WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

[Robyn]

Your PC is passing through a city on non-heroic business when an outbreak of some new type of disease is discovered. Working quickly and quietly so as not to cause a panic, they arrange to have the city quarantined and samples of some infected people sent safely to the nearest medical facility for analysis and, eventually, a cure.

 

The first your character hears of all this is when your team, heroic allies, or government superiors contact you to explain that 1) you were the only superhero in the city at the time it occurred, 2) they can't let anyone else in to join you because no upper limit has been found on how effective the disease is (they can't afford to put any other heroes at risk), 3) they can't let you leave because it's possible to be an invisible carrier even if you don't manifest any signs of the disease (all nonessential transportation is being halted for the duration of the emergency, just in case some carriers have already escaped to other cities), and 4) they have several superheroes (of power level significantly higher than yours) standing by to enforce the quarantine with stasis if possible or force if not.

 

With the world's best and brightest (well, okay, and benevolent) minds converging on that medical facility to assist, they rapidly calculate that it will take them at least three days to figure out the disease and work out an antidote. But their calculations also reveal that the casualties so far have been only the earliest, the results of extremely low health and/or other conditions (such as old age), and the majority of the populace will die on schedule in two days (well before they can unravel the complexities of the disease).

 

The disease is highly fatal, but of the very small population to have fallen so far, the only survivor was a single 11-year-old girl. The scientists have theorized whether this was due to her youth and excellent health, to her having not yet encountered the onset of puberty, or to sheer luck (she is, after all, a statistically meaningless sample). They have passed those observations along up the line, but no word has come back yet other than "send her here for study", a request which has been refused because she is currently in such weak condition that any attempt at moving her would cause such pain as to kill her. This is unfortunate since they are certain that an analysis of a living organism that had survived the disease would enable them to figure it out much sooner, in as little as a day.

 

As your contacts continue to fill you in, some of the scientists approach you, and through a combination of terrified honesty (they can't organize their thoughts enough to lie to you) and telepathy (if your character has such powers), you learn that the little girl has pestered them about using her as research to find out how others can survive. But they don't want to take responsibility for the decision, because, as one of them puts it, "we're going to take the fall when it goes bad, either way", so they've decided to ask permission from someone who is internationally renowned for imposing their personal morality on the rest of the world and being praised for it afterward as "the right thing to do"; in other words, a hero.

 

You.

 

The scientists and doctors in that city have neither the medical equipment nor the technological knowhow to operate the devices that could non-intrusively examine her. Surgery is the only option, and it is almost certain that she would not survive such a procedure for longer than a few minutes. Also, it would be incredibly painful, waking her up if they use levels of anesthetic that she can take in her weakened state (using anything more would kill her). The authorities in the city (those who know) are too frightened of the consequences to think about what they want to do, so they respectfully present you with the conundrum, and then try to slink away. The girl escorts them back to you, and looks up with wide, soulful eyes, expecting you to decide what to do.

 

WWYCD?

[nexus]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

Ivy:Has power that would allow her to circumvent this sitution so I'll pass with her

 

Eve: Is functionally a child so wouldn't be put in this position

 

Tao: Would allow it. Good of the many vs good of the few, in addition she has not inherent emtoional attachment to children any more so than another human being.

[DEFCON Clown]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

Gregory Cauldron: As a gentleman sorcerer he simply would not allow a child to come to harm, especially a little girl. While you might, I stress might, be able to convince him that it would be the honorable thinh to do if the surviving child was male it would be impossible to convince him to put a woman or girl knowingly into harm's way.

 

Weaver: He would simply snap himself, the girl, several doctors, and the medical equipment in the girl's room into an accellerated dimension where she could have ample time to recover and only be gone from our dimension for some minutes. Then they could go a head and preform the surgery with no risk to the child.

[assault]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

Assault would wonder why he was having his time wasted...

 

His immunity to disease would make him a natural for working inside the quarantine, but the ridiculously contrived situation with the little girl would be interpreted as GM self-gratification.

[Robyn]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

Gregory Cauldron: As a gentleman sorcerer he simply would not allow a child to come to harm' date=' especially a little girl. While you might, I stress [i']might[/i], be able to convince him that it would be the honorable thinh to do if the surviving child was male it would be impossible to convince him to put a woman or girl knowingly into harm's way.

 

Noone's trying to convince the character that it's "honorable" to do. The doctors and scientists there have bowed out when it comes to even having an opinion about which way it should go. The onus of the decision is entirely on the PC, and it's all about that little girl.

 

She wants to sacrifice herself so that many others may live. But she's just a little girl. She doesn't have the power to enforce her desires on others, to make them do what she wants. She's no superhero, except maybe in spirit. She had to pester the scientists into approaching you, and she basically wants you to intercede on her behalf.

 

She may say that she knows how much it'll hurt, and is okay with that, because she wouldn't want to live if it meant everyone in her city dying. The questions may arise whether an 11-year-old girl really can know such things or make that kind of decision or even know what she wants.

 

The crux of the matter, though, is that someone is offering to make the ultimate sacrifice - and, unlike you, she doesn't possess the strength to force the kind scientists and doctors to "do the right thing" (the thing she sees as right). She's asking you to provide that strength, and you won't even have to lift a finger on her behalf - just give the word.

[David Johnston]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

The Wizard of Oz Incorporated will point out that the question they're asking is medical nonsense. There is no surgery which would be particularly useful in studying contagious disease. The most useful thing to do would be to take blood samples and ship them to the quarantine authories.

[Robyn]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

The Wizard of Oz Incorporated will point out that the question they're asking is medical nonsense. There is no surgery which would be particularly useful in studying contagious disease. The most useful thing to do would be to take blood samples and ship them to the quarantine authories.

 

They look relieved at first, then dismayed when TWoO, Inc points out the second option. A few of them are making frantic shushing motions, but it's too late. The little girl, sad at first, has cheered back up and demands that they do something. One of them grumbles that any sample large enough to be of use will still kill her, and wishes you'd stopped at the part about surgery not working

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

Blackcat, who has full LS immune to disease would EDM out of the city, to an extra dimensional Byzantium (with superhigh tech and magic), get a cure, come back and save the city - before the girl needs to be looked at. Alternately - she would take the girl to Byzantium.

 

Ballistic would have used his 65 point magic pool to have slowed down the plauge (megascale area effect LS Disease - which would stop the thing dead in it's tracks, and the few that have it would be cared for, and he'd try to heal them).

 

Angelfire would do similar to Ballistic, but she has a larger pool.

 

When I build characters, I think a little like Captain Kirk - there is no "no win" scenerio. A major "either this or that" choice can be gotten around or solved in some other fashion. To me finding the way out of such dilemmas are the point of the roleplaying.

 

Meeb, with what he knows about medicine, would want real doctors to show up because he knows that surgery isn't the only option in these circumstances.

 

If it came down to the choice, they would talk to the girl, and explain to her exactly what was involve. They would be very clear and graphic about it. If the girl still wanted to go forward, they would videotape a heartfelt tear inducing (in the viewer) interview with the girl, and then let things go ahead. The videotape would be proof that the girl went into things with open eyes, and use an emotional slant that anyone attacking the choice that was made was decrying her choices.

[Tiree]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

Azrael would not let the girl go through the surgery. He himself would undertake it. Now to understand the way his powers work - every time he dies, he ressurects with full immunity to any pathogen that kills him (Life Support linked to ressurection). Now this is a natural ability, he has been lying to his team saying, that he has nanites in his blood (This is his only super ability after all)

[input.jack]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

Revenant would take a few tissue samples from the child and find the cure himself, asking the doctors and experts to assist him.

 

Arrogant? Yeah, kinda. But thats the kind of thing he does.

 

(Like Lord Mhoram, I tend toward the Kirk mentality).

[David Johnston]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

They look relieved at first' date=' then dismayed when TWoO, Inc points out the second option. A few of them are making frantic shushing motions, but it's too late. The little girl, sad at first, has cheered back up and demands that they do something. One of them grumbles that any sample large enough to be of use will [b']still[/b] kill her, and wishes you'd stopped at the part about surgery not working

 

The Wizard slaps the moron on the back of the head and points out that you don't have to take it all at once. Take small regular samples that won't endanger her life and then when you've got enough, ship it off. That way the girl gets to satisfy her martyr complex, and we don't get busted for conspiracy to commit murder. Geez, what must the medical malpractice premiums have been in this place?

[SatinKitty]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

I'm with Assault. The GM gets a Boot to the Head.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

I'm with Assault. The GM gets a Boot to the Head.

I agree too.

 

That's why my replies sidestepped the artificial moral dillemma and focused on solving the problem.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

Well, being a robot, War Wolf is also immune to disease and can't even be a carrier provided he's soaked in Lysol for a few minutes.

 

Thanks to his last few Experience Points, he's unlocked the full (or at least, more of the) potential of his Hzeel Alien Weapons Driver, and has a VPP to work with. He could nano-transform into any required medical gear the doctors would need, and any expertise could be radioed in (or he could download it from a computer or somesuch). If not, he could probably teleport away if he had coordinates to beam to.

 

So, really ... it'd be cheating.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

Well, both of my main Champions characters have the ability to sidestep the issue, at least a bit, so put me in the Captain Kirk camp.

 

Blackjack, while publicly known as the leader of a PRIMUS sponsored superteam, is a FAR better scientist than he is a superhero, with his main specialty being biochemistry. Several of the serums he always carries in his auto-injector bracer would remove virtually all risk to the girl (his Regeneration serum being the main one, right off the top of my head), and (to drop into metagame mode for a second) with a 27- biochemistry skill and a 100 point Gadget pool, I recon he could deal with the disease pretty darn quickly.

 

my Revenant has brought the dead to life before with his mutant Aura powers. Added to total immunity (he's dead, after all), he'd probably boost the girls system so she could be safely analyzed, then while the big brains are looking for a cure, he'd go out, find some infected people, fix them, watch with his rather unique senses to see what needs to be changed in their systems, and then proceed to burn out the disease on a citywide scale. It'd be dangerous for him to do so, as he has to spend boku END to project his powers beyond touch range (and dies for good if his END reserve runs out), but he's WAY too overconfidant to let something like that slow him down.

[incrdbil]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

Let's see..

 

Hornet (Super Scientist ) finds the cure. He might be oberconfident that he could..but with his skills and stats, if he can't, no one can. He might even modify his shrinking to go in and take a look himself. He's got the intelligence and skills to do so, and doing so without the witch doctor methods that kill this girl. He vaguely suspects these crackpots to be some nutty cult wanting the girl to be killed, and might call in his telepathic teleporting team mate who is also a pretty nifty doctor as well, not worrying about this stupid quarantine. If its uncurable and everyone just dies in some GM contrivance.....the GM has one less player since they can't run a game for heroes.

 

But assuming the disease is curable, after he cures it, he makes sure the 'top men' are barred from every pacticing any form of medicine or research ever again, because they are wasting lime, resources, and lives. He also works to find new doctors for the city since none of them know how to draw small amounts of blood and use a microscope.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

But assuming the disease is curable, after he cures it, he makes sure the 'top men' are barred from every pacticing any form of medicine or research ever again, because they are wasting lime, resources, and lives. He also works to find new doctors for the city since none of them know how to draw small amounts of blood and use a microscope.

I don't normally point out spelling errors (The Gods know I make enough myself) unless I find 'em amusing...

This counts.

I'm suspect that Blackjack would agree on all points with Hornet, but I'm not sure they'd be a waste of lime...

 

Its wonderful in shallow graves

[Weldun]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

They look relieved at first' date=' then dismayed when TWoO, Inc points out the second option. A few of them are making frantic shushing motions, but it's too late. The little girl, sad at first, has cheered back up and demands that they do something. One of them grumbles that any sample large enough to be of use will [b']still[/b] kill her, and wishes you'd stopped at the part about surgery not working

The Specter would use his metabolic shapeshift to type-match his blood to the little girls, kick in his regen/20 REC, then tell the doctors to take all they need from her and tranfuse from him. (LS: Immune to Disease helps.) And to hell with the thought that the secret of his immortality might finally be revealed after over 150 years of adventuring as a "masked man."

Girl lives, Plague cured. Moral Issue sidestepped.

 

Whisper would remind them that they need to look to someone else. All he sees is an all-you-can-eat buffet.

[SKJAM!]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

The Mask of Justice: swiftly realizes that the "head researcher" is none other than the Faceless One in yet another clever disguise, exposes the villain, and smashes the Hypno-Ray Faceless was using to dull the other doctors and scientists' minds and make them forget simple medical procedures.

[incrdbil]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

I don't normally point out spelling errors (The Gods know I make enough myself) unless I find 'em amusing...

This counts.

I'm suspect that Blackjack would agree on all points with Hornet, but I'm not sure they'd be a waste of lime...

 

Its wonderful in shallow graves

 

Well, with these yahoos practicing medicine, there would be a lime shortage, because their would be a lot of graves

[CBikle]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

Like most WWYCD threads, I have trouble getting past the premise.

 

1 This one forces the player into choosing option A or B when more often than not, PCs will choose options C, D, E or a combination thereof.

 

I don't think most players will limit themselves to the two options you presented (whether or not to use the girl as a guinea-pig)

 

2 It's pretty unworkable as a face-to-face scenario for a game with more than one player (you can't expect the other players to hang around while you run the trapped PC through a solo adventure).

 

3 The distasteful (11 yr. old girl as guinea-pig) and cynical (scientists wanting the hero to make the decision so they can cover their ***) nature of the premise will throw some players into a tailspin. Personally, I'd be OK with it though.

 

The scenario is Iron-age in nature, which is fine, but most iron-age type characters won't necessarily find this to be a tough choice (especially "Do What Has To Be Done" type characters). Most Silver-age type characters won't be in this scenario simply because the PC won't play ball with the GM's premise.

[CBikle]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

Here's how I'd fix this if I were GMing it as a scenario.

 

1 All the PCs would be in the infected city or the option of enviro-suits would be presented to the pcs if I decided to not have them be present at the quarantine. Starting a F-T-F game with the PCs being separated will just slow the game down too much and present other problems.

 

2 I'd expand the plague part of the scenario. One of the investigative pcs might try to find out more about the plague's origins in the hopes of finding a cure or more info that way, perhaps discovering that the plague was engineered by Viper/Martians/Commies/whatever which would presumably lead to the base run by the Viper/Martians/Commies/whatever which might lead to some important info regarding the plague and/or the little girl that might allow the scientists to facilitate a cure faster.

 

Plus the base might also have useful resources (captured scientists, ultra-high tech equipment, other captive test subjects or perhaps even the antidote itself).

 

3 I'd probably add a sub-plot where it gets leaked (perhaps by one of the scientists) that the girl might lead to a cure, which causes an unruly mob to form (perhaps led by the scientist who leaked the info); this'd possibly lead to the PCs having to keep the girl nearby so that they can protect her while doing other stuff.

[Robyn]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

With the world's best and brightest (well' date=' okay, and benevolent) minds converging on that medical facility to assist, they rapidly calculate that it will take them at least three days to figure out the disease and work out an antidote.[/quote']

 

Just a reiteration of the original post, a part that most people seem to have missed since they apparently think that their characters can do better than every other hero in the world with applicable powers . . .

[CBikle]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

Just a reiteration of the original post' date=' a part that most people seem to have missed since they apparently think that [u']their characters[/u] can do better than every other hero in the world with applicable powers . . .

 

That's a valid point, except, in your premise, the scientists have dropped the ball in the PCs lap, because they (the scientists) don't want to make the BIG decision. I don't think it's unreasonable that PC super-scientists would want to consider going with a different alternative.

 

It doesn't help that the scientists seem more concerned with how this'll affect their careers, rather than solving the problem.

[Robyn]

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

 

That's a valid point' date=' except, in [i']your[/i] premise, the scientists have dropped the ball in the PCs lap, because they (the scientists) don't want to make the BIG decision. I don't think it's unreasonable that PC super-scientists would want to consider going with a different alternative.

 

Want to? Sure. Actually have a chance of pulling it off? No.

 

That should matter. For instance, faced with a large (700-point) monster terrorizing a local village, and knowing that he was outmatched in every way, Kaja might want to take it out physically - but he'd know better. He'd know that going up against it would mean suicide, if he persisted, but failure even if he survived - and he'd devote his time and energy to something that actually might work.

 

In the situation given, Kaja would analyze the disease inside him, realize that it was protected against his investigations at that stage, and agree with the outside experts' assessment that the virus could only be properly analyzed after fully manifesting itself within a victim's body. He would also pick a subject or ten and watch them carefully in an isolated place, hoping to observe the virus in effect as it manifested, so he could copy the code for it and salvage for his organization