Monastery Outreach Projects

After another long hiatus, I return with some more notes from the neverending development of the Powercycles universe:

The Genetics of Super Powers
If I assume that there is some "genetic marker" that makes super powers possible, I need to also create an "activator" or "catalyst" that causes the potential abilities to express themselves.

Actually, to keep it complicated enough that it has not yet been discovered, it needs to be a ...

First disclaimer: These are my opinions. This is my blog. I am not looking for an argument here -- had I wanted an argument, I would have posted this in the forum. Please do not post a reply here telling me why you think I am wrong -- I am not interested. If you want to try to start an argument, your best bet is to refer to this blog post in a forum post of your own, but don't expect me to join in.

Second disclaimer: I am not in the publishing business. I have not performed any cost/benefit ...

It has been a while since I posted anything, so I thought I would share some of the background information I have been working up for the Power Cycles universe.

This time, we see my views on how VIPER was affected by the loss of super powers, and what they did about it.

VIPER
Aliases

None

Leader

The Supreme Serpent?

Founded

Not generally known.

Basic Goal

Crime. Organized by VIPER. Profiting VIPER. Empowering VIPER.

...

It seems that Brandon Sanderson (the author of Mistborn: The Final Empire) and Crafty Games (creators of the Spycraft RPG) have gotten together to make a RPG set in the Mistborn universe (author's blog post here, and Crafty press release here).

I will be interested in how they implement the magic system. Spycraft started as a D20 game, and then grew beyond it. But it still feels a lot more like D20 than a separate game system. On the one hand, there is very little in the Mistborn ...

There are two fantasy novels that I have read recently that have interesting magic systems. Here is where I comment on them and comment offhandedly about how I might build them in HERO.

The Mistborn Trilogy

First, Mistborn: The Final Empire, by Brandon Sanderson. The magic is called Allomancy, because it uses (or "burns") amounts of ingested metals and/or alloys to power the magic. There are two kinds of Allomancers in this world -- Mistings and Mistborn -- ...