[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Drakyrias

I've recently embarked on running a 'street' level Supers game set in a crossover world drawing on elements of both DC and Marvel Universes.

Details already set in the game: The game is currently set in Nov 1996

Charles Xavier, Magneto, General William Striker, Amanda Waller, Bruce Wayne/Batman, Victor Zsasz (a version combining Arkham city and Gotham tv series), and Carmine Falcone all exist.

If the first two are going to play a significant role, you'll need to consider why, and what your players can do for or against either one. Charles, esp. is a terrifying foe and a dangerous ally, since he can change your mind...whether you want to change it or not. It's also kind of hard to keep secrets from him.

For 'street level supers', those 2 may be too potent as written.

The only core cannon group from either universe I see as existing without any real tampering is the X men since they exist a a mutants training and protection group that primarily looks at the rest of even their own universe and tells it to shove off as often as not.

That could work at street level, with caveats. A few of the X-types are too powerful for that sort of setting, esp. the various versions of Jean Grey. It's even caused major problems in canon for their own titles.

If you want the X-men and Magneto and the Brotherhood or the Hellfire Club or whatever, it could be done in a Gotham-style street setting, but you'll probably need to adjust some membership and/or power levels. For ex, the Hellfires could fit into Gotham easily enough, in concept, a club of the rich, powerful, businessmen and politicians and self-flattering kinky sorts and the like prey, and a core of mutants with nastier plans. The court of owls might overlap with them easily enough.

But Emma Frost (if she's one of them) is an issue for the same reason Charles Xavier is, just a little less of it. From the POV of a normal person, either one is terrifying and almost impossible to cope with. (I'd far rather take on Sebastian Shaw than Emma Frost in a fight. I could conceivably hide from or run from Shaw, or trick him.)

If you're allowing telepathy in-game, you probably need to either give your PCs some defenses against it, or weaken it substantially. Xavier/Frost would be much more manageable if we reduce their range considerably, and make it easier for a strong-willed person to resist them.

Batman is still in year one.

Here's a thought: what if Batman, because of his will and insane dedication, and the Joker, because of his insane thought processes, are both more-or-less immune to telepathy, even Xavier's or Emma's? No resistance roll necessary, it just doesn't work on them, because of their particular mental states.

Would your players ally with the Joker against an evil telepath? Which is the great evil?

I'm looking for help and inspiration with any and all cannon characters and team or group affiliations from either universe. (i. e. Dr. Fate and Dr. Strange etc) along with stat help. 3rd edition rules preferred but I'll backwards compatible if I like something.

Thanks!

Strange, Fate, etc. are probably too powerful for a street-level Gotham game, unless you scale them way down. The Phantom Stranger might fit, for all his power, because he follows his own hidden set of rules. He might be theoretically able to blast the city apart but forbidden to do more than zap a lock or two on any given day.

In practice, though, you probably don't want to mix 'cosmic power levels' and 'street level superheroing' in one game setting. it works (sort of) in DC and Marvel because the authors have total control of character behavior, but even there it sometimes combines clumsily, making WSOD hard.

You might do best to assume that there just aren't any 'cosmic-level superpowers' existing. Make people like Magneto and Charles the high end of power, and make them rare. You might well want to scale even Charles and Magneto down some along the way too. The Hulk could work OK, as a very rare, very-high-end menace/ally, for all his physical strength he's still a one-trick pony.

In a Gothamite 'city scale setting', I'd say you'd probably want your enemies to be on a human scale. Add 25% of Metropolis to Gotham, in the rich and powerful residential areas and the downtown corporate/business core. Play up the distance between the two sides of Gotham. Batman operates in both, but even he uses different methods in each. The bright and shiny part of Gotham is at least as corrupt and criminal as the poor-and-shabby parts, but it's a different flavor and less out-in-the-open. There are good guys and bad guys in both.

Along with supercriminals, and maybe a bigger long-term problem, are the Kingpin, Carmine Falcone, the Mafia in general, the Yakuza might be in play. Play up the differences between fighting a powerful but lone supercrook and an organization of competent normals, esp. when you add in political corruption and crokked cops and so on. Play that right and your characters may end up being more worried about making the Kingpin mad than the Joker.

Spiderman could fit into your Gotham easily enough. In fact he might do quite well there. The Punisher, ditto, though he and Batman are just enough alike and just different enough that they'd likely end up mortal enemies. The Punisher would see Batman as a deranged kook trying to deal with deadly serious enemies by tea party methods, Batman would see Castle as just another perp, maybe a sympathetic one because of his backstory, but still a murderous criminal.

Daredevil could fit in without too much trouble, and his services as Matt Murdoch may come in handy, too, if somebody gets busted for something (and they likely will).

You might bring in J.J. Jameson and his Daily Bugle, too. Use the versions of him that have him basically one of the good guys, if often a nasty and unpleasant one, still obsessed with Spiderman if he's here too. It's canon (or has been with some writers) that the same J.J. obsessed with getting Spiderman is also a crusader for law-and-order, willing to call out corrupt cops and politicians, and a defender of mutant rights. He makes a nice complicated frenemy. He'd likely have many of the same issues with Batman as Spiderman, too. Batman would be more likely to hit back than Spiderman (who needs the employment), but Batman might also hesitate to strike back too hard against a J.J. who was exposing the rot in City Hall, too.