Morality - Good and Evil are mostly clear-cut with some shades of gray.
Realism - A strange combination of gritty realism and comic book "wild" reality.
Outlook - You are the good guys, but victories will no be cake walks normally. You will have some laughingly easy victories..."How the hell did that happen?" and you will have some nail biting scrapes which make you wish you'd stayed in bed..."We're alive! hurray!!!!" but you'll also have failures, which will hopfully lead to later victories by learning from your mistakes.
Seriousness - In theory fairly serious with levity and real emotion...I hope. I do not intend to run this for laughs.
Continuity - I hope to have tons of it. Let's see how the flow of time works first, but assume that continuity will be high.
Importance of the PCs - The PCs are indivdual heroes who have answered the call of the city of Chicago to help with it's growing paranormal criminal threats. You will be working with the city authorities and the mayor's office. Your importance to the city will be fairly high, you may not make the national news often but you'll have plenty to do in the Windy City.
The Game year is 2000
In 1973 President Gerald Ford transferred control of all the nations Para-Normal Operations assets and responsibilities for Ultra-Terrorism to the National Security Agency.
The NSA formed a new branch known as Para-Normal Operations and a para-military action arm known as Strike Operations.
With a single agency coordinating and handling national response to Ultra-Terrorist and Para-Normal Threats things were actually getting done. The NSA was able to quickly provide assistance to other federal and state police agencies and public opinion of the controversial decision was very positive.
The number of Hero Groups in the US isn't huge. The big names have been around for a few years The Avengers, The Defenders, Justice Inc.,The Olympians but most cities don't have their own hero group. Many major cities have their own heroes and some cities have more then their fair share (New York!). The heroes that are out there are outnumbered and often outgunned, but that's one of the things that makes them heroes.