Tried and true vs nifty and new

Having decided to run a superhero campaign, I've been debating whether I should shoot for a standard, old-school world where supers started appearing around WWII, or try something new and different, like making the PC's part of the first generation of supers and giving all superpowers a common origin. (Like Mutant X, for instance, but I've got a lot more ideas than that.)

I decided that since it's been so long since Karen and I have played supers, and the other two players in the group have never played supers, I'd just go with the standard. That way, I can draw on resources like Mutants & Mastermind's Freedom City.

I bought Freedom City a few months ago, because I'd heard good things about M&M and wanted to see their world. It's a great sourcebook for converting to Fudge because it contains almost no rules information… it's chock-full of setting goodness with little tiny d20 stat blocks. But I've heard enough good things about the game system itself, despite it being d20, that I broke down and ordered the main rule book just to see how they handle things, and to avoid the guess work in figuring out what some of the characters' powers are. (Got a good deal from an eBay store… came to 20% off the list price after shipping.)

I'm sitting here asking myself why, with all that Champions stuff in the basement, am I buying new superhero source material? I dunno. Maybe it's because I never saw the Champions universe as being very coherent. Maybe it's because Karen and I know a lot about it, and our two other players won't know all the background we do about VIPER, UNTIL, and so on. Maybe it's because the M&M products have lots of pretty pictures that Champions products don't.

I have to admit, although I'm not too picky about art in roleplaying games, comic books are a visual medium, and having well-done art in a superhero game is a must. Hero Games had its share of good artists, but those old books don't compete with the full-color art of M&M.

And then there's just the fact that I like to be in on what's new instead of "living in the past," so to speak. I know there's new Champions stuff out, but M&M looks like it's going to to well and we'll see a lot more products. I don't know about Champions… the fifth edition wasn't a revolutionary new thing, and I don't know where that product line is going to go.

Of course, just because I'm using Freedom City doesn't mean I can't mine my Champions material, old and new, for material to incorporate.

So, we're getting together tomorrow (Sunday) to discuss preliminaries about the game and look at some character concepts. The ball is rolling, and I'm excited to finally be so close to roleplaying again.