LEGACY 2020: General Premise.

(This was originally written back in November of 2006 -- two days shy of a year ago, actually -- in the first flush of the L2020 concept. The campaign concept lost steam, so I didn't post it at the time. Now, however, it looks like the game will be played after all -- and looking it over, I can present this unchanged.)

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First, the boilerplate:
LEGACY 2020 is a proposal for a superhero role-playing campaign set in a world in which superheroes emerged in the early 20th Century, then aged in real time, interacting with each other and the world around them, having children and grandchildren and passing on their legacies. This project is for personal amusement, and in no way is intended to violate the intellectual property rights of the creators and copyright holders.

And now, the details:

Unlike Mr. Allston, I'm not brave enough to incorporate every comic-book superhero into a single world. For one thing, it would be horrifically cluttered; for another, it wouldn't leave me any material for the inevitable cross-time crises that are a staple of the genre.

Instead, the L2020 project will be an alternate DC Universe. If Marvel was once "The House Of Ideas", DC has long been "The House of Legacies". DC characters pass their titles, powers, or simply callings on to successors. They do so in the "mainstream continuity", and have done so for half a century. They also have a precedent for masterful re-interpretations of their characters in "Elseworlds", exploring how stories could be retold and reintegrated in hindsight, if they had, in fact, been subject to the tides of time and change.

In other words, DC has a rich vein of material to plunder.

Of course, the idea of an "alternate DC universe" is in itself no simple matter. DC is, after all, the Borg of the Comics World, assimilating other comics companies and adding their biological and technological distinctiveness to their own -- and this tendency extends back to the earliest origins of the company.

The characters currently considered part of the "Mainstream DC Universe" include:

1. Characters from National Allied Publications, Detective Comics, Inc., and All-American Publications.
2. The Quality Comics stable, acquired by National Periodicals in 1956.
3. The Fawcett Comics characters, licensed by DC in 1972 and purchased outright in 1980.
4. The Charlton Comics superheroes, acquired in 1983.
5. Characters created by various DC licensees who were absorbed, back-licensed, or outright appropriated for the comics -- the appearance of the Wonder Twins in Extreme Justice, for example.
6. Some, but not all, of the characters appearing under the "Vertigo" imprint -- primarily those who originated in the "Mainstream DCU"."

They're all fair game for L-2020, and I'll try to use as many as I can -- though I have no intention of rewriting the history of every character.

Also "fair game" are characters who have lapsed into the Public Domain, including characters from such long-defunct publishers as Nedor and Centaur. I won't make an effort to include their extensive stables into the Legacy "mainstream", but I will draw upon them to fill the occasional hole in the timeline.

The core premise of the L-2020 Campaign is that characters make their public debut in the same year that their features debuted in our timeline, and age normally thereafter. Of course, there are exceptions:

1. "Aging normally" is relative. Alien physiologies, magical creations, and life-extending technologies and side-effects will benefit certain individuals, though no exploding supervillains will bestow extended lifespans on entire super-teams.
2. Characters set in historical time periods are, of course, still set in those time periods... as intriguing as the notion of Jonah Hex as a scarred Viet Nam vet in 1972 might be.
3. Characters who began in relative obscurity but later achieved far greater prominence may have their debuts and timelines adjusted to put them in the "proper" period. This could include Green Arrow and Animal Man.
4. Introduction dates for characters closely associated with other, more prominent characters may be adjusted to better fit the "primary" character's timelines.
5. Characters introduced into other characters' backstories by later writers may be introduced at their "retcon point", at the actual publication date of their debut, or not at all.

Needless to say, relationships between characters will often change, frequently enough to be considered the rule instead of the exception. Cousins may become offspring. Children may become grandchildren. Entirely new characters will certainly show up.