Aurora Consurgens [Breaking dawn]
Kids these days. It's the common complaint of parents: the wrong shows, the wrong music, the disgusting things they do to try and one-up the antics of their own parents. Only now, that's nothing. The world is too big, too global, too much of everything. It's hard to hide, that some kids aren't kids. They're stronger, faster, dangerous. They're more than other kids, more than other people. Evolution on crack, as the leading theorist Ms. Elenora Thompson put it.
And if that were all, that would be enough. But there's other kids, too. Able to do things that defy reason, miracles that mock physics. Able to create fire, to turn things into other things, to change the way we see and understand the world. Why this is, no one knows. It was hidden. Though how any government did that, and for how long, is unknown. But too many escaped handling, escaped conditioning, flew under the radar [some literally] and slowly but surely a new kind of being has been discovered. Something old? New? Government tricks? Aliens? No one knows. Or if they do, they're not talking.
Two new species of humanity exist now. They get called different things, are capable of stuff no humans are, but as a brief rundown.
Homo Alpha: People who are better than human. Stronger, faster, quicker. They heal quickly, are smarter than most, shrug off drugs etc. They're widely believed to be a human answer to Omegas, essentially, and what humanity may some day become. Despite the title, there is a lot of variance among them: some are geniuses at one thing, others awesome at a few things and so forth.
[In other words, you can get Reed Richards (intelligence wise) and Captan America, ability wise, falling under the same penumbra. Since people are capable of pretty impressive things, it's often hard to prove someone is one without drugging them – and some have died of such things, so it is not an idea test.]
Homo omega: The x-men style people. One, at the most two, related abilities that are, frankly, beyond the scope of modern science and understanding. A guy with strength CAN lift up an entire car, when his attempt should just rip off the bumper and so forth. Currently theory holds that there's some physics distortion field involved, but that's mostly scientists making up terms. The fact is that these people can do impossible things as easily as breathing and few of them look human at all.
Basically, mutants in the sense of being weird and different: red skin for fire-users, etc. It's generally held that the most visible and physical the 'tell', the stronger one is, but that's not strictly true since not some only have tells function when using abilities, but the general public is ignorant of this.
(Meta note: Telepaths don't exist, to the common knowledge of even alphas and omegas. Some abilities are so dangerous it's considered best no one knows about 'em.)
System: Risus! YAY! Dice: ~12-15. 4 die max for starting cliches, 2 die cliche minimum. Should have at least one hobby/future profession cliche that won't lend itself to being Useful. I am assuming the PC does not begin the game with martial arts and the like and learns such things via experience dice and teaching as the game progresses. (Ditto for increasing power and control of it.)
Homo Alpha: Post-olympic level ability (X), And (Y). Sometimes Z, or a more general 'all-olympic level'. Basically, you could get ninjas, batman, the punisher and the like out of this. They look like normal people, but aren't. Downside is their senses are better than human, so intense aural or visual stimuli can throw them for a loop. (Not well known, naturally.) Also, at least a third suffer some degree of sociopathic or autistic tendencies but most of that is blamed on upbringing.
Homo Omega: Likely the PC, naturally. One-two abilities. If more than one, the other is physical and based on mutation of the body in some way. In other words, one could have Fire (and burning eyes when using it) or Fire and flight with red skin/giant flaming wings, as an example, though the two don't have to be connected. The huge downside to this problem is normal humans with skin conditions and such can run into problems, which helps no one at all.
Note: Omegas spend their lives human until either some Huge Stress, puberty or being around a lot of Omegas fighting triggers abilities/powers/changes. Unlike alphas, who are born as they are, omegas do get to lead a normal life to a point.
Note (2): Whatever ability(s) the PC has should ideally be scalable. Game begins with PC new to the power/ability and with player providing ideas for scaling it up. So you begin with control/understanding of power at basic level, RP it up a notch as the game goes, and then have further milestones achieved via experience dice. Having one power ability and one mutation-style ne allows for growth in both, naturally.
EX: A pc with blueish tint to skin, ability to manipulate ice.
Start: make snowballs, throw them at people.
RPed stuff: Create ice, alter ice into water.
Experience (with dice): Freeze water in people, create ice duplicates.
More experience (with dice) animate duplicates , create second skin of ice as armour etc.
Still later: make an ice age?
SETTING:
Modern world, except paranoia has gone through the roof. On one hand, you have 'humans' who look like everyone else but are Better and on the other weird mutants who are Unclean and so forth and can probably kill other people with a thought, if sufficiently annoyed. The law hasn't begun to come to grips with this, and drug are already being marketed that can boost Omegas (and Alphas) to new heights – or depths. To say nothing of fast-tracking vastly illegal government experiments on humans (a la iron man) to give humanity a 'fighting chance'.
The world is basically a powder keg, and into that steps the PC.
THEMES:
Ism: This is the major one, really. On one hand, there's people who look human and 'aren't' (Alphas) and on the other people who don't look human who can level entire city blocks and so forth. Lots of fear, mistrust, and so forth, parents who go "think of the children!" and the like. On the plus side, it is getting rid of the previous racism and sexism humans had. A lot if mistrust, lies and such will be spouted.
(This one won't always be bad: someone can cleverly parlay it into hollywood-level fame and fortune, after all.)
Destiny: What does one DO with such power, especially when one begins to get inklings of the upper limits? You are, after all, a walking WMD, and the consequences of that can be pretty dangerous at the best of times, to say nothing of when being framed and so forth. As per the 'ism', it takes a lot of strength to be hated and not internalize some of that hate, eg: becoming a monster since people figure you are one and so forth.
Shaping the world: as the game increases to Epic levels of threats and problems, the extent to which one can change the world, if one has the right to and so forth. Should the Omegas ignore the humans, let them make their own path, catch them if they fall or raise them up? A lot of this gets deep into nanny state level ideas: what if people no longer put parachutes in planes because the odds an Omega would show to stop the plane from falling being ~70%? Etc. As the PC and NPCs gain in power, this becomes more and more important: you can have a huge impact on the world, become Celebrity famous and so forth, be the latest Hitler to scar the pages of history: it's pretty heady, and should prove fun to explore.
A few final notes: I doubt there'll be much call for secret IDs and costumes in such a setting. Hiding'd be rather difficult, after all. I figure there's some who will end up with cool 'call names' to market their brand, others who decide humanity should be exterminated and become terrorists and so forth.
A lot of groups with a lot of agendas can make for a fun game, especially with the giant question of the how and why of alphas and omegas hanging over it, and a lot of people having their ideals – or huge bets – riding on which theory is 'right', if any of them are.
Sample NPC:
Joseph Frizel, German-American, second generation. Age: 16, tall and thin. Looks normal enough save for vertical cat-like eyes.
Cliche: Cat (3), Bad Luck (4), B&E: (4), 70s clothing fetish (2), Electrical Engineer (2)
The son of 2 famous cat burglars, he's taken up the family profession with a twist, owing to being an Omega.
Cat: Can turn into a common black house cat. Really.
Bad Luck: Can give others bad luck, especially in cat form. Quite useful, not controlled at present.
B&E: Obvious. He's good at it.
70s clothing fetish: he's got this thing about the 70s and happily steals such things, up to and including furniture. Knows far too much about the decade.
Electrical Engineer: Began an an offshoot of B&E (with security systems) but he's found he likes working with such things, and was considering that as his legit profession before becoming an Omega.
Cat stuff: Claws, good night vision, land on feet, agility. All increase during game. Does NOT like turning into a cat, since the whole "I am cool/awesome' vibe he tries to give off doesn't work once he becomes a cat.
Further: Actually has an awesome cat-like vibe. People like him, think he's cool even when someone who steals and wears 70s clothing should not be cool.
Experience: turn into other kinds of cats, talk to/control cats.
Later: 9 lives? Other cat-like animals? Turn into cat and people just pour out their life stories to their own fur-covered therapist?
Bad Luck: The more actually impressive and useful power, though not flashy.
Start: uncontrolled, works on enemies and friends.
RP: Just enemies.
Experience: some idea of how to direct/focus it and eventually to the point of altering someone's fate, cursing them with superstitions and defying entropy at the maximum levels.
Eventual limited ability to give good luck, like cat hairs of inspiration?
Very basic, at present, but it's one idea.
