DC5K

Inspired by the JLA One Million trade paperback, I've been doing a lot of thinking about a futuristic sci-fi/superhero game. My idea doesn't reach as far into the future as DC's mini-series (set in the year 85,000-and-something) but I do want to place it far enough into the future that even the Legion of Superheroes is a part of the remote past. Trouble is, I don't know bupkis about the Legion era, so I can't really effectively build from it. I suppose at this point I could invoke the notion of setting the campaign on a remote colony, perhaps cut off from the rest of human space. That removes the possibility of setting an adventure on Mars, which I would paint as a haunted planet, haunted by the spirits of Martians past and haunted by J'onn J'onzz. Also there's the simple fact that threatening to destroy Earth packs a bigger emotional punch than threatening to destroy Colonial 62B-Ophiuchi or whatever. Maybe the old DC Heroes supplement on the Legion contains enough material to work up a future DC campaign.

Of course, once all the setting details are thrashed out we still return to the age old question for supers games: What system? Most made-for-supers systems don't do a very good job of tackling the high power levels of Superman and his ilk. I can let that slide for most supers games, but I think this concept calls for cosmic level powers. The aforementioned DC Heroes game and its descendant Blood of Heroes ought to do the trick, but I'm not sure I want to tackle an old-school crunchy system like that. I owned one of the DC boxed sets at one time, but back then I couldn't wrap my head around the system. Maybe all these years later I could do it, but do I want to? The new Authority rpg from Guardians of Order takes their Silver Age Sentinels system and dials the power level to eleven, so that might work. After those two their a zillion other supers games, generic systems, and doing wierd things like ripping off non-supers games. I'm sure I could find some folks on RPG.net that would urge me to use Nobilis or Exalted for the task. Maybe I could tackle this project as a one shot or a con game, in which case I the ideal system would be A) popular, B) easy to use, and C) already in my collection. I wish I could think of a game like that right now.