Paragons Design Journal #2
Welcome to a world where “reality” doesn’t mean quite the same thing it used to, where the word “impossible” is used conditionally when it has any meaning at all, and where you will believe a man can fly, because there’s a good chance of seeing it on the evening news. Welcome to a world of normal people with paranormal powers, the world of Paragons.
When planning releases for the second edition of Mutants & Masterminds, we realized one place to expand the game line was settings. If M&M was to be a true broad-based superhero roleplaying game, its support should reflect the broad range of super-powered fiction over the years; not just comics and prose, but also popular television and film. Paragons was conceived early on as a new setting to compliment and contrast with the four-color Freedom City superhero setting. Paragons would tap a different vein of super-powered fiction, one that asks “what happens when you give otherwise normal people, in a world much like our own, the kind of power possessed by characters in comic books?”
Paragons turned out to be some time in coming; other projects took priority with the launch of the second edition of M&M, particularly more rules-heavy books like Mastermind’s Manual and Ultimate Power. Still, the concept of Paragons continued to percolate on the back burner, and we did those other books with an eye towards things we could use in this setting.
Paragons also needed a diverse and, frankly, kind of weird setting. It was a great opportunity to play around with ideas for characters, powers, and factions that didn’t suit a four-color comic book world like Freedom City, the sort of things that wouldn’t show up in most comics, but could happen if real people had super-powers. Therefore, we recruited a diverse team of freelancers to populate and flesh out the paranormal world, and we think they offer a wealth of options for your own Paragons games.
Options are, in many ways, what Paragons is all about, both as a game setting and as a theme within the setting itself. With power comes a greater range of choices, many of them difficult choices. We wanted Paragons to be a world where the players helped set the tone and direction and their characters could make decisions that would alter the world.
Therefore, Paragons does not present a fully defined setting, assuming certain events, particular power-players, and factions with pre-defined goals. Why? Because a big element of the genre Paragons seeks to emulate is discovery: The thrill of being among the first paranormals to discover and use their powers, the excitement of pursuing the mysteries of the setting: Finding out about antagonists and allies first-hand, uncovering secrets and conspiracies. Those are difficult things to do when everything about the world is a given, already established and available for anyone to read about in the source material.
Therefore, Paragons takes a somewhat different approach to setting source material. Instead of a fully fleshed-out world with all the pieces already in place, the book gives you a framework, and all the pieces, and lets you (and your players) assemble them however you want. In some cases, there are even multiple pieces to go into the same “place” in the setting; you choose what (if anything) goes there and what that means for your Paragons world.
Chapter 1 through Chapter 3 of the sourcebook lay out the framework, the skeleton of the Paragons setting. They tell you the broad base assumptions about the world and how they affect things. You’ll find many of these elements can be interpreted in a number of different ways; this is deliberate, and factors into the options for the world discussed in Chapter 6.
In Chapter 1 you’ll find a discussion of paranormals: Their powers, origins, and capabilities, largely from the perspective of someone confronted with the strange new phenomenon of paragons. This chapter also discusses some issues paranormals and their powers may create in the world, offering inspiration for events in your own series.
Chapter 2 broadens the perspective to the world and the effect paragons can have on it. What is it like to live in a world where the fantastic and “impossible” are daily realities of life? How do nations, cultures, governments, corporations, and other bodies react to the paragons among them? What of paranormal phenomena that exist but are not directly connected to any known paragon? This chapter looks at the framework of the world itself and the “holes” where later pieces of the setting may fit.
Chapter 3 deals with the largest framework of the setting: The otherworldly realm of the Imageria. Is it “just” a veridical hallucination brought into being by paranormal powers or is it the source of those powers, and perhaps even the entire universe? Does it prove the existence of the supernatural or demonstrate all such beliefs are equally unreal?
Once the first three chapters set-up the framework, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 give you the pieces to go into it:
Chapter 4 looks at factions involving paragons to one degree or another, from the Church of Jesus Christ, Paragon, to Foregone Conclusions, the mysterious Initiative, the Pact, the Pantheon, the Paramount Club, or the Vanguard, among others. They can serve as patrons, allies, antagonists, or simply background color for your setting. You can elevate some factions over others, making them centerpieces of your series, downplay or eliminate ones that don’t fit your conception of the world, and customize them all to your heart’s content.
Chapter 5 is a casting-call, featuring a variety of characters suitable for use in a Paragons series in various roles, from mentor, ally, or student to rival or antagonist, from world-shaking power level to fairly ordinary people with some very unusual “talents.” As with Chapter 4, you pick and choose which characters to include, and how they interact with the setting and the player characters. Give some of these characters important roles in your series, relegate others to supporting cast or “background color” and ignore the rest as you see fit.
Chapter 6 brings it all together by discussing in detail how to assemble the pieces in the framework to create your own Paragons series. It looks at diverse questions; from the origin of paranormal powers to the meaning of the Imageria and the place of the various factions and characters in the world. It also outlines a variety of approaches to the setting, each with a different style and emphasis for a different kind of series. With the tools in this chapter, you can create numerous Paragons games, each with its own distinct flavor and style.
This chapter also offers additional rules for the Paragons setting, including mass combat and paradigm shifts, detailing how paranormals influence and change the world around them.
