Ideas For a Neighborhood Watch Campaign

[Kid Jake]

My current Mutants and Masterminds campaign has been repeatedly delayed due to player schedules and it's making us all pretty antsy; so a couple of us have decided to run a session or two set in a 'What if?' styled future of our current campaign until we can meet up as a group again. We're aiming for a more lighthearted feel than what we usually run so we've decided that our new super team will be a bunch of D-Listers (think the Tick's supporting cast) who have formed an overzealous neighborhood watch in a neighborhood that alternates between lawless hellhole and totalitarian dystopia depending on which faction claims ownership of it this week.

What sort of trouble could you imagine (crappy)super-powered agents of the local homeowner's association getting up to in a city where suddenly 1/10th of the population has some sort of superpower and everyone's left to their own devices?

I'm not looking for epic encounters (though if you've got a good one, feel free to share), I'm talking: Noise violations, minor graffiti, papers going missing, etc... Things that are so ridiculously minor that their inevitable failure to prevent it is made all the more pathetic/hilarious.

[Milodiah]

"Excuse me, sir, I can't help but notice that the tank you just smacked into the air landed in front of a hydrant. I'm going to have to ask you to move it before I have to issue you a citation."

[Exegesis]

Kids with superpowers all got hauled off except for one subtle little Tom Riddle who conceals his power and uses it, possibly along with a ring of followers, to pull pranks.

Maybe his power is that he can change the details of signs and posters and what they now say becomes true. He can make an airplane late, change the movie theater's program, edit a "deer crossing" sign so that, an hour later, a rhino stumbles over the road. His power slowly grows as he practices it. At first he has no real plots but perhaps he comes to someone worse's attention.

[Kid Jake]

"Excuse me, sir, I can't help but notice that the tank you just smacked into the air landed in front of a hydrant. I'm going to have to ask you to move it before I have to issue you a citation."

Heh, I think I'm going to adapt this into an actual superhero living in the community that flaunts their rules because there's nothing anyone can do about it. His effectiveness as a hero won't really be addressed, but he's definitely going to be the resident bad neighbor.

Kids with superpowers all got hauled off except for one subtle little Tom Riddle who conceals his power and uses it, possibly along with a ring of followers, to pull pranks.

Maybe his power is that he can change the details of signs and posters and what they now say becomes true. He can make an airplane late, change the movie theater's program, edit a "deer crossing" sign so that, an hour later, a rhino stumbles over the road. His power slowly grows as he practices it. At first he has no real plots but perhaps he comes to someone worse's attention.

Considering that the PCs so far are a girl that can turn into plants (not special mobile or dangerous plants, just everyday inanimate plants) a middle aged Mr. Rogers with wings (not flight, he's too heavy to even glide on them so they mostly just make it hard to fit in cars) and a man that becomes invisible whenever he's covered in complete darkness; I'd say that the neighborhood would just belong to Tom Riddle now.

I like the idea of the kid though, so I'm going to start him out as being the ultimate graffiti artist. He can visually rearrange inanimate objects with a touch; so Winged-Man's festive holiday sweater would suddenly become an XXX rated display between Mrs. Claus and Rudolph and there's nothing anyone can do to change it back. If anyone ends up surviving The Watch then things might escalate from there.

[Exegesis]

That is pretty clever.