Metahumans Rising

Within the last sixty years mankind has passed a fundamental shift in their understanding of nature and reality. Genetic mutants and those things deemed supernatural have existed from time before man could lay pen to parchment, their numbers were small, hiding in shadows or secret cabals they escaped the eye of history. With the coming of the First World War this all changed. Solders exposed to a deadly airborn agent known as Kaiser Box marked the birth of the first Metahumans.

No longer mere men they were transformed into something only spoken of in the epic poems and myths of centuries past. Although none realized at the time they were heralds of change. In the years after the war governments experimented with the deadly KB gas as Metahuman births continued to rise. Their powers and abilities sparking the imaginations of millions and a surge in scientific research and funding as man rushed to understand and adapt.

Their numbers small, the world has seen the rise and fall of living gods. It is estimated that there are less than two thousand Metahumans world wide, heroes and villains, saints and devils the earth continues to evolve as the new millennium approaches. How these few beings will continue to shape the world is unknown. Some fear them, others see them as weapons, most are simply trying to survive. Welcome to the world of Metahumans Rising.

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Why a Wiki?

I decided to put the Metahumans Rising Setting up here so that my friends and I can all have a collective super heroic world to draw from. Part of the appeal, at least for me is the fact that comics, baring some graphic novels, are not created by just one person. They are the collaborative work of multiple writers. So I wanted to set up a world that we could all build on.

Thoughts on tone and feel.

While working on the timeline I was drawn to the Golden Age comics and the new movement to Retro Golden. I think the most defining quote I can use when I think of flavor of Retro Golden is:

This of course may not be the best fit for every GM or Player but it's a strong movie to express tone and help generate an initial feel for a superhero setting. As others pick up the setting and play with it I'm sure the tome will very drastically,even I didn't picture something quite as dark as Batman Begins. For a start however I thought it was a good visual.

Gold: Gold represents the era starting with the introduction of Superman and Batman up until the introduction of the Barry Allen Flash. Benchmarks include:

Characters, hero and villain, can kill, but mostly indirectly in the case of heroes. You don't see heroes breaking the necks of enemy sentries, but you do see them blowing up Japanese dams or causing some criminal's plane to crash, No particular effort is made to save the lives of bad guys and certain heroes are remorseless and implacable killers.

Capes aren't universal but are widespread fashion.

Teenage sidekicks who are shorter, less capable versions of their patron are even more common than capes.

No particular training or powers are considered necessary to a superhero. As a result there are a large number of characters who are going into combat armed with nothing but a mask and an attitude, and a mob of mundane thugs are often a serious threat even to some characters who have powers.

Titles and colours are common in superhero names: Characters are named "Doctor" or "Captain", or "Mister", or the "Red", "Green" or "Blue" something. When you aren't named like that odds are good that your name ends in "Man", or "Lady" or "Girl". Or you're a sidekick in which case your name tends to be something nonthreatening and meaningless.

Nazis are common opponents. So are bald scientists. (Historically Japanese were also common opponents in the real Golden Age, but in nostalgia stories hearkening back to the GA the Japanese have largely been sidelined in favour of the more romantic Nazis.). Actual superpowered opponents, as opposed to bald scientists with a robot or a death ray, while not unknown, were less common than in later eras. Aliens from other parts of the solar system are also frequent opponents.

Common origins include: Accidental chemical exposure, visiting or being raised in a secret society which can train you to have powers, stumbling across a magical relic, consumption of a drug or serum which usually only requires one dose, designing a special weapon that can be held in one hand, just getting angry and putting on a costume.

What's Different

Interpretations of Retro Gold

The Article discusses a few points namely around the Japanese. Retro Golden often removes racist elements from the storyline or uses the Golden Flavor to highlight racism of the old guard being swept away. Sidekicks are not near as common, although there are some characters that even in a Retro Golden story their sidekicks are still featured, Capitan America and Bucky for example.

Retro Gold in Champions:

The campaign is a standard 350 game so the just a guy in a mask factor is limited. Trained normals tend to be more along the lines of Hawkeye or Batman, although they lack true superpowers they compensate with skill and or gadgets.

I would like to avoid the whole sidekick thing if possible, this is basically a NPC for the GM to run and torture the player with their ineptitude. The timeline places the game in the late 90's so Nazi's are not the world threat as they once were. However, the Metahumans Rising campaign does include several possible organizations that can slip into their place.