Vigil - home campaign

[Forged]

So I've always had this setting brewing in my head, and I thought that I could share it with you guys and get some help/ideas with fleshing out the setting.

During world war 2 is when super powered individuals became public. It started with covert assistance from magical cabals and government created super soldiers. Then a Nazi scientist dubbed Doctor Dimension, unleased his robot army. Much to everyone's surprise his robots fought Nazi and allied forces alike. The doctor opereated on a scorched earth policy, using his dimension bombs to remove anything he couldn't conquer, and to make sure nothing he lost was captured. He was defeated, but at a great cost. In his final moments he launched hundreds of dimension missiles. Many were stopped but lots of places were destroyed.

The dimension bombs and missiles took the area around them and swapped it for a nearby dimension. The areas replaced tended to be similar to our own, but without any humans, and sometime different terrain. It seems the explosions were tuned to a dimension with no intelligent life. Much of europe and russia were affected along with almost the entire west coast of North America.

This was over 60 years ago.

The occult is now something you can major in university, the police can call in robotic backup, your boss can fly.

Welcome to vigil.

[Forged]

I plan for Vigil to be a PL10 world filled with PL5 heroes.

The U.S.A. has legalized vigilanteism. People can apply for Vigilante licences, which give certain additional rights to crime fighters. Not everyone wants them or trusts them, but it has been fairly well received.

People are wildly different too. Magic is no longer hidden, and people manifest mutant powers. Most of the time people don't have anything incredibly powerful, and cases have been found where baseline humans have been able to exceed where powered people couldn't. In fact there are 2 designations people use, Powered and Emergent. A powered person has powers, an emergent is not well defined. Heroes and villains are emergent. Batman would be emergent, your moms witchcraft class is not. Emergent people seem to just have an edge over those that don't.

Emergent was coined by Kolus, the former leader of The Vigil, as to why Red Ghost, an unpowered hero, was chosen to join the Vigil over Harold Farman aka The Rock.

"When danger rears it's head, most people stand in shock or run, in maybe a hundred people, only a handful will emerge and fight. Those people are the firefighters and the rescue workers. But if you up the danger even more, less and less show up. The vigil is made up of those who stood up in times of incredible danger. Our ranks will only be joined by the Emergent few. The Rock is not one of those people, Red Ghost is."

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Dimension-swapping missiles. Magic can be learned by average people.

I like it.

Also:

"When danger rears it's head, most people stand in shock or run, in maybe a hundred people, only a handful will emerge and fight. Those people are the firefighters and the rescue workers. But if you up the danger even more, less and less show up. The vigil is made up of those who stood up in times of incredible danger. Our ranks will only be joined by the Emergent few. The Rock is not one of those people, Red Ghost is."

Badass quote.

[Forged]

Thanks for the comment! I do want the idea of calling people emergent to be a bit touchy, specifically in the U.S.A. Not that it's bad to call someone emergent, but that when you say someone isn't, they are being excluded, and the pressure to constantly step-up or be excluded has begun to beed into everyday life. Imagine if your kid didn't volunteer for something in class and now he's being picked on because of that. (Cue supervillian....)

I haven't thought it all the way through, but I want it to be important enough to have some impact on the campaign.


The devastation caused by Doctor Dimension is still painfully remembered worldwide. In many places monuments were erected, globes of the old earth. But like all wounds, time has begun to heal them. The new frontiers are being explored, new cities built.

Dimensional research is a touchy subject, and proving to be incredibly difficult. Portals have been created but controlling where or even making them stable has been so far impossible. Near where Geneva once stood scientists recently constructed the LRC, the Large rift creator. It is the worlds largest dimensional research facility. Some worry though that the facility will cause more damage than good, but so far nothing terrible has happened.

[Forged]

The campaign is going to start at the DVA Department of Vigilante Activities.

The players are all either applying for or renewing their vigilante licenses. If a character wishes to be unliscenced, then they will need to have either a pre-existing relationship with at least one of the other PC's or be introduced later.

THe DVA will be used to teach the new players in my group the basics of combat and how skills and such work. The more experienced PC's will be able to chew the scenery and show off what their characters can do. After the PC"s finish their tests, they will get their licenses. I haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to do it, but I want the licenses to have lots of little simplified statistics on them for the players to fuss over. (Your a 6 threat? I'm only a 3! Bob's says 2C, whats the letter for?)

Lastly I want to introduce Officer Dalton, A mage cop, and the licensed PC's "handler" when it comes to vigilante-police interactions. He's a nice guy, and wants to have a "good working relationship" with the vigilantes. He likens the role to a cat owner, he takes care of you, cleans up some of your messes, and in return, there are less rats running around.

Then if all the PC's haven't bonded they should find that they have close "hunting grounds" Leading them to patrol together.

[Forged]

I haven't decided on how much info and what kind I want on the licenses. I do eventually want to print them out as a nice prop for the game.

Things I do want on the license:

Hero name - obvious
ID number - to make it feel "real"
Vigilante level - A scale that represents how much authority the holder has. from citizens arrest to "judge jury executioner". 0-10 with add ons like P for press access, D* for some form of diplomatic immunity etc.
Threat level - Scale about what level threats they are reasonably able to handle. Letters, and not 1-1 for PC instead go from E(purse thief, missing cats) to AAA (cosmic threat)
Skills - I want this to be a byzantine array of letters and numbers representing what they "bring to the table"
mF2-mA-C+ = Magic flight class 2, magic array class 1, Exceptional contact network
tR3-tM2-pI = tech-based resistance class 3, tech based melee class 2- psionic Immunity class 1

I want these to not be linked to the players stats, but what the SHOW of their capabilities. Also if a showy character uses stunts often, they might get tags that they don't rightly deserve.

Collateral - How much collateral damage the hero is covered for/expected. again nota scale but a set of symbols.
Contact method - How to get in touch with the hero. This should be funny, but default to a police drop box.


Anything else I should add? Suggestions on other symbols or info I can apply?