(To ring in the new year; this probably wouldn't run until after Mid-Feb. since I won't be around for the start of that month.)
Low Life is centred about low lives, the disenfranchised and the unfranchisable.
The PCs all live in a housing project that the police try to avoid
when possible – it’s the kind of place where even those who live
there would consider a carpet bombing to be a civic improvement, the
sort of housing that it’s a crime to live in but somehow not a
crime to own and rent out. Landlords are delinquent at best,
malicious at worst, and it’s the last step before the streets for
many families. The Everway Housing Project started life as an attempt
to boost the lives of the destitute, back in the day when living in
the projects just meant you were in a slump and being on welfare
wasn’t seen as a moral flaw. Now it’s the kind of place the city
likes to pretend doesn’t exist, one bad apple in a bunch scattered
together like boils in the heart of what once was a vibrant downtown
core. You live in a place of the violent and grubby desperation that
lies under all the grandiose ambitions of the world, and you know
just know wrong the american dream can be and just how ugly those who
can help really act once the media can’t see them.
No one admits to living here if they
can avoid it; many employers write off anyone who comes from it as a
matter of course. If the police come, it’s in riot gear and in the
knowledge almost no one is going to be stupid enough to try and video
them. Not everyone is a criminal – far from it – but it’s
easier to be one than anything else, and too easy to fall when you’ve
got nothing left to live for at all. Most TVs have been sold to pawn
shops, many others are broken as a result of items being hurled
through them after seeing another report about affluenza or another
TV show set in some mythical America that doesn’t exist at all.
Only something has changed. Perhaps an
accident, or some government weapon. One day you were normal, and now
– now you’re something more than human. You can do things other
people can’t. Things out of stories and comic books, are an
impossibility walking about a world of drab possibilities.
Longfellow wrote that ‘One half the
world must sweat and groan that the other half may dream’... only
now it is far more than half, and your groans have been among them.
You have power. And those in charge are probably shitting themselves
right now...
System: Unsure, at the moment. The
Cypher System Superhero variant might work well because it would work
better for more gritty games. I think? The OVA-Risus variant could
work as well (and require less work on everyone’s part).
Note: PCs will have 1 or 2 powers.
Power ceiling will be at weak-marvel range. In other words, you can
have Invulnerability, but it will have limits. Be super strong, but
only to so many limited tons of weight. Be fast, not still visible to
people. Etc.
If you have one power, you can pass
entirely as human if you want to. If you have two, you don’t pass
as human anymore. (Exactly how far you want to take that is up to
each PC; consider Nightcrawler in the x-men as a rough starting point
– you need to hide your appearance.)
Optionally, you can have your power be
stronger than the norm, but when you push it your appearance changes
etc.
Theme/Tone: This game is about what
happens when the least in society gain power, and how society
responds. It is up to the players if their characters decide to be
villains, heroes, or inhabit the shades of grey everyone else lives
in their lives in. We live in a digital age, and that will affect
everything for good or ill – you won’t be able to hide, but
neither will the regular media be able to smear you quite as easily
as they would otherwise.
Note: this will be a superhero-style
game if players want that: my
default assumption is that PCs will take steps to improve their own
lives via power(s) – ideally with the aid of others, since they
aren’t that powerful on their lonesome – and no one is going to
put on suits to fight crime. Which doesn’t mean PCs can’t do
that, only that it should be run by other players and such as well as
to what tone people want the game to take.
The arc the campaign itself takes will be determined by the players and GM prior to the start of the game so that everyone is roughly on the same page.
