Nevenall Posted February 11, 2004 Report Share Posted February 11, 2004 Only supervillians, and your characters were Normals who belonged to a high tech organization created to stop them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlestaff Posted February 11, 2004 Report Share Posted February 11, 2004 My character would walk around with a bunch of body-armor, and the biggest freakin' gun he could find. Oh, and he'd be able to detect escape routes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WhammeWhamme Posted February 11, 2004 Report Share Posted February 11, 2004 Special Unit Two, eh? Either: 1) The Supers are weak enough that all we need to be are stong willed police types. If so, cool. I want real world weapons; it GOOD to kill those bloody mentalists etc... 2)THe Supers are NOT weak, and we're fcuked, even if we are essentially a military division. At that point, the trick is to get them to fight each other... 3) The Supers are NOT weak... but us 'normals' are walking around in power armour, or have Energy Cannons and Psi-Screens or something. All of them work. The second is a little combat lite, but could be great fun. Oh, and WHY they're all evil: 1) Mutant Powers are caused by brain abnormalities (psychic?). Abnormalities that are, sadly, much the same as though found in the brains of pssychopaths... 2) They're drawing power from a tainted well. A few were 'good' long enough to provide us with our high tech toys... 3) Official policy was too repressive. Mutants are hated and feared, and all of them either get killed or become THE ENEMY. At this point, the world is in two armed camps... A 'good' Mutant could provide an interesting dilemma. Is it as fake? Is it real? What is going on...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allandrel Posted February 11, 2004 Report Share Posted February 11, 2004 From what I've seen of it, Mark Millar's new series "Wanted" has a concept like this. The world is pretty much run by supervillains, who managed to eliminate the last of the superheroes some time ago. The main character is informed that he is the unacknowledge son of the world's greatest supervillain, recently deceased, and has inherited his powers. He's all set up to be trained as a supervillain, whetehr he likes it or not. If the series goes the way I think it will, he'll probably start a lone crusade against the supervillains. Should be pretty interesting. Patrick J McGraw Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug McCrae Posted February 11, 2004 Report Share Posted February 11, 2004 It's a good idea though you could do agents vs supers (with the PCs as agents) in a normal superhero universe too. StormWatch: Team Achilles takes this route. Hey, do you think all this stuff focussing on normals was inspired by Marvels/Astro City? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bengal Posted February 11, 2004 Report Share Posted February 11, 2004 Hm. "What if" there were no superheroes? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vorsch Posted February 12, 2004 Report Share Posted February 12, 2004 It wouldnt be champions for starters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Jogger Posted February 12, 2004 Report Share Posted February 12, 2004 Imagine the fun... "Yeah, I was a supervillian. But now, I take heavy medications and wear this stupid unbreakable collar. Community Service, my butt." "No way, I'm not going first." **ZAP** "Ok, stop shocking me with the collar. I'll go first. Just because I have forcefield doesn't mean I deserve this, I'm PULSAR for crying out..." **ZAP** "Ok, ok. I deserve that one." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assault Posted February 12, 2004 Report Share Posted February 12, 2004 Originally posted by Battlestaff My character would walk around with a bunch of body-armor, and the biggest freakin' gun he could find. Oh, and he'd be able to detect escape routes. Your character would die. ... OK, my thoughts on the topic, starting from the beginning... The thread title is, of course, rather funny. My reaction was, of course, well, duh, it would be like the real world. But of course the intention was that villainous supers exist. This is a Super-Agents setting. This is good, and has a long Hero System history. Now, on the setting itself: the main factor is how numerous and powerful the villains are. In general, the normals would have to use stealth and trickery. That's why "a bunch of body-armor, and the biggest freakin' gun he could find" is a bad idea. It sets you up as a target. A better idea is to avoid fighting when the odds aren't in your favour, and to try and set your enemies against each other. If the enemy include lots and lots of nasty telepaths, you are probably in deep trouble, but otherwise you should be able to run an underground network well enough. That is, of course, unless the villains' goal is genocide, or they are using mass mind-control or something like that. Many villains are weak enough to be "fixed" with reasonable weapons, as long as you get to set the terms of the engagement. Others may need nukes! A few may require something special. (How do you deal with pre-cogs? Time for some very weird science!) You probably would want to have lots of scientists working overtime on making neat toys, as well as trying to understand the nature of superpowers, and preferably how to replicate or neutralise them. This might result in some of your agents wandering around in half-decent armour, or under the influence of Cyberline-style super-soldier serums. Some of your early serums might be quick burnout types, which kill the heroic volunteer! A few of your agents might approach "non-powered" superbeing status themselves. A couple of decent Batman types would help a lot. You would, of course, also be scouring the world for previously unknown superbeings. Just because the only known superhumans are villains doesn't mean that there aren't some others out there... And of course there are villains and villains. You might be able to ally with the saner ones against the crazies. I'm sure GRAB would be less than impressed by a world run by Dr Destroyer. You probably wouldn't want to ally with any of the nastier groups though - just concentrate on getting them fighting each other and hope that you can take whoever is left when the dust settles. Otherwise, _you're_ likely to be the ones taken out "when the dust settles". Anyway, this could be quite an interesting game in a fairly low-powered setting. The current CU is probably a bit too high-powered. Then again, the current CU's agents are pretty over the top too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthur Posted February 12, 2004 Report Share Posted February 12, 2004 Originally posted by assault You would, of course, also be scouring the world for previously unknown superbeings. Just because the only known superhumans are villains doesn't mean that there aren't some others out there... This part really sparked my imagination. What if there were some low-level (or not!) supers that just wanted to live in peace? They would have to be convinced to join the battle. "But you may be our last hope, Dr. Steele! The android body you transferred your mind into could easily be refitted for combat with your skills in robotics!" "No, I'm not a warrior. I'm just a scientist" "Couldn't you just add a few weapons systems? For your own defense?" "Hmmm. Why, yes, I could fit a combat laser in, just in case. I would, of course, design it fire right out of my optical sensors. Pointing an arm is so... unnecessary. And I could easily upgrade my dermal armor..." Etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assault Posted February 12, 2004 Report Share Posted February 12, 2004 I actually spent a bit of time designing characters for this world. If you use the concepts of "Trained Paranormal Operatives" and "Low Powered Metahumans" it makes a whole lot of sense. The latter means that you have a few "supers" with about 30 or 40 active points worth of superpowers. This shifts the balance a whole lot. Sergeant Fuzzy would definitely like having one of these people in his squad when he's taking down Armadillo. As for general character design, you can design some pretty fine characters with NCM and a hundred points of gear. It helps if you can use "super-steroids" to fix up your SPD. This way you can produce some fairly serious 250 point "normals". I'd play them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
starblaze Posted February 12, 2004 Report Share Posted February 12, 2004 I am presently involved in a Hero Central game called Vipers in ye duste. In this game Supers took over the world and reduced most of humanity back to the middle ages. This is because the Super Lords believe that technology will be thier downfall. We are playing normals on the run who just found an abandoned VIPER base. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sbarron Posted February 12, 2004 Report Share Posted February 12, 2004 Originally posted by assault As for general character design, you can design some pretty fine characters with NCM and a hundred points of gear. It helps if you can use "super-steroids" to fix up your SPD. This way you can produce some fairly serious 250 point "normals". I'd play it 75+75 and have equipment be free. I still think it would be a very cool game, though, either way. I enjoy having my characters up against very long odds. It makes success so sweet. Probably the same reason I like playing normals vs. vampires/demons/werewolves. Of course, things can get messy for the PCs sometimes. But the risks come with the job... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoneDaddy Posted February 12, 2004 Report Share Posted February 12, 2004 I ran a one shot Shadowrun where the players were playing cops out to kill/capture/subdue/foil a team of runners. It was tough. I used the stock runners from the main book (not too powerful) and it was really hard, but a lot of fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assault Posted February 12, 2004 Report Share Posted February 12, 2004 Originally posted by sbarron I'd play it 75+75 and have equipment be free. That's where my 250 point number came from. I was assuming 75+75 plus 100 point equipment allowance. The 100 points came from the old Super-Agents supplement, where UNTIL agents normally carried about 50 points, with a 100 point load when they were hunting supers. Of course, they could always just pop into the toolshed and equip themselves with everything from the lawnmower to the kitchen sink, but that gets pretty pointless pretty fast. In any case, I was using the 250 figure to compare the agents with the supers a little more directly than is possible with an unknown amount of gear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bengal Posted February 13, 2004 Report Share Posted February 13, 2004 You know, the Flaming Carrot used to enjoy a television show called the Dread Pirate Choakers. It was the story of a (presumably) villainous pirate who fought superheroes on the Spanish Main (whatever that is... I'm sure some wiseacre will tell me). Ol Bob Burden, what a wild guy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pegasus Posted February 13, 2004 Report Share Posted February 13, 2004 This sounds a bit like the alternate Earth in DC where the "Justice League" was evil (Ultraman, Power Ring, Owl Man, etc.) and the Earth's only superhero was Lex Luthor, scientist. It was destroyed in the Crisis, but brought back a couple years ago in a disappointing graphic novel. It definitely has potential for a campaign setting...as longh as super science is involved. So, what about magic? Are the good doctors Strange and Fate out of business in this world you propose? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redmenace Posted February 13, 2004 Report Share Posted February 13, 2004 1.) Supervillains take over 2.) Too many big fish for one pond, Doom doesn't share power as an example. 3.) A conflict, overt or covert erupts. 4.) Super villains are poor losers and either the Earth is destroyed, made barely habitable or exists in a post holocaust state and is being rebuilt to the whims of whichever badguy came out on top. At best it is like a global Doomstadt, clean and orderly but with little to no personal freedom, or at worse it's like Apocalypse, a world wide concentration camp. Just my 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted February 13, 2004 Report Share Posted February 13, 2004 This would be like most fantasy games at low levels, or a vampire hunter type game. All of these types of stories are based on regular people fighting frigheningly powerful creatures. Now your just calling them Super Villians instead of Werewolf or lich. Sounds like fun to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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