In the early to mid-90s, I got exposed to three real-world supers settings: Marvel’s New Universe comics line, John Byrne’s Next Men comic book and the Wild Cards novels. At that time, the concept of superpowered people in the "real" world was relatively fresh and I was hooked on all of them.

Thanks to GURPS, I was able to translate my infatuation with one of these settings into gaming. I used the GURPS supplement for Wild Cards and ran a campaign set in Rio de Janeiro, which is the basis of the Carioca Cards installments.

Finally, in 1996, I decided to create an original campaign in the real-world supers genre. Part of the idea came from a dream, like the name alussein-within, which had multiple meanings in the game. Other concepts were inspired by the sources mentioned above.

Like in other settings of the same genre, super-humans suddenly appear and the world has to readapt to the new status quo. My idea was to have three acts in the campaign: the first one dealing with the origin of superpowers, the second one about the inevitable conflict between paranormals and mundanes, and the third one following the PCs’ trip to meet – and maybe battle – the ones responsible for their powers.

We played the first arc and moved on to other campaigns, as we usually do. I thought I would come back to it a couple of years later, but a lot of things happened in real life and in gaming, like me changing from GURPS to Unisystem as my go-to game.

At the end of 1995, I remembered the campaign and thought it would be cool to return to the second act in 2006, because 10 years was also the difference in in-game time between the first and second arcs.

Sadly, one of the original players, my friend Cláudio "JJ" Bustamante, passed away on February 10th, 2006 (here’s the memorial thread I created). After that, it didn’t feel right to return to the game without him.

Both because he was an integral part of it – I tailored the campaign to my players and their characters -- and because one of the themes was the evolution of the relationship between the PCs, who start as strangers and hopefully become friends over the 60 years the campaign lasts.

But just because I’m not running it anymore (who knows? I may reboot it one day), it doesn’t mean you can’t. So here’s the first part of the Superseeds’ version of the Alussein campaign.

This is also the second anniversary of this column, so I would like to dedicate this installment to JJ.

We miss you, man.

Pitch

After a strange explosion in the sky, people around the world start displaying superpowers.

Premise

One day, one year before the start of the campaign, there was an explosion approximately 80 km (50 miles) high in the atmosphere. It was a big flash of light and nobody seemed to know how to explain it. There was talk of UFOs and secret weapons testing, but eventually the more mundane explanation of a meteorite hitting the atmosphere won over.

Three weeks later, nobody remembered the explosion, because the first public paranormal appeared on TV: Chang, a powerful Chinese weather manipulator who was defying the government of China. It was the biggest news in human history and the TV networks made sure no one forgot about that by doing 24-hour coverage for several days.

Public reaction differed: some panicked, others rejoiced. Governments, obviously, were desperate to learn more and tried to recruit – or study -- every possible paranormal they could find. Within one year, there were already several government agencies dedicated to the paranormal problem and rumors of secret containment facilities or concentration camps were rampant.

If a paranormal isn’t working for the government, he’s either keeping his powers secret, profiting from them (legally or not) or using them to help others. Yes, there are super-heroes, but they are the minority, at least for now.

A few months before the start of the campaign, a new trend has emerged concerning paranormals: private ‘clinics’. These are institutions dedicated to studying super-human phenomena by analyzing the performance and biochemistries of paranormal volunteers recruited from all over the world.

The clinics pay the volunteers a stipend and house them at their facilities for an agreed-upon period that usually lasts two or three months and can be renewed. Most clinics are located in Europe or in the United States, like the Wentworth Clinic.

Who are the PCs?

They are regular people from anywhere in the world. I really mean regular. Of course, you are free to have your characters be Navy SEALs, quantum physics geniuses or movie stars, but one of the ideas behind the campaign is to explore the reactions of normal people to having powers and being swept up in the kind of trouble only superpowered individuals find themselves in.

In the original campaign, the PC lineup was: a Brazilian Rastafarian slacker, an Italian IT guy, a New York tow truck driver, a Greek taxi driver and a Hong Kong martial artist/actor. The only one with a more colorful detail was the IT guy (JJ’s character), who had family connections to the Mafia.

One important detail of character creation is that, unlike more traditional supers games, in Alussein, the players don’t choose their superpowers. In fact, at the start of the campaign, they don’t even know they are paranormals. You, the GM, will pick their abilities.

There’s no method. It can be random or you can use the characters’ backgrounds to inspire you. You can even use a combination of both, like I did. Just make sure you don’t shortchange any of the players. If you are using a point-buy system, for example, build each character’s abilities with the same number of points.

In the original campaign, I ended up with: an astral-projecting precog slacker who used pot to power his telepathy; an IT guy able to talk to cities; a flying super-strong tow truck driver who was getting more handsome; a density-manipulating taxi driver; and a martial artist/actor who could turn into an Oriental dragon.

My dear super-human

Nobody is certain how many paranormals exist in the world. The numbers seem to be rising, but it’s unknown if that is due to an actual increase in the super-human population or just the result of them "coming out". Estimates are all over the place and put the number of paranormals somewhere between 5,000 and 50,000.

Powerwise, there’s a bias towards psionic abilities, especially precognition, telepathy and telekinesis, with these being collectively responsible for almost 30% of manifestations. The rest is composed of every possible power you can think of.

In terms of power level, you have all the gamut of a regular supers world, ranging from paranormals with very limited abilities, like one-second precognition, to powerhouses in Thor’s or Superman’s category. The distribution follows a bell curve.

Using Mutants & Masterminds power level numbers (PL 1 to 20) for the sake of example, the peak of the curve would be around PL 8, with sharp decreases to PLs 4 and 12, and an almost flattening of the line all the way to PLs 1 and 15.

Theoretically, the curve goes on beyond PL 15, but there’s been no public example of a PL 16+ in the setting so far, with the major paranormals, like Chang, capping out at PL 15. In this scenario, a default Alussein campaign would probably work best at PL 7-9.

Acquiring superpowers – also known as "rising", "stepping up", "moving up" – is as varied as the abilities themselves. Stress and trauma do seem to make part of most experiences, but there’s a fair number of cases of people just waking up after an uneventful night as paranormals. So no one knows for sure what’s going on. Other triggering events have included being born, undergoing radiotherapy, and having sex, among others.

Welcome to Wentworth

The campaign starts with each PC being approached by a man named David Boyle. He’s a "headhunter" for the Wentworth Clinic, i.e., he travels the world locating paranormals and offering them a trip to the clinic in exchange for money and any information about their abilities the doctors might uncover with their tests.

Since the PCs know nothing about the whys and hows of superpowers – and this is kind of the premise of the game --, they probably won’t suspect any foul play. And there isn’t any per se, but Boyle isn’t telling the whole story.

He doesn’t only locate super-humans – he can find proto-paranormals as well, people who are on the genetic brink of developing superpowers. And he can provide that extra "push" they need to step into paranormality. He’s an activator. This specific ability ensures Boyle receives an obscene salary from the clinic and gives it an edge in studying paranormals.

Boyle will activate the PCs when they agree to join the clinic’s program, but he won’t tell them that: his pitch is that they are already paranormals. They will begin to manifest their powers shortly after arriving at the clinic, which is located in the suburbs of Springfield, Massachusetts. Once there, the characters will learn what they can do, what are their limitations etc.

They will also meet other paranormals, which can include individuals with physical mutations, since sometimes the eruption of powers changes the bodies of the paranormals. This is the case of Jack "Snake" Johnston, one of the guests that befriend the characters. He has serpentine traits, such as scaly skin, fangs, a forked tongue and poison sacs.

Dreams and murder!

A couple of days after arriving at the clinic, the PCs will have the same dream of standing at a crossroads in a great plain and facing a mysterious man, who tells them they are all part of a new species that will supplant humankind. Because of that, he says, they must unite to conquer the world. He asks the character if he will join his cause. The dream ends after the PC answers him.

The next day, if they ask around, the PCs find out all of the other guests have had the same dream. Some of them agreed with the man, who calls himself the Spiderman, others didn’t. Considering the man sounds like a zealot, it’s quite possible that all the characters, or at least the majority, refuse Spiderman’s offer.

After another couple of days, the PC with astral projection, telepathy, clairvoyance, super-senses or any other kind of awareness-related power will, while sleeping, unconsciously eavesdrop on a conversation between Dr. William Wentworth, head of the clinic, and another man, who is revealed as the real power behind the institution.

When viewed from the astral/mental plane or through extra-sensorial powers, this man, as well as the clinic, seems to be covered in webs (the mental visualization of his control over the place). The stranger is the Spiderman. Eventually, he will notice the eavesdropping and will go after the PC.

If the characters remain in their room (they are roommates), the Spiderman will kill them, even those who agreed to join him, since they now know about him and have become a liability. This should be abundantly clear to the eavesdropping PC and should narrow the characters’ choices to fighting an unknown, but seemingly powerful, enemy or fleeing.

Hopefully, they flee.

Alussein, sweet Alussein

A few hours later, Snake will track them down and inform them that a few guests – from the group that refused Spiderman’s offer -- have been shot dead and the PCs are the prime suspects for the murders. Not feeling the clinic was the safest place to be, Snake also left.

He offers to take the characters to a place where they can lay low until the dust settles. If they agree, Snake will take them to a desert and eerie place where they find a strange, luminous portal. Going through it, which feels like breaking through a membrane, the PCs will find themselves in a complex of caves inhabited by weirdly-looking paranormals.

The leader of the place, Old Man Prophet, a precog with a third eye on his forehead, tells them that the name of the place is Alussein and that it is a safe haven for all paranormals (or Alussein, as he also calls them) who don’t or won’t fit into society. There are approximately 200 people there, with close to 20% of them being paranormals.

Some of the residents are: Door, a living teleporting gate that connects all the cities named Springfield; Knife, a blue-skinned cannibal with fleshy dreadlocks and enhanced physical attributes; Paolla, the porcupine woman – seductive and frightening at the same time.

Just so you know, Alussein is inspired by Midian, from Clive Barker’s Nightbreed movie, which was based on his novella Cabal. You can plunder the film for seeds and visuals.

Old Man Prophet adds that they can stay for as long as they want and, if they wish, the inhabitants of Alussein can help them understand their abilities.

Staying in Alussein will reveal two things. First, all the paranormals there have physical mutations. The only normal people in the community are the paranormals’ relatives that chose to live with them.

Second, a lot of them have had superpowers for more than one year. In other words, they were paranormals before the explosion in the sky (also known as Skybang or Skyplosion), which by now has been tenuously linked with the apparition of super-humans.

Super-sandbox

The arrival in Alussein concludes the first part of the first arc in the campaign. The second part puts the PCs on the path of finding out the truth about the origin of the paranormals. But there’s no need for you to follow this, especially if your players decided not to take Snake’s offers.

The campaign can become a road trip kind of game, with the PCs traveling the backwoods of the United States and eluding the pursuit by police forces and the FBI’s Department of Paranormal Investigations, all the while dealing with superpowered problems. It could be a sort of reversed X-Files.

A couple of Alussein seeds

These are geared towards the "road trip" campaign, but can be used with the default one, since the PCs are not confined to Alussein and can still travel around while using the paranormal haven as their base of operation. Reasons for traveling might include contacting loved ones, retrieving important personal items and conducting investigation on Spiderman’s identity.

Angel of Light: The PCs roll into a small town where they are treated really nice. Everybody there raves about their local church service and invites the characters to attend it that night. If they go, they find out the "minister" is a paranormal with angelic white-feathered wings. Psychic or psionic characters automatically realize that Elijah, the "angel", is exerting a subtle, but powerful mental influence on the locals. He tries to do the same with the PCs and if he fails he will try to convince them to work for him in exchange for living as princes in town. If they refuse, Elijah sicks the townsfolk on them. Escaping will prove hard if they don’t have some kind of movement power, as the locals have sabotaged their vehicle and are armed to the teeth. If the characters didn’t attend the service, Elijah will appear to them and try to influence them, offering the deal if the fails. Elijah will rather kill the PCs than let them escape.

Soul Drinker: The PCs finally reach a large city, but it’s not the best time to be them and be there. The city is in an uproar due to a string of murders: several people have been found dead with their bodies in a mummified state. The local police department is almost 100% sure there’s paranormal involvement and is cracking down hard on anyone that looks suspicious and displays superpowers. The perpetrator is a psychopathic super-human who can drain a person’s life-force and add it to his own, amplifying his strength, durability and overall attributes. He targets normals because they are easy prey, but he hungers for other super-humans, since their life-force has double or triple the strength of mundane people’s. He catches the scent of the PCs and goes after them. The battle will probably attract the attention of the police and if any of the characters is caught on camera, law enforcement agencies will know they are wanted for murder in Massachusetts. They will mistakenly connect the dots and conclude the PCs are responsible for the murders. So now the characters have to evade a superpowered serial killer and elude a citywide manhunt at the same time. Hijinks ensue.

Inspiration

It’s not difficult to find sources of inspiration for an Alussein campaign.

New Universe, Next Men & Wild Cards: Mentioned in the introduction of this installment, all three describe a supposedly real world setting that has to deal with the sudden appearance of super-humans. In 2006, the New Universe was re-imagined as newuniversal, by Warren Ellis, and in 2010, John Byrne started a second Next Men series.

Heroes & The 4400: TV shows usually shy away from showing true super-heroes or powerful paranormals, but have ventured often enough into low-power-metahuman territory. Both these shows have compelling stories and characters, even if they may have faltered here and there during their runs.

Paragons: A Mutants & Masterminds, Second Edition sourcebook describing a real world supers setting. There have been other games that dealt with this theme as well, like Brave New World.

Of things to come

Usually, in multipart installments, I try to give you enough information to run the campaign with just the first part. I know this one is slim pickings, but I think you can jumpstart a game with this information.

If you follow the default arc, you won’t need appearances by the big guns or have access to the setting’s secrets. These will come next month, when I’ll talk about the second part of the first act and briefly go over the other two acts.

I hope you liked it. Feel free to share any comments, suggestion and criticisms on the forum.