ego, the Trickster.
- The wearer of the cloak can turn invisible OR assume any other humanoid form at will.
- While invisible they are immune to all attacks affecting their strength or dexterity. Conversely, they are unable to commit an act of violence without once again becoming visible.
- The trickster has a complicated relationship with gravity. They fall at a steady pace rather than accelerating and are immune to fall damage.
- The trickster's charisma is double that of their alter-ego, even if this increases their ability score above 18.
- The Trickster's powerful charisma enables them to issue short suggestions to NPCs and intelligent animals, which they must obey unless they can make a CHA save. These suggestions cannot induce those bewitched to harm others that they would ordinarily care about, including themselves.
- Mask of Orgrynn: the chosen wearer assumes the form of a mythical ogre. Their size doubles. Their canines and finger nails extend into fangs and claws. their thirst for blood increases commensurately.
- In melee attacks roll 1d12 for their claws or 3d6 for a bite.
- Bites are more potent but require a CHA save to avoid continuing to bite said opponent until they have been completely consumed
- Double strength (even if above 18) and +1d6 dexterity
- Thick hide acts as armour 4, +2d12 HP
And so on. To make hero generation interesting, I'd imagine a series of nested tables providing multiple variation of the typical superhero archetypes:
- speedster
- monster
- sorcerer supreme
- strong guy
- ranged attacker
- water dude
- psionicist
Other classic archetypes like the android/robot or hi-tech vigilante could be represented by the same quasi-government organisation providing support to the superhero team. The alter-ego could be remote controlling a drone or wearing tactical dreadnought armour.
But..
...is this is the point at which the game breaks?
The Point of a Superheroes RPG vs. the Point of Old School adventuring
Mark of the Odd games are built on the principle of player skill over character skill.
Superhero games are built on the principle of the characters being superheroes.
I should have seen this from the start... but there's a clear paradox here!
I've attempted to address this by focussing on an investigative or starting element where the PCs are in their squishy, run-of-the-mill non-super identities... but obviously, at some point, they activate their powers and the tone switches.
The only technique for keeping it interesting (that I can see) is introducing some kind of limit, probably time-based:
- Artifacts have a built in timer and deactivate when it runs out
- Artifacts that transform the bearer (like the Mask of Orgrynn) require a regular save to a) avoid losing control or b) avoid transforming permanently
- Some other kind of material/circumstantial limitation: like kryptonite but more mundane, such as can't be exposed to water/sunlight
The trouble is, this starts to conflict with the typical tropes of the genre and become something weird and specific, which wasn't the original goal. There are ways in which these elements could be more tailored to the genre's tropes:
- The evil mastermind learning of the limits to the superheroes power (Lex Luthor and Kryptonite, for example) and designing obstacles that exploit these weaknesses
- The rookie superhero initially being unable to fully control their powers
- Skew the campaigns tone to investigative: the PCs are looking to uncover corruption or conspiracy within their organisation, and they solve this mystery through ordinary detective work (but get ot have fun fighting super powered monsters and villains along the way)
So let me ask you again: what would an OSR/Thinking Adventures Superheroes campaign look like? Or should I just shut up and get on with the other 10,000 projects currently simmering on the back-burner?
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