How much worldbuilding?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah exactly, nobody knows who SHIELD is, and you get the feeling that it was just formed; they don't even have the name down really well yet. Either that or Coulson doesn't like to say SHIELD because he thinks its silly.

[Nothere]

What does that name mean to you? That somebody (probably Stan Lee, or David Hasslhoff) really wanted our name to b SHIELD.

[mrinku]

It really means that Stan Lee wanted very badly in 1965 to cash in on the spy craze. Man From U.N.C.L.E. debuted in 1964

 

Though I think Ian Fleming is actually responsible for it all with SPECTRE (In Thunderballl, 1961). He also took the real world SMERSH (which was largely a wartime counter-intelligence organisation) and used them instead of the KGB.

[Cassandra]

You could introduce a character called Mick Anger, Director of Allied Expeditionary Global Intelligence Service (AEGIS).

[Cassandra]

It really means that Stan Lee wanted very badly in 1965 to cash in on the spy craze. Man From U.N.C.L.E. debuted in 1964

 

Though I think Ian Fleming is actually responsible for it all with SPECTRE (In Thunderballl, 1961). He also took the real world SMERSH (which was largely a wartime counter-intelligence organisation) and used them instead of the KGB.

 

Stan was also able to recycle Nick Fury for use as a Howling Commando.

[mrinku]

Stan was also able to recycle Nick Fury for use as a Howling Commando.

 

Other way around. Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos debuted in 1963. Stan recycled him from a 1940's soldier hero into an older 1960's spy craze guy. As with Ben Grimm being a Korean War veteran, the time difference wasn't so great in the mid-60's that this needed any real excuse (Fury later got retconned into having special treatments that kept him younger. And Ben's war moved from Korea to Vietnam to the Gulf War etc).

[Cassandra]

Other way around. Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos debuted in 1963. Stan recycled him from a 1940's soldier hero into an older 1960's spy craze guy. As with Ben Grimm being a Korean War veteran, the time difference wasn't so great in the mid-60's that this needed any real excuse (Fury later got retconned into having special treatments that kept him younger. And Ben's war moved from Korea to Vietnam to the Gulf War etc).

 

I stand corrected.

[Greywind]

Other way around. Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos debuted in 1963. Stan recycled him from a 1940's soldier hero into an older 1960's spy craze guy. As with Ben Grimm being a Korean War veteran, the time difference wasn't so great in the mid-60's that this needed any real excuse (Fury later got retconned into having special treatments that kept him younger. And Ben's war moved from Korea to Vietnam to the Gulf War etc).

 

It's a common thing. Stark was injured in Korea/Vietnam/Afghanistan as time slides to keep them more current in the minds of newer readers.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Loren Estelman wrote about that problem in a great essay once on detective novels.  He pointed out that his character Amos Walker was in Vietnam, but he is still writing about the man and he's still in his 40s or so.  Spenser was in Korea, but that sort of disappeared from the stories because he'd be in his 80s now.  The ABC Kinsey Milhone books are stuck in the 1980s on purpose to avoid that kind of problem.

In comic books it works better, because you can just reboot or ignore what came before.

[Cassandra]

Loren Estelman wrote about that problem in a great essay once on detective novels.  He pointed out that his character Amos Walker was in Vietnam, but he is still writing about the man and he's still in his 40s or so.  Spenser was in Korea, but that sort of disappeared from the stories because he'd be in his 80s now.  The ABC Kinsey Milhone books are stuck in the 1980s on purpose to avoid that kind of problem.

In comic books it works better, because you can just reboot or ignore what came before.

 

Or just give everyone an extended life span so World War Two heroes could still be active.

[phydaux]

I run in the official Champions Universe.  It's rich, well documented, plenty of fully fleshed out villians, agencies, and NPC heroes.

 

One thing, though, is I always have the local Campaign City be one that HASN'T been written up in any source book.  That way I can say what the "local color" is.

[mrinku]

Nicely used in Sherlock (and Elementary as well, I think) where they could still have Watson be a veteran of Afghanistan, despite the modern setting 

 

Comics have a built in problem that they're generally limited to about 30 pages a month (especially if you want the same writing/art team). British weekly comics with 8 page chapters and rotating artists (i.e. 2000AD) have a different dynamic to US comics, which helps characters like Judge Dredd be allowed to age in real time despite being published for forty years.

 

But our own RPGs aren't limited by that. We can potentially pump out an issue a week, or even more.

 

I'm coming back after a 15 year or so layoff from Champions and doing what amounts to a generational update of my old NPC rosters. Some of those were revised in 1990 for 4th, but many haven't been touched or used since. It's an interesting process. One of my players is going to do the new version of his second ever character, who's the biological son of the hero's arch enemy (same powers) but mentored by his old character.

[Crusher Bob]

I'd say that the most important aspect of world building is that your world is well defined enough that you can add things to it that can then feel like they've always been there. So it should be more focused on things like appropriate themes, exact genre conventions,

[mrinku]

One reason to use a past or future setting is to avoid the time slip problem. Interestingly, there was never any need for Judge Dredd to be a roughly year-for-year progression, that was a deliberate choice. And ironically the Legion of Superheroes, which could have just avoided it as well was usually locked in as taking place exactly 1000 years in the future, and had to be reset a few times.

 

But I'll never need to do an update/reset on my Golden Age campaigns, even if they get put aside for decades

[Chris Goodwin]

Here's what I sent out in an email to the group: 
 

The game will take place in the Portland area, unless everyone hates the idea and can come up with an alternative.

We'll assume that you all (the PCs) have discovered your powers within the past month or so, unless you (the player) specify otherwise. You've probably spent the past month coming to terms with them, figuring out in a basic sense what you can do, figuring out how you're going to keep your identity secret, acquire a costume, etc.

About a week ago, you all heard the following in the news: At least a dozen suspects have escaped from a federal penitentiary in eastern Oregon, and they may be heading to Portland. They should be considered armed and extremely dangerous. Do not attempt to apprehend; contact the authorities at 1-800-xxx-yyyy if you see them.

The background:

The first publicly known superheroes have appeared within about the last five to fifteen years, depending on how you count them and who you count. The one everybody knows is Atlas, and he has what is technically known as the "FDS package" (flight, durability, strength), or more commonly the "Superman set". Atlas appeared in Kansas City about five years ago, and he's used as the sort of "year zero" indicator for superheroes in the popular press; you'll commonly hear "before Atlas" and "after Atlas" or similar. There were a few truly super powered costumed heroes who appeared up to a few years before Atlas, but he got the publicity. About ten years or so before Atlas, costumed "real heroes" started showing up, but they were all non-powered. After Atlas, more and more superheroes have been appearing, all over the world.

Since Atlas, a government agency has been created, the Department of Metahuman Affairs (DMHA). It was originally the Office of Metahuman Affairs, part of Homeland Security, but has since become a full cabinet department. Almost immediately, a gossip magazine (SuperSense) sprang up, and numerous other less-gossipy publications have followed since then, including a number of university research journals. Metahuman seems to be the accepted term for supers; some universities and other organizations are trying to push the term "orthohuman" to represent non-metahumans.

The DMHA has come up with a classification system. "Class negative one" is roughly the theoretical lowest measurable superpower output, and represents the approximate amount of energy of an American half-dollar falling one meter (the DMHA knows of a class -1 telekinetic, who can telekinetically lift and slowly move a coin). Atlas is considered a class ten; the PCs will be roughly in the class six to nine range. (Every plus one is roughly 10 times the energy output; this doesn't really match with real world scientific rigor, but it's good enough for the game, and tells me about how powerful in game terms a character might be.)

As always, if you have any questions, ask!

I've got a lot more background than this, and may drop additional information to one PC or another that has appropriate Knowledge Skills and the like. I'm writing up all of the PCs, so I'll be able to figure out which ones know what.

[Nothere]

Well what I see I approve of. The only worry I have is the  "may drop additional information" If this is all the players have there is nothing besides Atlas and the DMHA for them to hang their backgrounds on. Which isn't really a bad thing. Generic backgrounds are fine, and they can also give you details to put into  the setting.

[Chris Goodwin]

Well what I see I approve of. The only worry I have is the  "may drop additional information" If this is all the players have there is nothing besides Atlas and the DMHA for them to hang their backgrounds on. Which isn't really a bad thing. Generic backgrounds are fine, and they can also give you details to put into  the setting.

 

I already told them that it's a MCU style universe in which supers have only appeared in the last few years, and that currently worldwide there's about one superhero level super per million people, and that there are likely more than that who have lower power levels.  I came up with the power level classification system after that, so I think I can tweak those numbers to work together; it implies that for every ten at one level, there is one at the next higher level.  (Edit:  Maybe.  I'll work numbers when I have time...)

 

But yeah, I think I'll have to turn "may" into "will" and toss some more info in.  

[mrinku]

One per million? So... about 7,500 worldwide. You *might* want to tweak that, but it depends on what you're after. Traditionally supers are concentrated in the USA and in particular New York City (or close analogues like Metropolis), so I'm guessing the distribution isn't even.

 

But if you want the superhuman community to be dominated by Chinese and Indian ones (about 1300 each) with the 320 odd American ones coming a distant third ahead of the roughly 260 Indonesian ones, go for it. 

 

Alternatively, you could follow the money and use the billionaire list:

 

USA (565), China (319), Germany (114), India (101), Russia (96), Hong Kong (67)

[Crusher Bob]

Hmm, things you should probably think about adding to your world write up:

 

What kinds of origins are acceptable?

For a bit of humor, see the song lyrics for Ookla the Mok: Super Powers

Are any of these origins not acceptable?

 

Other than having having super powers, how exceptional are the power recipients supposed to be? For example, in Worm, power recipients are mostly 'normal' people, so someone who is particularly strong willed, clever, rich, etc can compensate for a 'weaker' power. While in the Marvel and DC verse, superheroes tend to be exceptional people in addition to having their powers.

 

How much influence can the characters be expected to have on the setting? For example, if you are playing heroes in the Marvel Universe, you probably don't have to worry too much about changing the shape of the world when you do stuff. But if you are going to be one of the to 30? or so most powerful people (out of ~300 heroes) in North America then you can expect a lot of fallout from what ever actions you take.

 

Softer characteristics:

How much PRE and EGO are typical heroes supposed to have? If heroes are supposed to be 'normal people' then 15 EGO and 15 PRE makes you pretty impressive. The same scale of things that would terrify 'normal people' will also work on the heroes. Things like fear, PTSD, and maintaining enough motivation to keep heroing despite a lot of psychological pressure might be a big deal. Example: a police procedural that covers the mental health impacts of being a officer.

 

But if you heroes are supposed to be exceptional then you can expect things like EGO 30 PRE 30 heroes to be much more common. You can impress most people by just walking into the room. And you'd expect the themes here to be stuff like noblesse oblige, power and responsibility, and how much you change peoples minds just by doing stuff. Example: Mass Effect

[massey]

There's an essay somewhere on these forums (or there was, anyway), regarding population breakdowns and supers.  In the real world, of course, comics are a primarily American cultural trend, so there's no surprise that there aren't a lot of Indonesian superheroes.  The essay I'm thinking of gave a breakdown of the different factors that would influence the number of supers.  Is your country a source of high technology?  If so, you will have more supers.  Does your country have a mysterious history of mysticism?  If so, you will have more supers.  Is your country a military power?  If so, you will have more supers.  All these act as a multiplier for your base population.  These guidelines were set up to give the US as many multipliers as possible, to better reflect comics.

 

I liked something the MCU did in Spider-Man: Homecoming.  (minor spoilers)  Crap left over from superfights and the alien invasion gets cobbled together with regular Earth tech into some makeshift supervillain technology.  This could give you plenty of justification for having a bunch of one-off characters, yet still preventing true mass production of them.  There's only so much crap left over from the aborted alien invasion.

 

How about giving the players like a dozen different possible super origins?

 

In the MCU, some variant of the super-soldier serum has been used to create:

Cap

The Red Skull

The Hulk

The Abomination

The Leader (hinted at but not really seen onscreen)

Winter Soldier

6 other Winter Soldier types

 

Arc Reactor tech has been used to create:

Iron Man

War Machine

Iron Monger

Whiplash

knock-off Hammertech drones

Ultron

etc

 

then you've got Infinity Stones, the Extremis treatment, and a bunch of other things.  There are plenty of irresponsible people who try different variations of this stuff, with varying degrees of success.

[Chris Goodwin]

One per million? So... about 7,500 worldwide. You *might* want to tweak that, but it depends on what you're after. Traditionally supers are concentrated in the USA and in particular New York City (or close analogues like Metropolis), so I'm guessing the distribution isn't even.

 

But if you want the superhuman community to be dominated by Chinese and Indian ones (about 1300 each) with the 320 odd American ones coming a distant third ahead of the roughly 260 Indonesian ones, go for it. 

 

That's about right, numbers wise.  I may be able to tweak population, based on the overall origin for supers, which I'll put in a spoiler tag in another post.  But I also don't have a problem with a lot of Chinese and Indian supers.    Maybe they're there and their respective governments are keeping them secret.  I'm not sure yet.

 

Hmm, things you should probably think about adding to your world write up:

 

What kinds of origins are acceptable?

For a bit of humor, see the song lyrics for Ookla the Mok: Super Powers

Are any of these origins not acceptable?

 

I'll tell more about the meta-origin under a spoiler tag. More or less, all of those are acceptable, as a layer on top of the meta-origin.  

 

 

Other than having having super powers, how exceptional are the power recipients supposed to be? For example, in Worm, power recipients are mostly 'normal' people, so someone who is particularly strong willed, clever, rich, etc can compensate for a 'weaker' power. While in the Marvel and DC verse, superheroes tend to be exceptional people in addition to having their powers.

I'm thinking Marvel Cinematic Universe level. They'll be exceptional, and there aren't a lot of supers yet.  

[Chris Goodwin]

It's unlikely but not impossible that my players will be here reading this; if they are, and they know who they are, there are spoilers and they should not look.  

 

 

There have actually been supers present among humanity for 20,000 years or more.  They were worshiped as the gods of the ancients.  Most superhero universes would recognize them as mutants or similar.  There have been cycles, many of them during prehistory, of supers appearing, taking the positions of gods, becoming powerful and cruel, and either making an exodus from Earth (to planets in other star systems, other dimensions, etc.) or remaining and being burned as witches and demons or otherwise destroyed by their would-be subjects.  They've also resulted in well known ages of heroes: the Classical Age (from Gilgamesh to the Trojan War in the 1100's BCE) is probably the best known, but they are also dismissed as myths and legends.  

 

Neither supers nor heroes have really ever gone away.  Throughout humanity's existence there have always been exceptional people; some could commune with spirits, some could lift giant boulders.  During times of fear, they keep their gifts hidden.  When it's safe, they tend to show themselves.  This has been the pattern as long as there have been supers.  

 

Since about the year 100 CE, the world has been in a new age of heroes.  The Arthurian heroes, folk heroes such as Robin Hood, Joan of Arc, William Tell, Dick Turpin, the Scarlet Pimpernel, el Zorro, the Lone Ranger, Sherlock Holmes, Paul Bunyan, John Henry, and so on.  The fictional tales have always been inspired by real people, some of whom were "exceptional", some of whom were just tired of injustice, picking up a weapon and putting on a mask and a cape.  The "mystery men" era, before and between WWI and WWII, was just this sort of time; people, some of whom could lift a car or cloud men's minds, wearing mask, slouch hat, and trench coat, deciding enough is enough and putting themselves between their loved ones and harm's way.  

 

During WWII: 

 

Germany put together what it called Überkampfgruppe 72 (UKG-72), active from 1943 to the end of the war.  As far as anyone is aware, this was a group of highly trained elite combat operatives whose purpose was to strike fear into Allied soldiers.  They did this largely through reputation and outright trickery; for instance, faces were masked, so that when one individual was wounded or killed in action, another could be substituted in (sometimes even during combat). 

 

However, Nazi interest in super powered individuals goes back as far as 1932; a major part of the German eugenics program at the time was to "reunite the bloodlines of the gods". 
Except they were going about it all wrong.  Around the same time that Jews were leaving Germany in droves, their supers were as well.  Anyone who ever had to hide what they were, knew that if they didn't leave they would be taken and used, or killed. 

 

The Allies countered with the US-led 99th Special Operations Division (part of the Denver Project).  This was also a highly trained elite combat group.  They went less with trickery, and more with tight screening to locate and train "exceptionals" along with ridiculously overdone training to build them up to potential.  The 99th SOD began operations in March of 1944, and other than two highly successful engagements with UKG-72 it was most effectively utilized as a propaganda tool.  After the war the existence of the 99th SOD was quietly buried and allowed to fade into obscurity.  It, like the Philadelphia Experiment, became part of WWII-related conspiracy lore.

 

As part of Operation Paperclip, all scientists involved in the UKG-72 program were exfiltrated to the West.  They spent the remainder of their lives working with Denver Project scientists, and faded away into obscurity. 

 

The late 2000's and 2010's in the US saw first a number of nonpowered "real heroes" and later some lower powered (class 3-4) supers putting on costumes and showing themselves; the US government tried to suppress the information, but social media turned out to be too much for them, and the turning point was when Atlas appeared.  He was both very powerful and very public, and while various governments around the world couldn't keep this a secret any longer they have strongly maintained as much secrecy about past heroes as they could.  The "prison break" near Portland I mentioned previously was actually the breach of a Refrigerator-like (MCU) super prison, where supers, mostly undesirables, have been kept and in some cases experimented on; the cover story is an Azkaban-like deliberate passing of bad information by those in the know to the public.  There's no way at all, that this could possibly go badly...

 

Needless to say, pop culture has seized on the existence of real supers like nothing before, leading to a massive resurgence of interest in superhero comic books, cinematic superheroes, and other media.  Conspiracy theorists have more or less puzzled out most of the history of various heroic ages, and the show "Ancient Aliens" recently ran an episode called "Was Hercules A Class Ten?"

 

 

[DShomshak]

There's an essay somewhere on these forums (or there was, anyway), regarding population breakdowns and supers.  In the real world, of course, comics are a primarily American cultural trend, so there's no surprise that there aren't a lot of Indonesian superheroes.  The essay I'm thinking of gave a breakdown of the different factors that would influence the number of supers.  Is your country a source of high technology?  If so, you will have more supers.  Does your country have a mysterious history of mysticism?  If so, you will have more supers.  Is your country a military power?  If so, you will have more supers.  All these act as a multiplier for your base population.  These guidelines were set up to give the US as many multipliers as possible, to better reflect comics.

 

I believe that's an essay I wrote some time back. If it's vanished into digital oblivion, I can repost it.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Chris Goodwin]

I believe that's an essay I wrote some time back. If it's vanished into digital oblivion, I can repost it.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

I seem to recall reading that, at some point.  I also remember reading a Dragon Magazine article from the 80's that suggested the 1 to 1 million ratio, for Marvel Superheroes (FASERIP) if I'm remembering correctly.  I thought that seemed a little low, especially for the full Marvel Universe at the time, but for the Marvel Cinematic Universe I'd guess it's probably about that.  

[mrinku]

There's an essay somewhere on these forums (or there was, anyway), regarding population breakdowns and supers.  In the real world, of course, comics are a primarily American cultural trend, so there's no surprise that there aren't a lot of Indonesian superheroes.  The essay I'm thinking of gave a breakdown of the different factors that would influence the number of supers.  Is your country a source of high technology?  If so, you will have more supers.  Does your country have a mysterious history of mysticism?  If so, you will have more supers.  Is your country a military power?  If so, you will have more supers.  All these act as a multiplier for your base population.  These guidelines were set up to give the US as many multipliers as possible, to better reflect comics.

 

 

...and is still unlikely to give the USA more superhumans than modern China

 

Mind you, the USA is likely to have a lot more vigilantes. THAT'S a definite US thing.

 

In relation to numbers... LEGO Marvel Superheroes, which does a good job of adding a good chunk of all Marvel super and non-super powered characters as playable characters only needs 180 to do so. That list is overwhelmingly American (one major omission are the Canadians, aside from Wolverine and Deadpool. Poor Alpha Flight gets no bloody respect...). So as a rough count, "several hundred" American supers would match up, which is likely where the 1 in a million rule of thumb was derived from.