This world that the characters find themselves into is very strange in many ways.
First, Marvel, DC, etc.-- all characters existed. There was somehow both a Justice League and an Avengers, a Doom Patrol and an X-Men and even Youngblood. Thing is-- they all disappeared rather abruptly and no one but the teens and children who were connected to those teams even remembers that they existed. All of the super high tech security that was designed to stop the most serious of super villains has also disappeared. There are prisons for holding people with superpowers. In fact, all in all its like all the remaining adults are pretty inept and oblivious of all this-- as if it is novel to them every time they encounter it and they forget about it as soon as any given crisis is averted.
Although most of what I have written focused on Marvel and D.C., teenage superhero or supervillain characters from other media-- even The Boys, Invincible, Kick Ass, My Hero Academia or One Punch Man, could be considered so long as it is understood that the more gruesome, violent and realistic aspects will end up getting removed and they will end up as the most standard PG kid's cartoon version of themselves due to how the mechanics of the world work.
But the strangeness does not stop there. There are many other things that don't make sense if one puts too much thought into them.
- A character can be a Kryptonian who can supposedly move at the speed of light, survive in space, and move planets... but someone with no super powers or combat experienced dressed like a clown will be able to dodge and deflect blows from this same kryptonian and will not get splattered into red mist if struck with even a serious blow. Furthermore the character might be able to stand up to a hail of bullets without flinching only to get knocked down by an energy blast or frozen momentarily by an ice guy. In general battles will often get determined far more by who is being more entertaining or what is more dramatically satisfying.
- Powers that one would generally be "auto wins" such as mind control will work fine on NPCs and may occasionally work on the strongest member of the enemy team in the case of the person with mind control is outnumbered or outgunned, but will never seem to work quite right on someone with a costume and a super name.
- Someone who is outnumbered will generally be way more effective than if they were fighting as part of a team. They might be able to take on a whole team of 5 supers when alone, but then if they later join a team with 4 other people-- then when they fight that same 5-person group, they won't do any better in that 1-on-1 match than they did against the whole team before.
- Any attempt to kill someone will somehow be thwarted. Even if it makes absolutely no sense, even if there is no possible way to escape, even if the person is completely and hopelessly outmatched-- nothing any super attempts to do to any other super will result in death. Attempting to knock out or capture someone will always have a higher success rate than any attempt to kill.
- Characters who do get captured will pretty much only remain captured so long as someone is paying attention to them. No matter how perfect and inescapable the facility is, no matter how impossible to escape the bindings, no matter how you have definitely deactivated their powers-- somehow once you stop regularly socializing with your prisoners, they will almost immediately escape confinement.
- Any attempt to engage in non-PG rated actions with anyone else will backfire. The fastest way to enable someone to escape at your own humiliation and expense is to attempt any non-consensual touching, the quickest way to see your significant other get turned to the other side or get killed or otherwise some massive tragedy that destroys your relationship is by escalating a romantic relationship too far.
- No matter how bad of a thing the villains do (and it should be limited given the whole limiter on killing), somehow society will always be willing to give them another chance to use their powers for good after just a few months of rehabilitation or psychiatric care.
- Both Heroes and Villains, so long as they are still conscious and not bound before they attempt it will somehow always be able to escape-- yes, even if the other team has a super speedster or other power that would presumably be able to prevent it. Something will always occur to make it possible.
This is not a definitive list of the rules of the world, but just the general vibe of the kind of nonsensical rules that govern the world. Any kind of game system would inherently be logical and thus not really allow for the extent of this kind of "comic book" flavor. I am going to rely on the players to police themselves and play according to this. There will be GM intervention to enable some of these scenarios if necessary.
Everyone needs to check their egos, not power game and remember that your goal is not to attempt to end the other player in the most gruesome and brutal way possible-- even if you are playing an overly edgelord character who would aim to do that-- your goal is to create a dramatic situation followed by the villain's plan ending primarily in failure before they run off to think of something else to try. Also don't try to resolve something like uncovering each other's secret identities too soon because then you'd spoil any future scenes where heroes and villains might meet each other socially under secret identities.
In fact, it might generally be good to work out where you generally want things to go out-of-character before playing out the details in-character.
One might get the idea that the characters in this world are trapped in some sort of simulation or that they are in some sort of TV show with an audience that wants to see heightened drama. The thing is though-- if they are from a comics reality, these rules really are generally not enough of a departure from how things usually work that it should stir up any major suspicions in even the cleverest of characters. In fact, it should only be the unhinged and insane characters that might come to the conclusion that there are no actual lasting consequences for anything they attempt to do and that something will intervene whenever they try anything too evil and then try to push the limits of what they can get away with.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:10, Sun 10 July 2022.
