Capebusters -- brainstorming a single-setting game

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

You can also possibly take inspiration from Garth Ennis's The Boys: A corporation developed a drug which grants super-powers which they tried to control via contracts and publicity. At first things go okay, but other corporations and the politicians they control have opposed the integration of supers into military service. And what happens when the more powerful supers decide they can do anything and don't need to do what their corporate sponsors tell them to do?

I can also second this. I had to abandon it, but if your tastes skew Ennis's way this ones a must read.

Nymdok

[PTTG]

Henry is actually fantastic, because he's really not someone who can easily disappear, even for the MIB.

I'm still working on the PC group. What's a good patron who can back up Legal Immunity 2 and has a global jurisdiction?

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Henry is actually fantastic, because he's really not someone who can easily disappear, even for the MIB.

I'm still working on the PC group. What's a good patron who can back up Legal Immunity 2 and has a global jurisdiction?

Interpol. Give them more powers than they have in real life (mostly, IRL, they're basically info brokers on international criminals), and authority granted by international treaty to make arrests for trial in the World Court, and you're set.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by PTTG

What's a good patron who can back up Legal Immunity 2 and has a global jurisdiction?

In reality? No one.

In fiction, maybe Interpol or the UN Security Counsel?


[Ninja'd!!]

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by PTTG

2.) How do we make the PCs sympathetic without making the mutants/supers/heroes outright monsters? The feeling should be a strongly medium grey morality, something that allows for some player-driven characterization. That way it hurts more when their squishy human gets pulped by a super-strong teenage girl.

The supers are people with ordinary minds and cultural values. So some of them, on discovering their powers, think they should become caped crimefighters, which works about as well as you'd expect in a realistic world: lots of lost evidence, wrong people beaten up, and lack of legal authority for their actions. Being part of a police squad whose job is to catch vigilantes is the most attractive supers campaign idea I've seen for years.

[PTTG]

Anyone know a good way to build a touch-range upgrade power? Basically, the empowered individual is capable of "upgrading" a machine or tool held in hand. The exact effects of the upgrade are flexible, but mainly I'm thinking dramatically improved performance without any new features. Ideally enough to make a significant difference in combat. I'm not yet sure if this should be only-one-item-at-a-time or possibly a lingering buff they can apply to allies' gear.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Anyone know a good way to build a touch-range upgrade power? Basically, the empowered individual is capable of "upgrading" a machine or tool held in hand. The exact effects of the upgrade are flexible, but mainly I'm thinking dramatically improved performance without any new features. Ideally enough to make a significant difference in combat. I'm not yet sure if this should be only-one-item-at-a-time or possibly a lingering buff they can apply to allies' gear.

Instant Gadgeteer (Limited to performance upgrades.)

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Instant Gadgeteer (Limited to performance upgrades.)

That could work.

Here's a rough draft of the introduction. Let me know if there's anything really absurd in this from a "comic book realism" standpoint.

In 2018, Jay Soman, alias Varuna from the Hindi god of darkness*1, attempted to use his unusual abilities to stage a coup upon established world powers. At least three individuals of similar power are believed to have helped him; one, a white male teenager known as Phreak*2, was killed by police forces in the process. Soman's plan consisted of first attempting to hijack control of the US' nuclear weapons systems and using these to extort the nations of the world into granting him and his followers land and and recognition as an independent state.

The four conspirators somehow transported the President from a public speech into a nearby secured room, where they either drugged or otherwise manipulated the President into granting them access to detailed nuclear weapons information, but were not yet able to put their plan into action. The Secret Service located the President within eight minutes, despite the unusual circumstances, and burst into the basement-level room where the conspirators held the POTUS. The initial round of fire killed Phreak, but Varuna returned fire with what reports describe as a "powerful hand-held laser,*3" slaying four SS agents before escaping with the two surviving individuals, despite the room having only one exit. The President was found dead due to deep-level brain trauma,*4 otherwise untouched.

In the aftermath, the Vice President stepped down. Two days after the attack, an internet video purportedly from Soman claimed responsibility and attempted to characterize his actions as well-intentioned. He also claimed that a "new era" of "superpowered people" was coming about -- a claim that is, alarmingly, coming true.*5 Over the following months, a number of empowered individuals have arisen in every country and disrupted the peace and security of the world. While some have come out in support of their governments, most have resisted control and many have ultimately sided with Soman's growing underground organization*6.

The unprecedented events lead to an unusual level of international cooperation, and over the past several months a new international organization was founded by the UN for the express purpose of containing these emerging superpowered threats. This organization, the Ulysses Initiative, contracts with local armed forces for basic policing and security, but has a hard core of elite troops drawn from police and PMC groups experienced with flexibility and rapid deployment.*7

It is now December 2019. You are among the first Ulysses*8 forces to face deployment, a fire team under Durendal section.

Ulysses Foundation:
Sections:
Astra -- Term for a mythical weapon, from Hindu
Bashōsen -- Chinese mythical sword
Colada -- Sword of El Cid
Durendal -- French sword of Roland the Knight
Eurytus -- Original owner of the bow used by Ulysses to slay the suitors; outshot the gods.

*1 - Propogandic way to put it; Varuna's really more a god of justice with a dark, 'edgy' twist. Soman's powers are very high-level warp, which also justifies a powerful innate attack and nearly impenetrable DR.
*2 - Mind reading/control/probe powers.
*3 - Actually a molecule-scale portal connecting the palm of his hand to the core of the sun. (His portals have inversely proportionate range and size.)
*4 - Phreak's death severed the mental connection in a destructive manner.
*5 - The actual cause of enhancement was a cosmic event starting around 1984 and plateauing in the 1990s. Among other things, this event is the source of excess matter and energy when powers would otherwise break conservation.
*6 - Needs a name.
*7 - National special forces teams would actually be too high-powered. I want PCs to be decent but only in the [150] range. Therefore, nations are willing to cooperate enough to volunteer SWAT team members who are near retirement and pay for PMCs to work, but not willing to send in top level military men and equipment.
*8 - A mortal hero who faced and overcame gods through great trials.

One last note, Soman's plan was, indeed, stupid. Exactly the sort of plan a group of overconfident nigh-indestructable teenagers might come up with. That said, anything flashy, alarming, and not-quite-successful-but-scarily-close can work.

[(E)]

Perhaps only 90% of the nation's of the world are signatories of the UN Ulysses declaration on the responsibilities of parahumans? Have background arguments about legality etc

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by (E)

Perhaps only 90% of the nation's of the world are signatories of the UN Ulysses declaration on the responsibilities of parahumans? Have background arguments about legality etc

Each country has its own means to ratify treaties, as well, and no nation will sign a treaty that overtly violates its own laws.

That means the U.S. government cannot sign a treaty that violates the U.S. Constitution's protections for due process; the U.S. Senate might not ratify it, if the executive branch negotiated such a treaty; and the U.S. Supreme Court would almost certainly declare it null and void.

(In Captain America: Civil War, the means by which the Sokovia Accords went active was pretty silly, and the Raft was wholly unconstitutional.)

Additionally, most nations will do nothing that would even hint at compromising their sovereignty, so I'd bet that the international "specialists" would be considered "consultants," working under the control and jurisdiction of whatever national law-enforcement agency is most appropriate, when operating in that country. In the U.S., the would be the FBI.