Military Applications of Superhumans

[megaplayboy]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

Based on the training for SEALs, Green Berets and other special forces, I can't imagine that total training time from entry to deployment would be longer than 1-3 years, and for game purposes one might try to skip some of that. I don't see a practical benefit to treating "specials" like crap, though. Either they accept chain of command and stay in, or they don't and get drummed out. Otherwise, it seems more demotivational (and kinda unfun to RP) than anything else--"they hate us for our 'freedoms'? WHAT freedoms?"

[megaplayboy]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

I'd also add that any sort of "Multi Role Combat Superhuman" would be in high demand--whether a FISS type(flight/invulnerability/strength/speed(or blast or senses or all of the above), a full spectrum psychkinetic/esper, a "mage", mimic, power armor type, super-gadgeteer, etc. Even though specific abilities such as senses might be super-useful, having a one-man-army you could send into a situation requiring such precision would still be invaluable. Specialist Kent is still going to be an MVP.

[David Blue]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

Mark Milton can relieve you of most military necessities except wisdom. If, instead of telling him, "find out if there are weapons of mass destruction there, and if so destroy them" you tell him "smash the military forces of country X, in order that we may occupy it and remove its weapons of mass destruction", then a short while later you may be the owner of a traumatized, defenseless country, minus much of its draft-age male population, and you could be looking at a very unpleasant diplomatic situation, as well as a long term drain on your military forces, trying to bring order to this mess.

 

Ultimately, the only way for a Hyperion-class super to protect his country from the consequences of unwise "successful" wars is to stop taking orders. And in time, however much propaganda you feed him, he will think of that.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

I don't know that it's the only way. A major part of Western military training is that soldiers are instructed to disobey unlawful orders(i.e., if someone orders an act violative of the Geneva Convention or other laws of war, the soldier can simply cite the legal prohibition and refuse). Wiping out the draft age male population would fall into that category.

More likely, though, the mere threat or capability of doing so would force countries to seek alternative options: capitulation to the demands of such countries, acquisition of secure WMD capabilities, alignment with rival supers-possessing nations, or acquisition/development of their own such capabilities. Could the catastrophic potential(or actual) effects of a supers vs. supers war on a global scale lead to an international convention abolishing the employment of metahumans as military combatants? Anything's possible.

[Clonus]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

 

Example one: the military will certainly grab "Electrocution Lass" but that doesn't mean they have anything interesting for her to do. All that's going to happen is that she's going to get bored, bored, bored.

 

I doubt it. First of all, if she's a typical champions super then she'll have a DCV of...what. 8? 9? 10? That alone would make her a formidable special forces operative with proper training, particularly when added to the fact that her stamina will likely be way higher than non-super. Stamina is as you may know, the most important quality of special ops because they can't rely on vehicles to get where they are going when operating behind enemy lines. And she's got a totally invisible weapon when not being used which makes her perfect for undercover assassination jobs. So even if she's a one trick pony and they rarely are, sign her up with the OSS, or the CIA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Telepathy is one of those powers that are so good they can look better than they are. What do you do after you let your telepath wander around your insurgent war zone for a while, and he reports that you can't trust anybody?

 

You say "Tell us something we don't already know."

 

In our bitter experience, super-luck is the most useless power for anyone but Mr. or Miss Lucky. Two rules of thumb: don't stand next to Mr. Lucky in a firefight, and the mission after Mr. or Miss Lucky surprisingly leaves the team or otherwise becomes unavailable to go will be bloody.

 

Wouldn't the same be true of anyone who is bullet-proof?

 

 

The second most useless power (at least it doesn't hurt anyone else) is: precognition / future cannot be changed. "I've seen how this war ends. We lose. Nothing can stop it. I've also seen how this conversation ends. You're going to keep fighting anyway. But it doesn't matter to me. I know there's a bullet with my name on it, and inside a week I'm gonna be gone."

 

Actually knowing the war is going to be lost does have it's uses. It means you can concentrate on what you will be doing after the war. Really the wiggle room with infallible precognitives is in what they don't see. They can't see everything. If they could the negative feedback would make it impossible for them to be infallible. So the things they see are going to be the things that the characters knowing it won't prevent. Knowing that there's going to be an unpreventable earthquake, troop movement, storm or even assassination means that you take disaster relief precautions, prepare a counter attack, selected a replacement...

[David Blue]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

Wouldn't the same be true of anyone who is bullet-proof?

I haven't noticed any problem with small arms resistance. Whereas the lucky guy who's never there when the hammer falls is a military cliche we had experience of.

[Clonus]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

I haven't noticed any problem with small arms resistance. Whereas the lucky guy who's never there when the hammer falls is a military cliche we had experience of.

 

What I was talking about was standing beside a luck guy. Even if his luck isn't such that it protects adjacent associates (and if I designed with a character with luck as an actual superpower I would give him that much luck) it shouldn't be a zero sum game so that his luck is everyone else's unluck. And bullets richochet off bullet-proof things...

[David Blue]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

OK. Luck can be fine, in fact it can be built carefully and deliberately as a group advantage, in which case: great!

 

The military might try to create statistics on fortunate and unfortunate events associated with supers. I'm thinking of the movie Master and Commander: the far side of the world. The men on the ship (including the unhappy man himself) were convinced they had an unlucky shipmate, and therefore an unlucky ship. Super or not, nobody wants to ship with a Jonah. And everybody would want to ship with an albatross. So, particularly for military applications of supers in that era and at sea, luck and the reputation of luck or unluck would be of great importance.

[lapsedgamer]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

Arc Dream's Godlike covered this territory very thoroughly. I'm not a One Roll Engine fan, but the background and support material for that game are worth looking at for background.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Godlike-Superhero-Roleplaying-World-1936-1946/dp/0971064202

 

http://arcdream.com/home/?cat=6

[David Blue]

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

 

I'm not willing endure years of having my character treated like crap in order to set-up a scenario where my reward is NOT being treated like crap. If you're enjoying the game' date=' that's great. But I think you're going to find that most folks wouldn't be so forgiving of the GM's behavior.[/quote']

Would you be willing to play the movie Spider-Man 2 as a campaign? Remembering that the whole first half was Spider-Man getting humiliated and hammered from every angle, losing his job, failing at school, losing his power, blowing it with his girlfriend and losing her to a better man, and so on?

 

A lot of players won't be happy with a campaign like that, and that's fine. This is a minority taste. And you need a lot of trust in the GM, and that trust has to be justified in the long run.

 

But for the right players, with the right GM and the right concept, when Peter Parker drops his broken glasses in the gutter because he doesn't need them any more, and it's time for Spider-Man to swing out, reborn - from then on there's nothing like it, and it wouldn't be nearly the same if you hadn't put your time in.

 

And, in the context of this thread, the restrictions that can go with the military application of superhumans are one way to make this kind of campaign work.