Beyond the Steel Wall

I came up with a setting/campaign concept today and wanted to write it down and get some critique. My approach has been top-down. I started with the history/concept. Some decision points that I made:

• Super powers arrived in two waves: extremely rare (at most hundreds) but immensely powerful, followed by extremely common (1 in 50) but less powerful. Now, superpower genetics are hereditary and aren't as powerful as the original waves of supers.

• The setting is post-apocalyptic with supers. The only known survivors are the Yukon enclave, which encompasses practically all the Yukon territory. Outside the steel wall surrounding the enclave things are wild, changed, and extremely hazardous to people accustomed to living in the enclave.

• The one thing keeping the Yukon enclave safe is "The Accord" which is a set of legal articles similar to the US Bill of Rights or Constitution, but intended to regulate the usage of superpowers. Punishment for breaking the Accord is harsh, but the articles (though undecided at this point) should be reasonable limitations that both heroes and villains would agree upon. Because of this, the Accord should only limit things like collateral damage and restrain loss of life—especially of civilians.

• I named some super heroes and villains to provide provide a set of founders that all could look up to for inspiration, as well as legendary names.

Concept backstory on Google Docs. Commenting is enabled for the document if you want to comment inline, so your comment is associated with the context.

So, what do you all like/dislike with the concept thus far? What do you think that I should flesh out while keeping the concept to mostly high-level details? I'm unaccustomed to super hero fiction and roleplaying as a genre, have I missed anything obvious?

As an overall concept its got a lot going for it. The "Omega Level" superpowers being the source of the apacolypse makes sense. And of course a pre-cog would herald it. I'm interested to know if Oracle is in the compound herself, knowing what she knows. The swift and brutal mind wipe punishment is intriguing, and also prudent. They aren't wasting valuable resources by killing usefully powered individuals, just making them fall in line.

But I do have to question why you still refer to some characters as heroes and some as villains. If they are all on the ruling council together, working toward the same goal of keeping the compound from dying out. They aren't really villains anymore. And the timeframe you have set this in would dictate the same thing. A hundred plus years after the cataclysm would mean that no one would be alive from before the destruction of civilization, unless some kind of anti-aging effect were in play that you don't mention. So no one who is being an active member of society could really be a villain anymore. The. There's the mind wipe again. Somebody would have mind wiped all the desenters and made the leaders into a group of like minded individuals thus eliminating the potential for that kind of division(or that's what I'd do access to a mind wipe power/machine) Basically I'm staying drop the "Council of Heroes and Villains" and make it "Council of Elders" and I'd say it has potential.

Thank you for your input. I had forgotten about the secondary effects of imposing a set of laws with such heavy enforcement would do to stereotypical hero/villain types. I was thinking that there would be some regulation of what heroes and villains could do, but I wasn't thinking that there wouldn't be any (obvious) villainy.

Good thoughts. I'll have to keep that in mind as I decide how to write a 2nd draft of the premise.