memesis
Feb 14th, '04, 12:57 PM
The "Golden Age" of comic books featured a number of heroes who were truthful, just, righteous, and worthy of every accolade heaped upon their shoulders by a grateful public. The super-scientists of Personified are not comic book readers, but in the age of superhumans, most of whom are relatively weak and fallible humans, their psychologists understand the value of a seemingly flawless hero to the population.
Personified is a government-sponsored agency with legal enforcement powers. It coordinates closely with Federal, state and local authorities on all matters, lending its expertise whenever possible and borrowing likewise whenever necessary. It consists of a few dozen "agents" and at least a hundred men and women who occupy support positions or handle administrative tasks. Personified also maintains a "library" of beings, who are called "icons".
The icons are not real people in an intellectual or moral sense; they are living bodies without minds, designed and engineered by Personified science, tailored for super-powers and physical fitness. Each icon is connected to the specialized equipment at Personified headquarters; through this equipment, anyone occupying the proper icon chamber (a reclining glass tube, designed to accommodate a single human body) can mentally direct the icon the chamber is connected to, just as if it were his own body. It is a form of super-tech possession, through which the agents operate their icons like three-dimensional, stringless puppets.
Agents are supervised and aided by "monitors". Computer operators, researchers, librarians and scientists all hunt down whatever knowledge a given agent will require in the course of his duties, but it is the monitors - men and women who are in close contact with each agent in his or her chamber - who must coordinate this information, synthesize it and feed it to the agent in a way that does not distract him from whatever is at hand. The monitors are able to experience what the agent experiences from his icon, though they cannot control the icons directly.
Agents typically work week-long six-hour shifts, staggered to prevent the entire active staff from changing at once. While "personifying" an icon, each agent is expected to portray the icon accurately. Above all, the true power of the icons is their reliability. The public expects them to be consistently heroic and upstanding, and this obligation is impressed upon each new agent recruit. Agents who commonly manage the same icon will frequently meet to discuss the icon's nature, and rivalries about the "real" interpetation of an icon's purpose can become heated.
Agent characters will be active as icons about half the time, on average, in a given game. The other half of their time is spent on personal matters. Whether the public knows the nature of the Personified system is a matter for the GM to decide.
Running The Game: The GM must begin by creating the library of icons available to Personified. These are built as regular superhero characters, at whatever point values the GM sees fit to assign, with one exception: no mental facilities (INT, EGO, Skills, many Talents, Mental Powers) should have points put into them. Agents are designed as Heroes of some power level, and will not have powers of their own. They will be highly-trained, similar to a high-ranking CIA agent, Marine, or Special Forces character (and many agents will actually have such backgrounds). Icons follow "superheroic" game conventions; the agents themselves follow "heroic" conventions (such as not paying points for equipment).
Many agents will have particular "favorite" icons they enjoy portraying, and they will take every opportunity to do so. The GM should coordinate with his players and accept their suggestions as to what sort of icons Personified will have. The GM may assign Powers as he sees fit to the icons, based on his judgement of Personified's actual technological and scientific acumen.
When an agent personifies an icon, he uses his own INT and EGO Characteristics, and uses the icon's other Characteristics, Perks and Powers. He can use his own Skills, mental Talents and some of his Perks (as determined by the GM), and any physical Talents or Perks possessed by the icon. There is no point value for this; the Personified technology is essentially a plot device, and should not be statted out.
In combat, an icon may be Stunned, Knocked Out, and so forth, as usual. If an icon loses BODY, it must be healed in the usual fashion - one agent can go off shift and his replacement might inherit a badly-wounded icon, for example. Agents never lose BODY as a consequence of operating icons, nor are the agents themselves subjected to any special attacks (e.g. Drain) with a non-mental special effect. Running an icon is exhausting work; an agent who disengages from an icon chamber has STUN and END equal to his REC, and may recover normally. Damage to the agent himself while in the icon chamber (for example, due to sabotage) still applies to him; the icon effectively takes whatever STUN the agent does, and will be Stunned, Knocked Out, etc. if the agent is.
Healing icons depends on the GM's assumptions about the underlying technology. If they are cyborgs or androids in reality, they may not heal independently. If they are biological beings, they can be restored with Powers such as Healing, or by the usual methods of healing BODY damage. It is probably simplest to say that they take BODY and that Personified can restore them to full health if they are brought in for maintenance.
Against Mentalism, the agent is treated as though it was he who was present, rather than the icon. Mind Scan will fail against the icon, but locate the icon's body if directed to find the agent's mind. The agent has no special immunities to mental attacks such as EGO Attack. Telepathy will read the agent's mind. And so forth.
Things To Do: An agent encounters trouble because of a fellow agent's negligence, contempt, or corruption, and must work to clear the name of both himself and his icon. Elements of an agent's personal life interfere with his duties as an icon, and he must work to resolve his difficulties without resorting to the icon's powers (which would be a breach of acceptable conduct). Another agent or Personified employee has gone rogue, and is endangering the icons or their agents - can the party expose the traitor in time? A rival agency or nation develops its own Personified technology, and the agents must engage in both skullduggery and high-flash super-battles to overcome their new opponents, sometimes facing danger when they cannot count on having superpowers to save them.
Campaign Pros: the GM can easily set up situations where the PCs lack access to superpowers. The campaign is not necessarily a "flying fists" combat-heavy game nor exclusively a "subtle detection and intervention" game; it can be both, as interests dictate.
Campaign Cons: many players will be put off by not having their "own" powers; characters whose powers have direct consequences on their private lives are limited or eradicated.
Personified is a government-sponsored agency with legal enforcement powers. It coordinates closely with Federal, state and local authorities on all matters, lending its expertise whenever possible and borrowing likewise whenever necessary. It consists of a few dozen "agents" and at least a hundred men and women who occupy support positions or handle administrative tasks. Personified also maintains a "library" of beings, who are called "icons".
The icons are not real people in an intellectual or moral sense; they are living bodies without minds, designed and engineered by Personified science, tailored for super-powers and physical fitness. Each icon is connected to the specialized equipment at Personified headquarters; through this equipment, anyone occupying the proper icon chamber (a reclining glass tube, designed to accommodate a single human body) can mentally direct the icon the chamber is connected to, just as if it were his own body. It is a form of super-tech possession, through which the agents operate their icons like three-dimensional, stringless puppets.
Agents are supervised and aided by "monitors". Computer operators, researchers, librarians and scientists all hunt down whatever knowledge a given agent will require in the course of his duties, but it is the monitors - men and women who are in close contact with each agent in his or her chamber - who must coordinate this information, synthesize it and feed it to the agent in a way that does not distract him from whatever is at hand. The monitors are able to experience what the agent experiences from his icon, though they cannot control the icons directly.
Agents typically work week-long six-hour shifts, staggered to prevent the entire active staff from changing at once. While "personifying" an icon, each agent is expected to portray the icon accurately. Above all, the true power of the icons is their reliability. The public expects them to be consistently heroic and upstanding, and this obligation is impressed upon each new agent recruit. Agents who commonly manage the same icon will frequently meet to discuss the icon's nature, and rivalries about the "real" interpetation of an icon's purpose can become heated.
Agent characters will be active as icons about half the time, on average, in a given game. The other half of their time is spent on personal matters. Whether the public knows the nature of the Personified system is a matter for the GM to decide.
Running The Game: The GM must begin by creating the library of icons available to Personified. These are built as regular superhero characters, at whatever point values the GM sees fit to assign, with one exception: no mental facilities (INT, EGO, Skills, many Talents, Mental Powers) should have points put into them. Agents are designed as Heroes of some power level, and will not have powers of their own. They will be highly-trained, similar to a high-ranking CIA agent, Marine, or Special Forces character (and many agents will actually have such backgrounds). Icons follow "superheroic" game conventions; the agents themselves follow "heroic" conventions (such as not paying points for equipment).
Many agents will have particular "favorite" icons they enjoy portraying, and they will take every opportunity to do so. The GM should coordinate with his players and accept their suggestions as to what sort of icons Personified will have. The GM may assign Powers as he sees fit to the icons, based on his judgement of Personified's actual technological and scientific acumen.
When an agent personifies an icon, he uses his own INT and EGO Characteristics, and uses the icon's other Characteristics, Perks and Powers. He can use his own Skills, mental Talents and some of his Perks (as determined by the GM), and any physical Talents or Perks possessed by the icon. There is no point value for this; the Personified technology is essentially a plot device, and should not be statted out.
In combat, an icon may be Stunned, Knocked Out, and so forth, as usual. If an icon loses BODY, it must be healed in the usual fashion - one agent can go off shift and his replacement might inherit a badly-wounded icon, for example. Agents never lose BODY as a consequence of operating icons, nor are the agents themselves subjected to any special attacks (e.g. Drain) with a non-mental special effect. Running an icon is exhausting work; an agent who disengages from an icon chamber has STUN and END equal to his REC, and may recover normally. Damage to the agent himself while in the icon chamber (for example, due to sabotage) still applies to him; the icon effectively takes whatever STUN the agent does, and will be Stunned, Knocked Out, etc. if the agent is.
Healing icons depends on the GM's assumptions about the underlying technology. If they are cyborgs or androids in reality, they may not heal independently. If they are biological beings, they can be restored with Powers such as Healing, or by the usual methods of healing BODY damage. It is probably simplest to say that they take BODY and that Personified can restore them to full health if they are brought in for maintenance.
Against Mentalism, the agent is treated as though it was he who was present, rather than the icon. Mind Scan will fail against the icon, but locate the icon's body if directed to find the agent's mind. The agent has no special immunities to mental attacks such as EGO Attack. Telepathy will read the agent's mind. And so forth.
Things To Do: An agent encounters trouble because of a fellow agent's negligence, contempt, or corruption, and must work to clear the name of both himself and his icon. Elements of an agent's personal life interfere with his duties as an icon, and he must work to resolve his difficulties without resorting to the icon's powers (which would be a breach of acceptable conduct). Another agent or Personified employee has gone rogue, and is endangering the icons or their agents - can the party expose the traitor in time? A rival agency or nation develops its own Personified technology, and the agents must engage in both skullduggery and high-flash super-battles to overcome their new opponents, sometimes facing danger when they cannot count on having superpowers to save them.
Campaign Pros: the GM can easily set up situations where the PCs lack access to superpowers. The campaign is not necessarily a "flying fists" combat-heavy game nor exclusively a "subtle detection and intervention" game; it can be both, as interests dictate.
Campaign Cons: many players will be put off by not having their "own" powers; characters whose powers have direct consequences on their private lives are limited or eradicated.