Yesterday, Giuliano de Silva, a 13-year old boy from Sao Paulo, broke the unaided flight record by over 4,000 miles when he landed in Miami.

What will you do tomorrow?

Our ancient myths and legends positively drip with godlike beings. They teach us the price of hubris, they inform our beliefs, their symbols inspire us long after the people themselves are dust, and they show us that power alone does not make a hero.

Most of all, they are examples of what we are becoming.

At some subconscious level, humanity knew it was being held back. A racial memory, some genetic anomaly, a shared mythology lay sleeping for centuries, and its dreams reminded us again and again that one day the chains would break and the walls would come down. And on that day, we would know what to do.

Potential is my idea for a series of mini-campaigns for Mutants and Masterminds. Long ago, aliens abducted tests on early humans and discovered that if left unchecked, humanity would grow into one of the more powerful species in the galaxy. Rather than wipe us out for something we hadn't done yet, they set up an immense nullifier field that blanketed the Earth, but nothing lasts forever. The nullifier's power is finally fading and humanity is slowly realizing its true potential (ahem).

In the first mini-campaign, PCs play some of the first superhumans starting the day the nullifier has, for lack of a better term, a brownout. A percentage of people around the world gain access to low-level or very specific powers that have been dampened their entire lives. A tiny percentage, including the PCs, manifest arrays of terrifyingly powerful abilities. The world up to that point is a mirror of our own. People know what superheroes are and they know what superheroes are supposed to do. However, there are no laws in place to handle the sudden appearance of superhumans. No super-prisons built to withstand teleporting bank robbers or mind-controlling assassins. As some of the most powerful people on the planet, the PCs are at the forefront of this superhero zeitgeist. The world follows their lead. Where will they take it?

We were lucky Sol sits in an isolated pocket devoid of interstellar gas and useless to ramscoops, else it wouldn’t have been a coverup, it would’ve been an eradication. As it was, Earth was in a backwater system not worth the trouble and the species that built the nullifiers got themselves wiped off the star map long before the nullifiers started running low on power.

But they are running low on power. More people manifest unbelievable powers every day. The world is changing, and maybe some of those changes are your fault. Is Earth ready for a planet of superhumans? Do you welcome it? Can you stop it? Should you stop it?

The second mini-campaign would be set several years after the first. Depending on what the PCs did to the world, you might end up with a fairly typical superhero setting, where masked crimefighters stalk supercriminals in a mostly modern setting, or you might have a post-apocalyptic wasteland, superscience dictatorship, metahuman caste system, or utopia.

This era of Potential could potentially (sorry) sustain a long-running campaign, and could easily follow on naturally from the first campaign without jumping ahead years if the first story arc allows. I'd end the second campaign, however, with the PCs discovering the nullifier satellite and deciding what to do about it. The nullifier's location isn't important, as long as it's somewhere hard to accidentally get to. I like putting it out in the Kuiper Belt, because the ability to reach it can lead into the third mini-campaign idea. More on that later.

So the PCs have this choice*. Do they destroy the nullifier and unleash humanity's potential all at once? Recharge it, maybe taking control of Earth or taking on the role of the planet's guardians for its peoples' own good? Let it die slowly, allowing humanity to adjust as best it can to an increasing number of superhumans?

* I didn't realize until I got to this point how similar this was. If you know what I'm talking about, well... now that I know, I'd totally embrace the reference.

Potential's third campaign falls somewhere between Star Trek and Old Man's War, but with superhumans. Humanity is a player on the galactic stage now, except that stage is full of fractious alliances and violent aliens who fight over habitable real estate. PCs could be anything from a mixed-species starship bridge crew to a team of pan-galactic space cops who use their sufficiently advanced alien jewelry to stop alien warlords from laying populated worlds to waste during their interstellar wars.

Notes on power origins: PCs should have some Complication or skill choice reflecting their life before their potential was unlocked. Generally powers would manifest at puberty, assuming a disabled or vastly reduced planetary nullifing field. It’s a nice nod to X-Men and it avoids messy situations where toddlers laser-vision their daycare providers during a tantrum or newborns teleport their mothers’ wombs onto the roof.

Not every superhuman manifested powers on Day One. Some people may have had powers for a variety of reasons. Some powers lie hidden, only manifesting through accidents or tragedy. You have to get shot before you find out you're bulletproof. A chemical spill interacts with your modified biology and gives you supersenses. Genetic markers allowing you to control alien technology with your mind only matter if an alien crash-lands near you.

Some people have spent years with powers but never used them. The ability to fly doesn’t stop bullets - far better to effect change by running for political office. Some people have been using their powers, but only in short spurts, afraid of what they have become. Others relish their abilities but are so scattered, and the eyewitness accounts so unbelievable, that society as a whole has largely ignored them before the nullifier browned out and there was incontrovertible evidence of superpowers.

Notes on aliens: Although aliens aren't entirely appropriate for the first campaign, except maybe as cloaked/morphed observer types or fugitives hiding out on this backwater "Erf" planet, as more people gain a variety of powers, the chances increase that somebody will end up with Life Support and Space Travel and end up running into a bunch of lobstercans or puppetworms or skree or something. Aliens are totally cool in the second mini-campaign - they could be diplomats, con artists, traders, conquerors, you name it. And the third campaign is all about aliens.