Arkham City: 1953
My decision to set my Adventures Into Darkness campaign in 1953 came to me in a dream, eerily enough. It’s an obvious enough choice. The House Un-American Activities Committee was on the rampage, with McCarthy’s metaphorical witchhunts. Frederick Wertham was causing a stir with Seduction of the Innocent, which can easily be transferred into criticism of how actual superheroes are conducting themselves. The first Hydrogen bomb tests were going on. Stalin died, sending the Cold War to new levels. The world was changing rapidly, and having the heroes deal with those changes offers up a lot of story fodder. Superheroes are coming under scrutiny, yes, but in a lot of ways they’re just not needed, or at least not particularly effective. You can’t punch your way through a Cold War without triggering an international incident and potentially triggering a nuclear war. Nazi scientists are now working for the American Government, and it would make sense that a lot of home-grown mad scientists and other villains would get rounded up and recruited as well. Scientific accidents that give people superpowers just don’t happen with government oversight… or at least, they’re no longer accidents. There’s a moral ambiguity that wasn’t there during World War II. A lot of heroes who became active in the late 1930s and early 40s have retired, if they weren’t killed in the war. Heroes who put their lives on hold to fight Hitler and the Axis are getting married, moving to the suburbs, and raising kids just like other veterans and ordinary citizens.
By setting it late in the Golden Age, the player characters get to be older and more experienced, but they’ve also had more exposure to the Mythos, the horrors or war, and the potentially corrupting influences of their powers. Here’s the example I give: imagine that Adam West’s Batman is the grim and gritty Batman, but after he’s lost his marbles facing down cosmic horrors. Everyone’s at least a little shell shocked, a little screwed up, but not without their moral compass, their patriotism, and their desire to battle evil intact.
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