I'm running a fantasy game where the players started as children, we played through to late-teens/early adulthood, and ended up with very well fleshed out characters with clear ties to the community.

It's a homebrew mystery system; all the mechanics are behind the scenes. Players are kept up to date on their inventory and general health (Healthy, injured, dying, poisoned, sick, etc) but all other system feedback is narrative.

I'd like to do it again, though this time in a different genre.

1. Cyberpunk. PCs grow up in the corporate arcology, isolated from the dangers of the street but not the boardroom. Picture a world where everyone you know is some shade of Patrick Bateman or Gordon Gecko. Maybe not as murderous. Maybe.

2. Superheroes. PCs grow up in a world of flying men and colorful criminals. Eventually they'll have an origin giving them powers or technology or something and tying them all together into a unified team.

3. Dark Superheroes. PCs grow up in TOTALLY NOT GOTHAM CITY where they will eventually have some traumatic reason to put on a NOT-BATMAN costume.

2 or 3 might actually take place in the Marvel/DC universe if the prospective players find that appealing. NOT-GOTHAM might just be Gotham.

4. Science Fiction. PCs grow up in a stellar society with the individual goals of someday getting into space. Maybe as Space Cops or Space Explorers or Space Merchants. They can start out on different planets or come from the same colony.

5. Conspiratorial/investigative horror. PCs grow up living relatively normal lives until the truths of the universe compel them to start looking for truth together. May actually be Lovecraftian, or may just be spooky.

6. Near future, players will be the first off-world colonists.

The big change I'd make from the fantasy game is I'd take fewer players. Even with drop-outs, I ended up with 9, and that's 3 too many.

So if you're interested, let me know which of the above scenarios is the most appealing. The key element here is that as we play through your backstory naturally, we get a lot of keen insight into character personality and motivation.
This message was last edited by the user at 03:36, Sun 27 July 2014.