Jump to content

Changes in a world with superpowers


dsatow

Recommended Posts

29 minutes ago, assault said:

 

No, but it's an example of how you could make such a character relatively "realistic".

 

The character is Sauron, and actually almost makes a kind of sense in his own right.

 

Ah.  

 

We're positing a... let's say gifted oncologist... effectively supers-level in his knowledge and ability, but as we've described him, he's pretty much just an oncologist.  His clinic is bombed -- why?  What does an investigation reveal about why?  It's bombed a second time... somebody -- cops, supers, whoever -- should be able to find out who.  It's bombed a third time... so that sends our gifted oncologist around the bend and makes him decide to start turning people into dinosaurs instead of curing cancer?  

 

Ooo.  That character can change into a humanoid pterosaur.  Does that affect the mind?  Are we positing in general that having powers can affect the mind (i.e. "Science-Related Memetic Disorder")?  Plausible, but it takes powers out of the realm of something I want to play characters that have, and puts them into the realm of "sorry, I deal with that kind of thing in my daily life, don't want it in my supers gaming".  So I'm going to say... no.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

His clinic is in Gaza, Tehran or where ever and the technology it uses can be weaponized. So it gets bombed.

 

There's no investigation because it was an intentional act by a recognized government.

 

This is both reasonably "realistic", and something I don't want to play.

There are good reasons for a setting to be fantastic, rather than "realistic". A "realistic" setting would be both dystopian and boring.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, assault said:

His clinic is in Gaza, Tehran or where ever and the technology it uses can be weaponized. So it gets bombed.

 

There's no investigation because it was an intentional act by a recognized government.

 

This is both reasonably "realistic", and something I don't want to play.

There are good reasons for a setting to be fantastic, rather than "realistic". A "realistic" setting would be both dystopian and boring.

 

That's a good point.  I'm not sure I'd want to play that event, but that would be the kind of thing that a government would probably deputize their own supers to protect.  Or supers taking it upon themselves to do.

 

If there's something that supers are good at, though, it's getting around the usual sorts of controls to get the real story out.  Clark Kent?  Why in the world is he not doing stories from war zones?  Or protecting refugees?  Or finding out for sure whether there were or were not actually WMDs in Iraq?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On April 7, 2019 at 1:41 PM, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

Why do you assume that cyber-super-villains are vastly more successful than cyber-super-heroes? 

 

Extrapolation from what is going on in our non-super world.  Cyber villains are more successful than cyber heroes.  There's a much larger payoff for a successful villain than there is for a successful hero.  Not a lot of innate nobility in our species; it's why we respect the selfless and those who are naturally more giving than others.

 

 

On April 7, 2019 at 4:43 PM, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

So there's no super-coder at M$ smart enough to verify the whole OS, no FOSS super-firewall, no roaming super-genius who swoops in and fixes every bug in Chrome in an hour, no metahumans doing penetration tests? 

 

Take the word "Super" out of that question:

 

No; there is no single coder at MS who could do all that effectively.  I don't know, but I've been told the code, printed, for the MS OS would make an encyclopedia (of old.  I have to remember those are relics now) look like a grammar school primer.  Certainly there is a guy-- likely several-- who _could_ verify every single line of it.  But there's no way he could do it effectively or even reasonably efficiently.  There are, I would imagine, _lots_ of guys that go into that sort of work even today, yet there are still issues.

 

Does every bug in Chrome get fixed in a remarkably short length of time?  (seriously; I don't know: I don't use it beyond the cripple version of Android my phone runs)  Is there a truly foolproof firewall today?  I mean, if "supers" make the difference, then removing supers on both sides of the equations should still yield comparable results, right?

 

 

On April 7, 2019 at 4:43 PM, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

 

 

But there are evil super-coders, super-programs, super-geniuses, and metahumans?

 

Assuming that the ratio of super-good guys to super bad guys is consistent with the ratio of regular good guys to regular bad guys, then we're still sunk: we're outnumbered by bad guys, and some of them win.  Adding "super" on both sides doesn't really solve it.  (Honestly, this is one of the reasons I was never a comic book kid: I had a hard time buying into the greatness of superheroes when they were up against super bad guys.  It's like one of them exists _only_ because the other does, and falls apart in silliness.  :Fight the good fight!  maintain the status quo!

 

 

On April 7, 2019 at 4:43 PM, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

 

  All the superheroes stay off the 'net for some reason

That seems horribly contrived. 

 

Not really.  When I was first online, after about six months, I got bored and stayed off for a couple of years.  I got back on, found this place (just prior to the launch of 5e) and hung around for a couple of years.  Then I went off the internet again for a few years, and when I decided to get back online, well-- that was about two days to my return to this board.  

 

Dude, unless you are a seriously dedicated online shopper ("I refuse to let the sunlight touch my skin, even reflected from the moon!"  :lol:  ), there's really nothing out here but advertisements and arguments with total strangers.  It's not really universally appealing.  When I get bored again, or decided I'd rather do something else with my time, I'll probably shut the net off again for a couple of years.  I remember back in ..91?  92?  My wife got online and started a Facebook at the request of her sister.  She played with for almost two weeks.  Hasn't been back online since.

 

Considering the schedule of people with _no_ secret lives, I don't find it difficult to believe that someone living two lives just doesn't bother to stay tethered to the internet.  We build it up as a great wonderful way to meet people, but it isn't.  It's a great way to share ideas with strangers, until you disagree vehemently enough, then you can work out your stress by yelling at each other.

 

That's it.

 

And youtube, when you don't know how to remove a particular piece from your car's interior.

 

It's not a big magnet for every person.  I can't see supers being any different: some like it, some don't.  Some use it, some don't.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/22/2019 at 7:08 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

Take the word "Super" out of that question:

 

No; there is no single coder at MS who could do all that effectively.  I don't know, but I've been told the code, printed, for the MS OS would make an encyclopedia (of old.  I have to remember those are relics now) look like a grammar school primer.  Certainly there is a guy-- likely several-- who _could_ verify every single line of it.  But there's no way he could do it effectively or even reasonably efficiently.  There are, I would imagine, _lots_ of guys that go into that sort of work even today, yet there are still issues.

 

Does every bug in Chrome get fixed in a remarkably short length of time?  (seriously; I don't know: I don't use it beyond the cripple version of Android my phone runs)  Is there a truly foolproof firewall today?  I mean, if "supers" make the difference, then removing supers on both sides of the equations should still yield comparable results, right?

 

This. The chief effect of supers is to personalize activities and conflicts, because the number of people on either side is relatively small. Sure, governments and corporations employ lots of mundande computer security people who try to block the criminal hackers, with results about the same as IRL. There are also a few super-hackers who blow through mundane security like it wasn't there because they are cyberpaths, or super-geniuses, or whatever. They are a terror to everyone with valuable data. And you have just a few super-security experts -- Captain Codebar and WhiteHat, say -- who are the only people able to stop them, because they have the same powers.

 

The two sides never reach an equilibrium, because so much depends on the outcome of each single conflict between these few individuals. If WhiteHat stops the attempt by SyberBadd to steal a country's sovereign wealth fund, the world wobbles on. If SyberBadd wins, a government falls or at least financial markets go nuts for a while. It's the financial equivalent of a major earthquake or hurricane.

 

This means it matters a lot who Captain Codebar and WhiteHat work for. It also means that after the third or fourth time they stop SyberBadd, he/she/it thinks about killing them -- the only two who stop him/her/it from enjoying not just limitless wealth (that would be easy to gain legitimately) but the sadistic thrill of absolute power gained by hitting the financial world like a digital pinata. Adventure results.

 

Conversely, the world becomes a lot safer if someone can capture SyberBadd. Capture or kill the other hacker supervillains -- remember, there's only a few of them -- and maybe WhiteHat and Captain Codebar have the time to debug Chrome, squash the mundane hackers for good, and make the Internet the utopian force for good that was promised. So the stakes are high on that side too. In practice, heroes maintain the status quo, but one can present the promise that someday they could make the world much better.

 

Dean Shomshak

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Prosecutors hate secret identities.  Whether hero or villain, they make their jobs a whole lot harder.  It's possible that prohibitions against going in public masked will be applied to supers.  They'll want to know who is out there on the streets throwing around cars and energy blasts regardless of which side they say they're on.  It's very likely that police will have intelligence units devoted to gathering information on publicly known supers.  OTOH, IRL there are some provisions for keeping personal information of law enforcement personnel confidential; in Oregon, at least, prison guards are permitted to keep official identification (including driver license) without their home address on it. 

 

The ACLU says no, you don't need that kind of information, and regularly sues to eliminate those intelligence units, as well as registration requirements, laws requiring disclosure of personal identity, etc.  

 

Those who do maintain double lives eventually end up abandoning them; the tropes that allow fictional supers to maintain them rely on people being dumber than they are in reality.  Besides, even if a super doesn't need to eat, they often are married to or parents of people who do, and they need to pay rent or a mortgage; it's hard to maintain a double life when, after working an eight hour day, you then have to go patrol the city -- and not get paid for it.  Besides, spouses tend to get suspicious when you don't come home and don't tell them where you've been...

 

"Supers chic!"  Powerful and well-known supers take on the same celebrity mystique as well-known actors, musicians, athletes, and so on.  People want to be like them.  Fashion takes on elements of superhero costuming; superhero fans and mundane criminals take on code names and wear masks.  Cosplay and shipping are rampant in the fan communities.  Supers have to deal with paparazzi, autograph seekers, groupies, tabloid gossip.  (Some American supers really feel they've "made it" when they get a British tabloid press nickname.)  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎5‎/‎24‎/‎2019 at 7:48 PM, Chris Goodwin said:

Prosecutors hate secret identities.  Whether hero or villain, they make their jobs a whole lot harder.  It's possible that prohibitions against going in public masked will be applied to supers.  They'll want to know who is out there on the streets throwing around cars and energy blasts regardless of which side they say they're on.  It's very likely that police will have intelligence units devoted to gathering information on publicly known supers.  OTOH, IRL there are some provisions for keeping personal information of law enforcement personnel confidential; in Oregon, at least, prison guards are permitted to keep official identification (including driver license) without their home address on it. 

 

The ACLU says no, you don't need that kind of information, and regularly sues to eliminate those intelligence units, as well as registration requirements, laws requiring disclosure of personal identity, etc.  

 

Those who do maintain double lives eventually end up abandoning them; the tropes that allow fictional supers to maintain them rely on people being dumber than they are in reality.  Besides, even if a super doesn't need to eat, they often are married to or parents of people who do, and they need to pay rent or a mortgage; it's hard to maintain a double life when, after working an eight hour day, you then have to go patrol the city -- and not get paid for it.  Besides, spouses tend to get suspicious when you don't come home and don't tell them where you've been...

 

"Supers chic!"  Powerful and well-known supers take on the same celebrity mystique as well-known actors, musicians, athletes, and so on.  People want to be like them.  Fashion takes on elements of superhero costuming; superhero fans and mundane criminals take on code names and wear masks.  Cosplay and shipping are rampant in the fan communities.  Supers have to deal with paparazzi, autograph seekers, groupies, tabloid gossip.  (Some American supers really feel they've "made it" when they get a British tabloid press nickname.)  

Billy Batson has an awesome secret ID protection mechanism.  He looks nothing like his heroic ID.  Anyone who effectively shapeshifts into their heroic ID(or vice versa) has a great way to preserve their Secret ID, in the era of facial recognition technology.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...