Our first thought experiment is America's Best Comics. Alan Moore did some very interesting things (again, you could say) with tired old superhero tropes, but how would we imagine a single unified game based on his various visions? There's the mystical Promethea in a sci-fi New York, the cops of Top Ten and their city full of super-humans, pulpish hero Tom Strong, the Victorian League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the various Tomorrow Stories (including Veitch's Greyshirt). Lots of stuff apparently sharing the same multiverse. What kind of RPG would that be?
Ideas
That one unified system, right? It's one where super-powers would have to be easy to design, and anything goes as far as technology, myth and magic, but of course, they would be publish in series-specific sourcebooks.
Top 10, for example, needs a random super-character generator, it must explain the multiverse, etc. Tom Strong should have a map of Earth with all the pulpy locations on it, and LXG should have extensive literary notes. They would make good reads even if you're not a gamer. If Alan Moore were convinced to pull what he did with DC Heroes' Watchmen material, his contributions would ensure some non-gamer sales.
How about calling the core system "Science Heroes", which is the one thing consistent through all books (except LXG, though I really get the sense it's part of the same multiverse).
LXG might publish first because of name recognition, with the rest coming out over the course of the next 2 years. Of course, it's the one that could be released without a license by filing the numbers off. Moore's specific versions of literary characters like Mr. Hyde and the Invisible Man are off-limits, of course, but the originals are in the public domain. A Victorian Heroes and Villains book could weave a tapestry of literary characters and events from the era without having to resort to ABC's particular paradigm.
System help
Well, as it stands, the various ABC series would probably do better in different systems. Adventure! for Tom Strong, or Dust Devils for the LXG. A Top 10 game could be achieved with almost any standard Supers game, but there are so many powered characters (everyone you meet, in fact) that you really need it to be quick and dirty - can't go full Champions on every random NPC.
Ultimately you might ask WHY a coherent game for such varied worlds, but the value of that is creating a brand that encourages different ways of looking at the Supers genre.
What would YOU do with an "Alan Moore" superhero RPG?
Comments