First off, Hello all, this is my first post upon finding this site. I've been a HERO fan for quite a while, and Champions was the first RPG I ever played (about 12 years ago now)
Anyways, I'm putting together a twice monthly game for myself and a few friends. Basically, I'm using a setting I'd made a few years ago, in a place called Center City. It's more or less Millenium City, just not on the ruins of Detroit and all that. It's a wonderfully generic city that is placed on a river, and has the full range of seasons, etc.
The last game I ran in this setting kind of fell apart. Playing heroes got old for the group, and the Serenity Role Playing Game had just come out, so we ended up stopping the game rather abruptly. I want to reboot the setting, and I was figuring setting it in the not too distant future, like, say, 2025.
Center City, once a mecca of meta-human activity for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that the city sits smack dab on top of a convergence of Ley Lines, had gone cold. 25 years ago, something happened, and all meta-human activity disappeared. Super science no longer worked without the meta-human geniuses to concieve of it. Those who could once work magic found it to be impossible. All the heroes and villains that populated the city just vanished overnight.
Now, 25 years later, 6 young people find that they are the first to exhibit powers in a quarter of a century. They are:
Frostbite - and Ice/Cold manipulator. Petty thief and cat burglar, on probation.
The Twins - Identical boy/girl twins with limited psychic powers, who also have access to a 2 story tall mecha.
Fox - A teleporting anthropomorphic fox-man. Expert swordsman.
(The Healer) - a heal/buff/debuff master (no name yet)
as well as two more characters that I don't have details for yet.
(any of my players who read after this, do so at your own peril!)
I plan for these characters, who find it difficult to access their powers initially, to discover that the heroes and villains of Center City were trapped in a pocket dimension somehow, held in stasis for 25 years.
My big question is, I need a macguffin for the players to destroy, or futz with, or whatever that will deactivate/short out/glitch/whatever and release not only the heroes and villains, but also reactivate the ley lines, bringing power and magic back to the world, starting in Center City.
What kind of Macguffin would you use? Mystical? Technologic? Alien Tech? I can't really decide.
Hope I didn't ramble too much.
Re: Major NPCs from your campaign...who got ganked before their time. First session of a Champions game I ran long ago. Some players know the system, most don't, so I set up a little introductory scenario, Pulsar and a couple thugs are robbing a bank, I figure it'll be good to showcase the combat system and all that right? Well, Fox, our Teleporting Swordsman ports in, and swings. Crit. Rolls damage. Full damage. On an HKA. Pulsar falls down, goes boom. It wasn't intended as one, but I made it a presence attack against his thugs. Thugs all fail. One soils himself. The fight ended in literally one phase. I fudged and ruled that Pulsar survived, but was in a coma. Last thing fledgling heroes need is a reputation as murderers. Then, when Pulsar returned several story-arcs later, our frenzied Were-Jaguar literally ripped him apart. Guy just can't win.