DShomshak

No, I never wrote package deals or templates. Ultimate Super-Mage and Ultimate Mystic included some loose discussion of how to build mystical characters, but my playtest experience was that characters varied too much to be nailed down to any formula more detailed than, "A big Multipower for spells, and an Elemental Control for all Powers the character must use at the same time." The Mystic World discussed the role of Archmage in the CU. It sounds like you've already read The Mystic World, QM, so I probably don't need to repeat what's there. For the current CU, the most important aspect of the Archmage is there isn't one, and all the last Archmage's sanctum and mystical paraphernalia got blowed up real good: Steve and I thought it was important to leave GMs and PCs a blank slate they could fill in the course of play. As such, designing further allies, DNPCs, and other accretions around the office was not a priority. Dean Shomshak

After reading the CU book, ask here if you want more information about particular parts of the setting, and we can recommend the 6e or 5e books with the most information (or just answer directly). I wrote a bunch of the mystical, Doctor Strange-y stuff, so I am somewhat expert in it. Dean Shomshak

Oh -- Heller also believes that jovian planets could have Earth-sized moons, and these could be habitable, or even superhabitable. Their interiors would be heated by tidal stresses rather than radioactivity, so that factor would be removed. Heller's article has a bibliogaphy: Habitable Climates: The Influence of Obliquity. David S. Spiegel, Kristen Menou and Caleb A. Scharf in Astrophysical Journal, vol. 691, No. 1, pages 596-610; Jan. 20, 2009. http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/691/1/596/article Exomoon Habitability Constrained by Illumination and Tidal Heating. Rene' Heller and Rory Barnes in Astrobiology, vol. 13, No. 1, pages 18-46; 2013. http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.5323 Habitable Zone Lifetimes of Exoplanets around Main Sequence Stars. Andrew J. Rushby, Mark W. Claire, Hugh Osborn and Andrew J. Watson in Atrobiology, vol. 13, No. 9, pages 833-849; Sep. 18, 2013. [Didn't give a URL] Superhabitable Worlds. Rene' Heller and John Armstrong in Astrobiology, Vol. 14, No. 1, pages 50-66; Jan. 16, 2014. http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.2392 Dean Shomshak

In brief: Author Rene' Heller notes that Earth's habitability -- measured by actual quantity of life -- has varied widely over time. During the Carboniferous, Earth's biomass was probably larger than it is now, what with our large desert areas, the near-lifeless middle of the oceans, etc. More importantly, habitability should be summed over time. Earth's period as a life-bearing planet is almost over, geologically speaking: As the Sun gets brighter and hotter with age, the "Goldilocks Zone" moves outward. Current estimates place Earth at its inner edge. Within the next billion years or so, the oceans evaporate. Earth also faces some geological exhaustion-points. The magnetic field that protects the atmosphere, and the plate tectonics that keeps carbon cycling between atmosphere and lithosphere, are driven by a combination of relic heat from the Earth's formation and heat from radioacive decay. The supply of radioactive elements inexorably declines. In a billion years or so, internal heat drops to the point that both processes stop. CO2 builds up in the atmosphere, unless the atmosphere gets blown away by the solar wind. Bad either way. Heller suggests that a larger planet would sustain its geological processes longer, through its larger supply of radioactives and greater heat of formation; while a K dwarf star would heat more slowly, leaving the planet within its Goldilocks Zone many billions of years longer. He estimates that a planet twice Earth's mass, orbiting a K dwarf star, could remain habitable for many billions of years longer than Earth. <oreover, the higher gravity could mean a flatter topography, with fewer high, expansive continents to develop deserts and more life-rich archipelagos. I see potential problems with Heller's arguments (notably, an article I read several years ago that a planet significantly larger than Earth can't have a liquid core -- the greater pressure keeps it solid, even if it's hotter). But it's an interesting alternate view of habitability, and a healthy counterpoint to the "Rare Earth" school that says even the slightest difference from Earth would make complex life impossible. I think one should hesitate to be too certain, in any direction, until we have more than one example of a life-bearing planet to study -- and as a gamer, I prefer to err on the side of possibility! Dean Shomshak

The latest Scientific American has an article about the potential for "superhabitable" planets -- worlds that are actually better than Earth at sustaining Life As We Know It. (Sorry, no link. I read SA in Dead Tree, and me big tech dummy who doesn't know how to post links on this forum. Maybe someone else could do this? Sorry again.) Dean Shomshak

Mm, I think it takes something away from the setting if the original serum was controllable enough to have sterility built in. The original scientists reached into the unknown when they created the first super-soldiers, the fear of what they might unleash on the world outweighed by the fear of an Axis victory if they did not. Sort of like the scientists on the Manhattan Project. Recall that the speculation that the first A-bomb might start a nuclear chain reaction in the atmosphere was answered, "Certainly not. Well, *almost* certainly not." At first, with all supers state-created, there may have been registration. As the first super-powered children came of age in the late 1950s and 1960s, though, there would be court cases in the US challenging the law as part of the wider civil rights movement. Forcing someone to register for something they were born with arguably violates a few Constitutional amendments. Laws might stand about people who use the serums -- at least for now. Other countries will take different approaches due to their different legal frameworks regarding the individual's relation to the state. It also might muddy the setting too much to have low-grade serums for sale to the public. It seems to me the strength of a setting like this is to explore issues of law and control. Dean Shomshak

In my gaming group, the GMs now start each adventure with a look at what each character is doing individually, both in costume and in Secret IDs (for those who have them). If you keep switching from character to character quickly, no one has time to be bored. Thing is, those of us who GM find we spend most of our prep time thinking up these short solo vignettes. The group adventure only requires a few scribbled notes and the character sheets for the antagonists. We're so likely to send the story off in unexpected directions that any more prep is a wate of time. Dean Shomshak

I've sent Jason the .pdf of SHARED ORIGINS: THE DYNATRON. It should appear for sale very soon. Continuing the SHARED ORIGINS series, it presents the Dynatron: A miracle machine that can give anyone super-powers. Its inventor, the supervillain Red Giant, has become an important vendor of origins to anyone who can pay. This is not as good for Red Giant as you might think. SHARED ORIGINS: THE DYNATRON is almost twice as long as the previous supplement in the series, SKY-Q, with 10 sample characters of various power levels. You also get game mechanics for the Dynatron itself. There should soon be a more complete product announcement in the Product Line Forum and the News homepage. I hope you find SHARED ORIGINS: THE DYNATRON useful, and as much fun to read as I found it to write. Dean Shomshak

The Cherubim bringing gifts reminds me of the Axons, from the old Doctor Who episode The Claws of Axos. Golden humanoids with obviously fake curled hair -- just the surface of the head, sculpted, rather than actual hair -- and blank eyes. I think it's a rather creepy, uncanny-valley look. It's a little too obvious they are trying to look like us for so they don't scare us, but aren't very good at i -- which raises the question of what they are really like, that we would find so scary. (This being Doctor Who, the Axons' "gift" -- a substance called Axonite, which could vastly multiply humanity's food supply, among other benefits -- was of course a trap meant to destroy humanity. The Cornucopias are probably not that sort of trap, but shrewd people will not be too quick to rely on them.) Dean Shomshak

Steriaca: A Program could become a Power Vendor, or vice-versa, over time; or a Program could hire a Power Vendor. Like, imagine a country that wants a corps of super-soldiers but doesn't have enough native mutants to train, the tech for powered armor or cyborgs, or other available resources. The government might just hire a vendor such as Marvel's Power Broker, Inc. to augment a group of loyal soldiers. If it's an unpleasant regime, so what if half of them die or are horribly mutated into mindless monsters? If the government is somewhat more responsible, the soldiers are volunteers who know the process is dangerous. QM: Yeah, Will "Starman Payton was great. One of my favorites from DC. I never cared much for DC's A-list characters like Batman and Superman: Too much history (and sometimes, too many titles published at once). I preferred Blue Devil, Halk and Dove, Booster Gold, etc. Dean Shomshak

Quite possibly, humans have the wrong idea about what caused Sol System to fall into the oubliette. It could be a plot point for the PCs to discover that what people thought was causative was actually coincidence, or at least not causative in the way they thought. Like, the LHC doesn't create the oubliette, but creating a short-lived quantum black hole signals the oubliette's creators that humanity is advanced/interesting/potentially dangerous enough to sequester and observe. Dean Shomshak

The Cadmus Project was an example of a different trope, the Program. But a related trope, it's true. The chief difference is whether the people trying to create superheumans are doing it for a particular sponsor, to further that sponsor's interests, or (apparently) for anyone willing to pay the price. Cadmus was only one U. S. government program to create superbeings. I recall that Will Payton became Starman through an accidental deflection of the energies meant for another government program. He later met the pissed-off super-soldiers that program created. Over in Marvel, the two Serpent Squads were products of programs from the evil Roxxon Corporation. Many other examples -- the trope is a lot more common than the Power Vendor. As Christopher points out, the methods used by a Power Vendor must not be too cheap or easy, or why isn't the world even more full of supers? The limiting factor on a Power Vendor or Program can be as important, from a story POV, as the mechanism for origins. Dean Shomshak

Incidentally, Cassandra, if you want any more RL people to fit into the WW2-era period of your timeline, I suggest Hedy Lamarr. The famed Hollywood acress -- billed, not unjustly, as "the most beautiful woman in the world," was also a genius polymath. Most notably she and the composer George Antheil invented frequency hopping as an adjunct to her idea of radio-guided torpedoes. The two gave their patent to the Navy, which wasn't interested, but frequency-hopping is now a fundamental technology for cell phones, GPS, etc. She's probably the only person to be in both the Hollywood Hall of Fame and the U. S. Inventors Hall of Fame. In your world, she could have reacted to the Navy's disinterest by becoming a spy-smashing gadgeteer superhero! (The 100th anniversary of her birth passed last week, so there have been remembrances.) Dean Shomshak

I had forgotten about Barter! Though the only story I remember in which he conferred super-powered happened in the Armageddon 2001 series of annuals: In a possible future, he gave Dove's daughter the Kestrel enchantment... *Gave* it, in full knowledge of the consequences for breaking the law of his existence. I never read any stories involving Necron. I will look him up. Thank you, one and all. Dean Shomshak

Thank you for the responses but, er, many of them were not to the question I asked. I didn't just ask for people and groups able to grant super-powers. I asked for people and groups who will do this *for people who pay them.* So, the Oans are not power vendors. Unless they have changed a *lot* since I last looked into the DCU, they do not sell power rings. That a lot of lab accident origins happen at STAR Labs does not make it a power vendor. Can they grant super-powers reliably? If you hand them a big wad of money and say, "Give me super-powers," will they do it? I remember the former hero turned insane villain Mento used Promethium to give super-powers to the members of the Hybrid villain team. But they were his mind-controlled minions, not his customers. I didn't ask for the CU because I already know it. Yes indeed, Wayland Talos and ARGENT are examples of power vendors. Teleios seems to do this at least once in a while, going by Hurricane's backstory. Doctor Philippe Moreau sort-of-does this by supplying manimal soldiers, though apparently he can't give super-powers to people who ask for them. Mephistopheles is a power vendor: See Hell Rider. He just charges souls instead of money. King Cobra is very definitely *not* a power vendor: He seeks loyal minions, not satisfied clients. PRIMUS isn't selling cyberline. The Haynesville Project isn't looking for customers, either. And so on, for most of the other origin granters mentioned. So: Do any of the DCU origin-granters *sell* super-powers? (Though they may have a hidden agenda in doing so, the way Cauldron has an agenda of SPOILER CENSORED.) Dean Shomshak

While working on my latest project, Shared Origins: The Dynatron, I realized it was built around a different comic book trope than I first thought. In the introduction, I'd like to cite examples of that trope from different superhero settings. The trope is "Powers For Sale": A person or organization that can confer super-powers on anyone who's willing to pay. There may be some other agenda too, but the vendor at least gives the appearance of being in it for the money. This sets the vendor apart from other people who can grant super-powers or otherwise create superbeings, but do so only to create powerful minions, give their best friend a suit of powered armor, or other personal reasons. The Marvel Universe has Power Broker, Inc. Justin Hammer and the Tinkerer supply technical upgrades for gadget-based villains (though I don't off-hand recall them supplying gadgets or battlesuits "from scratch" for would-be villains), so they also count as examples of this trope. The online serial Worm has the organization Cauldron, which sells super-power serums. (And there's a lot more to them, but that's the part their customers see.) I don't know the DC Universe as well as Marvel, but I'm sure there must be a power vendor or two in this setting. Could some kind expert in the DCU please clue me in? Thank you in advance. (Or, hey, if you know of any power vendors in the indie comic book settings, I'd like to hear of them as well.) Dean Shomshak

It seems vaguely appropriate at this point to note that the last two episodes of Grimm featured a mind flayer. hey didn't call it that, but that's what it was. Dean Shomshak

I notice you slipped in a bit of The Waste Land, too. But that's okay. Dean Shomshak

I love understatement. :-) (Also, not up on the latest/most complete treatment of mind flayers. I don't read or buy D&D supplements; the three corebooks have always been enough for my needs.) Dean Shomshak

The "oubliette" premise also reminds me of DC's Mosaic, in which the last Guardian of the Universe, going nuts from loneliness, abducts communities from dozens of worlds to Oa. Including, of course, from Earth. How do all these aliens get along with their new neighbors? It could be that each new star system brought into the pocket universe causes a reshuffling of the jump points. People know it's happened when the old jump points vanish and it takes a few years to find the new ones. Decades may pass between shuffles, but it shapes how alien races interact. Nobody plans on the assumption they'll be neighbors forever. Illithids in the Sundered Stars? Interesting, especially if they aren't the villains. Sure, they have some unpleasant biological requirements, but reasonable people can overcome such difficulties, can't they? Dean Shomshak

Well, people wouldn't see the stars go out immediately; the light that already crossed the border keeps going. The first clue would be that jump points out of the sundered zone stop working. Then people see the stars go out in a wave, starting from the nearest edge of the Sundering and sweeping around to the opposite side; slowest near the edge of the zone (I presume it's spherical) and faster near the center. At the exact center, the stars all seem to go out at once. If the Sundering destroys all the jump points at once, then all people know is that they are trapped in one star system. They have to infer everything else from the pattern of stars going out -- at least until the new jump points form and are discovered. Dean Shomshak

Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan" series has similar "wormholes." That interestellar travel is only possible along these specific routes is an important part of the setting: The history of series hero Miles Vorkosigan's home planet was shaped by its sole jump point closing shortly after colonization, leading to the barbaric, centuries-long Time of Isolation; when a new wormhole opened, Barrayar's sole exit route led to the planet Komarr, whose only resource is that it's a hub for several jump-point routes; and after a very bad invasion abetted by the Komarrans, the Barrayarans conquered Komarr to make sure they controlled their own front door, leading to further story-shaping consequences. Since Cancer brought it up, I notice that Bujold's wormholes cancel relative velocity. (It's noted in a couple novels that ships must deliberately move away from the wormhole afterwards, to make sure they don't collide with other ships coming through.) Presumably, the ship's energy gets stored in the five-space vibrations of the wormhole. In one book, someone finds how to pull energy out of the wormhole -- though not in a particularly controllable fashion, and that's not what the people were trying to do. Starships need a living pilot who's had his brain specially wired to interface with the ship's jump drive. Exactly what the pilot contributes is not clear in the stories, but they are necessary: No robot ships. This becomes important in the first book, when the Barrayarans use the technique to cover their retreat from a military debacle. If you detonate a nuke mid-jump, the resulting five-space vibrations block the wormhole for some weeks... which means sacrificing a ship and its pilot. Cordelia Nismith, from the ultra-civilized planet Beta Colony, is gobsmacked that the Barrayarans would use a suicide tactic -- and that a pilot would volunteer. Dean Shomshak

Keelung sounds interesting. If you decide to use a made-up city, you could use Keelung as a starting point. To get the expat/cultural melting pot aspects of Singapore and Macau, maybe create a "Taiwan's Hong Kong" sort of city. In the 19th century, the Taiwan city was leased to European country as a port and trading post. The lease, of course, is about to expire -- so who does sovereignty revert to? The Taiwan government assumes of course that it takes over the city, but the PRC is (of course) claiming that it's the legitimate successor to the Qing empire. If the soon-to-be former colonial power has severe economic problems -- say, Spain or Portugal -- the PRC could exert a lot of pressure/bribery to be designated the new owner. In any case there could be a lot of PRC spies at work in the city. They would not be the Big Bad, but could be a pretty important distraction or red herring. I hope to hear more about this project. Dean Shomshak

Do you yet have a cool bar with a cool bartender? It might be a "neutral ground" for all the super/supernatural types, like MacAnally's pub fromj the Dresden Files. After all, people who have adventures traditionally meet in bars. Dean Shomshak

I think it's a good idea, too. Not everything should have "body loot," but maybe that just means alchemists have not yet found what something is good for, hmm? (Pet peeve: Fantasy settings in which *everything* is already known, and PCs have no chance of discovering/inventing anything new. It's rarely stated explicitly, but often seems implicit in the setting.) Dean Shomshak