Mutant Hysteria Campaign

[Syberdwarf2]

Okay, Herophiles. I recently started work on a champions campaign for my new group that's finally going to be starting up shortly. I don't have it typed up yet, but here's the basic premise. Please let me know what you think. I'm open to any input, suggestions etc and am not very much above using blantant rip-offs.

Mutant Hysteria Campaign:
Starting sometime during WWII, Hitler began several eugenics programs to build his 'Master Race'. Unlike the real world, however, latent mutant genes exist in the Human race. Hitler discovers this, and begins testing to determine the best way to turn this to his advantage.

He starts his experimental program with the help of Doctor Joseph Mengela (did I spell that right?) who used Jews in his experiments.

At the same time, America undergoes a period of enthusiasm for 'Building Better Babies' (a real event that most don't know about knowadays) aka eugenics. They begin their own experiments (in THIS case, "volunteers") in Japanese Internment camps, African-Americans near Tuskeegee, and various American 'Indian' tribes, but with less successful results.

Back in the Reich.....
Dr Mengela develops a proposal for a new viral strain based on the influenza virus to be used on the unsuspecting Allied Forces. The idea is to introduce the virus into their bodies, making them more susceptible to mutation. Part two introduces the next strain, that acts as a trigger, thus causing mutation at an accelerated rate. The end result, the target turns into a mass of goo as his cells liquify. With all of the bombs dropped on Britain and elsewhere, he had no problem at all with Phase One.

Meanwhile...
In seperate experiments back in the US, American scientists learn to enhance the body with various "super-serums" and drugs, and begin having more success with mutant eugenics. American Mutants and supersoldiers are sent to the front lines...

WWII comes to an end.

Mengela never introduces Phase Two. Instead, what is left of his work gets stolen by the Russians.
The Cold War kicks into high gear and the mutant creations of science are viewed as just another minority along with Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, and Asians as the McCarthy "Red Scare" takes place.

Perhaps because of this, mutants go into hiding, and the events of eugenics (via an enourmous censorship program) are all but forgotten.

Thus, History as we know it returns to normal and progresses as we view it in the real world. JFK. Vietnam. Sexual Revolution. Reagan. Bay of Pigs. Hair Metal. Punk Rock. The Gulf War.

With the fall of communism, the research into Phase Two becomes 'lost'. In actuality is is sold to Muslim extremists and supporting governments, falling into the hands of Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.

1993(?): WTC parking deck bombing. Bin Laden prepares for eventual attacks against American Targets.

1995: Bin Laden gets access to Phase Two through Saddam.

Sept. 11, 2001: WTC Attack. Al-qaeda plans to drop Phase Two on the US using airplanes as missiles. The planes do not reach their intial targets (White House, Los Angeles, and Atlanta), and take the secondary target,...the WTC)

Recent: During the liberation of Iraq, Al-Qaeda successfully releases Phase Two in airports around the world (Tokyo, London, Miami, NYC, LA, Paris, Beijing, Johannesburg are among the cities struck).
Those infected spread the virus like wildfire through the world. However, the attack is unsuccessful, resulting instead in outbreaks of SARS, Honta virus, and Bird Flu.

Present: Immediately following the liberation of Baghdad, Al-Qaeda loses the Phase Two research, losing any chance they or anyone else has of perfecting it.
Meanwhile,....
As a side effect of the unsuccessful Phase Two attack (currently unkown to the rest of the world), people exhibiting mutant abilities begin to appear in large numbers. Most are very weak in their abilities to the point that it isn't even a noticable change. But some (still a pretty large number) display levels of power to rival even the greatest from the WWII era.

The "Mutant Menace" has returned, and the world is on the brink of war once again...

[Tim]

This is a really cool concept. Hope the players enjoy it.

[Killer Shrike]

Hmm....Interesting concept but if I might make a suggestion?

Instead of having Mutants openly emerging, instead run it as a 'Hidden Masters' type of campaign.

The mutants that went underground 60 odd years ago formed a secret counter-culture of largely independent cells scattered around the country. Over 6 decades sects and fueds and alliances have formed between various larger cells, but the majority of the cells are unaligned and in many cases consist of a single family unit.

The government of course didnt forget about these people....not all of the government anyway. After Nixon (was involved in McCarthyism by the way) took office, he put in place by Presidential Order a department under the auspices of the National Security Council to control or eliminate this hidden 'threat', and to do so secretly.

This agency, hidden behind the unassuming title of National Security Policies Auditing and Review Board (NS-PAR), which internally stands for Paranormal Acquisition and Removal. "Naspar" squads, also called simply 'the Feds', hunt and neutralize paranormals either through capture or killing, and of course manage the requisite cover ups.

The established cells are well practiced in evading detection, but "Naspar" snatch up newly catalyzed mutants born to normal parents, called 'seeds' by the underground mutants, who generally call themselves 'supes', which is obviously short for superior, or superhuman, or souped-up depending on who you ask. Some of the more forward thinking/kind hearted cells try to rescue young seeds before they can get snatched up by "Naspar". Other more militant cells try to get them first to fill out thier body count. Still other cells play ostrich and concentrate on not taking any risks.

Of course, one of the largest and fastest growing sects is a militant sect which wants to sieze control of the American government and institute a new rule by the "genetically advanced". This sect, The People of Tommorrow ("The People" for short, connotating that "norms" are not people, only mutants are), is lead by a particularly powerful mutant [insert campaign info here].

And of course, there is an oppositional sect, The Protectors of Humanity ("The Protectors" for short) who seek to a) stop The People b) improve Normal-Mutant relations, c) minimize the damaged done by militant groups that in the long run will turn all of humanity against mutants if left unchecked.


Classic XMen, updated to the modern day.

The really cool bit about keeping it all an underground phenomenom is that you can use modern media unchanged. Its amazing what kind of slants you can put to real news stories if you try to corral some of them into hidden facades that really mask some mutant or anti-mutant government activity.

It would also keep a reign on the players, assuming they are part of or friendly to The Protectors, to keep thier powers as hidden as possible. It also encourages a nomadic existance, moving around to evade "Federal Entanglements".

This is such a cool idea in fact, that if I wasnt already in the middle of a Champions campaign and planning the next campaign (a fantasy HERO game) I'd be tempted to run it myself......

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

You know, I was looking for exactly this sort of background for a 'dark future with mutants' campaign that I'm running on Shadowland BBS. I thank you EVER so much for doing my homework for me. *grins*

For those of you suddenly interested in a play-by-BBS campaign, Shadowland is a Java-based web BBS. Just go to Shadowland (using the above link or going to www.shadowland.org), create a name, then go into the Shadowland section. This campaign can be found in 'Private Campaigns / Champions'.

[assault]

There are some very good ideas in this thread. I'm tempted to steal some of them, although I am already half-committed to a rather different campaign concept.

I'm wondering a bit about the degree to which the "Mutant Menace" is internationalised. To some extent it can't be, or there will be places where they won't have had to go underground, which could cause complications.

That's not an issue if you are OK with a purely US based setting, but even in this case it seems kind of likely that persecuted mutants would tend to slip over the borders to where the feds can't get them as easily. This means that there would be supers elsewhere in the world, but it is possible that they might still usually keep a low profile in order to avoid "entanglements". Potentially, of course, many of them could end up in various odd places, while avoiding the "usual" locations of international superteams. For example, you might have lots of supers in Havana, and relatively few in London.

Hmm. I like it. So:
***
Mutations arose as a result of highly unethical genetic experiments in a few countries during WWII. Such experiments were relatively rare in subsequent periods (but they happened... of course). In the decades since the war, the mutant population has gradually spread into nations other than those in which they originally arose. The mutant population is highly clustered and unevenly distributed geographically. In addition, it is fragmented into a vast number of factions, groups, families, sects and cells. Almost all operate relatively covertly, either for self preservation, or to maintain "operational security".
***

And just a couple of days ago I was thinking of designing myself a group of "Gamma Agents". I think I might.

Thanks for the inspiration.

Alan

[Syberdwarf2]

Wow, I wasn't expecting xuch good responses. Thanks for all the good ideas thus far. I especially like Killer Shrike's idea for an 'umbrella' organization of federal agencies persecuting mutants. As for how widespread the menace goes in other countries; when the virus was spread, the idea was to release it in places allowing for maximum contact and 'momentum of the masses' to help do the delivery work for them. It's the same idea as releasing ebola on a plane (or for a more recent example, SARS. Thus, when it got released, Phase Two spread like wildfire. It is highly contagious, but short lived if not spread (sorta like flu) and is indistinguishable from flu in all but the most advanced labs.
As for how other countries handle it, most of Europe would follow the US example, publicly denying the whole thing and launching massive disinformation campaigns in the tabloids (Bat Boy Bites Saddam!!!, that sorta thing). In the Middle East, information is usually suppressed anyway, as is freedom of action and thought, so mutants would be persecuted as infidels and enemies of Allah by groups like Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the PLO.
Japan and China could chalk up reports of mutants as medical research (highly covered up of course), Africa and South America could lay blame on tribal mumbo-jumbo, russia would blame lingering Cold War fears (not too far from the truth).

[assault]

Originally posted by Syberdwarf2
As for how widespread the menace goes in other countries; when the virus was spread, the idea was to release it in places allowing for maximum contact and 'momentum of the masses' to help do the delivery work for them.

I was actually thinking about how widespread the initial population of mutants were, working from Killer Shrike's ideas.

The 'second wave' of virally transmitted mutations would, of course, blow this apart. In the process, of course, it would blow apart the laboriously won stability that had been achieved in dealing with the 'first wave'. All the covert government agencies, mutant sects, and so on would be left scrambling to catch up, while new forces would be struggling to establish themselves... All good fun.

I think if I was running a game along these lines, I would start with a 'first wave' situation, and then, once the players thought they understood how the world worked, drop the 'second wave' on them as an in-game event. All of a sudden, the 'old' mutants of the first wave would be flooded by a horde of... err... 'New Mutants'.

Or you could play a game where the 'new' mutants could be trying to find a place for themselves that isn't the old, sterile world of the previous generation and its enemies.

Or if you had two separate groups, both.

Alan

[Syberdwarf2]

My bad, I mustve misunderstood....
The spread of the 'first wave'?
Almost all of them wouldve been contained in the US, Europe and the Soviet Union following the war. Due to limited excursions in other continents, there would of course have been a few scattered around the world, most notably in South America (when Mengela went into hiding) and Africa (during Rommel's campaigns)There would also probably be a few in highly concentrated cells of mutants in Isreal as an after effect that followed them out of the concentration-camp/breeding-program holocaust.
Still, most would be in Europe, Russia and the US, with a small scattering around South America, Africa and Isreal.

BTW, once I have time this weekend, I plan on taking all of the advice given so far (it's all too good NOT to steal...er, accquire) and attaching a downloadable PDF.

[Mastermind]

Sounds like some very good ideas.

so will mutation be the only form of paranormal powers in your universe?

[Syberdwarf2]

Originally posted by Mastermind
Sounds like some very good ideas.

so will mutation be the only form of paranormal powers in your universe?

No. There will be serum/drug combos; both as hold-overs from WWII and new experimentation by less-than-reputable governments (such as pre-liberation Iraq and North Korea). Radiation Accidents will also be allowed, but only on limited basis (maybe, still haven't decided fully on that one).

Magic will definately not be allowed... at all... ever. IMO it just adds too much cheez to an otherwise straightforward premise. I'm trying to keep things at least somewhat scientifically possible (even if it is comic-book science).

Extradimensional characters may be allowed but only very rarely.

Aliens do exist, and will probably tie in with my far-future 'Twin Galaxies' campaign; much in the same way that Ironclad from CU ties in with the Perseids of TE. But as of yet, they won't appear for quite some time. I don't have them slated to appear until manned missions to Mars enter serious preparations (circa 2025-2038)

[Killer Shrike]

So where is the pdf?

[Syberdwarf2]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike
So where is the pdf?

I still havent figured out how to do that.
Grrrrrr.......

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Syberdwarf2
I still havent figured out how to do that.
Grrrrrr.......

Hmph. Well quit slackin and figure it out already. HEROs players are supposed to be advanced and engineer-like. You're making us look bad

[Syberdwarf2]

test

[Tim]

Originally posted by Syberdwarf2
test

YOu score only a C+.