Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

[tribe]

I've been bouncing around a variety of explanations for superpowers being a part of a new campaign, basically rehashing the common idea that heavier use of atomic energy in the 20th century caused genetic mutations.

 

What other explanations are there in the various campaigns?

[Taurus]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

i havent had a chance to address that yet since the group i run has yet to encounter other 'supers' yet. the heroes in my campaign were given their powers through genetic manipulation and then abandoned on a planet far away from earth so they're just encountering aliens and stugff. their first objective is to get back to earth, but since that's not for a long time in the campaign i havent really thought about it.

 

i might just use the hero universe explaination.

[Blue]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

I do not restrict the reasoning for mutations. It could be anything, from deliberate experimentation to accident. Radiation, evolution, etc. are all perfectly acceptable. If a player said, "My character's cells were altered by a magical spell" I'd accept that.

[MitchellS]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

From my history section:

 

THE CATALYST

No one is truly sure when super-humans first appeared in the world; it seems as though they have been a part of humanity forever. Throughout history there have always been a small number of Metas (those with extraordinary abilities) guiding, defending, and even hindering humanity’s progress during its slow walk through time. Earth’s history abounds with many of their stories, stories of Heracles and Beowulf for example, but unfortunately most of the stories have been lost to the ravages of time. To some cultures these Metas were gods; to others they were kings; to most they were just legends.

 

Historically Meta populations have always been low with never more than one-hundred living at one time. It seemed as though each generation of man had his own heroes and villains. That all changed*in 1908 when a meteorite struck Tunguska Siberia. The impact leveled nearly 1,000 miles of Siberian wilderness. That, in itself, was tragic, but the fallout from the airborne particles blown into the Earth’s atmosphere had a catalyst effect on the world’s populations in 1910 when the Tunguska particles became irradiated by some unknown material contained within the tail of Halley's comet as the earth passed through it.*A Meta explosion quickly ensued. From that point onward Metas were born at a rate of one-in-one million instead of the more common rate of one-in-one-hundred million.

[Hermit]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

Well, in the 5th Ed Champions Universe, magic influences and alters the laws of probablity that makes 'radiation accidents' and other methods of powergain possible. The magic waxes and wanes, and the late 1930s is when it came back.

 

In Wildcards,an alien virus geneticly alters humans (and their off spring) and grants the powers that way (IF you are lucky, it also killed a lot of people, and deformed some of the survivors)

 

Freedom Force has Energy X, an evil Alien's plan is foiled by a rebel alien, so instead of empowering the most evil men around only, random canisters land on the earth to be found by various people. The Energy X interacts with their personality and grants them powers that suit them.

[Alverant]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

How you answer the question affects what kind of heroes you can have. In 4th Ed, Obsidian was an alien prince. His background implied half the population had similar powers. That wouldn't really fly in 5th edition since it made Earth the center of the magical event which made superpowers possible. If you reverse the positions, it's like superpowers suddenly became possible without reason. (Then according to the future history of 5th edition, vanishing for no reason.) So you don't really have to have a reason because the real cause happened on another planet.

 

I was working on an idea that a scientist on the other side of the universe accidently created a second big bang with a second set of physical laws which overlapped our own. This expansion wave encompassed the universe in a few centuries (there was a new maximum speed limit) and after it passed, superpowers became possible.

 

The only origin this forbids is the "ancient hero" unless there is something about the original physical laws allowed for it.

[Guzalot]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

In my campaign superbeings have been around for thousands of years (the Red Sea didn't part itself you know, Moses was a powerful mutant). As the human genome has evolved however superpowers have become more and more prevalant. By the late 19th century extraordinary humans were more common than ever and it seems that mankind had made an evolutionary leap. Costumed superheroes followed soon after and the Age Of Heroes was born.

[Onyxclaw]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

I usually play Star Hero, so most of the time superpowers are defined by race. Humans with mutations or abilities are usually the result of cross breeding with another species, or through genetic manipulation.

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

In my campaign world, superpowers are gained in the same way as seen in comics, e.g. by as many ways as random occurances can reasonably lead to weird physical change (alien by birth, radiation accident, mutation, etc...)

 

Now, the source of superpowers is simple super-physics, that is, physics in my campaign world in general works the same as in our world except there are "extra" qualities, extra forms of radiation, extra sources of energy, extra subatomic particles (that lead to paralel periodic tables filled with wonder-elements), etc...

 

All of this exists as part of mundane reality (albeit fantastic mundane reality), outside of this is Magic, magic is not based on the physics of the universe (Multiverse actually) but on the metaphysics of the universe. Where as Barricade-ium blocks all super-telepathy, someone who can cast a Telepathy spell can read someone's thoughts who is wearing a Barricade-ium helmet. But that same person who's mind would be an open book to a super-telepath is completely inscrutable to the Psy-mage when they wear a pendant in the shape of a lock that has been rolled in rust under the new moon, because of the metaphysics of the enchantment.

 

TB

[zornwil]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

Why, that'd be telling!

 

The origin of supers is tied up in the grand story arc of the campaign, I'll just say that.

[Hermit]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

You don't know?

Well, when a Quantum flux and mystical energies love each other VERY much

 

 

Well, right now I am using the official 5th ed CU with a few changes so ... that's close anyways.

[Kyle A.]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

In my campaigns its classic comic book reasoning. You're a 1,200 year old wizard, and you built a powered armor suit, and you're a mutant, fine you all co-exsist equally. I refuse to rule out almost any source for superpowers, except ones that rule out other people's sources.

[Saxondog]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

I have clouds of small meterorites drifting through space. These meteorites are acompanied by a radioactive cloud of unknown type. Everytime a planet passes through one of these clouds, it is bombarded with these meteorites.

 

The distribution is not uniform and parts of the planet get hit by a dense cloud while other parts see few hits. There are scattered hits years before the main event and hits long after but most of the impacts are over a short period of time. There is fire and destruction and then there are strange results.

 

Earth intersected with one of these clouds 4000 years ago and Gilgimesh was born. Around 3200 years ago the Celestial Court influenced China. 2500 years ago and Heracles and Zeus walked the earth. 1800 years ago and Thor fought with giants and Merlin walked the English isles. 800 years ago the jungles of

South America saw flying serpants.

 

This time the primay impact area was the eastern half of the US, the northern half of south-America the very west parts of Europe and north-west Africa. Thousands were killed in the blasts but many survived. From those survivors, the powerful were born.

 

 

I also like the situation in Godlike were people developed powers through sheer will. They can alter reality because they think they can.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

In our world they've always been there... prominence of Superheroes on the other hand came about with genetic manipulation circ WW2 and an increased population lending itself to a higher number of paranormals based simple probability.

 

We've already determined that the Gods Of Old (pre christian pantheons) were mostly paranormals, some figured out how to channel worship into power and thus "Gods" were born. It's a messy situation really.

[McCoy]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

Never actually tried this background, but thought about it.

 

There have always been a few metahumans, those who have reached their full potential, the gods and heroes of myth and legend.

 

On Feburary 29, 1920, the light of a distant exploding star reached Earth. Along with the light came an artifact, a small spacecraft that had been traveling at the speed of light since shortly before its planet of origin exploded. On board was the last survivor of his species, an infant born hours before the planet exploded, who had not aged during the trip due the relavistic effect. However, the "spacewarp engine" on the small craft had caused a "slipstream" effect, drawing tons of matter from the exploded planet behind it into the Sol system. The craft landed on Earth. Much of the exteresterial material did too.

 

Many of these metorites yielded a glowing green metal with a number of mysterious peoperties. Dubbed "Crypto-ite" by an early researcher, this became corrupted to kryptonite. Soon every research lab in the world had a chunk of the stuff. During this period advances were made not only in the physical sciences, but metaphysics as well.

 

In 1939 rumors started of a powerful man in a circus acrobat's costume that styled himself a crusader for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. He served as an inspiration for many others to follow. The age of the superhero had begun.

 

The War, double ewe double ewe two, The Big One, spawned a number of costumed metahumans on both sides. It was a Golden Age for costumed heros. Then it was discovered that kryptonite, among its other properties, could be used as a trigger in nuclear bombs. This discovery led to the end of the war (and to the distribution of microscopic kryptonite particles over much of the planet).

 

On July 4, 1946, the United State's government somehow aquired the spaceship that had landed in 1920. While examining it and attempting to reverse-engineer the technology, a superluminal beacon was activated. Exteresterials from a number of different civilizations "dropped in" after that.

 

The next major discovery was that kryptonite could be used to make super efficent batteries. This, along with the alien tech, led to the development of personal powered armor.

 

In the 1960's some metahumans begain to manifest with no know connection to kryptonite, possibly as a result of the fallout from the nuclear bomb testing. Additionally, about half of the children of the original humans begain to exibit powers (seems to be about a 50/50 chance, irreguardless of whether one or both parents were metahuman).

 

So the campagine world would have analogs of the DC characters in the 40's, the marvel characters in the 60's, possibly selected independents in the 80's, and now the PC's are part of a fourth generation of metahumans.

[Vorsch]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

How you answer the question affects what kind of heroes you can have. In 4th Ed, Obsidian was an alien prince. His background implied half the population had similar powers. That wouldn't really fly in 5th edition since it made Earth the center of the magical event which made superpowers possible. If you reverse the positions, it's like superpowers suddenly became possible without reason. (Then according to the future history of 5th edition, vanishing for no reason.) So you don't really have to have a reason because the real cause happened on another planet.

 

I was working on an idea that a scientist on the other side of the universe accidently created a second big bang with a second set of physical laws which overlapped our own. This expansion wave encompassed the universe in a few centuries (there was a new maximum speed limit) and after it passed, superpowers became possible.

 

The only origin this forbids is the "ancient hero" unless there is something about the original physical laws allowed for it.

 

The number of Champions gamer's who accept this rationale is :

 

One

 

Steve Long

 

but a very important one, you will admit.

[yamamura]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

I once ran a campaign in which there was an evil Godling with his thirteen children (all bad to the bone and constantly plotting against their father and each other) who were sealed away for all eternity by a cabal of wizards in an age long since forgotten. Well the wizards didn't count on a mall being built on the exact spot of the entombed Godling and two very hapless workmen accidently opens seal and released the overlord and his children. Luckily for the rest of us, the release of this Godling also released a host of spirit that when they came in contact with any living creature awakened it to its spiritual possibility. This caused transformation in all that they touched (think Wild Cards here) and a wide range of powers from very weak to very powerful (Wild Cards again). Idea for the campaign, is that the character deal with their changes and then slowly helps restore order from the Spirit Storm. But after a time of fighting crime and being your normal heroes, they slowly began to see that there is a hand behind the scene trying to subvert the world to his view.

 

Ps. If I ran this campaign using FRed, I would make the character low powered.

[assault]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

I don't bother with a unified explanation for superpowers in my campaign world. There aren't more than a couple of hundred supers at best and each super is a fluke and a statistical outlier. On the other hand, I am partial to alien and Hidden Land type origins. It's probable that most supers in my world are of that type, along with the various varieties of super competent normals.

 

To put it simply, my world is more early JLA than X-Men.

 

I have toyed with other setups. Mainly, though, I tend to focus on a small group of PCs, their opponents, allies, rivals and so on. I don't tend to pay much attention to NPCs that don't really play a role in the game.

[FTJoshua]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

We take the amalgamation approach. Most "fantasy" creatures really did exist and most do to some level today (elves, greek gods and heroes, etc.); aliens are out there and have been here; genetic experiements and tinkering; radiation accidents; magic; plain-old random mutation; cinema-quality heroic levels--you name it. We don't really have an all-encompasing rationale. This is just the world, there are some freaky things in it, and we deal. The majority of our PC's have been straigth-up mutants, but we do have one that's the result of experimentation on embryos and an alien. I will say though that the PC's, none of whom are magic-based, tend to give magic a wide berth and healthy respect. Give us technological agents and supermutants any day of the week over a magician. Or a mentalist. Hate those guys.

[zornwil]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

Yeah, in my prior campaign there was no common origin, I should add. Instead, I looked at as the acceleration of forces already present and manifest in earlier heroes. As industrialization and science progressed and with good old "background radiation" and a resurgence in magic, it all just continued to evolve, particularly rapidly from the early to late 20th century.

[Agent 13]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

The origin of superpowers in my old UNCoPS world went something like this:

 

As far as the majority of humankind knows, there were no superhumans on UNCoPS Earth until the end of the second decade of this century. (Those Who Truly Know, of course, know that save for a few practitioners of magic and the rare Wild Psionic, this is true.)

 

The first quarter century was marked by its great explorations and great discoveries; it was during this period that G.E. Challenger announced and proved the existence of the so-called Maple White Plateau, where an ancient civilization lived side by side with the last dinosaurs; that Richard Byrd formed his 'Hollow Earth' theories; and Donnally Beaumont announced his contact with members of the underwater Kikládhean civilization. Sadly, while Byrd would later be proven correct during the infamous Hohlwelt Chase of 1947, the Kikládheans would not reveal their existence to the world at large until 1973, four years after Beaumont's death.

 

In the year 1908, however, an aerial blast in Tunguska, Siberia flattened every tree within 20 miles and caused burns to people as far away as 40 miles. It would be over 40 years later before the world at large found the truth about this event - a member of the star-faring corps of world defenders known only as The Silver sacrificed himself and his ship to defeat a scouting party of the world-devouring Gurges race. This action undeniably bought enough time for Earth's technology to advance to a level sufficient to defeat the Gurges in the First War of the Worlds.

 

The first metahuman officially recognized by historians is the Russian variously referred to as the Worker's Champion, the Silver Cossack, or the Silver Revolutionary. Appearing in 1917, the Revolutionary was instrumental in the October Revolution until he turned on the Bolsheviks and attempted to prevent the 1918 executions of the Czar and his family. Able only to save the two youngest princesses, he dropped out of sight after smuggling the girls to Finland.

 

The great proliferation of the "two-fisted" heroes, such as Elliot Ness and Tyson Clay; and the "mystery men", like Professor Perdu and the first Midnight Man, began to appear in 1919, their ranks finally dwindling with the approach of World War II. They fought not only gangsters and rumrunners, but also the likes of the Snark and Madjack the Mystic, madmen and would-be world-conquerors.

 

However, the mystery men were to fight one great battle, and the world was finally to find out that we were not alone in the universe. On October 30, 1938, the Gurges returned in force, their capsules landing around the world. News of the landings interrupted a dramatization of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, broadcast by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater of the Air troupe. For 48 hours, Welles and a group of mystery men, led by the Midnight Man, used the power of the CBS broadcast to coordinate much of the freelance heroic resistance to the invasion. Researchers including Oswald Gerald Whizz and Tyson Clay searched for a weapon to use against the aliens and their war machines in makeshift labs inside the CBS studios. According to witnesses, the turning point came with the arrival of the long-missing Silver Revolutionary and an unnamed gentleman in Victorian garb. The two conferred quickly with those heroes present, then the Silver Revolutionary flew - flew - out into the night, quickly returning with the Paladin and the Wolfshead. Then all sequestered themselves inside the laboratories. What happened then is unknown - none of the participants of that night has broken the silence about what happened behind those closed doors. What is known, however, is that the Gurges began to die where they stood, self-destruct circuits blasting apart the tripods. In twelve hours, every war machine in a two hundred mile radius was scrap metal. By November 7, those aliens that had not fled the planet were dead. The aliens were dead, the scientists told the world, because of their lack of resistance to the diseases of our planet.

 

This, of course, wasn't quite true. In fact, the Paladin and the Wolfshead were not of this world, but rather refugees from another world where magic flourished. Using a mix of scientific theory and super-sorcery, the greatest heroic minds of the age identified and isolated the diseases native to the world of magic, and supercharged them to defend the Earth from the invaders.

 

The death of the Gurges, however, did not mean the death of the magical bacterium and virii released to defeat them. Charged, in both senses of the word, as they were to protect humanity, they began to infect humanity. The Circe Virus, as it was popularly called after its discovery in 1979, was found to be the cause of most superpowers, rewriting the genetic code after it being triggered by massive stress or life-threatening situations. The virus also came to be known as the Survivor Virus, or, more whimsically, the "Spider-Sense" bug.

 

And those parts of the world affected by the War of the Worlds began to rebuild. People returned to population centers to resume their lives. And then Adolph Hitler and his Third Reich proved that it did not require being inhuman to be possessed of an entirely alien inhumanity. The Second World War progressed much as it did on our world, with one exception; the rigors of military training, and the stresses of combat, gave birth to the first true metahumans, beginning with British hero Dunkirk Johnny in 1940, and quickly followed by the American (with token Brit) 'Victory Six'...

[transmetahuman]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

The origin of superpowers in my old UNCoPS world went something like this:

Neat! And, repped. I might steal bits of this someday.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

The origin of superpowers in my world answers the whole "Why is earth invaded by every alien fleet, and why does every cross dimentional or magical baddie come after Earth?" question as well.

 

Back at the dawn of time there was godwar - and the bad guys lost, and were imprissoned within a special asteroid/comet whathave you. It drifted through space for time unknow, but it hit a planet rather hard and came to rest inside this planet.* This was the nascent earth.

 

Now their prison had sapped them of much of thier powers, and the collisions left a small crack in the prison, but they still could not escape.** But some of thier power and essence did. So the intelligent life that developed did so in the form of minigods. The earliest Humans all had somehting like 40-100 pt cosmic pools - this was the "age of gods". Then one rather smart and devious person had the idea to become all powerful, and he made it so that anyone else born after he did his thing did not have that cosmic pool, and then started negating the powers of the others. This led to a war- and the twit lost, but no one could undo what he did - so humanity lost it's superpowers. Those that survived, to get away from this loss of powers ran to pocket dementions - who came out millenial later as the classic pantheons of gods (Greek, Egyption ect). However due to other problems they forgot much if not all of what happened.

Cut to now - the thing that the bad guy did, is coming undone and people start gaining powers. Some by stress, some born with it ect - but nobody in the world (aside from the sorceror surpreme) know why. So from a character perspective, there is no unified origin, but from an outside one there is.

 

Bascially if nothing had happened back at the dawn of humanity, every human would be walking around today with 150+ cosmic pools.

 

Aliens can have powers, and such - but aliens never have the "bolt of lighting struck and created a superhero" concept - it is either natural ability, chosen change magic tech ect.

 

And the power of the beings in the planet are why Earth keeps getting attacked - even if the attackers don't know why - they just know Earth is powerful/important.

 

 

edit - Forgot the footnote -

* there is one theory that the moon was formed when something really big hit the earth and a chunck was thrown out to become the moon. I got with that (hey it's supers) and the moon was formed when the prison thingy hit the Earth.

[TheRavenIs]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

In the distant past the Earth was the focus of many ET’s, Entities; mystic and pure mind. Each of them used the planet as a living lab, making changes to the dominate life forms then existing at the time, as each came to the planet. This was the reason that on Earth we have seen so many cycles of extinctions.

 

The continual alteration of life set up many latent abilities and over time creatures of myth and people with superior abilities appeared. (See the thread in Champions: Need help with a new campaign.) I have listed many of the heroes and some of the villains that have existed over time.

 

In 1995, a extra-dimensional being called The Traveler was in route to a world to watch a baseball game, he loved baseball, in an distant dimension a small group of super powered being used a bomb that had the unexpected effect of disrupting all extra-dimensional travel in the common multi-verse. As he suddenly found himself on an Earth that he had not planned on going to or the time he was aiming for. The sudden opening of a dimensional rift allowed incredible energies to floor the planet.

 

This energy awakened the latent powers in many people, the first six that will appear with real super powers were the ones closest to the point of the Travelers appearance. They will be the first in many years to have anything more than very minor powers.

[Dominique]

Re: Big Question: How did superpowers come about in your campaign?

 

Way back when, I we decided that it was some form of genetic tinkering by an ancient alien race. After years of pretty much nothing happening, they chocked it up as a failure and moved on to other parts of the galaxy.

 

Only to have the descndants of their original test groups to being exbiting various special abilities (it explains some of the more colorful myths throughout history).