Oppressors: Ruminations on powers

Supervillains are more than the sum of powers, but powers certainly help. This is just some notes so far on specific powers and the uses thereof.

Nullify
Nullify is an interesting and tricky one. It's best used in conjunction with allies, since it only works against a specific kind of power (say, tech or magic or superpowers). Plus, you need to melee touch attack, beat a defense, *and*they get a soul check + resistance against it. While it is undoubtedly useful, it's probably best as a secondary power.

Mind Control & Telepathy
Very, very common choices. You can use them, but if everyone does things get rather boring. Or at least predictable. (Mind you, 4+ people with mind control trying to take over the same group at once would be quite amusing.)

Power Flux & Variation
Go to town with these :) With 700 points, they become more worthwhile and practical as well as allowing some pretty nifty tricks to be accomplished.

Dynamic Powers
This is for abilities other powers don't work well for. In game terms, it's pretty much even with power flux though the scope is far broader. Power flux - fire could be flight, environmental manipulation, weapon, armour. Dynamic powers - fire, on the other hand, would probably include light, things involving volcanoes, skywriting a name and so forth. (It costs more, so the player gets a bit more bang for the buck.)


Finally, keep in mind your PCs motivation and goal(s). This is pretty much crucial to why they do whatever they do, and what they hope to gain out of it. Your PC is an active player, probably hoping to become Big and Famous: go with it.


And keep in mind that the Haud have conquered quite a few worlds. Mind shield, resistance and probably block power will crop up among them, depending on rank and so forth.

Oppressors: How far will you go?

Some notes, plus information on game time and format.

Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.
-Josephine Hart

Some things to keep in mind as we approach session #1 (Either the 20th or 27th, depending on how many people are done and so forth).

There are very few absolute heroes. Ditto for villains. So why your PC does whatever they do is important. You need motivations, goals, plans. And then the aliens come along and screw it all up on you. What do you do if the Haud are making money worthless? If the police have become as ruthless as the villains? If your Arch Enemy has been killed/destroyed/vanquished by some lizard-things and left you bereft of meaning and purpose?

Figuring this out is important. Also, well, not everyone has what it takes to be a hero. Some try it and fail, some can't stay the course. A few fall off the wagon and enter 12 step programs for recovering sidekicks or something. Plus, sometimes people just get the short end of the powers stick. If you can only blow things up, then being a hero becomes bloody difficult and so on.


Thing #2:
Your PCs aren't the Big Villains. Or, if so, they were locked away for a good time by Captain Flux and/or Victory and just got out etc. So you need to figure out why: they could be new, not ambitious enough, been burned by being beaten too often and so on. Not everyone has the cojones to be a big-time supervillain as well. Most people just can't be quite that ruthless/insane/demented. And so on.

Game Time & Set up

Official sessions will run Thursdays, at ~10pm EST. We can start a bit later if need be. Other sessions will run whenever players are about and we feel like the game. As far as sessions go, there are several things to keep in mind:

1. You are supervillains. Alliances between such are often temporary (see the prisoners dilemma for reason(s) why:). This doesn't have to be the case -- some of you could be allies going way back, or even friends. Despite the stereotype, there are villains who are friends just as their are heroes who are. Work this out with other players as needed.

2. Despite 1, I am going to assume the PCs begin the game operating on their own (or with a small gang of minions/their ward). While PCs will not be forced to act together, they will encounter many Haud and police and such, and often threats that they simply can't deal with alone. To what extent they suck in pride and ask for aid (or whatever) is entirely up to you. The heroes are gone, after all. It's a brave new world out there, and some villains are definitely forming 'teams', if only to mock what the heroes were.

The fact that the heroes lost, despite teams and powers, mostly seems a karmic "it's about time!" thing than anything else to most of the supervillain community. And, well, heroes are good and just and seldom have the guts to do what really has to be done. Villains aren't as hampered by this problem.

3. The Haud seem to want to subjugate humanity and strip-mine the world of resources. For all that villains are evil, this is your world as well. And, be it ever so selfish, you don't want it destroyed by anyone but yourselves.

Finally, people need people. Villain or not, your character has to get along with others to some extent, even if only through fear and intimidation and being utterly bonkers (see: The Joker). The supervillain community might be evil, but there are things it doesn't accept or condone and if you cross those lines, well, someone is going to say hello. The results are seldom pretty.

Oppressors: First Blows

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.
- H L Mencken

The idea: This is essentially Game1 doing Necessary Evil. By which: the Haud invade, sometime after Defenders ends (in game time) and take over. The heroes go to battle them and get killed/defeated - the stories differ; the villains believe they ran away I'd think :) - and the Haud have landed, and are taking over the world as a beachhead in their attempts to conquer the galactic hub.

The army has no hope, the global infastructure has begun to collapse, and the only thing between the Haud and taking over the world are ... supervillains.

Aka the PCs.

How it'll play out: This is up to the players, really. Some characters may be willing to ally with (aka use) others, some may see strategic alliances being vital. I imagine everyone will run into the prisoner's dilemma in some way :)A lot of what is done will depend on the PC, on what made them a villain, their own goals and desires -- some are likely to never consider themselves villains at all.


Character creation:

BESM, 3e. 700 points build. Max levels (see page 9, Superpowered listing) are enforced (though you can ignore the % in each guidelines), along with max level for attributes. The latter can be juggled about on a case by case basis -- if you want to be The Best Teleporter Evar(tm) then you'd want a level or two above the max. But for the most part we'll use the limits in the book to prevent gross overkill.

NOTE: unlike in Defenders, I will be allowing Dynamic Powers in this game. And Nullify, and Mind Control etc..

gm requirement: PCs need to be able to take damage and keep on going. Regen and/or armour and the like are almost a must.

Morality: It will be up to characters how far they go. To be on the safe side, each player may want to make more than 1 character, in case their original one is killed/controlled/put out of commission etc. You are, after all, playing the bad guys. And the player is not the character. I trust people can be adults about this. (And it's comics; even though it's not remotely 4 colour, resurrections can happen.)

The sitrep: The Haud are terribly powerful. They wiped out the heroes (somehow) after all, so the villains are left with the grim reality that, in order for their to BE a world they can rule/take over/get wealth from they have to defeat the Haud, or convince the Haud the planet is too dangerous to take. How they go about this is up to you all.

Toss other ideas/thoughts/etcs. in game1.

Final note: as with Defenders, you do NOT get points for most flaws and defects. You have 700 points; that's enough for anyone.

Caveat to the above:

Defenders had Hero Points. Oppressors will have Villain Points. Meaning: if you do something particularly nasty, you get 1 point. Flaws will translate into 10 of them = 1 villain point, to get something out of them.

Villain point expenditure
1 = divine intervention effect.
2 = +6 bonus to next roll.
5 = Critical Strike effect. (Can be declared once you hit.)
10 = comes back from the dead (somehow, some way)

Others can be added/modified at need.

With the exception of 10, using the same amount of points as someone else does can negate their in game use of villain points. In other words, their use must be declared in channel and other players can elect to use some of the PCs points to stop you. (Others could, conversely, counter the stoppage.) use of points in this manner is unaffected by character location.

Proposed Unknown Armies Game

Some caveats:

1) This will begin when Defenders ends* (should be 1-3 sessions, really)
2) Regular or 'when people are about' time needs to be determined. If the latter, what night(s) work best and so on.
3) UA is urban horror; except the weird, the surreal, the screwed up. The world is a reflection of the Pcs, the PCs are a reflection of the world.
* Defenders could continue; but defeating Wiley is basically the end of the plot. In what form it continues - if it does - will be up to players/gm after that.


First off, this game is going to need players. Contact Alcar if you are willing to play. Secondly, the players need to get together and decide what kind of game they want to play in and kinds of characters they want to make.

Some GM ideas:
- A game where the PCs ARE clued in. They know about magick, weirdness, the general occult underground. They may not be a cabal, but they at least have their toes in the water of weirdness and probably a good campfire on the beach.
- The PCs know each other before the game begins.
- PCs that reflect the sheer weird/odd/strange aspect of UA. Go big here. Go wild. Go crazy and nuts and have wild fun with it. Make characters you'd love to play, as long as they can interact and work with others.

The latter is pretty much essential. PCs may be screwed up, but they're somewhat functional. Exactly what this entails is up to everyone but at heart it means you interact with other pcs willingly. This is group role playing, after all. Consider it a challenge :P

Aside from that, nothing major springs to mind. I think most of the players are familiar with basic UA cosmology (if not, let me know). We can tweak it here and there, but generally we'll bend it more than break it. (This can be considered a challenge for the gm :p)

And that's it. Thoughts? Ideas? Throw them here, in channel, or wherever.

Some notes for Empires

This is some rough notes on how magic and magical things work.

All magic is sourced from somewhere. Since no one really knows where, and it seems to vary from school to school and magician to magician, general theory holds that magic is what holds the world together. Manipulate it, and you can change the world. Change the wold, change yourself.

This, of course, costs energy. Different kinds of magic cost more EP.

Healers: Healers don't pay EP for healing. It works up to its stated limited. Given that this is a subset of being an Oracle, it's widely believed the power comes from the gods, with the person merely a channel for it. The price for this (since magic gives nothing that is not paid for) is the varied mental and physical defects they have.

Magicians: A magician is the most common worker of magic. Generally, the ability to see and manipulate the universe lies in seeing under it, and manipulating forces barely understood. While tomes, rods etc. have been used, they're mostly focus tools and do little to lessen the EP cost of magic, which is basically the will and desire of the magician bending reality to their will.
Potential magicians are born with the ability to see magic (i.e. Sixth Sense); if they don't train early, it won't manifest at all for the most part since whatever window of opportunity there is to become a magician tends to be quite narrow. A magician normally follows the path of their teacher (the Dreamers of Flaath-innis can make dreams real etc.) This doesn't mean that everyone who can sense magic could become a magician, just that it is a requirement.
Since magicians are basically Power Flux (magic) they have to work their magic out, which takes time to decide on effect/cost etc. The chief limits to magicians are time and EP. EP cost = level of effect.

Dynamic Powers: Sourced entirely from the user, they use up craploads of EP (Basically, cost/level = EP used. So Minor (15) would be 15 for a level 1 effect, 30 for a 2 and so on.) Dynamic powers are basically a specific bailiwick interpreted broadly, often moreso than the user realizes. It also comes with no kind of instruction manual.

Chosen of Ve: Basically, elemental powers. Ep cost is low, effect range is limited to 100 yards at best for the most part. Generally, getting anything powerful out of it (say, storms, earthquakes etc.) depends on group effort. It's cheap in EP, but also fairly limited in effects.

Wizards: Wizards are magicians who have lived a long, long time. Centuries, in many cases. They've honed EP useage to a fine art and can create magical creatures and weapons, though the latter tend to be very rare as the energy put into them is a permanent loss.
If your pc has a weapon that is not normal, you need to work out how they got it, from whom etc.

A Tale Of Two Empires

Being a new game starting Mondays for the new year. System is BESM, setting is hyborean age (roughly) and the PCs are people who end up getting drafted into the war, all the while fighting simply to survive.

And we're baaaack!

Aka, it's no longer November, games are moving ahead.

Defenders will likely wrap up soonish (16-20 sessions, I think) as far as the Main Plot Stuff goes. If the PCs wish to continue the game beyond that, we'll work stuff out.

Conviction will run at some point. Need to find out how many people are interested and what they'd like to play.

As for games after that, no idea at all :)

Games

Games run by Alcar are, basically, on hold until December. I may run a session or two during the month as a break from nanowrimo, but offer no guarantees.

December shall see the existence of Conviction, the wrapping up of Defenders and -- who knows what for the new year :)

Character Creation Notes + Game Time

The things that define your character (outside of personality and occupation) are the Nifty Trick and the Secret.

Any personality and occupation are possible: your PC has ended up in the City because they Know Something (or someone believes they do) and the City is both a place and a method for extracting it. You could be the reincarnation of an Atlantean high priest, a busboy, an actual spy, a scientist, a dock worker, the real dalai lama -- the GM is willing to consider almost anything as a possibility. And, of course, your personality is your own.

Nifty Trick: This is something you have that others might not, or isn't common. It can be perfect recall of the past, to make friends easily, the ability to alter your own memories, speed reading, fast reflexes beyond the norm, a photographic memory, a feeling of when danger is near, seeing odd things others don't, minor telekinesis or what have you. Whatever this trick is, it's nothing that blatantly violates the laws of the universe and/or is too obvious -- i.e. no pyrokinesis, no telepathy, magic, shapechanging and so on. It can be an ace in the hole (even a joker) but it's no substitute for playing with the rest of the deck. The more outré the ability, the more its use may cost.

Secret: This is something important. It's something you know that's dangerous and deep enough that people have kidnapped you and put you into some city no one escapes from. You might know classified information, or what really happened to the Titanic or anything else torn from conspiracy theories and just plain being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever it is, someone is going to a LOT of trouble to acquire it, so put some serious thought into it.


Game Time: This game will begin in December of 2007. Due to its nature (Conspiracies, sleeper agents, double and triple agents and so forth) the night it plays may entirely depend on players schedules. Characters need never actually meet, after all, or meet and discover the person they thought they met before doesn't seem to act the same as they did that last time ...

Ideally, 2+ players will be able to play at any one time. This will basically allow it to fit almost anyone's schedule, as long as they play at least one a week.

CONVICTION: An rpg setting.

This is going to be an RPG set in a city known as Apotheosis. Despite the name, the city is firmly rooted in older technology. All phones are rotary, most vehicles come from the 1960s in terms of style and fashion, and they use blimps for travel overhead, though those are seldom seen. It's filled with many things everyone knows about but seldom sees, a place where truth always takes second place to rumor.

The bathrooms are purely modern (stand in accessible showers), doors wider than normal, and so on. You end up with the feeling you're expected to spend your entire life in your apartment or condo or home. There are no maps of it to be found, and the newspaper are full of strange classified ads that read out like messages to secret agents or demented love letters. EX: "SRM seeks NDG for rendezvous at the high point. Poodle only. Safe word: None."

There are fnords. And they are everywhere.

If there is a way out of the city, no one seems to know. Most people don't even seem to care. There are hints that horrible things happen to those who try and escape, but no one knows any specifics. There are the police, but there are hints that anyone could be a member of the secret police, who prevent crime from happening at all. (Those caught are often killed, to prevent them from THINKING of committing another crime -- or so the rumors claim.)

The City is clean, and neat, and terribly tidy - as if a neat freak, about to kill themselves, had tidied everything up before hand to leave a last, sparkling impression. There are more city workers who clean things up than there may be citizens, and most dust mites probably starve to death. They clean up crew are all white, blond haired and blue eyed - Hitler's Aryan wet dream, scrubbing out the toilets and cleaning up the homes. They never speak.

There are panhandlers, but they are all neat, clean, and impeccably polite, decorating the Blue Light districts of the City, asking for credit, and possibly all spying on you. Or everyone else, too, but mostly you. Some of them might even know you by name, but there are always people who look like "a Joe" aren't there? No need to be worried. There is never any need to be worried.


Sources

This is pretty much sourced in The Prisoner, 1984, Brave New World, Paranoia (the rpg) with dashes of Kult, Transmetropolitan and Serial Experiments Lain. As well as generous helpings of conspiracy theories, the importance of truth, the nature of identity and lots of fun spy and thriller novels. It might help to think of James Bond on LSD, at least some of the time. (Most of the rest of the time, he is probably on soma, the same as everyone else.)


Character Creation

As explained by Robert Sloan: Join a dystopia RPG where you don't know what system you're playing, don't know what your stats are and the GM laughs malevolently while fondling the DVD of "The Prisoner."

To whit, the players are told they have 4 statistics. Each represents Body (Strength, Dex etc.), Mind (Intellect), Soul (willpower, force of personality, etc.) and Luck. You divide them in orders of importance (A - D) and then divide 100 points between them. Points divided don't necessarily have to correlate to importance) You then pick skills your PC should know, up to 5 per stat, in order of importance. You then decide what thing you are really, really good at. This can be a skill, it can be a Unique Trick. It doesn't matter. This is the little thing that makes your character a PC.

Genre: Spy/Conspiracy pretty much.

Background: Anything you want, barring in mind the game is set in the real world. But, in the real world, you have a Secret. This is Important, and it's valuable enough that someone put you here to, somehow, extract it. Or perhaps they already have, or never needed to at all. We're all being used, after all. We're all pawns, and there is always someone out there pulling our strings: whether we accept this with resignation or fight to be ourselves is up to us ....

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."

        - Huxley, Brave New World

Sparkie demanded this post!

* Sparkie sniffs
* Sparkie went down on the google search for dice bot
* Sparkie demands satisfaction!
<kentari> just mention sparkie in your blog
<Sparkie> and links! And the beating heart of the CEO of google deepfried!

And now.. defenders poetry!

Via Rob's Amazing Poem Generator

Defenders of wonder: rare
things. of points. for twenty years,
because you’re making superheroes, after all. that or newspaper
articles on availability. Each session will
go into skills.

30 Sessions Into Defenders...

So! We're into session 32 or so, month 4, and it's time for the quarterly report.

To whit:
- So far, we have NOT broken away from 4 colour(1) though the notion that the AI is trying to look for/build a mate was close.
- The game's moved from 2 people to, possibly, 4. Which will take some getting used to but shouldn't be impossible to manage. Having Fen's pc as a hero-in-training/teaching is a fun aspect to things, too.

Current plots:
- One AI, who is kidnapping humans for nefarious purposes and has made bothering the PCs into a hobby for what is, in AI terms, a few million years.
- F.R.O.G, a supervillain team who use frogs and -- okay, they're not really a threat, but they can dream :)
- Chris & Magnificent Man - Superhuman brothers, one of whom can mimic powers, the other who likes to annoy just about everyone.
- Government agents in Purple Suits. Goals unknown at present, but they seem to be in charge of monitoring superhuman activity.
- Regular government agents with terminator robots, who seem to want Arbiter and call themselves the Earth Defense League.
- Doctor Despair, who has yet to show up to more than NPCs, and seems to be on a warpath for Thaumaturge and Arbiter's real names and locations for unknown reasons, but likes to scare people with illusions.
- There are also the Haud, an alien species that is likely coming to earth to invade and Arbiter promised to aid the dinosaurs against their former masters. They are, according to Tumbler, VERY bad news.
- The Tastemaster, a villain connected somehow to the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) and has hired people to steal hard drives from their and arranged for the entire building to be blown up. Has, via a proxy, made all food in the city taste like broccoli for one hour, and his (or her) long term plans remain a mystery.
- The Living Pyramid, a ... living pyramid (surprise!) who tried to destroy the city to prove his masters thesis was correct. Shoved into a future with robocops by Thaumaturge.
- The hingari, an alien shape shifting species who disguised themselves as all the hot dog vendors in the city and were discovered entirely by accident.
- As well, The Second Cup coffee shop downtown is working on becoming a hangout for heroes and the heroes have a base (well, a blimp :)) that seems immune to alterations in time.

Currently, Arbiter has gone through a portal to another world.


So far, the city has been invaded by the undead, snowed in, telepathically assaulted and had stuffed bears summon forth their god to eat the world on the PCs watch. It can only make them wonder the kinds of stuff Captain Victory deals with :)


Allies:
- Dennis (whom the GM hopes will still, somehow, become a villain :)), a genius whose friend Karen helps him in building and fixing things from junk.
- Lance (police contact; but this IS Lance so there has to be more to him than that :p)
- Benjy, a young telepath who idolized Arbiter and is still finding out what he is capable of.
- Justice Lad, a sidekick whose mentor is out of action for ridiculous lengths of time :)


Future plots:
- Bizarro defenders!
- Evil Twins. Because it has to happen.
- Alien invasion!
- The coffee shop expands :)


Assignment for players (and anyone else who wants to help):
The Second Cup shop is going to be a hero hang out, in and out of costume. If staff guess who the heroes are, they will naturally tell no one. (This IS 4 colour, and there are benefits to it). As such, it's going to have a lot of third-tier heroes in it, and the GM can't be bothered to make 'em all up. So toss some up in comments here or on forum. You don't need to detail them, stats wise: it's more a matter of power and description -- some of them might even be allies, sometimes.

(1) insert obligatory Mitch reference here.

DEFENDERS: THE MANIFESTO

This is, basically, a guideline/my thoughts ON the silver age and what superheroes are meant to be. Debate it in the forum (will be cross posted) and such :)

When we light a candle, we say to darkness: "I beg to differ"

"Silver age" is, after all, just a concept. So here are some worlds to put behind it, to get a feel for the setting, for the kind of character PCs are.

Heroism is, basically doing the right thing. It's hanging on that moment longer, protecting the innocent and serving others. It's about the kind of people who would be heroes even without powers, because they are kind and decent people.

It's about character. Honour. Integrity. The responsibility of being role models as you are, the weight that goes along with that -- of accepting it, but never giving into it, because you are needed. Even if you're hated, or feared, or people turn against you, you don't stop -- because it's about doing what is right, about being a hero no matter what the odds.

It's not taking leaps off the edge of what you know, but standing there to face the darkness, stare at your own demons if need be, and draw a line in a sand. And say to it: "No further. You will not come this point." And standing, and holding it back, if only for another day.

It's about optimism, and the future, and love, and hope, and all those values that are harder to hold to now than they were in the silver age but more important than ever. It's about the possibility of redemption, and the power of compassion.

Because the world isn't Us and Them. It's ALL us, even the ugly parts people don't like to admit. People need heroes, for much the same reason they need gods: to help them believe the world is truly the wonderful place it's advertised as being. And while you can't be everywhere, can't do everything, you do what you can and hope it's enough, sacrificing to a cause greater than yourself, to humanity, because people can be good ...

and because, of all powers, the one that truly matters is hope.

Anime-ish Overkill Game - Thoughts

It has been suggested that a game be ran in #game1, ergo here are some thoughts on the aforementioned idea, known as "an amine/manga game", hereafter referred to as "the game". The court notes the following, but in readable prose in direct contravenence to the rules, forthwith ignoring that neither contravenence nor contravenance are actually proper derivatives of contravenes:

1) A maximum of Three (3) players would be allowed, owing to reasons of sanity and genre. A dramatic disparity in powers among the PCs (say, 1-2 sidekick/ally types to the MC) is possible if the players agree to such.

2) Anime characters tend to be defined by their flaws inasmuch as their strengths. (In many ways, they tend to be the same thing.) PCs in the game will require, per Beagle, "great sorrows and great joys, or half of their greatness goes unnoticed". Also, anime heroes tend to Excel at One Thing, to the expense of other things. This isn't always good, and limiting - which is probably the point.

3) Characters need to be made by group effort between players and the GM. Are they siblings? Friends? Wife and husband? Parent and child? etc. In addition to this, genre (for game) and setting need to be figured out.

Just my first basic thoughts on the conundrum.