My homebrew campaign setting is a modernish setting, and that's very often what I want to play, but I get a lot of moods where I want something more medieval, old west, or age of sail. It would be nice to have a setting that facilitated this, but at the same time 20th century technology is the largest portion of what I want. I think I have a solution to this dilemma.
My setting assumes that there was a day when it was a "typical medieval fantasy setting", and that it evolved into a 20th century tech setting over time. That means the other eras I am often interested in did exist at one point within the setting. If I were to write down the basics of what was going on during these eras there is no reason I couldn't set a game in one of them if I were in the mood to. I would use the idea that the modernish setting assumes a specific series of historical events but that any game set in an earlier era can diverge from those events and be considered an alternate history timeline, so that players don't have a specific set of events that they know are all going to happen regardless of what they do.
This is where the Mythic Adventures ruleset comes in. I want to use it for any "historical" games, but instead of Mythics being divinely chosen they are movie and comic book creations. This meshes well with the fact that my modern setting is P6. That limited power level is usually fun, but it'll be nice to drop it every now and then and play a knight of yore who is a total badass because she's an action hero. It is also my understanding that it isn't heavily numbers based and is relatively easy to work with (great when trying to scratch a momentary itch). It seems to me that Mythic Adventures would be a great ruleset for high magic Pirates of the Caribbean or Red Read Redemption Undead Nightmare, or for something based off of Greek Mythology, but I don't have the copy I ordered yet. Am I right about it being a great ruleset for what I want to do with it?
I haven't had a really good read of the Mythic rules yet since we aren't going to be running Wrath of the Righteous for a long while, but I don't know that I'd say it's not heavily numbers based (though given that you're likely to stick to low tiers due to the fact that you're running with P6 anyway, it may not become a problem).
I could definitely see the Champion, Marshal, Guardian and Trickster paths working as comic book characters (things like the Champions literally leaping into battle work well). Archmage and Heirophant would work for characters like Doctor Strange and the Shaman (from the Authority). Certainly it does seem designed to make characters into total badasses.
If you want to take a look at the rules and see what you think, they're up on the PRD now, so you can at least get a feel for it.
When I say comic book, I mean that the action should be high powered and entertaining, not so much that I want superheroes. My thing is that I typically like high fantasy but at a lower power level for the individual character, and I typically like modern settings. When I'm in the mood for a non-modern setting, such as medieval, old west, or age of sail, it's almost always at the same time I want a high power level instead of a low one. So, the Mythic rules would coincide with when I take the setting back in time, and it seems they would give me the power boost I want without the high level math I hate.
The movie/comic thing is because the setting normally considers something like a vampire a serious threat, so there needs to be an explanation of why a guy with a longbow can easy kill two of something a guy with an automatic rifle has trouble with. Mythics being the action heroes of this setting explains it. You don't expect Audie Murphy to go all Buffy the Vampire Slayer on somebody (Now, Jack Churchill is a different story).
Okay, that makes a bit more sense. Yeah, I definitely think low levels with some tiers added would be less book keeping than high level play, but it will involve some added maths obviously. But yeah, there are some good action heroic style mythic feats and abilities in there, so I thnk you're on to a winner.
I'd still recommend checking out the rules on the PRD. I've been happy with what I've read of them so far, but as I said I haven't had a chance to actually run it yet (we're still playing Shattered Star, and are only about a third of the way through Curse of the Lady's Light, so there's another 4 and 2/3 books to go before we hit Wrath).
High powered and entertaining? Definitely!
I've been running Wrath of the Righteous so most of my experience is based on that.
The big thing to note about mythic powers that I remember someone else saying is that they break otherwise existing rules. They go beyond what characters can generally achieve, usually in a big way. Sometimes in ways that can easily catch you off guard.
The example I like using was the paladin in the campaign. His first tier granted him an ability to turn his mythic points into extra smites (for reference, at first tier that is 5 extra smites...over doubling his uses of it at level 6).
It caught me off guard the first day it happened because they weren't just being saved for the big bad (my fault and I admit it readily for not reading the ability closer), but suddenly his generals and some of his more annoying mooks were getting decimated.
Stuff like this is really common in the mythic rules. Your mileage may vary, but it gives them lots of options and variety and generally increases power in an exponential manner, especially the lower tiers you'll see the biggest bumps.