Continuing this month’s RPG Blog Carnival theme, here’s an idea for a slightly different superhero game. It’s all fluff, setting and story, so you can use the system of your choice.

The player characters are retired superheroes, middle-aged folks who’ve stepped out of the game to let the younger generation take over. Their reasons for retirement are all legitimate — sidelined by injury, health problems, decided to focus on the safety of their family, took a “grown up” job, real reasons people would get out of dangerous, high-risk professions. It’s not a forced shut down like Watchmen or The Incredibles, there are still supers. The game begins with them living their lives, and I think the lives should be happy and satisfying and not sad or bleak or filled with longing for the good ol’ days. Maybe one of them owns a car dealership, to run with a retired athlete metaphor. Maybe one of them does commentary on superhero stories for a news network. Maybe one of them works in law enforcement in some capacity. I think that in some cases, supers would become so successful in their day job/ secret identity careers that they turned their focus their, especially if it does as much or more good than super heroics — research scientists focus on curing disease, reporters focus on informing the public and exposing corruption, millionaire philanthropists do charity work.

One of their former villains approaches them. He’s done his time in prison, and is sincerely reformed. The problem is, the ex-villain suspects his kid is hanging with the wrong crowd and is about to get into the villain game. He doesn’t want to go to the police, or to the current generation of superheroes, because he doesn’t know for sure. If he’s wrong, he doesn’t want the kid to suffer guilt by association because the old man was a bad guy. If the kid isn’t involved in anything too deep, he wants to get him out before he gets in serious trouble. So the ex-villain approaches the retired heroes to ask a favor: stopping him and putting him in jail was the best thing that every happened to him, now please, I’m begging you, help me save my kid.

It really needs to be driven home that the villain really is reformed, and that his kid is otherwise a good kid roped in with the wrong crowd. I suggest making the ex-villain one of the player characters. Other player characters can also be ex-villains, also recruited to help out.

This could go a lot of different ways. The retired heroes can suit up again, or stay “plain clothes” to investigate. They can ask around to old contacts, but run the risk of attracting the attention of cops and current supers and getting the kid into trouble, which puts them at odds with the current establishment. In the course of their investigation, they might run afoul of current-era villains and plots, and bump up against old villains who aren’t reformed.

The setting also lends itself to flashbacks. When the ex-villain approaches them, you can flash back to battles fought between their younger selves. When they visit old contacts, you can play out previous adventures they had together, to establish how they know each other. The flashback is a valid storytelling device here.. The best part is, you can probably use the exact same statistics as their current, middle-aged selves, but they may roleplay things differently to show how they’ve changed and matured over the years. Are they more, or less, reckless now? Do they use their powers differently based on greater experience?

This is a game I’ll probably never run, but I really dig the idea. If anyone ever does anything with it, I’d like to know how it turns out.

Like

Unlike

More from unclebear

• In a Wicked Age
• What is a Campaign?
• Selecting a Campaign