What if the M.U. was consistent?

[David Johnston]

Ironverse

 

Power sources:

 

Superpowers come from deliberately designed technology. Either you are

wearing a battlesuit, (which can range from actual suits of armour down

to just circuitry laden spandex-like body stockings) or you are some

kind of robot, android or cyborg. Human cyborgs are rare, since few see

the appeal of self-mutilation when you can get equal powers just by

donning a costume, but some victims of terrible accidents get themselves

rebuilt with combat capable prosthetics. There are no real magicians,

or superpower granting random mutations.

 

Society:

 

In Iron, corporations operate on fairly equal terms with even the most

powerful governments and both governments and corporations build both

"heros" who act as their public symbols and "villians" who can be used

to attack and rob each other with plausible deniability. The lines

between government and corporation tend to be vague, and the line between a

corporation and a criminal organisation is equally vague. Of course sometimes

the battlesuits really do get stolen or the androids rebel, but this

only adds to the deniability of the others. The public take what's

going on at face value rarely questioning the theory that lone geniuses

can build cutting edge weaponry in their garages.

 

In general technology is higher than that of reality, but the price

curve is high for the more advanced technology limiting its distribution.

Still, you'll see clumsy power loader suits in the warehouses, flying cars

driven by the ostentatiously rich in the air above the cities,

humanoid personal androids and other such anachronisms.

 

Characters:

 

The most powerful fighting force in the world is the Alliance,

a technically non-governmental organisation, but one which defends

the common interests of the United States and the collected contributing

corporations both at home and abroad. Members of the Alliance include:

 

Stark Industries: Iron Man. The original Iron Man armour was the

prototype for modern battlesuit technology and virtually everyone uses

a version of Stark's mind machine interface technology to control their

advanced weaponry these days. But he's still the best at using it and

his weaponry is constantly advancing and modifying.

 

Advanced Idea Mechanics: Hawkeye. While not nearly as powerful or

durable as the Iron Man battle armour, the Hawkeye armour has

superior targeting capabilities and the rockets it fires have a wide

variety of special purpose warheads letting it excel in flexibility.

 

Van Dyne Industries: The Wasp. Packs amazing power into a tiny

robotic packages operated by a human pilot via telepresence.

 

Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency: Captain America. Miraculous

surviving a landmine explosion that left him a paraplegic, Steve Rogers

was extensively rebuilt as a cyborg super-soldier and eventually

placed on "detached duty" with the Alliance as the representive of

the federal government.

 

Ultech: The Vision. A biocybernetic android notable for his ability

to "phase" through solid objects and his secret relationship with

Scarlet.

 

Department of Justice: Scarlet. Scarlet's costume contains ECM circuitry

allowing her to scramble electronic technology, a weapon

she once used as a member of the outlaw Rebel Brotherhood, a group which

violently opposed the corporate domination of society until she

discovered they were in reality just being used by a corporation

named Magnetodynamix to attack their rivals. Disillusioned,

she turned herself into the authorities and helped them shut down

the Brotherhood and in return was paroled into the custody of the

Alliance.

 

Unicorp: Goliath. As seems appropriate for the world's largest

corporation, they offer the world's largest and most powerful robot,

albeit neither the most advanced nor most effective member of the team.

 

Other individuals and groups in Iron include:

 

The Rogues: A team of runaway androids and robots who fight for

their freedom and the rights of other enslaved intelligent machines,

led by a computer named Cerebro.

 

Spider-Man: A vigilante hunted by Oscorp for stealing the

technology he developed in their labs, then absconded with once he

learned about the crimes his employers were committing in his city.

 

The Fantastic Four: Have no powers but make use of

costumes invented by Reed Richards. His own suit of armour is

equipped with telescoping tentacles.

 

 

And most of Iron Man's usual opponents.

[Blue]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

Cinsistancy? In a comic book world? What's the point?

[teh bunneh]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

Sounds pretty schway to me. I've always been a fan of re-visioning/re-imagining/cleaning up existing comic universes.

[David Johnston]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

X-Verse

 

Power Sources: Either you are a human mutant, or you use technology developed

as a result of mutants, (a mutant with invention powers, a precognitive

mutant bringing tech back from the future, or a discovery made by

studying a mutant's powers), or you are an alien, probably drawn here

by the presence of all those mutants.

 

Society:

 

Most baseline humans are a bit unnerved and untrusting of mutants with a substantial

minority responding to them with rabid paranoia. There's a _lot_ of

superpowered mutants, but most of them are less combat compable than a

baseline cop or soldier with a gun and try to remain "closeted" if they

can. Those who can't end tend to end up living in ghettoes to avoid

human harassment. There is something of a fad for baselines to enhance

themselves into cyborgs to "keep up" with the mutants, but most normals

regard the cyborgs with equal mistrust, and are actually more inclined

to trust mutants, provided the mutants are operating under human

leadership like that of Reed Richards or Captain America.

 

Characters:

 

The premier superteam in the United States is of course the X-Men,

who actually have as almost as many adherents as they do opponents

among the baselines and are largely unchanged. Running a close

second is Freedom Force which, fronted by powerless figurehead

"Captain America" has numbered the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver

and Beast among their members. Spider-Man is largely unchanged,

except that now it was his mother who was bit by a radioactive

spider and Aunt May always knew who Spider-Man. Juggernaut is quite

a bit less tough since he's now just a mutant.

 

The Fantastic Four are a group of mutants named Franklin, Susan,

Ben and Johnny adopted by baseline scientist Reed Richards as

babies in order that he could study their development, who now

assist him in his scientific investigations of alien activity on

Earth.

[David Johnston]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

Cinsistancy? In a comic book world? What's the point?

 

I got on this kick a few months ago when I heard the hundredth complaint or comment about how the portrayal of the world as seen in X-Men isn't consistent with what we see in non-X-books. As in, "People don't seem to be nearly so hostile toward mutants in the Avengers, and why are mutants supposed to be so much scarier to the public than members of the Fantastic Four who have the same kind of powers, physical freakishness, and will in fact

give birth to honest to murgatroyd mutants."

 

The reason of course, is that these books started out as separate "realities" and then were combined through crossovers and the Avengers. But it isn't just the X-Men who are odd men out. Doctor Strange, for example, used to do things that just didn't make sense if he really lived in the same universe as the Avengers. For example, erasing the memories of an audience of mundanes who saw one of his more pyrotechnic encounters to "protect their sanity". Iron Man in his own comic constantly runs into other people with gimmick costumes, and does not run into mutants or magicians as often as their general prevalence would suggest is likely and think silly things about not believing in magic. So, what if these little subrealities actually existed as alternate universes in their own right? I thought they might at least make interesting places to visit for D-Hoppers.

[Blue]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

I understand. I'm just being a wise@$$ as usual.

 

I think there are plenty of things that need shored up in Marvel & DC, but enough so that I wouldn't make the effort myself to run a game. Just better to do my own thing.

 

But that doesn't make it any less fun to take someone else's ideas and improve them.

[assault]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

I've played around a bit with the separate realities that were eventually merged into the DC universe. This works particularly well in the early Silver Age, prior to the establishment of the JLA. Superman and Batman crossed over occasionally in the 50s, but generally speaking they might as well have existed in different universes. Similarly for all the other characters.

 

The absence of team books in this period is a bit of a problem, though. You are kind of restricted to small informal teams of the "Batman, Robin, Batwoman and Bat-Girl" type. (Bat-Girl was actually post-JLA, but was firmly Batman-continuity only). The only major exception is the Legion of Superheroes, who are part of the Superboy/Superman continuity. They are, of course, a fine basis for a campaign in their own right.

 

Of course, calling the Superman or Batman continuities "consistent" is a problem in its own right! But you could minimise this by being firm as to what periods you are treating as canon. There were definite breakpoints at which the canon was revised. For example, Batwoman and Bat-Girl stopped appearing in Batman's continuity after 1964.

 

Doing this in the Marvel Universe would, if anything, be somewhat easier. First of all, there are more team books, and the FF and the X-Men are relatively tightly themed. You would just need to carefully excise the crossovers, which would of course be easier if you limit yourself to an early point in their continuity. The FF "universe", for example, looked a whole lot different in 1962 than it did in 2006.

 

Of course, even then there were elements which pointed to a bigger universe. The early presence of Namor suggested that Captain America, and at least some other Golden Age characters, had once existed. But it would have been at least notionally possible that Cap might have become associated with the FF in the absence of the Avengers...

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

Actually, I'd reboot the Marvel Universe into two separate continuities, Marvel X and Marvel M.

 

Marvel X would be the x-factor universe, where everything there was based around the x-factor gene complex. Almost all of the elements save magic would be reintroduced, but everything would be reintroduced and reoriented around the x-factor.

 

For example, the Eternals and the Deviants, the two original subspecies created alongside of humanity would not be indifferent to mutants. In fact they would be just as opposed to mutants if not more so than ordinary people. They see this species of humanity that will outevolve them and leave them in the dust. The Eternals, who manipulate humanity from behind the scenes Illuminati style (when you're that immortal and that powerful, playing games with humanity is just a way to pass the time), are really the ones pushing anti-mutant prejudice.

 

Aliens either want the human race wiped out or they want the x-factor for themselves and then they want to wipe the human race out. Or they'd like to find a way to make sure that humanity doesn't Ascend to whatever its evolving to before they do. This is a very science fictiony universe in theme and consequence.

 

Then there's Marvel M, which is where all superpowers come from magic, and all supertech is in effect technomancy. This does not mean that folks like Reed Richards and Tony Stark are unwitting using magic. Physics is the field of science which describes the fundamental forces of the universe. Magic therefore is just an extension of physics in the same way that the laws of physics were extended when nuclear forces were discovered.

 

That universe is a lot more classically superheroic as costumes and codenames carry mystic power and there are reasons that heroes and villains deliberately use a motif in all of their tools. Spiderman becomes one of the archetypical totem warriors of Marvel M. Captain America didn't have the Supersoldier Serum but was touched by the Spirit of America.

[Dynamo]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

Consistency in the Marvel Universe is prophecied as the 5th Sign of the Apocalypse. The 3rd Sign will be a sitting Pope playing a Kender Rogue in a game of DnD, so I'd imagine we've a while to wait.

[Haerandir]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

Hey, you never know what sorts of shenanigans they get up in the back rooms of the Vatican. However, I expect that any papal gaming tends towards LARPs. Those guys love to dress up.

[David Johnston]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

The Strangeverse:

 

Power sources: Magic, plain and simple. There is no technology in

advance of that of the real world. In fact the technology lags behind

the real world. How long has been since Doctor Strange had an issue?

However not all super-powered characters are actual sorcerers. Many

are "cursed" humans, vampires, people with supernatural ancestry

that gives them magic powers and the like.

 

Society: Normal society operates oblivious to the supernatural

hostilities going on under the surface. Anything that would reveal

the truth to the public at large is covered up after the fact by

mass amnesia spells, time reversals, reconstruction spells and other

such plot devices.

 

Characters: The Strangeverse does have costumed crimefighters like

Moon Knight, Nighthawk and Hellcat, not to mention people who change

into creatures to fight crime like Ghost Rider, and Jack Russell,

but all of them operate pretty much exclusively at night and none

of them are well known since the respectable media regards stories

about them as unbelievable tabloid fodder. Reed Richards, once a

respected physicist, ruined his reputation by attempting to investigate

the supernatural and now, haunted and protected by the

invisible ghost of his deceased fiance, leads two heavily armed assistants

against the unknown. They frequently find themselves up against creatures

summoned by the magic of the sorceror Doctor Doom. Johnny Storm

prefers to deal with them using a flame thrower, while Ben Grimm is

more the automatic weapons type.

 

Doctor Strange himself often has a house full of guests like Nighthawk,

Gargoyle, Valkyrie, Daimon Hellstrom, and Clea who in return for his

assistance in helping them with their problems often are often banded

together to deal with problems Strange is too busy to deal with and

occasionally rally to assist Strange himself. They

are the closest thing to a true superhero team this world has, although

another competitor are the banded together opponents of the

vampire Dracula.

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

Actually, the one consistancy I'd really like in the Marvel Universe above all else is consistancy of characters and a consistancy of aging in the Marvel Universe, with characters growing old normally and there being a normal amount of retirement, settling down and spawning in the Marvel Universe. And a certain consistancy of concept and theme.

 

By this point, Peter Parker has been retired for a very long time, his son, Ben Parker, is Spider-man and carrying on the family tradition. Over in the X-Men the original New Mutants are starting to drop off the team roster and retire and the generation after the original X-Men are starting to take their place. Captain America may well have retired by now and is the mentor of his successor. Ditto for Tony Stark.

 

Over in the Fantastic Four, the core concept has always been a family of explorers, with a strong emphasis on family. As such the Fantastic Four has always been more of an extended family than a superhero team. All the founding members settled down, though Ben probably adopted unwanted kids with strange appearances or power issues (or both) to give them a healthy home. Doom has had a number of offspring by a number of concubines, not all of them human and has a brooding and scheming family of his own.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

So, basically, Spider-Girl and the rest of MC-2.

[Haerandir]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

Well, sure, but presumably if they actually retired the characters that have been running continuously for the last 50 or 60 years, they might come up with some new ones and do some interesting things with them. That being the primary attraction of Mutant for Hire's plan, to counterbalance the loss of everybody's old favorites.

[David Johnston]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

The problem of course with retiring the old characters to get new characters, is that you don't need to retire old characters to get new characters. You just need to think up new characters.

[Haerandir]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

Certainly. However, the old characters still remain and take pride of place. That's what I meant about 'doing something interesting' with the new characters. It's not that new characters aren't introduced, or even that they're not interesting, well-developed characters. It's just that they are frequently overshadowed by Cap, IM, Thor, Spidey, the FF, et al. Meanwhile, those legacy characters are constantly being revamped, rebooted, retconned, killed & resurrected and otherwise bent, folded, spindled and mutilated, just to eke out a few more issues' worth of interest in them. And even then, these 'shocking twists', 'startling revelations' and 'bold new directions' start to get repetetive after a few decades. Whereas, Tony Stark turning 60 and retiring to become a mentor and supplier for younger heroes would actually constitute a real change in the character, and create some space for new characters to shine.

 

The simple fact is, that dozens of new characters are introduced to the MU every year, and the vast majority of them have a brief spurt of popularity before fading into the background or disappearing entirely, and are lucky if they even get that initial surge of interest. Perhaps some of those characters could have been the new Spiderman or Captain America, but odds are we'll never know. The days when Marvel could only publish 8 titles a month are thankfully long gone, but they still have to devote a huge chunk of their finite publishing resources to the same dozen or so titles that have been their top sellers since the '70s. And you know what? I can't be bothered to pick up an issue of Iron Man so I can read the latest variation on the eternal fugue of how he had to build his armor to keep his poor abused ticker tocking.

 

Which isn't to say that I don't love all the old Marvel characters... But really, there just aren't that many stories to tell about them. I wouldn't still be reading the Adventures of Frodo Baggins if it had been published in serial form continuously since 1940, either.

 

I'm just sayin', is all...

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

The days when Marvel could only publish 8 titles a month are thankfully long gone' date=' but they still have to devote a huge chunk of their finite publishing resources to the same dozen or so titles that [b']have been their top sellers since the '70s. [/b]

 

Emphasis added

 

If it's a top seller, no rational company is going to cancel it and replace it with an unknown quantity. The fact it is a top seller means that, regardless of whether you or I may want something brand-new instead, a lot of people do want that old, familiar book.

 

For Marvel to cancel Spiderman, FF, Avengers, etc., or DC to write off Superman and Batman, to publish brand-new series with no track record is about as likely as McDonalds introducing a new line of mutton dishes and getting rid of burgers to make room for them.

[Clonus]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

The Thorverse:

 

The big question with the Thorverse is what to be consistent with, the original premise, where humans could gain the power of gods by finding their discarded junk, or the later premise where the source of superpowers is divine (or demonic/giant whatever) ancestry.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

I'm a fan of holding closely to Marvel's own continuity, but with one major changing point: events happened approximately when they were seen in comics in the real world.

 

Reed and Sue Richards have retired from active duty in the Fantastic Four, becoming mentors; Franklin and Valeria have taken their place. Johnny Storm was recently killed in action, and Spider-Man invited to take his place (at least temporarily). The Thing, whose powers retarded his aging, is the last active founding member.

 

Speaking of Spider-Man, Peter Parker retired from that title in the 1990s, giving it over to his son Ben. Peter is now the editor in chief of the Daily Bugle. Ben's spider-powers aren't as powerful as his father's, so he relies more on gadgetry and training.

 

Like the Thing, the Hulk has a slower aging system; he started in his early forties, but even as Bruce Banner looks like a well-preserved sixty-year-old than the nonagenarian he actually is. Similarly, Doctor Strange's magic has kept him relatively youthful over the years.

 

Professor X actually died in the Messiah Complex event. By then, Cyclops had already taken over the daily operations of the school, and while he closed it down for a while he's now re-opened it with help from the others. The X-Men roster is roughly what it is now; the original and second-wave members are mainly instructors and commanders, with the younger members handling most of the field work.

 

After Tony Stark gave up on his alcohol abuse, he let James Rhodes take over as Iron Man full-time -- it wasn't just the booze that was slowing him down, but advancing age and advancing complications with his heart. As Rhodey starts showing his age, he's starting to look at retiring as well, and Tony's thinking of using what was learned in the "sentient armor" incident to make an android for Iron Man III.

 

I'm sure by now you get the general idea.

[novi]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

Emphasis added

 

If it's a top seller, no rational company is going to cancel it and replace it with an unknown quantity. The fact it is a top seller means that, regardless of whether you or I may want something brand-new instead, a lot of people do want that old, familiar book.

 

For Marvel to cancel Spiderman, FF, Avengers, etc., or DC to write off Superman and Batman, to publish brand-new series with no track record is about as likely as McDonalds introducing a new line of mutton dishes and getting rid of burgers to make room for them.

 

Along those lines, my take on things is to continue their long-running top sellers as they are now, and then bundle the rest of their stories into a weekly magazine a la Shonen Jump. I don't know how the economics would work out on one big magazine vs a bunch of single shot comic books; but the point there would be that it would hopefully boost circulation overall and get people to read stories they would otherwise skip. It would probably also boost experimentation since it would be much less risky than to publish an untested title on its own; it would also allow stories that don't fit properly in a normal comic book.

 

Also, if that works out, I'd launch a second weekly solely for non-canon stories. Stories that fit the characters, but don't really fit into the main continuity. Possibly add a framing device of he eXiles, but that's just because I'm partial to that team. This is assuming that we're trying to make the Marvel Universe more consistent; if you assume most of the continuity snarls and idiocy are due to writers who don't care about current continuity and/or want to write about their favorite characters instead of who's actually on the team, this book would give them an out. Instead of BS like She-Hulk becoming a bounty hunter instead of practicing law.

 

But that's just me.

[Lucius]

Re: What if the M.U. was consistent?

 

For some reason today I remembered something the Watcher said in the first Marvel Superheroes RPG.

 

"The very precepts of thought change with the cosmic wind."

 

Lucius Alexander

 

But I still have a palindromedary tagline.