The Realme & New Heaven

I'm racking my head trying to piece together a comprehensive back story for an entire fictional city set in an alternative, modern Earth where people with paranormal abilities have manifested. Writing about paranormal people used to come a lot easier to me, but nowadays I'm all too mindful of that sceptical monkey on my back, so I'm constantly having to tell myself that fiction is important too. Previous projects based on high fantasy or advanced sci-fi were much easier - poetic licence and illogical plot devices are necessary when dealing with magick or super-luminary travel.

THE REALME

But as I look back at these imaginary settings I realise that even then I imposed certain constraints. The Realme - a medieval fantasy setting - is a prime example. As much as I admire Tolkien and the generations of dragon n' sorcery epics he inspired, I have much more empathy for the late, great David Gemmell and his sagas of heroic fantasy that somehow distilled and rationalised the pulp concepts of Robert E. Howard into a far less misogynistic yet equally manly portrayal of valour. While drafting the imperfect and incomplete RPG of The Realme, I focused on what made a human-based fantasy world fun and scary. Demi-human species were more or less shunted into the annals of mythology from whence they spawned. Dwarves, goblins and elves were actually just races distinct from the anglo-european based peoples. The closest thing you would find to a halfling was a race of forest dwelling pymies, for instance. Magick, too, was conveyed in more of a sense of the strange and inexplicable, because I couldn't reslove a universe where (unlike so many commercial versions) there seemed to be as many warlocks as peasants, wandering the countryside chucking fireballs and summoning demons.
I broke one of the unwritten genre conventions by introducing primitive firearms, albeit with the inferred disclaimer that gunpowder was tantamount to witchcraft. Alchemy played a much larger role than ritual magicks too, a concept shamelessly borrowed from the classic Darklands PC game. Religious evocations were also applied, but only in the sense that if your prayers happened to coincide with a favourable outcome then a preist-like character was likely to assume divine credit (much like the real world). Villains in the somewhat improvised plots I contrived to face our heroes during gaming sessions were less likely to be dragons or arch-mages and more so corrupt aristocrats and megalomanic cultists, or even each other*. Minions were more likely fur-clad bandits, not werewolves, but in such a superstitious setting who could tell the difference? In short, I wanted a D&D style game that took the mythology back to the ambiguous analogues of its historical origins.

*The adventures in The Realme were both perilous and hilarious. In one module our heroes explore a vast wilderness and find a lush waterfall. They strip off for a swim, during which one naked character discovers a small secret tunnel behind the fall. Unfortunately he manages to fumble his exploration roll and his upper body becomes wedged in the hole. In a Brokeback Dungeon moment one of the other heroes declares "Me first!" and the rest of the skinny dipping party starts fighting over who gets to push their trapped comrade through the hole with their penis. Hey, what happens in module stays in module, alright?

NEW HEAVEN

And now I reprise the other draft I started over a decade ago - the super-powered world of New Heaven, named after an imaginary, independent city-state in which the canon characters operate. I've always pictured it as a cross between Hong Kong and Monaco, a thriving, advanced city wealthy enough to stand apart from the rest of North America, but corrupt enough to invite the worst of capitalist traits - a near future noir setting where paranormally afflicted characters fight to survive the machinations of well resourced criminals and shadow agencies amidst an ignorant general public. This world is devoid of the ideological subtext of the Heroes tv series or the public political pressures of the Wild Cards books edited by George RR Martin. It's not about 'mutants versus humanity', let alone superheroes versus supervillains. What it is about is a group of loosely associated individuals, gifted or cursed with special abilities, who must work together in order to protect themselves from the clutches of those who would exploit them. Think of an anti-Watchmen place where socio-political issues are substituted by the mundanely evil motives of silent selfish needs.

We had a lot of fun with New Heaven back in the days of our pen and paper rpg sessions. (We even experimented with a historical spin-off of an 1860's version which met with a great reaction from my peers.) The characters became defined more by their variety of incredible personality quirks than their powers*.
Ed The Ferret's 'kryptonite' for instance was a rare psycholigical disorder that compelled an irrational urge to attempt to fly helicopters at any given opportunity (despite no training to do so whatsoever). The one and only scenario in which such an improbable opportunity arose led to the near death of the entire team and millions in property damage.
Scalpel the illusionist assassin would literally stab you in the back for the right price, and could probably get away with it by blaming someone else.
Molly the psionic barmaid preferred to telepathically assault foes by making them shit themselves, while Barfly's teleportation powers were either inert while sober or dangerously unreliable when drunk.
I'm currently in the process of refining the origin stories of each character as well as the city in which they live. I just hope I can do it justice.

*One game concept we had was a 'Cool roll' whereby whenever a character sought to say a memorable quip or catch-phrase or witty come-back during a high tension moment the player had to roll to see they pulled it off. The player would first draft their character's phrase (eg: Scalpel - "I may be small but I'm tough', or Kid Vengeance extolling "Prepare to suffer my Justice!") and if the roll failed they would screw it up George McFly style ("I may be tough but I'm small!" or "Prepare to suffer my Jaundice!").