Your small-town supers setting, doncha know

For a small group, you can certainly consider a small-town setting. (Insert Brent Butt's comedy routine about the hooker in the small town.) They can go into the city sometimes and get into conflicts there, but most of it would be local. There are a couple of things to think about.

Why are your heroes grouped there? There are possibilities. Perhaps the government decided to put the paranaturally-abled students out in the country where they could damage less in case of an accident. Maybe they're all part of the same family...Mom and Dad Super moved out there to raise their children. (Heh...I just thought of a low-rent Xavier School, which is a big farmhouse where the students have to help with chores.) Maybe they've been chased out of the city. Heck, maybe they're all refugees from a particular conflict and the local church has raised money to settle them there.

What are they going to do? We presume they're going to fight someone; it's a superhero game. But who (or whom)? Well, there might be the conflicts with the locals...but that won't sustain an entire campaign, though it might make an interesting arc through it. Off the top of my head:

• Someone's after the retired superhero in town, and he can't defend himself.
• There's a government base--a kind of Area 51--nearby that can produce your freak-of-the-week.
• It's a super-student school, and the opposite group generates conflict.
• Bad guys have come to town to hide, and your players find out.
• The place was heavily affected by the gene bomb/meteors/alien invasion a bunch of years ago.

Consider it as a place to use. They can always move to the city afterward.