David Blue

Re: Opinions: A 'Hero' Stealing Their Gear.....????

Iron. Iron isn't just about megaviolence. It's about deconstruction and cynicism' date=' abandonment of traditional heroic ethics as being "unrealistic". Booster Gold came out the same year Watchmen did, the year Punisher got his first miniseries, just a year before Marshall Law comes out. It's the start of the Iron Age and Booster, the athlete who got expelled from sports for betting on games and then stole his powers so he could play hero and get back the fame and money is right there along with with the other heros who don't play by the old rules.[/quote']

I think so.

 

My point about the elven hero is that he doesn't need to be like that at all. He could be a post-iron, heroism restored sort of character. The museum authorities could be irrelevant and forgotten, a real option in the golden age, or they could be hunters like J. Jonah Jameson in a Silver Age game, or the origin could be part of a bronze age story about the racist white establishment needing to learn respect for the rights of all other races (you could have native Americans, elves, aliens and other races reclaiming their rights from honkie scholars), or in an iron age story reclaiming the items might save them from being replaced by fakes and destroyed, along with the rest of the irreplaceable items in the museum for, sick kicks at some evil billionaire's parties, or in a fairly hopeful post-iron game with a lot of character building, the museum might provide the elf hero with some nice normals to interact with, a bunch of good looking scenery to pose in front of and save from thieves and vandals, and a place to meet and be met by other heroes.

Re: Opinions: A 'Hero' Stealing Their Gear.....????

I don't think she's at all shaky on the good / bad thing. She's right, and she should keep doing what she's doing.

Imagine in future every Christian artifact was owned by a museum, and wasn't allowed to be used for any other purpose than museum display. Imagine that somebody then got hold of a bible, read it, believed it, and started to preach from it - that is they use the holy item exactly the way it was intended to be used. Would they have the right to do so? I would say: of course they would.

Or, imagine if a museum disinterred your grandfather's corpse, and against his will, your will and your family tradition, put him on display like a bug in a glass case, and the law supported it. Would you have the moral right to "steal" your grandfather's corpse and see that it was properly reburied, if you practically could? I would say: of course you would.

Part of responsible conservation (in the sense that a museum conserves things) is to recognize the moral limits of your claim on things. "Anything that the museum has, it keeps, and claims as its own property no matter what counter-claims come up" is not an adequate rule to follow.

There's no fixed rule for how completing claims should be adjudicated, especially with all the odd cases that can come up in a superhero world. But I'd say demonstrating that your ownership of the items was in line with the intentions of the creators and historical owners by actually transforming into something in line with their intentions and then acting in accordance with their values would be pressing your claim in the strongest way short of proving that you personally were the items' creator and owner.

It would be very reasonable for the museum to want to negotiate a compromise solution. The elf hero could spend regular time in the museum and allow visitors. Even if it was only a fifteen minute showing a week, the attendance would be huge - enough eventually to make up for even a huge dollar loss on the item. The elf hero might be filmed and scientifically examined, and sign over the rights to that data to compensate the museum for its scientific loss. The elven hero might say that his code was against both those things, but he could undertake a quest to compensate the museum with other items that could be legitimately examined and shown to the public.

If the elf hero didn't do anything like that, when reasonable compromises were on offer, then yes that would be unheroic.

But if the museum just took the attitude that they owned everything and what the elves wanted with their own sacred items was of no importance, then they'd be acting like a typical nuisance hunted, and morally they could be treated as such.

Re: Songs that inspire(d) you to make a Champions Character

I've built this guy repeatedly, using different mechanics, for different games. I don't have the character sheets any more (and I'll be very pleased if someone else can do a good build), but I still have the inspiration of The Hardest Part:

Twenty five tons of hardened steel rolls on no ordinary wheels. Inside the armored car ride two big armed guards; in a bulletproof vest, shatterproof glass.

Overdrive, we're gonna pass!

Twenty five tons of hardened steel rolls on no ordinary wheels.

The hardest part of the armored guard big: man of steel behind the steering wheel.

Nitro and acetylene open la machine. No short heist, no overnight: big money take ya to Brazil.

Bulletproof vest, shatterproof glass. Overdrive, we're gonna pass! Time bomb, greasy mob, count down, hurry up, come on!

The hardest part of the armored guard: big man of steel behind the steering wheel.

In a wire mesh cage with a twelve gauge. Radio, we're coming fast! Oh need to feel some hardened steel, deliver the big money deal.

Of the armored guard, here's what I heard: I'll tell you that he will, no matter what you feel.

The hardest part of the armored guard: big man of steel behind the steering wheel!

Twenty five tons of hardened steel deliver the big money deal...

Re: WWYCD: "He'll be back."

Remote would take the view that a fight for species survival over-rides all other considerations. He'd fight to the death for future humanity and for the extermination of the machines, using all his technological prowess.

To that end, while remaining organic, he would become harder than any machine: more implacable, more logical, more ruthless and more strategically directed.

He wouldn't care at all who started it, or whether humans became machines voluntarily. He'd be a Protector (from Larry Niven's fiction) in every way that mattered.

Re: Pet Powers

The "red shoes" multipower:

* running

* swimming

* leaping

preferably bought with reduced or zero Endurance.

I originally bought this focused in a pair of red shoes for my first regular Champions character, a martial artist.

And yes it was inspired by a girl who when she put on a pair of magic red shoes couldn't stop dancing.

I like athletic characters: sprinting, jumping, swimming, diving, running long distance, clinging and climbing and swinging and doing insane chases on bicycles and stuff like that.

Super-athletes, though a comic book staple, are inefficient compared to power-gamed-up characters. That was why my martial artist had a pair of red shoes.

The neat thing about a "red shoes" multipower is that if the gamemaster retaliates by giving his non-player characters something similar, the game is improved, not least for the athletic hero.

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

This was the case of a guy leaving the room' date=' watching porn, and then being "affectionate" in a personal space violation type of way... and I think that's saying too much about it altogether. Time for another shower.[/quote']

OK, we have a "winner".

Re: Wild Card's Hero

True. And although there is reference in the books to it "fading"' date=' I don't know that the field every actually goes away. (IIRC, GB says that after a few hours of the military testing his powers, bullets began to actually hurt, though I read that as painful, but not doing actual damage)[/quote']

Page 98 of Wild Cards I: "I never got tired enough for it to fade entirely, not when I wanted it on. I was scared of what would happen then, and I always took care to take my rest when I needed it."

 

To reflect this, you could limit a small amount of the armor with "not when very tired" and give the character a fear of being too tired, or you could buy a small part of the armor as having an END cost, and let long term Endurance rules work. I think the first option is simpler.

 

I think of all Wild Cards characters as Superworld characters first. I read that this was how the series began, though I don't have a reference to back me up now, the timing is right, and as a long term Superworld gamemaster and player (who eventually converted to Champions when it had rules for vehicles etc. and it had become obvious that Superworld was dead in the water and was never going to have such things), I can say that both the design and play of the characters shows every possible Superworld hallmark.

 

Because of this, in another system, some of the characters, or quite a few, have quirks that aren't really quirks, they're just facts about how the character's native system works.

 

One of these quirks is the devastating effect of impact damage. Car wrecks and falls will kill ungodly tough characters, easily. A runaway suburban car or a fall can do triple what a hero might be allowed to do with an energy blast. Stick a Mad Max spike on the front for Impaling damage (yes, this is Runequest), and you can do a really large multiple of what superheroes dish out.

 

So when you look at Jack Braun and falling damage, you can choose to reflect his concern as an oddity in Hero System, or (as I would do) disregard it as something that never marked the character out as unusual in his original context.

Re: Would this be simpler?

I personally think it's just easier to restructure the price of the powers and the various advantages and limitations. Instead of making them cost multipliers make them adders and hide the math: Half-End can cost 10 points and Zero-End can cost 20' date=' etc. Yes, it'll change the cost structure of the game but it's an easy thing to adjust starting point totals to adjust for that, IMO.[/quote']

That might work for advantages, but with limitations you'll soon have to impose a minimum cost of 1pt per power or something like that, or else carefully defined powers will be worth free points.

Re: Integrating "normal" things into a "Super" world

I used to run with a rule that everybody liked so much that all the people I knew adopted it in their games: all super-attacks are twice as effective if fired at someone without a super-body.

I defined a super-body as 100pts or more of characteristics bought straight or in effect. (That is, a battlesuit counts. But if you don't want to be reduced to jam by the first attack that's fired at you while you're out of your suit, buy your hundred.)

This worked because it was a very simple rule, and everybody understood what kind of player characters were wanted and why, and players could use the rule to their advantage and I and other gamemasters were fine with that. If you wanted to graduate from mook-ness by buying up your PRE and COM, OK, I figured good-looking and impressive people were in genre, so go for it. If you wanted to make your DNPC Competent to get their hundred and be easier to rescue alive, great.

Super-bodies were visible if you knew what you were looking for. The special effect was that someone with a super-body had the most common superpower: the ability to look great in a superhero costume. If you were a "hardbody", well, you were a hard body. I figured that was in genre too, and everybody seemed to agree.

I'm a strong believer in simple solutions and in starting with the source material.

Re: Real life powers... (Adv's vs Lim's) Balance?

1. If you get whatever groups of powers you want say 300pt's worth what powers would you want in real life? (post your sheet)

Life Support 50pts

N-Ray Vision 10pts

Telescopic Vision for sight group +13 vs. range modifiers 20pts

Telekinesis 60 STR, affects porus, fine manipulation, 0 END 165pts

Flight 12" 0 END 36pts

Armor +6rPD +6rED 18pts

Flash Defense +1 sight group 1pt

This would enable me to find people in trouble, for example on foundering ships and in mine cave ins, and rescue them with my telekinesis, as fast as I could fly to them, all day every day, endlessly, no sweat.

2. Would you want any limitations on your powers? How about power advantages?

Only as noted above: few advantages, no limitations.

3. Would you want to keep limitations on yourself for balance of your own power?

No.

4. What would you do if others say you are overpowered' date=' and you having super ability's takes the fun out of there lives....[/quote']

I'd ask them to explain this theory to people whose lives I saved.

 

5. How about government and some people who just want to stay normal not meta & think you should be normal too?

I'd ask them to explain this theory to people whose lives I saved.

Re: Integrating "normal" things into a "Super" world

I wrote:

 

 

I've done a bit of this. It's pretty tricky balancing vulnerability to low end attacks with not dying against high end ones, when the high end ones are 150AP!

 

I still think it's possible, but my original approach (3/4 Damage Reduction) is just too brutal at the bottom end. It simply wouldn't be possible for a Joker-type to take out a Batman built this way (or vice versa). (I'm not particularly concerned about mooks not being able to do it!)

 

I'll keep fiddling around whenever I get a moment. There must be an answer!

Did you try 1/2 Damage Reduction, and if so how did it go for you?

Re: Integrating "normal" things into a "Super" world

That said' date=' I also would find restatting everything to be too much work, so I strove to make my options easily graftable onto extant characters.[/quote']

Thank you for doing so. Though I'm happy with what I'm doing now, in future I may want to do something else. It's good to have extra options.

Re: Integrating "normal" things into a "Super" world

Working on some paramilitary guys today, I found the weak spot in these rules. None of them will give supers a chance against the typical heavy weapons used by the military.

 

As written, a LAW Rocket is a 6 1/2d6 AP RKA Explosion with a +1 STUN multiplier. That will turn most supers into a smear on the ground - 23 BODY versus 1/2 resistant defenses, with a minimum 46 STUN assuming an average BODY roll (or 69 STUN assuming a roll of 3 on the die). Granted, it takes an extra phase to fire, but even a near miss is going to drop anything short of a brick with hardened defenses (and the brick will probably be stunned). I understand the need for the high BODY and AP to blow through a tank, but the Increased STUN multiplier is simply overkill.

 

I had to tone down the LAW when working up a paramilitary guy - dropped it to 6d6, stated that the AP portion only works versus the target hit (not everyone else in the radius), and removed the increased STUN multiple. Even so, I pray that the supers see the guy and stop him before he fires...

 

So, what do other people do to address this issue? Change the stats on the weapons? Let the chips fall where they may? Just avoid using realistic heavy weapons altogether?

Restatting everything would be way too much work.

Letting the chips wall where they may works reasonably well for dumb bricks with very high resistant defenses and regeneration. Mighty Rogg is based on the Hulk, Ang Lee movie version. He's supposed to fight the army, but because of the way Hero system works, they flatten him, and it's not even a fight: one pass and he's out like a baby. But since he's back to full body by the time he wakes up, and his personality is not such that he has to internalize and be dejected by the fact that he gets one punched, who cares? I just play him in character and in genre, minus the bit where after he roars his defiance and the army takes its first shot he's still standing. The gamemaster was kind of shocked that the game system does that, but I the player realized that Hero and supers are far apart as genres, so I wasn't bothered, and when you're happy what more is there in gaming?

Not using realistic heavy weapons at all is a good solution. Why should realistic heavy weapons show up when realistic, that is genre-appropriate, supers can't? Keep the villains using bizarre magic weapons, and basically pretend normal weapons don't exist. In another game I'm playing in, we'd be hosed if we ever had to fight soldiers, or really even cops, but as long as the big kids don't show up it's not an issue.

One thing about this: with magic or psionics, you want to be careful not to give mind control to anyone but a player who understands and will play with your campaign limits. Bribery and wealth might also be a problem.

Re: WWYCD: Welcome Divinity?

Seems like anyone worthy of having such power would refuse it when offered.

How come?

Re: PA Hero: Kamandi's World

Kamandi was a hoot, but for exactly that reason tough to do as a game.

You have to get the tone just right, otherwise you can't keep both your license to be loopy (which you need) and the deadly seriousness of (say) the bulldog cavalry about to be slaughtered by leopards with modern (for the 1970s) arms - both going successfully in the same scene.

Above all, to run Kamandi, you have to not slap down the main character when he's showing extreme confidence and belligerence.

If Kamandi thinks he can take down an entire hotel full of sentient wolves with the equivalent of an improvised stink-bomb, he can. When he thinks he can talk not only back to but down to armed gorillas, imperial tigers and so on, he's right. His friend Ben Boxer, who's interchangeable with the X-Men movies' Colossus, has no edge over Kamandi, who's super-power is that he's feisty and active. The player has to rely on that and push the game forward vigorously, and the world has to confirm he's right.

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

when for every 3hours of game play you invest 6 hours of bitching about the game.

When, with scenarios / sessions that consistently finish around 10pm if the rules lawyers don't show up,

you consistently have 11pm or later finishes when the rules lawyers can make it to the session,

and then the non-rules lawyers, as if on signal, find familiar places to crash on couches, chairs and on the floor,

as the bitching goes to 12 midnight, 1am and even 1:30 or 2am, and you're still not ready to make the call and distribute experience points. (With those not present or who have departed of course missing out, or having post-game rulings and time-line revisions go against them.)

Because the non-rules lawyers, as they remind you individually from time to time, looking right in your eyes, have to work the next day.

-

The willingness or unwillingness of the gamemaster to say, "no, that's it, events will not be changed and I don't want to hear about any more one last things, here's your experience points, get out" can have a disproportionate effect on the enjoyment that some of your players (the non-rules-lawyers, those who work for a living, and those who have a long drive home) get from the game.

Re: WWYCD: Welcome Divinity?

"We have seen your power' date=' your integrity, your virtues. We hold extraordinary power; some have, in your past, regarded us as divine. That may---or may not---be true, but we have determined that you hold great value. We would hereby make you one of us, in effect, a god. Do you accept?"[/quote']

 

Remote: "Yes. Thank you."

 

Rogg I: (the Gamma Giant) (shrugging with already godlike self-assurance): "Sure."

Rogg II: (Dr. Freddie Green: the Gamma Genius): "Yes. I expect this will be very interesting."

 

Spirit Master: "Yes. I'll need help and guidance to do a good job at first. May I ask for a mentor?"

Re: 'Divine' Characters

The reason not to be grateful is if the character sees the bestowal of power as an investment' date=' not a gift.[/quote']

Do you mean like in Ghost Rider (2007)? I would agree with that, in this situation.

Re: Politics or not

In fairness, there was more to the scenario than described - like ongoing killings and enough supernatural vengeance to keep a group of heroes busy - and this was a long time ago and I'm shaky on some details as the number of victims shows, and the gamemaster did decide to abandon that scenario. In other words, apart from the central problem, this was a good piece of plotting, and the gamemaster also showed good judgment in letting it go. On both counts, well done.

But the central problem - that the scenario made no sense and was even insoluble unless you shared the scenario designer's assumptions - was as described.

Re: Politics or not

It is fatally easy, once you start mingling controversial political and moral issues with superhero plots, to make doing the scenario successfully or just playing your genius character as "smart" depend on agreeing with the gamemaster.

This isn't so bad (though it can still be annoying) when the writer of a comic controls both the plot that's intended to teach the readers a moral lesson and the designated smart character who will solve the problem in the proper way and perhaps spell out the lesson. But in a game it can work out very badly indeed.

Re: Politics or not

In Psi High, we recently had a short but in my opinion funny political sub-plot.

Simon, a good guy bitterly disappointed in love, resolved to forsake love and instead embrace the evil power of politics. He began his ascent to dark and loveless omnipotence by running for high school president, and to fit himself with a false personality to facilitate his career, he consulted his two remaining friends on what they wanted in a politician.

As it happened, these friends were Tamara, a gun-crazy conservative with a habit of wearing pro Second Amendment message T-shirts, and her new boyfriend, a warm fan of Dick Cheney. Simon heard his friends out politely, and then (for other reasons as well), instead of remaking himself as the kind of guy they wanted to vote for, he fled the country and returned to Japan, thus exiting the campaign.

"Sell my soul for power" is abstract. "100% conservative voting record" with specific issues mentioned and Dick Cheney as the model to aspire to was horrifyingly specific.

-

In my experience, politics doesn't work out well in superhero games unless it's as light and easy as what you might get in a situation comedy, or unless you play solidly to superhero conventions, like a race for district attourney where one of the candidates is not just wrong but secretly a mob boss or something like that.

If you're going to go all Bronze Age, tell your players up front that this is what you'll be doing, and that the politics reflect the comics you have in mind and not anything in the real world.

And if works best best if you catch and kill your own, with conservatives mocking conservatives (or at least playing them broadly, as in the example above) and liberals mocking liberals.

-

Two things I would steer way clear of: the topic of abortion, and (unconsiously) letting a plot depend on a political assumption that not everyone may agree on.

A friend, a very good gamemaster whose great strength was making up plots, devised a "ghosts of vengeance" plot where what looked at first like a "normal" series of superpowered slayings was really the work of the ghosts of every human being that had ever died at an abortion clinic that had been running for many years. These ghosts were an abortionist that had recently been killed by a pro-lifer, and I think three (or possibly just two, three total?) other noble pro-choice workers who had been killed over the years, and whose "accidental" deaths had not really been accidental but caused by malicious anti-abortion agitators. It would not be possible to defeat the angry spirits of justice, but it was possible to stop them, that is to lay the ghosts by bringing out the truth, by seeing that all those guilty of killing at that location were properly punished, and by reassuring the spirits of the righteous departed that their good work would go on.

The scenario was intended partly to do something a bit different while being as fair as possible to both sides in the abortion debate, with the heroes playing the "middle" role of peacemakers, preventing unlimited vengeance against bigoted pro-lifers. In the end, ideally, every player would finish the scenario feeling happy or at least satisfied - but thoughtful.

I had to point out very gently certain flaws in this scenario, the first of which was that the critical supernatural clues about how all the slain were rising and all the blood shed must be answered for were either incomprehensible or misleading unless you held the proper assumptions. If you thought that only one human being had ever been killed at the clinic, the abortionist recently slain, then the clues led you to discover that there had been two or three other innocent victims crying out for vengeance, and then you could solve the plot. If you held another assumption about what happens at an abortion clinic, the clues were either incomprehensible in context (where nothing corresponding to what you would expect to happen ever happened) or else they pointed to a supernatural and therefore false explanation for the recent murder.

In effect, you could only do the adventure by agreeing with the gamemaster's beliefs, and if you didn't realize you had to do that, and if you didn't simply share his assumptions, you would fail.

Scenarios like this will not help your game or your gaming group.

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

The player characters keep track of how many years it's been since you said you were going to start enforcing the focus disadvantage.

You keep the players who don't already have focus-based characters from retiring their loser non-focused-up characters and bringing in focused based winner characters instead ... by banning the practice and insisting that they wouldn't be happy if you let them do that anyway, because you're going to start really enforcing the focus disadvantage real soon now.

This story has not changed in two or more years, and the players can tell you, at least to the month, when each anniversary of your first telling of that story comes around.

The gadget-based characters get a total rebuild with each new addition of experience, always reconfiguring themselves to become ever more invincible. Meanwhile, the players of the non-focused characters spend their points indifferently, but they each have a replacement character sheet for what they want to play if you ever relax the ban on new focus-based characters, and that is the character sheet that gets updated with loving care every time experience is distributed.

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

Your player characters know everybody in court on a first name basis, and spend more time defending themselves there than on any other activity in the game.

Players discuss during combat what they're going to be charged with this time, and their defenses and extenuating circumstances. They know and discuss your favorite charges and civil damage suits.

Player characters have psychologists routinely updated with any changes to their psych limits or life circumstances in anticipation of the next court-ordered evaluation.

Nobody bothers to keep track of how much more "community service" they have left to run, as (a) they know they'll be sentenced to more before this runs out, and ( they agree that the group has become in effect a system of court-ordered self-incrimination anyway.

Also, nobody bothers to buy Wealth as they know the court will take it.

Both players and player characters loudly discuss why Agent Max Justice doesn't do some fighting himself before the rest of the team is unconscious, humiliated and / or up for more property damage charges again.

(Agent Max Justice, or your equivalent, is the NPC government agent team leader with off-the-shelf foci who can take out any two team members simultaneously, and can probably take out the whole team himself if he wants to. His regular keen observations on player character frailties and failures under fire are vital in influencing the court in the direction of sufficient leniency to keep the game going.)

Re: The Incredibles and Registration

You may have misinterpreted the question' date=' which was about starting a new game, not converting an old one.[/quote']

Ah, I see. I did misinterpret you, based on this: "I'm particularly asking the players who would balk at such a change to their established universe. Would you play in such a game?"

 

Got it now.

 

Well, having established that I would balk at such a change to my established universes, and so having answered part of the question, I'll say I am also playing very happily in a Hero Central game with what amounts to compulsory registration: Psi High.

 

I would not be happy as Mr. or Mrs. Incredible, but the world looks very different from the point of view of characters like Violet and the Dash, who were in effect born registered. From their point of view you are not giving up your autonomy, secrecy and freedom: you never had them, and as a minor you are not supposed to have them. So: fair enough.

 

As it happens, and there is nothing surprising about this, our government-supplied secret identities have not held up well. About half the Psi High students took their secret identities seriously, and I even spent points on Area Knowledge and Imitate Dialects to become fully Californian and American. But about half the kids wouldn't even use their new names most of the time - and if your friends and schoolmates are non-secure so are you. (Think of the problems that siblings might have with this too - every time you move, you have to get a new name and a new identity, and likely new hobbies and sports, losing your old ones. What if your brother or sister won't even use the new name? "Hi, I'm supposed to be called Sandra but my real name is Darleen.")

 

The kids who ignored security argued that it was meaningless anyway, and they were right. One of our classmates, a mind controller, defected, taking with him, among other things, everything our school doctor / psychologist knew, and later he returned and took everything someone else knew, so that even those who enrolled later and had been paranoid about their security procedures lost everything. And that villain has other contacts, and so on.

 

Given this, naturally everybody has moved into the fortified government dormitory (watch those hallway cameras!) and their parents have moved to different states or continents.

 

For safety, we also use and carry everywhere government supplied cell phones that we know are traced, and those of us with various forms of clairvoyance play a polite game of make believe as if we did not see the government agents always keeping us under surveillance.

 

Again, fair enough: whoever moves out from under surveillance not only invites more villainous attacks (delivered to us in the comfort and privacy of our own homes), but their updated knowledge is a danger to everyone as soon as the villains start using it.

 

By the time these kids reach the age of majority, they'll be fully used to living in a world where, while the public may be in the dark, villains know everything about them, including their secret dreams, where they'd like to live, what work they would like to do, what food they like, how they liked to dress and what hobbies and sports it would kill them to give up. Of course telepathic classmates (in one case with always on telepathy) also know this.

 

Why would you not register, as an adult? What would you give up by doing so? Privacy??

 

In some ways the situation of Dash and Violet is even more dis-empowered. Separating the supers rather than having a Psi High / Sky High means the government still has everything on these kids, but they know nothing about each other, except in their own families. They have no real peers, nobody they can really compete with, and nobody they can talk freely to about anything. (Except the government counselor with the tape running of course.) It's enough to make you stir-crazy, which can be interesting to play. The incentive to get into any action going is strong.

 

The Dash registers. Violet registers. There is no rational reason why they wouldn't. Rick Dickerson or the equivalent knows everything about them anyway. And if you already love playing them - why would you stop playing them?

 

In sum, if super-hood is hereditary, as in The Incredibles (2004) and Sky High (2005), getting people to register is only a problem in the first generation.

Re: 'Divine' Characters

Does the source of the character's power obligate that the character become a member of a religion appropriate to such? For example' date=' if your character had Apollo's bow or somesuch, would you feel that this should automatically make him worship the Olympian pantheon?[/quote']

Speaking for myself: decency and gratitude should obligate. Dieties may obligate. Power by itself has not yet obligated, though it may do so one day.

 

-

 

Chain Lightning has elemental magical powers that come with demon-slaying duties and a Confucian philosophy. The powers are not set to turn off if he ceased to slay demons or uphold traditional virtues. However, he chose to take seriously the implications of the fact that his powers worked for what the world is really about and what his duties are.

 

If Chain Lightning had no respect for tradition, learning, teachers, ancestors or duty, he would not have done that, and he would not have been a "superior man" and he would not have been fated to receive these gifts in the first place. This is obligation from general character, or decency.

 

In the movie Unbreakable (2000), David Dunn is obligated by his character. If his gifts are from a deity, and for all we know they are, they seem to be pure gifts, with no strings or hooks attached. (There is no indication that David Dunn will lose all his powers if he misses Sunday church or commits a sin such as an act of masturbation.) But they are gifts to someone who has to be a hero, who will always be sad unless he's doing the sorts of things it would take his gifts to accomplish.

 

-

 

I've played a variety of characters as supers and in fantasy who had divine gifts. They were or promptly became sincere worshipers of the relevant deity, because said deity had proved his, her or its generosity and goodness, effectiveness and interest. It was the right thing to do. This was obligation from gratitude, which also goes to decency and general character.

 

I would question the character of someone someone jogging around with something like a sword from Horus who didn't want to give thanks. I would also wonder at the goodness of a deity giving great powers to someone irredeemably, stone-hearted ungrateful. Isn't there anybody nice who could have used that power? Wouldn't it have been a more generous deed, for the sake of third parties, to have given the power to a better potential user?

 

There is not much support for this in the comics though, unless the power looks Jewish. Or possibly Christian. (Nowadays, Muslim might work too.) The Source, in Jack Kirby's comics, came with at least quasi-religious obligations. Other supernatural aid tended not to: it was just handy stuff to grab and use, like some item convenient to the hand of Conan the Barbarian.

 

I think if you are sticking to a strong New York Jewish feel for your comic book superheroes - and what could be more traditional? - this non-denominational Jewish or Abrahamic religious approach is a good way to go, or the best way to go.

 

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The character of the gods is very different from one pantheon to another. There are jealous gods and generous gods. The former demand devotion, the latter do not. You have to follow the directions of the jealous ones, which are likely to include spurning the others. "Have to," as in: they'll make you sorry if you don't, and fear of the jealous god is the beginning of wisdom.

 

If you have two divine gifts, one from, say, generous and motherly Isis, given no strings attached, and one from an explicitly jealous god who demands that Isis not be worshiped, prudence says which way you have to go. This is an obligation from the (more demanding and jealous, less forgiving and generous) deity.

 

I hadn't thought about it before, but it also makes sense to back the jealous god even if they have done nothing for you or even if you have had a life of sorrow being faithful to them. If the reward of those who disobey the jealous god is hellfire, while Amon or Anubis just gave you a divine gift, no strings attached - the math is easy. Use the power, but worship and serve the one who holds you dangling above eternal flames, if you know what's good for you.

 

I've never played a character who accepted an obligation from the deity. (Or not in the long run and willingly: in a convention game or something like that, sure.)

 

But fear, or what comes to the same thing, fanatical love directed by an underlying fear of Hellfire or something like that, may be a perfectly valid motive, depending on the religion or the deity.

 

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Obligation by power would be something like the obligation a Green Lantern has to recharge his or her ring. If Hal Jordan's favorite jingle was essential for the recharging to work, and if it was an explicit, religious prayer or an oath, that would be obligation by power. I have built characters that would have worked like that, but as luck would have it I have never played one.

 

I think this can work very well for a game, because wild costumes and grandiose speeches can be part of the deal.

 

This seems to be valid from comics too. I remember a fight where Moon Knight, servant of the god Khonsu, was taking on an enemy who had been favored by Anubis and was dressed to suit. The fight was in a temple that was going down, and the enemy found his "stupid" Anubis mask a hindrance amid the dust and falling rocks, so he tossed it - and was promptly smashed by a falling chunk of stone. Evidently whatever protection he had been getting had cut out. This could also be seen as an obligation from a god: do it my way, or SPLAT!