Prospectus
This 21 System series is set on Earth-200023, an amalgamation of:
Earth-10005 (the X-Men film franchise: First Class and Days of Futures Past.) Note that X-Men, X-Men United, The Last Stand, Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine have all been retconned out of existence due to the events in 1973 which were depicted in Days of Future Past.
Earth-96283 (the Sam Raimi Spider-Man 1, 2, and 3 movie franchise)
I'm even going to throw Daredevil into the mix, even though it wasn't very good... hopefully the upcoming Netflix show will be better.
The only Marvel Comics lore that is canon in this campaign is that which is provided by the aforementioned movies and tv shows. Any characters which appear in these films can only appear in the campaign as NPCs— feel free to bring them into play with Letters of Introduction. As new movies and episodes are released, they will potentially be woven into the backstory of the campaign setting.
Note that some Marvel movie properties have been deliberately left off the list (namely The Amazing Spider-Man reboots, the Blade, Ghost Rider, Punisher, and Fantastic Four movies). These films are not considered part of this campaign's canon, mostly because I either a) have not seen them, or b) have and do not like them. Therefore they do not exist for the purposes of this game.
Unlike the Marvel comic books, this campaign world exists at the same moment as the real world, and ages at the same time. Peter Parker was 18 years old in 2002 when he became Spider-Man... today he is 30. The Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters was established in 1963 after the events of X-Men: First Class, so it has been matriculating graduates for over four decades (barring a few years in the early 1970s where Xavier shuttered the school and wallowed in a drug-addled haze). The Battle of New York as depicted in The Avengers happened in the summer of 2012, and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s headquarters in Washington D.C. was destroyed in April of 2014 (The Winter Soldier).
Providing a framework for the campaign, red23 is a superhuman security consultancy firm which specializes in rendering services for individuals, corporations, and governments... basically anyone who can afford to hire them. In a world in which the Avengers, the X-Men, and what remains of S.H.I.E.L.D. are often otherwise indisposed dealing with huge international, interstellar and even interdimensional threats— and hometown heroes like Daredevil and Spider-Man are combating street-level crime— red23 occupies the fertile middle ground: providing globe-trotting hero contractors an opportunity to face a myriad of threats, both large and small, often ripped from today's headlines!
Players can play characters of either their own creation, or who are heroes (or villains— these are mercenaries we're talking about after all!) from published Marvel Comics, or characters who've appeared in a non-canon film. All player characters are independent contractors whose services have been retained by red23 Ltd. of Dubai, United Arab Emirates.