A New Campaign: Superheroes in Eberron

And so, with Angela unable to run a campaign now due to the time demand of her job, I presented The List (likely soon to be posted) to my players and they made their choice. Thus, we have picked up a game wherein the players use Dungeons & Dragons 3.x rules to, as closely as possible, create a gestalt character that resembles a hero from any superhero comic source.

In addition to the character build, I give a unique power to each character the rounds out and compliments the character chosen. All heroes, anti-heroes, villains, etc., are represented by gestalt characters and carry an additional "Extranormal" subtype. All characters not bearing the Extranormal subtype are granted the "Baseline" subtype, and may never have gestalt classes, barring extraordinary circumstances.

Character choice, as previously stated, can range the entire breadth of superhero comics, with a few exceptions. The founding members of the Justice League (Aquaman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Superman, and Wonderwoman) are disallowed to players, as are any character previously played in this or the original campaign (ruling out characters like Deadpool, Forge, Dr. Strange, Vision, Thor, and a few others). Also, any unique character that has previously died in campaign cannot be chosen. There are, of course, certain loopholes - there are hundreds of Green Lanterns, for instance, and only the Hal Jordan analog is disallowed, same for the Wally West Flash.

The campaign itself is the sequel to one ran by my friend Zack in the early to mid 2000s, wherein super-powered beings (by virtue of gestalt classes) had begun to manifest on the world of Eberron over the past few years. Suddenly, though, the greatest of these heroes had vanished, and Dr. Strange (played then by my friend, Chris G.) gathered a team he called The Defenders to get to the bottom of the disappearances. That was months (game time) ago, and those heroes are, perhaps, still on their quest, but another team has been assembled for similar reasons more recently.

The adventures of this new team will be presented in upcoming posts, as we've already had a few sessions, but for now, I'll introduce the team....

Cast of Characters
Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler), Rogue 3|Totemist 3 - David
Jean Grey, Psion 4|Wilder 4  - Angela
Bennet du Paris (Exodus), Psion 4|Spellthief 4 -Taylor
Henry (Beast), Artificer 4|Anthropomorphic Ape 2/Monk 2 - Paul
Scarecrow [DC] - Jon (Tentative)
Ghost Rider - G2 (Tentative)
Shadowcat - Sam (Tentative)

As you can see, the team we started out with (the non-Tentatives) are very X-centric (ha!), and their story falls more into the vein of what I feel fits the X-Men vibe. It's interesting to note that only two characters don't fit the X-Men team theme, and I was excited when Jon said he wanted to play a DC character. Integrating the separate mythos of various comic book worlds with the world of Eberron and each other has been a challenge for me when trying to plot my story, and I'm eager to see how and why Jon puts the Scarecrow, a notorious adversary of The Bat, in the midst of a young group of heroes.