ACUS 2012: Justice League Europe
I've tried running games to be intentionally silly before. It doesn't go so well. I've played games that were meant to be serious end up funnier due to events. I remember the wackiness of one superhero game where the players were trying to free a bunch of imprisoned metahumans and some of the people they freed (like Doomsday) made things worse because they weren't checking who they were. Ideally, I figured out that I like my games to play like an issue of the Justice League International comics from the 80's and 90's. During those years, the Justice League books were a good mixture of adventure with humor. The heroes were the B-Listers of the DCU. They were competent, but never taken as seriously as the A-Listers. They also didn't always get along and the bickering provided much of the humor. However, during these books they faced enormous threats like Despero, Starro, the Extremists, Queen Bee, etc.. They had to put their bickering aside when the fighting starts.
SPOILERS! (I forgot how to do a LJ cut or this would be behind a cut.)
So, how do I get that in a roleplaying game? I've been thinking and come up with something I think will work. The JLE game is based around the idea that the heroes are setting up the new Justice League International embassy in France. A threat, of course, comes along and there is serious plot they will have to deal with, but before that I plan to have some scenes of them dealing with things like moving in, the public relations nightmare of not having a French superhero on a team headquartered in Paris, etc. I also plan to pick out some fairly obnoxious NPCs for the team so if the heroes don't get annoyed with each other when dealing with this stuff, they will have someone else to plan their pranks on or throw their verbal jabs at. Should I go for the A-Lister of obnoxiousness, Guy Gardner? I haven't decided.
SPOILERS! (I forgot how to do a LJ cut or this would be behind a cut.)
So, how do I get that in a roleplaying game? I've been thinking and come up with something I think will work. The JLE game is based around the idea that the heroes are setting up the new Justice League International embassy in France. A threat, of course, comes along and there is serious plot they will have to deal with, but before that I plan to have some scenes of them dealing with things like moving in, the public relations nightmare of not having a French superhero on a team headquartered in Paris, etc. I also plan to pick out some fairly obnoxious NPCs for the team so if the heroes don't get annoyed with each other when dealing with this stuff, they will have someone else to plan their pranks on or throw their verbal jabs at. Should I go for the A-Lister of obnoxiousness, Guy Gardner? I haven't decided.