Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

[Dust Raven]

I'm in the process of creating a new Champions campaign. This is actually an extension/sequel to my last campaign which is very Bronze Age boarding on Iron. This will take place in the future, approx. 2030ish, the majority of the player characters being the children of the previous heroes. My desire is to combine the angst and edgyness of the previous game with the angst and frustration of a Teen Champions game, heavily seasoned with superpowered high-school anime bits.

 

What I need are some ideas of what combinations of these nitch genres might enhance game play, and which might completely spoil the tone and mood of the setting.

 

I'm looking for dark, as in Dark Champions, but not blood and guts dark. Dark around the tone of a DC: TAS campaign, only with more death.

 

The PCs aren't supposed to be killers, but may end up taking lives as part and parcel of some fights. They aren't trying to kill the bad guys, but sometimes the bad guys die by the heroes hands.

 

The PCs are supposed to be young, in school and supervised. As far as anyone is concerned, they are normal teenage kids... well, as normal as a teenager can be from an adult's perspective. To the other students, they may be the weirdos, or they may be the popular kids, or they may be a mix. The idea is that they interact mainly with other teenagers with with the rare exception the only adults they deal with are Parents, Teachers/School Faculty, Employers and Police.

 

The world is lacking superheroes. 20 years ago there were heroes, but they are gone now, faded into history and legend. The occasional super shows up now and then, but it's rare and usually happens so fast it never even makes the news. Psionics and psychic abilities are becoming mainstream though, but few people (no one known to the general public) possess any level of ability to actually frighten people.

 

 

What am I forgetting? What have I got so far that may cause problems? What should I make sure to reinforce in the players' minds? And what may the players be asking me because I wasn't too clear on something? What genre bits can I include/combine to make this work/pull this off well?

 

Thanks!

[OddHat]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

If Superheroes and Supervillains are as rare as you say, a high school full of young supers who regularly find bad guys to fight might strain suspension of disbelief, unless the rest of the campaign is such that those sorts of questions just never get asked. There are plenty of ways to deal with that, if you choose to. Nexus of All Realities / Hellmouth type phenomena can draw endless bad guys, and a Xavier's School / PS238 / Sky High scheme can explain why all these super teens are in the same school. If you're going for comedy, you can just go Project A-Ko and have no one ask why all these Supers are turning up in this school.

 

One easy answer to the rarity of Supers question is to say that changes in the laws and the steady improvement of weapons and personal armor available to the police has forced all of the bottom rank super criminals out of the game. When the police are carrying 3d6+1 RKA AP Autofire rifles, Bulldozer and Ogre are going to find jobs in construction or end up popped like red paint filled balloons. With the bottom rank bad guys gone, fewer lower powered public minded Supers have bothered to put on the spandex. That leaves CU Standard Heroes and Villains who make one or two appearances before being killed or crippled, and very high power Supers who can ignore even these new weapons but who still have reasonable motivation to avoid the overt superheroism and villainy that were popular in the 20th Century.

 

YMMV and all that.

[Shaft]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

I agree with Oddhat.

 

Another idea might be to make it that powered individuals have been present, but costumed heroes never caught on.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

I agree with Oddhat.

 

Another idea might be to make it that powered individuals have been present, but costumed heroes never caught on.

 

In this campaign world, costumed heroes caught on, but kinda wilted away. Same with costumed villains. Powered "ultras" (as they're called in my campaign world) still exist, but they keep to themselves, and generally aren't very powerful.

[Bunny]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

Who are the villains? I'm assuming all the PCs are hero types. Are the villains actual superpowered villains, adult, or are they kids of past heroes/villains that also go to the same schools, or whatever?

 

I think it's a brilliant idea. I'd love to play in a game like that. My characters tend to be on the darker heroic side, almost anti-heroes, so that goes really well with the high school theme. Where better to find villains are just villainous to be villainous? The most evil people I ever ran into in real life were teachers and fellow students in high school.

 

Are the kids known by everyone to be the children of past heroes/people with super powers? Because that would make them either watched closely or really picked on by bullies, probably.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

Who are the villains? I'm assuming all the PCs are hero types. Are the villains actual superpowered villains, adult, or are they kids of past heroes/villains that also go to the same schools, or whatever?

 

I think it's a brilliant idea. I'd love to play in a game like that. My characters tend to be on the darker heroic side, almost anti-heroes, so that goes really well with the high school theme. Where better to find villains are just villainous to be villainous? The most evil people I ever ran into in real life were teachers and fellow students in high school.

The villains are going to be somewhat Smallville-esque. Mostly kids like them, the occasional teacher/employer/parent and the seemingly random bizarre event will be the primary villains.

 

Are the kids known by everyone to be the children of past heroes/people with super powers? Because that would make them either watched closely or really picked on by bullies, probably.

 

Some may be, most won't. The old heroes for the most part all had (and still do) have Secret ID. There is one who lost it during the game, his son happens to be the oldest. Another is actually old of the old heroes, only time warped and mind wiped and a total appearance change. The rest are effective nobodies in the setting. Just other kids... weird kids, but just kids.

[David Johnston]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

Well, if this was a dark anime high school super series, then the first thing that would happen is that either the student government or the administration or both would be part of a conspiracy to take over the country at the least and possibly the world. The students have either been manuevered into coming to this school by said conspiracy which intends to either coopt or eliminate them, but first will test them to evaluate their potential threat, or the students have been manuevered into coming there by some opposing force which assumes they'll come into conflict with the bad guys. Very possibly both things are going on at the same time.

 

Said conspiracy would of course explain why powerful supers no longer seem to be present. The conspiracy makes the high profile types vanish.

[Bunny]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

If it's a setting in a Japanese type school (as you mentioned anime), getting them in the same school is easy, with how they do their testing, and approving and denying students for different reasons. Getting them to the same place wouldn't be hard.

 

And that villainous student government type could be trying to provoke them into doing something to reveal their powers in public, or to test them, see how powerful they are. I like the student government aspect mentioned before. It's classic.

[SKJAM!]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

The Student Government conspiracy sounds appropriate to the subgenre, yes. Perhaps the school everyone goes to is one of those exclusive private schools so popular in anime, so everyone is either rich, smart, talented...or has connections, whether they realize it or not. This makes the conspiracy a bit more plausible, as these kids actually will be going on to important or influential jobs they might be able to leverage into a takeover.

 

One of the tropes of the subgenre is that the conspiracy rarely if ever acts as a team. There's usually a lot of infighting, even if they show a united front to the outside world. So what the player character(s) go up against is one or two at a time in rough order of power/competence. Normally, the lowest-ranked conspirator is also the most obnoxious of personality, minimizing the chances that the player character will choose the wrong side.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

The school is definitely set in America, but I like the idea of the private school environment. It's set in the future, so I suppose I could introduce any educational reform I damn well please. Could be that all American high schools have entrance exams and tuition by then. Could be there's still a free education public school system, but the private school has become popular and affordable. I'll have to think about this.

 

The conspiracy within the school is absolutely a must, I agree. I'm not sure how I'll pull it off, though most likely a combination of students and faculty, allowing me to use students as "front men" and have the players discover the greater conspiracy as the game unfolds.

[Bunny]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

There's always that creepy teacher, not the loud-mouthed, blow hard martial arts teacher, but the unassuming, quiet, lurking literature teacher or something who turns out to be heading up all things wicked. He wins the confidence of a "good guy" or two, only to betray them to the student government kids, so that the good guys realize who their real enemy is, and that the conspiracy runs much deeper than they'd imagined.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

Actually, I was thinking of including the creepy, odd-acting teacher that always has a lazy eye on everyone and is constantly acting suspicious... and not deciding if here was a good guy or a bad guy until the players decide they trust him or not. If they trust him, he's a bad guy. If they don't trust him, he's a good guy.

[Bunny]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

Actually' date=' I was thinking of including the creepy, odd-acting teacher that always has a lazy eye on everyone and is constantly acting suspicious... and not deciding if here was a good guy or a bad guy until the players decide they trust him or not. If they trust him, he's a bad guy. If they don't trust him, he's a good guy. [/quote']

 

i love that idea

[nexus]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

The student could have also been pre selected for genetic potential for superpowers during the mandatary medical examination before entrance as well as social status. There could be a few scholorship cases around for just that reason and in addition to grooming for potential there are experiements being run to understand their latent (or not so latent) potential. Some of which could be the key event that triggers their powers and explains why supers are rare buyt clustered around this school.

[Spence]

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

 

Keeping with the private school setting.

 

If the number of players is small - say 3-5. Then if you go with them being related somehow. A brother and sister plus step-sibling (edit: make the step sib a half brother or sister) who run into their Aunts girl and boy. Spread across one or two grades this isn't really that implausible. Having a group of students related in a private school is not that unbelievable and could 1) explain why only they seem to have powers and 2) gives them a good reason to be a "team".

 

If heroes have "faded into history and legend" maybe it is because their powers are limited and they seem to burn-out, or appear to.

 

Try this.

 

The school and faculty are clueless.

 

There are 3 conspiracies.

1) a benevolent group that locates and monitors supers from afar. Both to study and prevent harm from group 2.

2) a evil group that wants to discover and harness the powers displayed by supers. After a period of hands off observation they will attempt to abduct the subject. Abducted subjects tend to become the faded away types.

3) the government, a security agency knows "something is going on" and has enough information to know that "it could be really really bad" but are clueless as to what it exactly is.

 

Sprinkle in a few independents and the players will be in the bottom of dark well of conspiracy. Just who is that creepy old teacher working for? Is he working for anyone? Do the players know there is more than one group? Do they realize there is a conspiracy in the first place? In Full Metal Panic the evil agancy tries to kidnaps Kaname by having the plane hijacked. Kaname's class trip is to Okinawa from Japan. The rest of the class and teachers fall for the line about the "terrorists" making political demands. But Sousuke has to rescue her, all while keeping his real purpose as secret as possible. In this case he would be part of Group 1.