Necessary Evil is a low powered (street level - so a Brick would be Luke Cage, not the Hulk) super villain game where super powers have only recently become public knowledge. The players will all start as prisoners at a federal detention center within the city of Strangeways.
After an event on Glass Island, an island just off the Florida mainland, a small percentage of the population were changed – transformed into beings with super powers. This transformation was most prominent in the nearby metropolis of Strangeways with lessening effects the further the location was from Glass Island.
All of the characters will have the same source for their powers but virtually any concept will work except characters that are supposed to know “magic”. A character that gains their powers from a power suit (such as Iron Man) is permissible but they will be at a disadvantage until they have time to build or recover such a suit. In such instances it might be better to create a character such as Armor from Marvel.
The Nature card that is chosen will determine the character’s powers and they will be able to channel them by playing Strength, Weakness, and Subplot cards. Because of the overall power level of the game please try to minimize the number of powers of any character and make sure that they tie together thematically. Please feel free to edit the Nature Cards (removing the character examples provided) and insert the power(s) that your character has. For Example, a character that is an Energy Projector might be able to freeze things that they touch or even, perhaps, look at. It would also not be unreasonable for such a character to be immune to cold.
The game world is intended to be gritty so mature (R Rated) scenes are acceptable but please don’t move beyond that without discussion first. Also, the powers of the heroes and villains will be very deadly to the non-powered. A bystander hit by a thrown truck is going to die. Freezing a civilian’s arm is going to result in frostbite and possible amputation at the very least. The power source of the super powered heroes and villains will protect them from this level of easy damage so they can engage in the normal levels of action and combat that you might expect in a Marvel or DC comic.
At the start of the game I am going to try something, perhaps, relatively novel. Any narration will require the use of a card. This will mean that characters will be limited to three narrative actions in a scene and will be needing to address Challenges in some manner. This is an experiment and if it does not work well after the first scene or two we will abandon it.
As we develop the characters I may ask for several revisions so that we all have similar character conceptions. Please do no be offended by this. I am open to creation of your own cards but please note the caveats above.
Setting Information
Strangeways University is a research university located on the Florida Gulf Coast. It is surrounded by the city of Strangeways which is comparable in size to Miami, Florida. Strangeways was built by the military during WWII as a shipyard and the research site for Project Wormwood – a secret weapons project that was eventually closed down due to a lack of weaponizable results. Off the coast of Strangeways is Glass Island, where Project Wormwood was housed. Glass Island is still restricted and maintained by the military though all programs have long since been closed.
Because of its origins, Strangeways University has always maintained very strong physical science, mathematics, and marine engineering programs. Other noted programs are its history and classics departments.
Several crime families make up the organized crime underbelly of Strangeways with the most prominent being the Tredici, the Šerbedžija, the Brannex, and the newly arrived Li’s. Recently the Brannex crime family was all but wiped out by a villain calling herself Night Song.
The docks have continued to be maintained and are for the most part owned by CoreTechs, a weapons manufacturer with strong ties to the US Military.
Hosted and narrated by:
D.P. Moring (Moring)
Started 06/28/14.
Scenes played: 16
License: Community License
