Cascading Justice

A Mutants & Masterminds Campaign

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everyone knows who the superheroes are. You see them on TV, you know their names, you buy their action figures. Here’s the thing, though: anyone the media calls a “hero” is either sponsored by the government or a corporation. Every one. Every hero team needs a license to operate and who do you think provides that license? Do they do good things? Sure. But they do it on the company dime, and that makes them beholden to company policy. You see the heroes saving people, stopping disasters, thwarting villains. But who decides who’s worth saving, what’s really a disaster, who’s really a villain?

Villains. Yeah. That’s a much murkier area. Some of them are bad, don’t get me wrong; some of them do things that would make history’s greatest monsters proud, and they do it for personal gain or revenge or for no reason at all. Evil exists. But some people who get painted with that “villain” brush are just supers without a corporate sponsor. They’re off-book. Unsanctioned.

Enter Destiny, Avatar of the Fates, and longtime member of the Guardians of Justice. She’s been able to translate her popularity as a member of the team over the years into celebrity, celebrity into wealth, and wealth into a small, but successful entertainment brand: Lemonade Entertainment Media, Inc. She’s started to notice how, while technically, justice is for everybody, it tends to benefit the elite, the wealthy, and the privileged. It’s time for that to change. Destiny has recruited you to fight for real justice. To the public, you’re on the payroll providing security for LEM, Inc. Behind the scenes, you are seeking justice for the voiceless, for those in the margins, for those who have been left behind and you won’t be satisfied until it comes cascading down like a flood and washes away injustice.

The Team

• Shyft Played by Ted
• Express played by Donna
• Scion played by Eric
• Malak played by ShawnMichael
• Chrome - RIP - NPC
• Wildcat - played by Sharin

Setting

• Cascading Justice Campaign Timeline: A timeline of events chronicling the history of the world that Cascading Justice is set in. This timeline focuses on American history
• Cascading Earth: Information examining the global state of affairs in the world of Cascading Justice as it is found at the beginning of the campaign in Spring 2022, including world politics and major current events.
• The Portland of Cascading Justice
  • The Shanghai Tunnels/Portland Underground: Information on the series of underground tunnels and inhabitants found under downtown Portland.
  • The Library, Portland Branch: The Portland branch of the organization dedicated to the preservation, protection, and control of mystical knowledge. Located in the historic Mt. Olivet Church building.
• The Challengers Museum: The Challengers Museum is housed in a converted four-story brownstone which served as the Challengers’ original headquarters when they first moved to Seattle.

Organizations and People

• Destiny:
• Maximilian Mars and MarsTech
• Superhero Teams
  • The Guardians of Justice
  • The Challengers
  • The Homeguard
• Villain Organizations
  • The Chamber
  • The Brain Trust (CrimeNet)
  • The Golden Dragon Society
  • The Malakov Mafiya
  • The Night Shift
• AEGIS
• The Pantheon
• MANTIS
• The Freakshow:
• P.U.R.G.E.:

House Rules

• Connected (Advantage): You must choose a particular faction of society to have active connections with. Every rank allows you to choose a different faction of society. The first rank you select for this advantage will indicate your primary connected faction with all others being secondary. For example, you could have Connected 3 (P: Criminal; S: Military, Police.) You gain a +5 circumstance bonus to Persuasion checks within your primary faction and a +2 circumstance bonus for secondary factions. This bonus can be used as an untrained skill. This bonus cannot increase your total effective skill rank higher than the campaign’s PL limit. You may later switch which faction is your primary faction, but doing so requires purchasing a rank in Connected without acquiring a new faction for it.
• Contacts (Advantage): You must choose a particular faction of society to have active contacts with. Every rank allows you to choose a different faction of society. The first rank will indicate your primary faction with all others being secondary. For example, you could have Contacts 2 (P: Federal Government; S: Legal.) You gain a +5 circumstance bonus to Investigation checks within your primary faction and a +2 circumstance bonus for secondary factions. This bonus can be used as an untrained skill. This bonus cannot increase your total effective skill rank higher than the campaign’s PL limit. You may later switch which faction is your primary faction, but doing so requires purchasing a rank in Contacts without acquiring a new faction for it.
• Faster Combat: If as a result of a Toughness save you would take a Condition (Dazed or Staggered), but you already have that Condition, instead take an additional Bruised (-1) effect.
  • Example: Goldrush is already at a -3 and has the Dazed Condition. When he is hit by another devastating attack, the results of his Toughness save indicate he takes an additional -1 and Dazed. Because he already has Dazed, he instead takes an additional -1. As a result, he is now at a -5, plus the Dazed Condition.

Resources

• Cascading Justice Character Sheet - Short M&M sidebar with space for wiki statblock Hero Lab
• M&M Character Template - Full M&M sidebar and template