A campaign idea. Please comment.

[Baladar]

I had an idea for a mutants & masterminds campaign and I wanted to run it by you guys to see how I could improve it. This adventure series would start after the heroes had already beaten a few supervillains and done some other heroic things.

The campaign would start with an attack at the local zoo, which the heroes would find is being carried out by a beastly man that can control animals who is attempting to gather an animal army. As the heroes deal with him, the museum of history is raided by a villain that looks like a living suit of armor. The armor looks like it was made by mixing armors from five or six ancient cultures and he wields a wicked axe. His objective is to make it to an exhibit on North American Native Americans, the center piece of course is a mummy (the first one ever found). Once the armor makes it to the mummy, it puts a phylactery (charm box with a very small and very detailed scroll inside) around the mummy’s neck. The mummy stands up, and the players would realize that he has straw sticking out of him in places, summons a scythe and a beat up old farmer’s hat from the late 1800’s.
As I’m sure you’ve realized by now, the villains are all modeled after the Wizard of Oz and will spend the remainder of the campaign calling in other Oz characters (as villains) and will lead to invasions from the Emerald city (Which is ruled by Ozma/Dorthy). Oz itself is an alternate dimension for this setup.

Any comments?

[Lochar]

The Wicked Witches of the East and West need to be good, and they need to be part of a lackluster rebellion.

[Wittgen]

The heroes of Oz as the campaign's heroes' rogues gallery? I like it.

My question now is where is the wizard himself. In the movie he's just a guy with some fancy machines who set up himself up as the ruler of Emerald City, right? Since the good guys of the movie are bad guys here, is the Wizard going to be an actual wizard? A powerful one maybe. What's his relationship with big bad Dorthy? I bet she wasn't happy when he failed to be able to return her home.

Good luck with the campaign. Mutants and Masterminds is great.

[Baladar]

The Wizard was a wizard. The backstory will explain that after the Wizard came to Oz, he deposed the evil Oz (king of Oz) and ruled as benevolent dictator.

Then Dorthy shows up and gets the slippers at Glinda's advise, and gets her new friends the necromancer, Scarecrow, the former executioner turned woodsman, Tinman, and the beast king, the Lion.

They overthrow the Wizard and begin plotting the takeover the Earth.

But these guys won't be the only group of villains, there will be others too.

[Kodra]

With Mutants and Masterminds, there are a few things to keep in mind:

Tone of Game: Your game is basically a very dark twisted take on Wizard of Oz, and with the themes you've thrown out it sounds like you are anticipating a darker grittier tone to the game. Reading the description I'm immediately drawing parallels to American McGee's Alice. That said, you'll probably want to keep the tone dark. Make heroes fear for their lives, don't be afraid to let a character die if they fall into a bad situation. Keep your players on their toes. Set the Power Level of the campaign lower (5 or 6) and limit the ability to use powers like Impervious, Regeneration, or Healing.

Now if I'm off my mark and you want more four colors hero game, ignore what I said and go for a more standard PL 10 campaign.

Build the characters with the players: Mutants and Masterminds tends to be mathematically balanced as far as abilities go, but it has tons of issues. Alternate Powers for example are an overpowering concept, and someone who focuses everything into Emotion Control can basically ruin a game. Make sure players give you an idea of what they want to play and then walk through with them the character generation process. You'll probably want to make sure everyone is at the caps as far as Attack, Save, Defense, Toughness go, otherwise they're at a significant disadvantage.

Don't let someone make a magical character with 48 alternate powers so they can do anything they want. I'm looking at you Wittgen.

[Wittgen]

That character was awesome. Absolutely awesome. There is nothing wrong with having a character who has access to literally every single power in the book at the maximum rank for their power level. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

[viridian]

What, you mean Dr. Strange?

[Wittgen]

A somewhat convoluted series of happenings have led to me thinking about this campaign idea quite a bit. So, how are things coming along?