Of course just having my players try to prevent the Armageddon event from happening wouldn't be anything special... lots of games have players stopping world destroying events every week or two. No... to make this a game that players will remember for some time, I think it will start with the Armageddon event having succeeded... thus it will open years after the world is transformed into Hell on Earth.
The question is... how far into the future should that be? I am thinking about 1 generation... the players will be a new generation of heroes born into this world... possibly even the children or grand-children of Heroes active before the Event. They will have been brought into the small rebellion that is trying to fight the endless hordes of Deevils that rule the world. I am thinking that the Resistance is on its last legs... and pinning its hope on one final plan to win... by sending the players back in time to before the Event happened and preventing it... sort of a HU version of "Days of Future Past" or similar hellish futures seen in many comics. I am thinking about 30 years after the Event... when most of those heroes and villains that took part in it have died (even by old age)... and only a few remember the world before it was changed.
One thing I am thinking of doing with this game is to have the levels of magic in the two time zones (hellish future and modern present/past) affect the powers of the players (even tech-based heroes). We already know that high levels of magic can increase the power of Magical and even Psionic characters... but also in settings like Rifts and Skraypers, high levels of magic (Seeron in Skraypers is in the 3 Galaxies) also increased Super Powers. It is also logical that Tech-based heroes may incorporate basic properties of mysticism into their tech... to make it more effective against supernatural threats. We aren't taking about magic-based tech like Techno-Wizardry... but more like how wood, silver and salt can affect the supernatural to various degrees... and creating weapons that take advantages of these weaknesses. Also with high levels of magic impregnating various metals and compounds... it may be possible to take advantage of their increased mystic properties without actually making them magic.
In effect, while the players are in the hellish future of their origin, they will effectively be Mega Heroes, with all the power and weaknesses that involves. This will allow me to make the future a real hellhole for them... with huge odds against them (5 to 1 lesser deevils per hero on average) and make them really struggle for any victory here... as it is a world ruled by the Deevils. This is more to show them that humanity is loosing the battle for Earth in this timeline... and pressuring them to realize the only way to save their world is to go back in time to prevent Armageddon from happening in the first place. Of course getting the materials to perform such a feat will be difficult... especially if they have to confront some of the most powerful Deevils on Earth (Vilde may rule the Earth, but he can't do it alone and has likely given control of various areas to loyal and/or trusted minions... human and Deevil).
When they do eventually arrive in the past however, the players will learn that they are not as powerful as they were in the future... loosing their Mega-Powers and any vulnerabilities it gave them. This is for a number of reasons... the levels of magic in the Present (before Armageddon) are significantly less, thus their abilities are no longer boosted. The other is to make it a little more difficult for them to fight the fewer deevils they will encounter here (allowing a more 1 on 1 ratio to be as dangerous here as 5 to 1 was in the future). It also means that they won't be able to just barrel through opposition in the Present to achieve victory. Lastly... changing their past should be difficult... as events will want to unfold as they did to create their future. Unlike many time travel stories where even moving a single insignificant rock can cause drastic changes to the future... I want the future to be harder to prevent. Yes, the players may have some foreknowledge of where key locations are that need to be dealt with... but specific knowledge isn't as easy to come by in the future (much of human technology like the internet are shattered with many records lost in the 30 years deevils ruled). Thus while the players may know what the future will become and what was used... how and where isn't as likely to know. Even Vilde's island base isn't likely to be known as he no doubt had a new Palace created when he achieved Armageddon.
Then there is the real possibility of the Players running into their heroic ancestors and even meeting younger versions of heroes they knew in their time. This is great material for creating "Terminator-style paradoxes" where the learn that they were selected by the Older hero they remember in the future because he encountered them in the Past (present) and waited for them to be born in the future... setting up a real possibility that the players fail to change anything. This may even lead to players second-guessing their actions... wondering if a plan they come up with will ultimately fail since they know that the young hero that is helping them will look for their births in the future that they failed to save. Being the twisted GM that I am... I love to mess with players minds like this.
Ultimately though, it will be interesting to see if they can change the future of their world... and if they do... what becomes of them? The trip into the past was likely one-way... and since the future that created them no longer exists... there is a chance that they too will cease to exist. But where is the fun in that? Just as in the Wolverine and the X-Men series prevented one hellish future from coming to be, the players may learn that the new future they helped create isn't as ideal as they hoped... and now they need to travel to a new future to find out what happened so that they can return to the past/present and prevent this new dystopian future from coming to pass. Sort of like preventing the "Days of Future Past" future only to create the possibility of an "Age of Apocalypse" or "House of M" future instead. Exactly what this new future will be like and how things went wrong... well that is the fun part (for me).
So... any ideas and suggestions as to where to go with the current future (Armageddon) or present?
