But the "hard photons" for flying and armor just reek of game mechanics.
Well, it would if it weren't the power basis for Dr. Light, the long standing Green Lantern/Teen Titans villain, and used in other places in the DC Canon. (And there's little Thor can't do if he spins the damn hammer fast enough! He used it as a cyclotron once, for pity's sake!)
But yes, I agree that it's a load of hooey if you're sticking with conventional physics at all. I should probably do a more proper post of the grounding for my supers setting construction kit idea (which has been discussed more extensively in A&E), but the basis of it is that when the campaign begins there is no pre-set powers list. The players say what they want their characters powers to be and how they work - they define the powers as a set of causes. They can then apply a Scarcity cost to them - how much people have to pay to even get the power at all (which I posted in a Pyramid article some time back). This discussion gives the framework on roughly how powers physics work in the setting.
Players then purchase those powers by defining their Potency and Versatility. Characters with the highest Potency Super-Strength will be able to lift and throw the greatest amounts of weight available for super strength, defined when the players hashed out the causes. But if he buys the highest potency with the lowest versatility, he won't be able to do much with it - the player has signed on that his character won't use his vast strength in a wide variety of ways. Someone with a lower Potency Super-Strength might crank up the Versatility and use it to tunnel, flick ball bearings at supersonic speed, give gusts of super-breath, leap vast distances and so on - he's not as strong but he is more versatile. Versatility has weaker boundaries than Potency does in the initial dicussion, but the outside edges have to be sketched so that everyone knows what they're working with. Right now I have a player pick a number of standard shticks based on a powers Versatility, with higher versatility making it easier to develop new ones.
There's a fourth component - Frequency - which determines how often the character relies on the power. As with versatility, this is a formalization of a player contract - it's why Superman starts with his strength and invulnerability rather than solving every problem with super-speed. Flash has all his points tied up in a high Potency, high Versatility, high Frequency super speed, and it won't do for Superman to also solve all his problems with his super speed, even if it is nearly as good.
That's where things stand right now. I think it's pretty close to what you're suggesting.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-04-11 01:54 pm (UTC)Well, it would if it weren't the power basis for Dr. Light, the long standing Green Lantern/Teen Titans villain, and used in other places in the DC Canon. (And there's little Thor can't do if he spins the damn hammer fast enough! He used it as a cyclotron once, for pity's sake!)
But yes, I agree that it's a load of hooey if you're sticking with conventional physics at all. I should probably do a more proper post of the grounding for my supers setting construction kit idea (which has been discussed more extensively in A&E), but the basis of it is that when the campaign begins there is no pre-set powers list. The players say what they want their characters powers to be and how they work - they define the powers as a set of causes. They can then apply a Scarcity cost to them - how much people have to pay to even get the power at all (which I posted in a Pyramid article some time back). This discussion gives the framework on roughly how powers physics work in the setting.
Players then purchase those powers by defining their Potency and Versatility. Characters with the highest Potency Super-Strength will be able to lift and throw the greatest amounts of weight available for super strength, defined when the players hashed out the causes. But if he buys the highest potency with the lowest versatility, he won't be able to do much with it - the player has signed on that his character won't use his vast strength in a wide variety of ways. Someone with a lower Potency Super-Strength might crank up the Versatility and use it to tunnel, flick ball bearings at supersonic speed, give gusts of super-breath, leap vast distances and so on - he's not as strong but he is more versatile. Versatility has weaker boundaries than Potency does in the initial dicussion, but the outside edges have to be sketched so that everyone knows what they're working with. Right now I have a player pick a number of standard shticks based on a powers Versatility, with higher versatility making it easier to develop new ones.
There's a fourth component - Frequency - which determines how often the character relies on the power. As with versatility, this is a formalization of a player contract - it's why Superman starts with his strength and invulnerability rather than solving every problem with super-speed. Flash has all his points tied up in a high Potency, high Versatility, high Frequency super speed, and it won't do for Superman to also solve all his problems with his super speed, even if it is nearly as good.
That's where things stand right now. I think it's pretty close to what you're suggesting.