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So its been decades since I was able to play a honest to god super hero game. It's got me wondering, does anyone even play a simple super hero game where the heroes fight street thugs and crime lord kind of stuff? I can't for the life of me find a game where someone bothers with the whole secret identity and day job kind of thing.

Anyone one chime in please.

I was running a game like that for my wife and kids not too long ago. They were unknowns, just getting started in the hero business, and the big bad guy of the story was a local crime boss. They never finished the campaign (life circumstances interfered), but they had to do a lot of investigating, fighting gangsters, and the like. No mega-battles that level the city, or grandiose supervillains. Just criminal thugs that were lording over a city district and needed to be stopped. We had fun with it while it lasted, and it was a mixed group: A mutant scientist with APS: Plasma, a Magically Bestowed 9-year-old girl who could transform into a warrior princess faerie, and a psychic PI. They had to learn to work together, and how to use their powers to stop the bad guys without killing people or damaging the neighborhood they were trying to protect.

I ran one many years ago. It was actually my first attempt to combine HU with BTS so more mystically focused, but all the players were low power and the bad guys were street thugs or evil business men. Unfortunately it's been so long I don't remember any of the characters. Most were mutants or skill based with a few magic like. The scenario we never got to finish was going to be capturing escaped prisoners in the mountains of northern California. That was the kind of scenario that I had planned for it.

I prefer street level superhero games. I don't like higher level games....not really in terms of "power" but more in terms of scope of action. Street level games are easily explained and run...once you get into bigger scope things, it really gets difficult (for me, the GM) to justify a whole world full of morons that can't do anything and has to rely on superheroes to do anything. If I don't run the world like idiots, the PC super heroes end up becoming late comers and in the way of nationally led super teams backed up by supertech...

-STS

My longest running campaign was a street level campaign. The players were not interested in getting their characters involved with organizations which would have been plot devices leading to more epic suff.

slade the sniper wrote:I prefer street level superhero games. I don't like higher level games....not really in terms of "power" but more in terms of scope of action. Street level games are easily explained and run...once you get into bigger scope things, it really gets difficult (for me, the GM) to justify a whole world full of morons that can't do anything and has to rely on superheroes to do anything. If I don't run the world like idiots, the PC super heroes end up becoming late comers and in the way of nationally led super teams backed up by supertech...

I’m curious: what happens if the PCs are the only supers?

So you could run some street-level sessions, with rookies getting the hang of small-scope-of-action crimefighting; but couldn’t you eventually scale that up to a bigger scope where they aren’t latecomers “in the way of nationally led super teams” — not because the world was too idiotic to think of backing team after team of supers, but because the PCs are the first supers that any nation could back?

Regularguy wrote:

slade the sniper wrote:I prefer street level superhero games. I don't like higher level games....not really in terms of "power" but more in terms of scope of action. Street level games are easily explained and run...once you get into bigger scope things, it really gets difficult (for me, the GM) to justify a whole world full of morons that can't do anything and has to rely on superheroes to do anything. If I don't run the world like idiots, the PC super heroes end up becoming late comers and in the way of nationally led super teams backed up by supertech...

I’m curious: what happens if the PCs are the only supers?

So you could run some street-level sessions, with rookies getting the hang of small-scope-of-action crimefighting; but couldn’t you eventually scale that up to a bigger scope where they aren’t latecomers “in the way of nationally led super teams” — not because the world was too idiotic to think of backing team after team of supers, but because the PCs are the first supers that any nation could back?

If my players were the only supers? Hmmmm...well with my players they would take over the world.

-STS

The Dark City of Cascade was /made/ for Street level heroes Rifter84

My most recent campaign started with street-level enemies and opponents and grew into more intense stuff as the group got closer to Level 5 or so.

The first session was literally the group coming together to foil a bank robbery by a well-organized crew that was hitting multiple banks all at once all over the city. That developed into them trying to figure out who was behind it and uncovering more issues. They didn't actually fight anybody with anything resembling superpowers until about ten sessions into the campaign.

Being able to grow a super-team is pretty awesome.

-STS