Oddities of a Superhuman World

[Steve]

While the presence of superhumans and all they bring with them will change the world, I've recently been wondering about other ways to flesh out a world. You can also have oddities and wonders that occur, that aren't necessarily connected to any superhuman but are just bits of weirdness that make the world more interesting.

 

How about a field in Kansas where it always rains at 3:06 PM local time for exactly five minutes to the second, even if the sky is totally clear that day?

 

How about a house in the campaign city that never needs heating or cooling because it is always 72 degrees inside, even with all the windows open and broiling or freezing temperatures outside?

 

How about a pawn shop that always seems to have the right trinket to help someone passing by its doors, before they even know they need it?

 

What kinds of weirdness have you seen in campaign worlds?

[Lord Liaden]

IME such color details are more common in fantasy game worlds than in super ones. In the former they serve to emphasize that the players are in an environment fundamentally more fantastic than their real mundane existence. OTOH mainstream comics make a point of keeping the world outside the superhuman subculture as recognizably normal as possible, perhaps to help with reader identification and/or to emphasize that supers operate on a more heightened level.

 

However, the current official Champions Universe differs from the comics in having allowed more of the "supertech" invented by super-scientists to filter out into the wider populace. Nowhere is that more obvious than in Millennium City, built on the ruins of Detroit to be "the City of the Future." Of the many ways that futurism manifests, what strikes me as most relevant to your examples is MC's "smart roadway" system. The roads in the city core have heating elements built in, which automatically melt snow and ice and hasten evaporation when sensors detect such conditions. All vehicles licensed to operate within MC are fitted with "vehicle control chips" which allow a central computer to track their movements, and if necessary shut them down. Moreover, when someone drives on the Millennium Highway, aka "the Loop," the freeway along the perimeter of the city, the central computer takes full control of their car and directs it to their destination, selected when they enter the Loop. Traffic on that freeway has been accident-free since the system was instituted.

 

But there are a number of other ways that advanced tech has impacted daily life. For anyone interested in that sort of local color, the Millennium City source book would be well worth its very reasonable price.

[csyphrett]

I usually throw these in my supers campaign like the heroes used a house like the house from Mystic Masters as their base, they dealt with expeditions into the Underworld, and genetic scientists (sometimes the same guy over multiple campaigns) likes to use Pickachu as a guard dog/ enforcer.

CES   

[JmOz]

Arnie's

A fast food chain (specializing in non beef burgers)

Ran by a Minotaur who retired from super hero life

[steriaca]

I kinda like the idea of a supervillain temp agency. I call them Villaintemp.

[Lord Liaden]

Back on Champions Earth, the Millennium City Zoo has the only exhibit of extraterrestrial animals on Earth. "The Alien Life Center has three residents. The first, supposedly a Mandaarian bird-analogue, was received in a trade with Mandaarian explorers by a somewhat puzzled Senator Frank Tannehill in 1991. He exchanged a fish tank full of guppies for the creature everyone now calls “Shiny.” So named for the metallic sheen of his “feathers” (which seem to have a very high iron content and are hazardous to handle without protective gloves), Shiny has adapted very well to the local environment. He’s a favorite of the both the staff and visitors, with an inquisitive intelligence and a tendency to show off for the crowds.
    The second alien creature, kept in a secured cage far away from the other animals, is Fizzgig, a lynx-sized carnivorous mammal with large teeth and a surly temper. Fizzgig belonged to a Gadroon general who died during the Gadroon assault on Earth in 1984. An UNTIL technician found Fizzgig, battered but otherwise unhurt, in the wreckage of the general’s speeder-jet. She considered taking it home to keep as a pet until the little creature ate her flashlight.
    The third member of the zoo’s alien menagerie is the Qularr monster Cazulon, who was originally over two hundred feet high. Cazulon destroyed vast amounts of property in Kobe, Japan during the Qularr attack in 1965. Microman used his shrinking ray to defeat the monster (making it the only organic creature to survive the process besides himself, for unknown reasons). Now a mere eight inches high, the creature delights children with its tiny roars from inside its fireproof plastic habitat, which the staff periodically redecorates with more miniature buildings for it to smash contentedly.

    Not an extraterrestrial, but similarly unique, is the world’s only living woolly mammoth, the surviving member of a group of three who were accidentally transported through time from approximately 50,000 years ago during the mysterious “Secret Crisis” of 1985. Emerging from a warp in time somewhere around 41st Street in the middle of New York City, the animals panicked, but the Sentinels rounded them up before they could hurt themselves or anyone else. At first the government kept them at the Bronx Zoo (where one died in 1988), but later decided to transfer them to Millennium City in 1994. All efforts to breed the remaining pair failed, and the male died in 1998. Efforts to clone the last female, named “Sadie” by keepers, continue with the aid of researchers from Cambridge Biotech." (Millennium City p. 87)
 

[Duke Bushido]

Homeless supers.

 

Not costumed heroes or whatever, but people with some sort of an ability, who have suffered a great misfortune.

[Matt the Bruins]

2 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

The second alien creature, kept in a secured cage far away from the other animals, is Fizzgig, a lynx-sized carnivorous mammal with large teeth and a surly temper. Fizzgig belonged to a Gadroon general who died during the Gadroon assault on Earth in 1984. An UNTIL technician found Fizzgig, battered but otherwise unhurt, in the wreckage of the general’s speeder-jet. She considered taking it home to keep as a pet until the little creature ate her flashlight.

Oh, I do so love this!

[Tjack]

13 minutes ago, Matt the Bruins said:

Oh, I do so love this!

    It looks like a Furby with ‘roid rage.

[Lord Liaden]

Well, Steve seems to have liked the details I imported from Champions sources, so I guess I should keep adding anything I think of that seems appropriate, until I run out or he tells me to stop.   This is one of my favorite unusual Contacts supers can seek for information, from The Mystic World p. 59.

 

The Paper Lady: Most people think the Paper Lady is just a mad old woman who lives in an abandoned building, surrounded by stacks of old newspapers. Actually, she’s a genius loci ["spirit of a place"], and the building is a minor mystic site drawing power from Babylon [the dimension that's the sum of all the great cities of Earth's history, real or imagined]. The Paper Lady’s body is made of yellowed, wadded-up newspapers. She can animate and control all paper around her. She also has a flawless memory for everything ever published in her city’s newspapers.
 

[BoloOfEarth]

In many of my Champions campaigns, I've had the Hero.Net Herald, a weekly news sheet produced by retired superheroes and fans who also maintain an online resource for superheroes.  The thing about the Herald is that it somehow simply appears next to the subscriber, wherever he or she may be, when there's nobody else around (so the Herald's appearance doesn't endanger someone's secret ID).  Each copy of the Herald is also semi-tailored to the recipient -- news items are generally either local or, if not, are likely to pertain to the recipient in the near future, leading many to believe that Hero.Net has a precognitive on staff, and likely a teleporter as well to deliver the Heralds.

[BoloOfEarth]

I think one of the oddities of a superhuman world would be that many things that we might think are odd (UFOs, spontaneous combustion, completely improbable events) would be met with a blasé attitude.   "The radio reporter just said a three-block radius chunk of downtown has begun floating 5 meters above the ground.  Just great, my bus to work runs right down that street.  Guess I'm going to be late for work."

[DShomshak]

Back in my old Seattle Sentinels campaign, every nowand then I wrote news updates of the super-world: what other heroes and villains were doing, "and superized" versions of current RL events such as the first Gulf War and the fall of the Soviet Union. I always included a few bits of "unexplained weirdness" ranging from the merely whimsical (such as the sun, as seen from Pretoria, South Africa, briefly turning into a glowing green "Mr. Yuck" symbol, or a rain of ice cream in Valparaiso, Chile) to the icky (a giant frog crashes through the window into a high school biology class and dissects the teacher) to the menacing (a small village in Japan disappears, leaving a big crater). Someof it was evidence of low-profile or newly-appeared supers (such as the armored car robbed by a pair of flying mastiffs and a small, acid-spitting dragon -- first appearance of the Great Beast [see creatures of the Night: Horror Enemies]), but a lot of it was the work of a tremendously powerful, completely insane reality-warping villain the PCs accidentally sent into humanity's collective unconscious. (That situation was eventually resolved.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[unclevlad]

On 6/6/2020 at 2:58 AM, Steve said:

While the presence of superhumans and all they bring with them will change the world, I've recently been wondering about other ways to flesh out a world. You can also have oddities and wonders that occur, that aren't necessarily connected to any superhuman but are just bits of weirdness that make the world more interesting.

 

How about a field in Kansas where it always rains at 3:06 PM local time for exactly five minutes to the second, even if the sky is totally clear that day?

 

How about a house in the campaign city that never needs heating or cooling because it is always 72 degrees inside, even with all the windows open and broiling or freezing temperatures outside?

 

How about a pawn shop that always seems to have the right trinket to help someone passing by its doors, before they even know they need it?

 

What kinds of weirdness have you seen in campaign worlds?

 

As Lord Liaden said, this is more a trope of high-magic fantasy.  In the supers genre, weirdness requires agency, so it's gonna be linked to someone.  The cause might not be *known*...Spider Robinson had Tesla build a Death Ray that was responsible for Tunguska, for example...and the general notion of high-level powers sometimes interacting bizarrely isn't much more than a small extension of a typical Accidental Superhero origin.

 

I know of at least 3 supers writers who explicitly include clean-up...a big supers battle creates a big mess, right?  So the clean-up, generally ignored in the comics, is more of an issue in books.  In at least 1, the clean-up is aided by a tech genius...here, lemme replace those old, dirty, inefficient appliances, hook in a few 75% efficiency solar panels, replace your heating/AC...whoa, suddenly the owner's saving several hundred a month.  Heck, if a tech genius can make, say, a 75% efficient solar panel that costs $20 per square foot to make, and also a high-capacity, SAFE power storage system for, say, 50 kWh...then solar becomes incredibly useful.  FAR less use of fossil fuels.  

Speaking of cleaning up...a device that extracts carbon from the atmosphere.  Getting this to make a real impact on global warming would be hard, simply because reducing carbon amounts by 10% would mean extracting BILLIONS of tons.  But, taking out the carbon, soot, etc. over cities?  Yes, I think that's doable.  And again...feed this into another machine that can process to create something useful.  Graphene is incredibly simple, as it's just carbon, but it's harder than heck to make.  Well, maybe not for a tech genius.  Cotton is almost all cellulose...and cellulose is simply 6 carbon atoms with 5 water molecules.  How about a system to clean up plastic trash from the oceans?  How about making recycling so easy and efficient that it becomes profitable?

 

 

[DShomshak]

White Wolf's supers game Aberrant included tech geniuses doing stuff like this as part of the background. Like, the hypercombustion engine (magnetohydrodynamics with a more "supoerish" name) and fuel cells greatly reduce petroleum use and make flying cars economical, though they are still very new. Better ways to clean toxic waste dumps, including plants genetically engineered to suck up toxic metals better than any natural plants. And yes, ultra-efficient solar cells. See "Technology of 2008" in Aberrant: Year One, written by... modesty prevents me.

 

Dean Shomshak

[DShomshak]

Bloody double-post.

[unclevlad]

One thing people may not know, about power...IIRC, about 50% of the electricity generated, is lost in transmission from the plant to your home.  Power lines are not perfect conductors, and power plants tend to be isolated.  The generation requirements thus get cut down by twice the production capacity of a localized power station.  Fuel cells are an option, but graphene has some extremely interesting properties and potential in that area too...it's just a bitch to produce the stuff.

 

Even if you're not gonna deal with classically tosic...there's a huge issue in the Gulf of Mexico due to fertilizer discharge...excess phospates and nitrogen.  Or a way to manage the algae that cause Red Tide...even if it's a system that's deployed after the tide's been identified, it'd still minimize the impact.

 

Might be REALLY expensive but...mostly-submerged buildings.  Imagine a vacation to Bermuda that includes a visit to a dome at, say, 50' depth?  Light's not a problem, pressure isn't much of a problem, if at all.  But to watch the sea life?  Cool!  Space tourism would practically be a given.

 

If you do want -non-agency weirdness...stigmata, highly distinct, probably NOT normal, features.  Scales, fur, eyes, antennae, whatnot.  They may mean nothing;  they don't imply powers, or maybe just imply something very minor.  Perhaps they show up in families with NO history of powers.  It's just the gene pool.  How about powered animals?  Altho ya gotta be careful here, as...imagine a field mouse that can teleport 3' at will.  VERY hard to catch, now, which means predation would be reduced, and thus the population could spiral out of control in an area.

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

As long as we're talking technology, several Champions Universe books -- notably Champions Universe, Champions Beyond, and Millennium City -- illustrate that new technologies pioneered by super-geniuses, or adapted from non-Terrestrial sources, have filtered out to the general public to some extent. Although supers and governments tend to keep the most advanced tech to themselves, for strategic reasons or out of concern for the danger it poses, what has become public has made qualitative differences in people's lives. The following is mostly transcribed from those books.

 

Advances in medicine and genetics have eliminated, or diminished the impact of, many diseases. Scientists have adapted cybernetic technology first developed for powered armor and similar super-technology to devices that allow people with spinal injuries to walk again, and people with neurological disorders to function without significant impairment.

 

Communications has advanced significantly. Throughout the United States, Europe, and many other developed or wealthy countries, virtually everyone has access to computers, smartphones, and similar devices that are easily carried, lightweight, fast, high-memory, extremely user friendly, and have extraordinarily long battery lives. Even in Third World countries, ownership of cellular phones and computers may exceed 50% of the population, thanks to advanced manufacturing processes and materials. Holography has improved to the point where Millennium City features animated three-dimensional advertising billboards.

 

High-tech fibers and materials discovered by superhumans, and scientists working with their data, beginning in the Sixties have led to stronger and more comfortable bulletproof vests, lightweight armored panels for military vehicles, more crash-proof civilian cars, and many similar advances.

 

Internal combustion vehicles and manufacturing are much cleaner and more environmentally friendly than the machines of old, and major strides have been made in the field of alternative energy. Significant efforts have been made to clean up and repair damage to the environment, and to prevent further damage going forward.

 

Travel, whether by air, water, or land, is quicker and safer than ever before. Flights from the East Coast of the United States to the West Coast can be comfortably completed in just two hours in some cases. The "Smart Roadway" system in Millennium City interacts with Vehicle Control Chips in all cars within city limits, allowing traffic authorities to automatically track them, and if necessary shut a car down remotely. When driving on the Millennium City Highway surrounding the city, the VCC lets a central computer take direct control of the cars, practically eliminating accidents.

 

While humanity is not yet colonizing other worlds in the solar system, near-space exploration is advancing rapidly. Since 1996 UNTIL has had a fully-functioning space station, GATEWAY, orbiting Earth, with up to 200 inhabitants. The United States launched its own orbital facility, the United States Space Station, in 2006. UNTIL also has the distinction of being the first entity to establish a permanently-manned base on the Moon, Moonbase Serenity, in 2000. It now has over 40 personnel. In late 2004 the United States completed work on the Venus Scientific Outpost, an orbital station designed to study the hothouse planet in detail. It has a crew of eight, six unmanned sensor drones, and three one-man vehicles capable of descending to the middle ranges of the atmosphere. The United States established Ares I, also known simply as the Mars Research Base (or “Marsbase”) in 2008. Marsbase currently houses a dozen scientists, though plans call for expanding it to almost four times that size over the next twenty years.

 

Powerful nations, such as the United States or Great Britain, have huge sums of money, well-stocked research facilities, and corps of brilliant scientists at their command — and if they work on something long enough, they may achieve results that would elude lesser strivers. Although most militaries still use standard-tech weapons (explosive-propellant-based bullets and rifles, tanks and howitzers firing explosive shells, manned fighter jets, and so on), the larger and more advanced armies and navies have incorporated some super-technology-derived weapons and systems into their arsenals.

 

Some Champions Universe governments have fielded units of soldiers equipped with low-strength powered armor (or at least high-tech defensive gear), made use of advanced spacecraft, and equipped special military and paramilitary forces with blasters and similar super weapons. But even then, they often prefer to keep their super-technology to themselves as much as possible, due to the strategic and tactical advantages it provides. For example, the United States has small squads of light powered armor-wearing soldiers, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with smart targeting capability able to fly at Mach 10, and many other such weapons. None of them provide the US with an overwhelming advantage in combat, but taken together they definitely extend and expand America’s already potent military capabilities.

 

In some cases, super-technology developments even trickle down to smaller militaries. The US Department of Defense has expressed concern about countries like North Korea or Awad building and using relatively cheap magnetic “railgun” weapons to shoot down American satellites and planes. Sometimes it seems that for every advance one nation makes, another finds a way to counter it using different super-technology... though the sources from which some lesser nations obtain their super-technology remain a subject of speculation.

 

Even mercenaries and mercenary companies get into the act sometimes. A few, seeking competitive advantage both on the battlefield and in the marketplace, have invested in (or otherwise obtained) powered armor suits, energy rifles, advanced robotic vehicles, and other super-tech weapons. Supervillains like Lazer, Mechassassin, and the Steel Commando all got their start as mercenaries (at least in part), and still participate in that part of the global underworld if the money’s right. Private super-criminal organizations such as VIPER and ARGENT have also developed weaponry and equipment beyond the conventional, aided by their willingness to disregard ethical research standards.

 

According to Champions Beyond various groups, notably the United States government, have salvaged and studied examples of alien technology from the several invasions and known spaceship crashes, with mixed results. They've had the most success understanding and adapting the tech from the Sirians, i.e. the "War of the Worlds" aliens. The highly biological nature of Qularr technology, including the tendency of the bio-components to decay or become dormant over time, has made it difficult to analyze and mostly incompatible with human tech. Gadroon gravity-manipulating devices appear to utilize principles that humans, even super-scientists, have never imagined, so have eluded deciphering. While trying to comprehend the nonfunctional wreckage of the Malvan ships that Ironclad and Herculan arrived in, has been likened to Neanderthals trying to reverse-engineer a supercollider.

 

OTOH the Warlord (Champions Villains Vol. 1: Master Villains) has had considerable success with technology salvaged from a downed "blueboy" (Hzeel) scout ship, even combining it with human technology to exceed the capabilities of the Hzeel themselves. Hzeel tech is also partly biological, but to a lesser degree, and is less advanced, than Qularr devices. (The Hzeel, Qularr, and Gadroon all have full chapters devoted to them in Champions Beyond.)

[megaplayboy]

In terms of how far advanced tech can be for a society to still be vaguely recognizable(i.e., retaining some familiar elements), I'd say somewhere between 20 and 120 years(one maximum human lifespan).  If we go back 20 years IRL, there's still the internet, cell phones, and even HDTV starting to come on.  If we go back 40 years, personal computers are starting to become a thing, and some places have high speed trains.  50 years back, we just landed on the Moon.  60 years back, we're talking about putting men into space.  70 years back, computers are coming into being.  80 years back, jet engines are being developed, long range rockets are being tested, and television is in development.  Even 120 years back, automobiles are coming into being and airplanes are within the realm of the imaginable.  Homes have electricity and flush toilets.  

 

So in a superhero world, you could advance technology by up to 100 years or so and there'd still be elements recognizable to a modern audience.  

[unclevlad]

In terms of the internal combustion engine...I'd actually argue that gas/diesel engines would be going the way of the dodo.  One limitation is battery capacity and weight...but by Lord Liaden's own admission, battery tech is far ahead.  Large capacity, most likely low weight...the electric motor becomes exceptionally viable.  And if you accept the high-efficiency solar panel, then highway recharge stations become extremely easy.  I can see fuel cell cars still...maybe.  Might get into the safety issues between the battery and the fuel cell.  But gas and diesel would, I think, be at least on their way out.  (Obviously the transition would take some time.)  A side point comes up here.  If you accept that fossil fuel use is way down...the oil companies' position is greatly changed.

 

Also note that the advanced materials have enormous applications in vehicles.  Shave 500 pounds off, you improve acceleration and, to some degree, top speed.  (Pretty sure air resistance becomes the more dominant factor;  lower weight helps with rolling resistance only.)  Or conversely, you gain quite acceptable performance with a smaller engine...which is also lighter.  You almost certainly improve power consumption.  

 

Some other little things...if high-speed transport is readily available, then specialty product availability improves...altho it might not be cheap.  How about Alaskan salmon caught that morning...then served in the East Coast restaurants that evening.  The Japanese will tell you that, with top stuff...a few hours *matters*.  How about 3D printing fabrics?  You've probably heard of MTailor and similar services...take measurements via smartphone app, they'll provide clothes to those measurements.  In a 3D printing environment, this actually opens the door for both basic services, and creative ones.  I still have a couple Jhane Barnes shirts...she's stopped making them, I think because they were too expensive to make because the patterns were too complicated for the weaving machines.  Probably not an issue for 3D.  Another flip side...the quality of everyday, machine-made goods is certainly solid...but also expect that the market for artisanal, hand-crafted goods would be even higher than it is now.  Even tho the quality isn't as good, the cachet of hand made and exclusive is enormous...as are the price tags.  Because the two go hand in hand.  (Veblen goods.)  This also, of course, invites fakes out the wazoo.

[unclevlad]

Of course, some things never change.  The NFL still can't write a catch rule that's comprehensible...and the mega-res cameras have only made the hair-splitting that much finer.  The Olympics not only have doping by norms...they have masking agents that hide supers in events intended for norms only.  The World Series of Poker was rocked with a clairvoyance scandal.  Gymnastics is embroiled in a size controversy...in many ways, smaller is better in gymnastics, and it's believed genetic manipulation has been in play by certain countries, to build the better gymnast.  (Among other things.)