Superhumans pulling an Authority

[OddHat]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

More importantly' date=' could they actually succeed in making the world a better place following their philosophies, without having their folly revealed by copious acts of megaviolence.[/quote']

 

On average, yes. Most of the world's population lives in poverty under the boots of thugs. For them, material wealth and comfort and the end of the worst of the thugs would only be an improvement. It's just the worlds industrialized democracies that would really lose out under fairly competent benevolent dictators.

[nexus]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

More importantly' date=' could they actually succeed in making the world a better place following their philosophies, without having their folly revealed by copious acts of megaviolence.[/quote']

 

With the current writers? Yes.

[Great Beyond]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

So sorry about the necromancy, but I've been wandering the older threads just for some good reading. This sounds like an intriguing game - not anything I'd ever want to play, I likes my "Heroes don't kill and bad guys wear black cowboy hats" games - but did anything ever come of this? Did the game ever go anywhere, or did it just kind of die on the vine?

[Clonus]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

So sorry about the necromancy' date=' but I've been wandering the older threads just for some good reading. This sounds like an intriguing game - not anything I'd ever want to play, I likes my "Heroes don't kill and bad guys wear black cowboy hats" games - but did anything ever come of this? Did the game ever go anywhere, or did it just kind of die on the vine?[/quote']

 

I expect the original poster is long gone and hence not available to answer. But the time may be ripe for a cooler assessment of the question. It is certainly true that a group of, say, a dozen people who are so powerful that the United States, superheroes and all is to them as say, Canada is to the United States accomodations would have be made.

 

Of course, the United States is a nuclear-armed power with a large arsenal. It was something of a mystery to me why, knowing that Death Note's Kira was in Tokyo the United States did not try to use their nuclear arsenal either directly or as a deterrent. Maybe I missed that episode. One of the things I noted in the spectacularly good Days of Future Past MSH modules was that a nuclear-armed Europe was keeping itself free of the Sentinels for now using their deterrent, even though the Sentinels probably couldn't be entirely destroyed even by a full barrage. These "heroes" do have concern for collateral damage so even if the Americans are unable to reliably kill them with their full arsenal, the threat that they might try might give the Americans enough leverage to say, let them kill all the polluters, dictators and child molesters they like but only outside NATO boundaries, essentially writing off the Third World the way they out of necessity wrote off Eastern Europe when facing the Russians during the Cold War. That would still be much of the world, plenty to keep the Twelve occupied for a long time.

[nexus]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

Wanderer's still around. His last post was on July 8th.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

If you have a large enough group of very powerful superheroes, with a sufficiently broad scope of powers, even a nuclear barrage might not be a sufficient deterrent. Let's consider the heroes of the DC universe, for example. Superman. Green Lantern. Flash. Captain Marvel. Doctor Fate. Red Tornado. Captain Atom. Martian Manhunter. Firestorm. Zatanna. These are practically forces of nature in human form, with the ability to bend the laws of nature and the minds of humanity, and with preternatural sources of prescient information. Collectively they could provide a "missile shield" more effective than anything human technology can create.

[Drhoz]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

Doesn't even have to be a particularly powerful super to do some horrible, world wide 'justice' either. For example, for 50 points you can put together a global spell that would explosively castrate every rapist in the world. The ritual is a bit involved, and would probably work best cast from St Mark's Square at the Vatican, and has an unfortunate side effect that all the charcoal-grilled gonads appear in a heap over the caster in a pile I calculated to be ten stories high (not even counting all the dolphin bits and the fine drizzle of bean weevil and scorpion fly parts.... but it's doable.

[Clonus]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

Doesn't even have to be a particularly powerful super to do some horrible' date=' world wide 'justice' either. For example, for 50 points you can put together a global spell that would explosively castrate every rapist in the world. The ritual is a bit involved, and would probably work best cast from St Mark's Square at the Vatican, and has an unfortunate side effect that all the charcoal-grilled gonads appear in a heap over the caster in a pile I calculated to be [b']ten stories high[/b] (not even counting all the dolphin bits and the fine drizzle of bean weevil and scorpion fly parts.... but it's doable.

 

How would you go about identifying every rapist in the world? I would not allow an area effect power, "only affects rapists".

[Drhoz]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

How would you go about identifying every rapist in the world? I would not allow an area effect power' date=' "only affects rapists".[/quote']

 

Mystic technobabble. My GM theoretically allowed it, as long as I wrote Vitus's definition of 'rapist' which included statutory, and everybody who hired the services of a prostitute and then refused to pay after the contract was concluded. But there was no way in hell the other party members would let Vitus cast the spell, so the points were left unspent and his notes passed on to VIPER.

 

In case you hadn't realised, Vitus is the kind of character who would cheer the Authority on.

[Clonus]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

Mystic technobabble.

 

Yeah...that's not what I'd allow. I figure you actually need to spend the points for the effect, which in this case would mean Selective, and a global Detect (Rapist) at a high enough level to find them all.

[nexus]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

Mystic technobabble. My GM theoretically allowed it, as long as I wrote Vitus's definition of 'rapist' which included statutory, and everybody who hired the services of a prostitute and then refused to pay after the contract was concluded. But there was no way in hell the other party members would let Vitus cast the spell, so the points were left unspent and his notes passed on to VIPER.

 

In case you hadn't realized, Vitus is the kind of character who would cheer the Authority on.

 

Would the spell only effect male rapists? Does it affect men who rape men? Statutory in what instance or does it vary by jurisdiction or relatively age? For example, the hypothetical 18 yr old that has consensual sex with his 17 yr old girlfriend (or vice versa) is legally a rapist. Those that "force" sex on animals? And I assume from your post that it would catch "rapists" in animal kingdom as well?

 

Speaking as a GM I wouldn't have allowed "Only effects Rapists" Mega Effect Area either but I'm am curious about the mechanics behind it

[Drhoz]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

Whether it affected males or not was going to be up to the GMs interpretation of my write-up. Being 100% heterosexual, homosexual rape never would have occured to him.

 

And Vitus was going to be working from the Samurian definition of 'legal age' which handily is easier to justify as a magical marker - menarche.

 

re: animals - Vitus's assumptions included being sapient enough to consent, but the GM was hinting strongly that I'ld be causing the extinction of a number of notorious species - as a biologist, I'ld disagree - not all males even of the infamously pushy Indian Ocean Bottlenose are rapists, or at least not yet.

[nexus]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

Definitely an interesting effect. Thanks

[Maelstrom]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

I became interested in this thread just because so many contributors to it eventually got banned.

 

As to the original idea, it makes a better story than a game, IMHO. His characters would, as was pointed out, wind up setting more policy than kicking a$$. Why not just play Diplomacy or something similar?

 

I prefer a$$-kicking games. More cathartic.

[Lucius]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

They're going to have to prove to me that they are morally superior, innately more wise beings before I will peacefully or eagerly submit to their rule.

.

 

Out of curiosity, how does one prove that?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Contemplating a palindromedocracy

[nexus]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

Out of curiosity, how does one prove that?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

That's the problem now isn't it? But because they say so and happen to be able ot shoot lightning out of their butts isn't good enough. To really mangle a quote "Extreme demands call for extreme proof"

[Clonus]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

I became interested in this thread just because so many contributors to it eventually got banned.

 

As to the original idea, it makes a better story than a game, IMHO. His characters would, as was pointed out, wind up setting more policy than kicking a$$. .

 

Not really true. People were plugging assumptions in based on the title but the original premise in the first post is just a super "hero" team who ignore the law and beat up or kill anyone anyone they want whether it's polluters or dictators.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

Isn't Judge Dredd basically about a bunch of amped-up guys who have taken over the city and impose their own version of law and order as self-appointed judge, jury and executioner?

 

Miracleman: the golden Age is kinda like an Authority scenario too, and in some ways I found it more insufferable. I can't have been the only reader who wanted to smother Miraclebaby. And I normally like kids.

[csyphrett]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

I think in Judge Dredd's case, judges are the law as well as the armed forces, public health, firefighters, building inspectors, and so on. I don't know if they started out as setting themselves up as that, but the huge cities they are based in sit in a nuclear wasteland.

CES

[Drhoz]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

Isn't Judge Dredd basically about a bunch of amped-up guys who have taken over the city and impose their own version of law and order as self-appointed judge, jury and executioner?

 

Given that the last president of the US in the Dredd universe was an incompetent and arrogant Texan who started an unwinable war against the rest of the world, the Judges had the full support of the citizens when they stepped in to arrest and impeach him.

 

They've had a referendum since - to go back to democracy or keep the Judge system. To everybody's surprise except Dredd's, they kept the Judges.

 

And the Judge's aren't enhanced humans - they're just trained from age 5. Or younger, in the case of clones like Dredd.

[Querysphinx]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

Reading back over the original posts, there seems to have been a whole lot of goal-post moving on the part of the thread starter. Every response not-in-complete-agreement to the original post was met with an "yes but" that moved the goal post out of reach of the original answer.

 

For what it's worth, the OP suggested a world in which god-like beings (might as well call the Q and Trelain) took over the Earth and instituted a might-makes-right policy. No Earthly power could dislodge them, but they constrain themselves to smashing "bad guys" by whatever your particular definition of "bad" is. The response the OP was apparently looking for is "gee wouldn't that be swell."

 

Unsurprisingly, nobody agreed with the aforementioned conclusion.

[David Blue]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

I can't have been the only reader who wanted to smother Miraclebaby.

You weren't.

[nexus]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

One of these days I have got to get around to reading that.

 

One question about this proposed game that I don't recall having been answered (I might have forgotten) was what was the "challenge" going to be? The characters are apparently so powerful they can crush any opposition be it "normal" or "metahuman" with little effort I gather and will dismiss most refusals, reason or rejection of their ideas as the "bleating of sheep" and madness. What was the conflict supposed to be?

[David Blue]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

I think the most likely scenario is that every government would be officially against them, and would steadily build hatred for them into the education systems, while those same governments not only tolerated them but courted them and schemed constantly to use their killing power for state ends without state responsibility. Almost everyone the heroes ever met would be an agent of one power or another. Being officially against the heroes would be part of the game of manipulating them into doing all the dirty work while denying responsibility for their actions.

 

Over time, there would be more and more hatred and terrorist plots directed at the heroes, and any loved ones they had, especially any loved ones that were genuine and unprotected by intelligence agencies. Again, nobody would take any responsibility for any of this.

 

I think one of the best reasons for heroes not to kill and not to impose solutions on states is that as soon as it is clear you are willing to do both those things, "everybody" will want you to start crossing names off their enemies lists and imposing their preferred diplomatic solutions at other people's expense, with you taking the risk, the blame and over time the hatred for doing their dirty work.

 

One obvious challenge for the heroes might be each other. After all, they would be living in a cauldron of plots heated by ever hotter fires of hatred. (Imagine four Jewish megabeings in an otherwise Palestinian world for the atmosphere.) People are always trying to manipulate you into killing people they hate, and every year they hate you more, either for things you did for their enemies (or things they imagine you did or will do at the behest of their enemies), or things that you did for them that they won't acknowledge, or just because they imbibed hatred of you with their mothers' milk. Stirring up deadly hatred within the team is a natural move.

[David Blue]

Re: Superhumans pulling an Authority

 

Oh, and I think that if the heroes playing "Authority" happened to look back soberly after say twenty years of doing what they do so well (with Authority-like body counts), and if unlike the Authority they had the self-discipline and detachment to do a good, tough review, if they asked themselves who they'd been killing, and which states, nations and ethnic and religious groups they had crippled and broken, I think they'd find that they'd wiped out the non-hypocrites. The flatterers and manipulators would have been doing land office business, while those who looked them in the eye, told them no, tried to make it stick, and disdained to launch sneaky plots at others would be out of business.