Where do superpowers come from?

[Guest lucky]

Okay, I'm stuck and I need some help:

 

I'm working on an original supers campaign and I can't figure out where "super-powers" should come from in my world. In other words, why do superhumans exist? What mechanism creates superpowers? Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

A few caveats:

 

No gods, no magic.

I'm really not interested in having any supernatural elements in this campaign. I'm not going to have any divine/infernal origins, no anything to do with sorcery, mana, potential psychic energy, "ambient paranormal energy" or anything else along those lines.

 

No Golden Age.

I'm also not interested in paralleling the evolution of comic books by having some WWII-era "golden age" heroes appear, pass on the mantle to their "silver age" heirs, etcetera etcetera. Superpowers appear for the first time around the beginning of the 21st century (say, 2010-ish). Extremely rare and/or isolated superhumans may have existed throughout history, but they should be (at the risk of repeating myself) rare and isolated.

 

Stan Lee failed 9th-Grade Chemistry.

Don't get me wrong: I grew up on the X-Men and I loved each and every issue. HOWEVER... the idea that "background radiation" left over from nuclear tests somehow led to the proliferation of mutantkind never sat well with me.

 

So... suggestions?

[Hermit]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

Well, there's always the Wildcard virus route.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

Not leaving us a whole lot of wiggle-room, are ya?

 

Given your parameters, and the timing of the phenomenon, I'd say that a single identifiable incident which allowed the whole spectrum of superpowers to manifest would be your best bet.

 

I'm going to suggest the underlying concept behind the San Angelo setting: "The Flux." This was the result of an experiment in quantum manipulation which got out of control, creating an anomaly which distorts probability over the Earth, allowing for random events and changes to physical laws which would normally be highly improbable. The Flux "orbits" eccentrically through the Earth, and while it affects the world generally it sometimes moves closer to the surface, creating a more profound localized effect that may especially trigger unusual phenomena... such as the creation of superbeings.

 

Probability alteration can justify a wide range of effects: supertech, psionics, genetic mutations, even apparent "magic." And since quantum phenomena can move freely through time as well as space, the same Flux may have been responsible for any other "supers" remembered in myth and folklore.

 

Does that work for you?

[Jhamin]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

Hmm. A few options:

 

-In the Rising Stars comic, all the supers that exist were fetuses in-utero when a strange meteor burst above the town their parents lived in.

 

-In Static Shock, all the "Bang Babies" were created when a gang war spilled into a bio-chemical firm's warehouse. A tank of bio-waste got shot & the resulting explosion gave everyone within a few blocks powers.

 

-One of the many power origins in the Marvel Universe related to uber-advanced space aliens manipulating the genetics of earthlings. (Those aliens were pretty much gods, but the idea doesn't require it)

 

-In the Freedom Force video game a space ship was destroyed near earth and it's cargo of Energy-X cannisters fell everywhere. The people that found them recieved powers based on the surroundings they were in when they came across the cannister.

[Icel]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

With my excitement over purchasing the HERO corebook, I started thinking on a super hero character on the setting to place him.

My idea was that some 15-17 years ago (setting time, of course) a strange energy pulse stroke the Earth. Some people have died, most of them wasn't affected, but few children over the world where affected and over time (when they reach adulthood) they began to develope powers.

I, like most people in my setting, don't realy know from where that pulse came from. Is it important?

[Superskrull]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

I' date=' like most people in my setting, don't realy know from where that pulse came from. Is it important?[/quote']

 

Only if you need it to be. For example, one of your superhumans manages to create a device that can duplicate the energy pulse in a smaller area. Now he's got a superhuman creator. If this pulse was the work of some alien culture trying to uplift lesser races, the reoccuring pulse could serve to signal them that it's time to check out the humans. Alternately, this pulse destabilizes the local space-time fabric. Now your heroes have to track and stop him.

 

Basically, it's most important to you as a potential adventure seed. If you don't want to mess with it it could have simply been the result of some distant star barfing wierd energy as it supernovaed or collapsed. If you can make a fun story out of it, do it. If not, shrug and just enjoy the results of the inexplicable event.

[Kirby]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

A few caveats:

 

No gods, no magic.

...

 

No Golden Age.

...

 

Stan Lee failed 9th-Grade Chemistry.

...

 

So... suggestions?

I don't know if you intended to put it in or not, but you left out "aliens," so it could be that aliens are abducting humans and their experiments are causing the "metagene" to activate.

 

While I'd probably go with Lord Liaden's suggestion of "The Flux" from the San Angelo setting (a great book if you can find it), there's also the "Freedom Force" method of Energy-X.

 

And as an aside, and to put some thing(s) into perspective, no one really knew much about radiation until years after WW2 was over. Radiation can mutate you, just not in a super hero way. But society didn't really know what it could do back then and you had all these fears, some which launched into entertainment ideas (comics, Godzilla, giant ants, etc.).

 

I mean, I've seen footage of the Navy after testing nukes on surrendered Japanese war vessels where the crews were hosing off the hulls thinking that the radiation would go away once the ship cooled down, and there is/was Bikini Island. These seem to obvious to us, but our knowledge wasn't available back then.

[altamaros]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

No gods, no magic.

(...)

Superpowers appear for the first time around the beginning of the 21st century (say, 2010-ish). Extremely rare and/or isolated superhumans may have existed throughout history, but they should be (at the risk of repeating myself) rare and isolated.

Two main possibilities :

a) something purely accidental or natural

something deliberate

 

a) Usually it implies some event with worldly consequences (unless you want a very localized setting)

- Lord Liaden already came with the idea of reality warping pulses. Similarly the CU has its "mana waves".

 

- The "big thing crashes on Earth" already mentioned : a meteor (or at least something the characters call "the Flash") in "Rising Stars", a falling satellite in "Aberrant".

As you say that some superhumans may have existed throughout history; it might not be the solution.

 

- A virus like in Wildcards (i don't know this setting a lot, i fear)

 

- A chemical incident (Static Shock)

 

something deliberate.

- A alien race once manipulated humanity's DNA thousands of years ago. a evil corporation discovers the truth and decides to unlock the genetic blocks so humanity can develop superpowers. (Un)fortunately things went AWOL (virus spread in earth atmosphere, satellite randomly fires its activation rays...) and superpowers appear randomly within the population (freely inspired from Guyver).

- A government (but it implies to see superpowers only appear in a small area)

- Symbiotes : the superpowers actually come from some kind of microscopic living beings (prions for example) who recently crashed on earth. When one of these prions found a host, it randomly mutates the poor sod into something else (it implies that paranormals are usually ugly ... and possibly contagious ...)

 

my 2 euros:

[OddHat]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

No Gods + No Magic + No Psionics + No Rubber Science = No Super Powers.

 

You could run a martial arts campaign with costumes and high-tech weapons, but that's about it.

 

Or, pick some rubber science that sounds convincing to you and go with it. Use the word "Quantum" a lot. That should work.

[fbdaury]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

Doggy style- those filthy heathens doing it in an unnatural manner have led to all manner of genetic anomalies over the years that just reached critical mass and started causing people to develop superhuman powers and/or deformities.

[Kirby]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

[Guest lucky]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

Not leaving us a whole lot of wiggle-room' date=' are ya? [/quote']

You see my problem.

 

Given your parameters' date=' and the timing of the phenomenon, I'd say that a single identifiable incident which allowed the whole spectrum of superpowers to manifest would be your best bet.[/quote']

Yes, I completely agree. Your suggestion of a floating "Flux" is totally workable for me, as is Hermit's "Wild Card Virus."

 

I may have been unclear in my original post: I'm not opposed to rubber science, I'm just not interested in using Cold War-era fears of radiation as a central metaphor in my game.

[David Blue]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

Skrullburgers.

[Blue]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

• Environmental Factors: Greenhouse effect, Chemical dumping, shifts in the poles, have caused changes in the gene pool.
  
• Genetic manipulation: Friendly government projects, Foreign Governments who intended to sabotage the gene pool but caused an evolutionary change instead, Secret private scientific efforts.
  
• Alien Technology: Alien abductions and experimentations on humans, Hybriding (breading aliens into the human gene pool), Discovery of long lost alien tech from before mankind walked the Earth, Intentional bolstering of humans by one race of aliens so they can defend themselves against another race.
  
• Otherdiemnsional Energy: Fissures in the fabric of reality allow energy to seep into ours, altering people. Use of powers is basically tapping this resource.

 

Here's my favorite combo so far... Aliens have punched holes into our dimension while exploration. They've witnessed how this energy affects select humans. Alien abductions are generally when people are sucked into the other dimension to see how they tick. Those who can gain powes are given them by the aliens. Why? Because use of the powers draws energy through the fissures in realities, widening them, and creating a breech through which the aliens will someday come and conquer our reality.

 

So the very powers that help people also doom them.

[Redmenace]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

I've always thought from the specificity of powers that they must have been enginered. There just didn't seem any proper way for fire or Lasers to launch from someones otherwise normal hands.

 

Hows this? Something alien, maybe extraterrestrial or from another dimention whith different physics, comes to earth. There is an accident, maybe there saucer is shot down, rivals attack, whatever. The aliens are killed and there bodies are torn appart.

 

Alien medical technology has created medical nanites that just stay inactive in the body until injury or infection requres them to get on the job of repairing their host.

 

These nanites were released during the accident and have been absorbed into the human populace. Detecting the differences in human vs alien physionamy and mistaking them as damage in need of repair, they have gone about their job and are thus mistakenly rewriting our dna and bodies into human, alien hybrids. The aliens are perhaps psionic, telekinetic , what-have-you, and now so are we.

 

Perhaps the mentality of the aliens is also different and so the "powers" work oddly when used by human minds. As an example, Telekinesis is an alien power, some humans can't do it at range, they just lift things with their muscles and the TK kicks in making it look like they are super strong rather than psychokinetic.

[Foxiekins]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

What about the Plateau Model of Evolution...?

 

I had a background going where these happened throughout history, it's just that when Intelligence came along, it threw a quirk into the mix... Ever since, you can have episodes where Superhumans come out of the woodwork as mankind goes through a jump... In my background, the *current* surge is only the second one... The first one was touched off when Cro-Magnon Man replaced Neanderthals, and the following wave of Supers led to most of our Mythology...

 

Mankind is set up to manifest powers eventually, it's just that these days we don't live long enough... But when we are going through a surge, the amount of time it takes drops dramatically, by many orders of magnitude, and we have spontaneous occurances...

 

Time is measured by the biological clock, in this case, so an occurance is statistically more likely to happen during a period of great biological change, which is why so many Supers manifest during puberty...

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

You see, when a character conception and a player love each other very much, they talk to the Game Master and write down all the wonderful things they want, and soon, a superhero is born!

[Markdoc]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

Another possibility, not so far mentioned is to assume that "metapowers" have always existed, but are extremely rare. Anyone with a single metapower gene might display no sign of it at all or have only very weak powers (this was the background for my occasional superhero game)

 

In the bad ol' days, the chances of two people with the metapower gene or genes meeting and having babies was extremely low - if the gene is "one in a million" then 100 years ago there would have been about 80 positives in the US. Their chances of meeting and having babies would be infinitesimal. Today there'd be nearly 300: statisically the chance of at least two meeting and getting together randomly is still pretty damn low - but it's nearly an order of magnitude higher than it was a century ago, even without taking other factors into account.

 

This is especially so since since people with odd powers would often have hidden them for fear of being branded a witch, and babies born that looked extremely odd would have often been drowned or exposed at birth.

 

However, with the rise in population, global travel, global media and more openness, unusual babies get to survive, and people with powers automatically get to know about other people with powers. It'd be natural enough that at the very least they'd get together socially - Batman hangs with Wonder Woman, not the guys from the office, after all - and in the real world, movie stars behave like this: some of them marry regular folks but most socialise with and reproduce with people from the same background. That *dramatically* increases your chances of getting new supers, and explains their sudden appearance in numbers, but allows you to retcon some old ones in the background when you need it.

 

It also prevents "Marvelisation" - where every block gets its own superhero. Powers will still be rare, so you don't have to alter the whole background - if we're talking at most, low hundreds of superheroes on a global plan - and most of them relatively recent arrivals - then the world would look pretty much like it does today.

 

It also allows you to have covert evil gene-screening and forced breeding programs to produce at the very least low-powered supers and doesn't require aliens lurking about in the background messing with folks (although you could have them as well if you want).

 

cheers, Mark

[Blue]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

You see' date=' when a character conception and a player love each other very much, they talk to the Game Master and write down all the wonderful things they want, and soon, a superhero is born![/quote']

See, now I thought about a "where do babies come from" joke for about 5 minutes and posted neither of them. Yours was much better. I'd rep ya but it won't let me.

[Guest lucky]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

And as an aside' date=' and to put some thing(s) into perspective, no one really knew much about radiation until years after WW2 was over.[/quote']

I know, and I'm not begrudging Lee his artistic license. I'd just prefer to make my own contemporary mistakes and misjudgments rather than repeat his.

[Battlestaff]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

See' date=' now I thought about a "where do babies come from" joke for about 5 minutes and posted neither of them. Yours was much better. I'd rep ya but it won't let me.[/quote']

I was thinking the same thing. Had to rep him for the joke.

[Wanderer]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

I find the Aberrant solution most satisfying: metahumans are the ones with the genetic potential to alter reality on the quantum level. Their consciousness is able to directly and drastically re-arrange the local pattern of matter and energy. The power takes the form of comic-book superpowers because of cultural influence. In other ages, it took the shape of magic, martial arts training, or god(s)-given powers, as it still does for some metahumans today (and here's a way to justify magical-looking supers in the setting). As the ability to tap and master this potential in an individual super grows, his powers grows and break free from initial preconceptions, till it reaches godlike level, and ancient gods and master wizards of legend were in fact metahumans.

 

For most of history, metahumans were indeed rare (or maybe they were more numerous in previous ages, but their exploits were the basis for "lost civlization" myths, till something -super civl war, cosmic disaster, interdimensional war- culled their number).

 

Nowadays, however, something is causing the meta-gene to activate in umprecedented ways in the subjects that have the greatest genetic potential: radiation from a nearby star gone supernova, mutant strain of flu, some secret organization having cracked the secret of the gene and releasing (intentionally or accidentally) a biological or nanotech agent that activates it, some ancient super that decides to use his powers to activate the gene worldwide for his own reasons, aliens doing likewise, government secret ops learning how to activate the gene on purpose in selected individuals.

 

Many individuals do "erupt" into metahumanhood spontaneosly, either because of adolescence, or because of "accidents" involving life threat, severe emotional trauma, etc. Others do need purposeful experimentation, or agents causing change on a genetic level (radiation, biological or chemical).

[Arkham]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

An experiment in quantum strings went awry and altered the

base string alignment for the solar system. With the fundamental

principals of reality thus altered, those subjected to near-death

events and possessing a particularly primordial will to live

spontaneously discovered certain methods of controlling the newly

altered physics around them.

 

This way accidents sometimes cause superpowers which can be

related to the theme of the accident, based on the personality

of the individual, but still does not always cause superpowers

in those subjected to the events.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

The first Hero game I played in, supers were relatively rare, at first. Magic existed in this world, thereby making most of our powers the result of magics in our blood.

 

Then along came a supervillain, who aimed a beam at the sun to alter its radiation output and produce more supers. We don't know how, exactly, it did that, and I don't think the co-GMs did, either.

 

The second Hero game I played in, it was genetic mutation. It was simply another evolutionary step. The first "mutant" had appeared about 50 years earlier, and it was still relatively rare (and low-powered) by the time our characters came around.

 

Now, I'm playing in CU, so no explanations are necessary. ^ v ^

 

Though my current character's powers come from the gods. So that's no help to you.

[Blue]

Re: Where do superpowers come from?

 

Come to think of it, I'm playing a character who presumes she's a mutant (Nobody has othewise explained her powers to her), a super-soldier origin type, a cybernetic experiment, a highly trained normal with some genetic enhancement, and a magic/time-based hero. I guess I'm being diverse about it