subplotkudzu | Always wanted to

As I noodle around on my supers setting building construction kit I have a question for my hordes of fans [Listens, daffy duck-like, for crickets]. Is there any super-hero concept that you've always wanted to play but either have had the opportunity or haven't found a system that could handle it?

In my case two spring to mind (there used to be more, but I did get to play my super smart guy and my super-strong cowboy ideas in now defunct PBEMs).

The first is an Adam Strange style SF adventurer: a two fisted science hero with a jet-pack, ray guns and other gadgets who, while a member of the super team on contemporary earth, is actually the defender of a different planet, time or timeline. The system would have to be able to handle someone who was basically a skilled, smart normal person with flight, a good dodge and a modest energy blast - a little tricky in some systems but more a matter of lacking opportunity rather than systemic problems.

The second is someone who has a separate energy body, similar to Negative Man, Raven's Soul Self or, ideally, Antibody from the New Universe book DP7. This is much harder to work mechanically - Cambias once recommended doing it as an Ally, or perhaps it's duplication where one of the duplicates has all the powers, or something of the sort. It's a really neat idea, but finding a system that could handle it is the problem.

This latter is one of the reasons why I'm building the supers setting construction kit: the hope of being able to simply define the characters potency, versatility, and scarcity and have it be in the world as its own distinct power - if the scarcity is high enough (or even if it's not with an oddball power like this one) my PC might be the only person with it, but it would be a quickly defined part of the world.

Finally, as a villain I still love the idea of a mummy whose internal organs were eaten away by vermin that now occupy his body cavities. He would be able to have his eyes turn into snakes, vomit up spiders, breathe out termites and so on for a variety of nasty effects. Icky, yes, but it just sticks with me,

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Is there any super-hero concept that you've always wanted to play but either have had the opportunity or haven't found a system that could handle it?

Well, pretty much all of them, as I rarely get to be a player as opposed to a GM, and we haven't really played a straight-up Supers game since my college days.

I'm more or less resigned to the conclusion that to do Supers properly (i.e. in genre) I'm going to have to steer clear of the traditional effects-based systems and anything that has anything more than the most simple and hand-waving of points-build systems.

I love speedsters - I've never seen a good implementation in RPGs. I love telekinetics, but I want more than Strength at a distance and force fields/bolts. I love teleporters, and time travellers, and the can of worms there would fill a TARDIS.

Please keep up the work on the construction kit, though. I really like the ideas of potency, versatility, and scarcity and want to see where you go with it.

One of my goals is to get super-speed to work. There's no reason why it shouldn't, after all, as long as the player doesn't walk in with the attitude of "I have super speed and am therefore unstoppable!" The same is true for a lot of powers, though.

One other note on this - there seems to be a false dichotemy between an "Effects Based" powers game and a "Narrative based" powers game. What I want is a "Cause Based" game. V&V was designed that way - you have Flame Powers, and Flame Powers let you do Flamey things - and as a result it's always made more sense to me than trying to cost out what how useful invisibility is vs energy blast to figure out what the character can do.

Now that I've thought of it that way I think it would have to be a cornerstone of the construction kit.

I'm not convinced that 'Narrative based' and 'Cause based' are that different, assuming that one restricts oneself to describing things that are a) in genre for a particular power and b) match the group's consensus on what a given power can and cannot do.

'Cause based' really suggests consensus-driven descriptions and mechanics, or a strong central vision that everyone buys into.

I dunno. See, V&V has Cause Based powers in that you had the power and wrote down, in clear mechanics, what it could be used for. Effects couldn't be added if they didn't fit the cause - no "and I have a 10d6 energy blast because I need to have a 10d6 energy blast". That's a strong part of what I'm aiming for, and it isn't tied to the needs of the narrative as much as it is the logic of the character

For the other aspect, one reason to get everyone at the table involved in the strong central vision. If you develop a power with a clearly written central premise/cause and then buy it with a lot of versatility everyone knows what that means in play because the outlines of versatility and potency were defined by the group as the campaign was hammered out.

Okay, I understand that V&V required that you wrote down the mechanics for any power effect or sub-power as needed, but that there was a certain amount of leeway and fudging allowed (I seem to recall Animal Powers and Mutant Power being particularly prone to this). To me it seemed like a negotiated agreement of 'what this power can do', and that sounds hippy-gamer style to me.

It's not explicitly Narrative in the sense that it doesn't have to play to the narrative requirements, but it is very much in the broader sense (in the hobby) of Narrative as player-empowerment.

I strongly agree that Cause-based can be a rewarding and sensible approach to gaming super-powers, always accepting that it can lead to proliferation problems if let run unchecked.

I think I'm going to pull this out into a fresh post today - it's worthy of longer discussion....

Always wanted to

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