Proposed monograph: BRP supers; playtesters and critical appraisal needed
Hi folks. I have recently begun assembling my material for a proposed monograph which has been accepted with an aim to be ready for September 2009. I am about 25-35% into the first draft writing and would really appreciate playtest and/or critical appraisal of the material.
I have been in discussion with our generous host on this board and he has agreed that I can have a playtest subforum as long as I get sufficient people signed up to do so. So what I need is a few willing volunteers to go over and hopefully make use of the work I produce, offering feedback along the way.
If you can help, either in playtesting as material appears or simply to critically appraise, then let me know by signing up in this thread.
Leon.
Covenant of Justice
The world is not the one we know. Brightly clad figures hurl themselves through skies to face menaces to their fellow man. Heroes abound, pursuing justice, vengeance or other motivations, expecting little obvious reward or thanks for their efforts. But the citizens of the metropolises which they patrol and protect recognise their feats of daring and heroic endeavour, and give their thanks anyway. Yet little do those unsuspecting citizens know of the true nature of the gravest threats to their world and their way of life. Few know of the things that lurk in the darkness and so the heroes of the Covenant of Justice bear a burden, to combat unknown forces with the ignorance of those whom they protect maintained for fear of the terror that would ensue were the truth publicly known. A heroic legacy has been maintained of costumed adventurers stretching back across more than a century, culminating in arguably the greatest age of heroes. It is ironic that at the time of the greatest assemblage of heroes there is the greatest need for their presence.
The setting is a hybrid of four-colour ethos and sensibility (so eschewing grim and gritty on the whole) juxtaposed with 'dark forces about which man was not meant to know', and so plays a little on assumptions built into Basic Roleplaying (such as if it involves eldritch horror and SAN rules it must be Lovecraftian - well not quite so, but you get the idea). This latter facet is intentionally to play on the Basic Roleplaying-Call of Cthulhu connection since the reason for supers existing in the world inverts the idea somewhat. It is against this backdrop that the Covenant of Justice has been formed, as a loose affiliation of heroes across the United States and originally formed in the midst of the Cold War. Many of the characters will have a degree of the mystical or mysterious in their origins, but some science-based characters will feature as well. It is not a Call of Cthulhu product.
I say four-colour sensibility in terms of having bright costumes, the codenames etc, as well as the general heroes’ code of honour that lasted until at least the silver age, if not now: protecting the weak and vulnerable, not killing and so on. Now that is sketchy, I know, but intentionally so since it is something that is examined more fully in the text. The default power level is superhuman which I think at its limit is around the Spider-man level and should hopefully offer an interesting gaming experience. No reference to any existing settings or published comic book characters will be made in the published text, however.
I plan to include additional game-mechanic material such as new powers and modifiers to supplement the setting-specific material (the latter comprising timeline, NPC heroes and villains, central hero organisation and at least one fictional city - Riviѐre Noire, Louisiana). The anticipated length of the book will be between 60,000-80,000 words, of which approximately 21-22,000 words are already written in first draft form (25-35% of expected length). Work has begun to source artwork. Anticipated date for completion is September 2009, possibly earlier.
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116/420.
Originally Posted by Trifletraxor
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Lovin' it!
