Mass Super-Empowering Event ideas (Mutants and Masterminds) - OG Myth-Weavers

Notices


GM Workshop

A community-created and maintained place for Game Masters of all systems to bounce ideas around. It's a place for inspiration and sharing tips.


Mass Super-Empowering Event ideas (Mutants and Masterminds)

   
Mass Super-Empowering Event ideas (Mutants and Masterminds)

So I'm trying to create a home-brew modern day superhero campaign. I have in mind one event that gave the heroes and villains of the campaign their powers.

However, I'm not sure what to have for the Mass Super-Empowering Event.

Does anybody have any creative ideas for what the Mass Super Empowering Event could be, and how it could've happened?

Ancient dragon awakens on modern Earth and goes on a warpath. Eventually, world powers unite in a military effort to destroy the creature. The battle spanned over half the planet as it flew from place to place, constantly being harassed by air and ground forces everywhere it stopped. Eventually, after days or constant attack, the dragon falls.

Everywhere it flew after the initial attack, it's blood fell from its wounds. That blood had a radical effect on any creature it came into contact with, changing them forever. Some changed more than others.

This also allows the dragon's body to be an eventual story hook as the blood in its body could be held by various forces that study it and use it to create their own metas.

I spent like 2 minutes thinking this up though so it needs a lot of refinement and detail work.

No one knows? Because basically every answer would be convoluted and silly, so why give any answer at all?

Aliens come to earth and infect humans (DC's Bloodline Parasites)

Aliens come to earth and genetically restructure humanity (Eternals, Inhumans, Legion of Super-Heroes (SW6) & half a dozen others)

Alien accident rains down an alien disease on earth. (Wild Card Anthology)

Alien power source is misused and explodes, destroying Philadelphia and creating a bunch of heroes (Marvel's New Universe)

Magic comes back to the world after having been gone a long time (Earthdawn/Shadowrun)

In the far and distant future, human criminals and malcontents were sentenced to being sent back in time to the prehistoric epoch where they would die out before having any impact on humanity but it turned out there were aliens from another planet that had been exiled to earth because they couldn't stop fighting an insane blood feud. The aliens tend to capture the time traveled humans and make them slaves, including interbreeding with some which eventually effects the human DNA and so going back through time the long way, in the future humanity as a whole develops telepathic powers. (Julian May's Saga of Pliocene Exiles)

Quote:
Originally Posted by TanaNari View Post
No one knows? Because basically every answer would be convoluted and silly, so why give any answer at all?
Personally, I like this one. Things like a random change to your DNA suddenly allowing you to break the laws of physics have never made much sense to me. It's going to take magic anyway, so why not just call it magic?

Quote:
Originally Posted by pyrrhicPachyderm View Post
Personally, I like this one. Things like a random change to your DNA suddenly allowing you to break the laws of physics have never made much sense to me. It's going to take magic anyway, so why not just call it magic?
I go with the "it's been part of human history forever" angle, myself. Because any setting where you get to count the ancient gods and heroic epics as canon is an awesome setting.

Bonus points for "it's obviously magic, but no 'scientific' person is willing to admit it".

Quote:
Originally Posted by TanaNari View Post
I go with the "it's been part of human history forever" angle, myself.
I tend to agree with this myself, but the OP was asking for how one might do it as a sudden event in the present.

In my setting I had these artifacts that gave off strange radiation that killed most people exposed to them, but a few would survive and gain powers that defied the laws of physics. What made them interesting for me was that they were alternately ancient religious artifacts and alien technological devices in the story. I gave supporting evidence for both explanations to be true and even for myself, did not decide which explanation was correct.

Might & Magic VI-VIII: A world once part of a galactic community has been cut off due to a millennia long interstellar war. Because of this, the world's culture and technology has fallen back into medieval times, and the majority of bioengineered creatures have disappeared or gone rogue. Oh, and magic exists.

I did have an idea just a couple of weeks ago about a superhero game set in ancient times, except for the magic being nanotech, the gods being supercomputers, and the whole thing actually being thousands of years in the future of our earth, post-peaceful-end-of-civilization.

And, I'm not naming it, but an adult webcomic I saw once had a high concept that ancient Atlantis had discovered the secrets of how to use magic before it was destroyed.
When its ruins were rediscovered, worldwide culture underwent a revolution in order to facilitate the physical and emotional rituals required to harness magic.

So yeah, I'm sort of suggesting, you could have something like dormant nanotechnological microbes reactivate, or an ancient magic-suppressing curse on the world expire, or an intersection with some parallel dimension, or something else with the general idea that something disappeared millennia ago has come around again.

One more: In Golden Sun, alchemy and psynergy used to be common on Weyard, but was sealed away to prevent a great war (I think).
When Mount Aleph erupts, psynergy crystals are scattered throughout the world, granting powers to anyone exposed to them, but also turning many animals into monsters.




 

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
User Alert System provided by Advanced User Tagging (Lite) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2024 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.
Last Database Backup 2024-03-28 10:38:20am local time
Myth-Weavers Status