Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!

[Randyman]

Originally Posted by malloyd

The thing is personally powerful individuals are just not that much of a threat to a stable society. I've said it before in the context of Horror, that there's a *reason* horror fiction is about unprepared small groups who can't reach or convince the authorities, and it's because organization, tactics and technology are such huge force multipliers. If the heroes had any chance of survival at all, once the authorities send in an organized force prepared for trouble, the monsters die.

This is, IMO, a crux of the monster hunters genre (including GURPS Monster Hunters): balancing a prepared group against monsters within a suitable suspension of disbelief.

[Boomerang]

Originally Posted by malloyd

The thing is personally powerful individuals are just not that much of a threat to a stable society. I've said it before in the context of Horror, that there's a *reason* horror fiction is about unprepared small groups who can't reach or convince the authorities, and it's because organization, tactics and technology are such huge force multipliers. If the heroes had any chance of survival at all, once the authorities send in an organized force prepared for trouble, the monsters die.

Totally agree. That idea seems to be supported by horror literature. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward springs to mind as an example.

[fchase8]

Powerful individuals could wreak havoc if they have powers that no one else has/has ever had. Like if there is one person in the world who can control minds, or one person who can't die. Even then it would require a power that can't be duplicated/negated by science (for instance, being the only person with super-strength, flight, or lasers would be awesome, but could be counteracted).

But all of those sorts of abilities require a good deal of points (I'm assuming that getting super-powers in this kill-and-points world doesn't require an Unusual Background first). It would take a long time - and a lot of kills - for a person to build up their powers to the scary point. But in this kind of world, that could, perhaps would, eventually happen.


Would the 'point earning kill' by accompanied by any sort of light show or the like? I'm just thinking of what happened in Highlander, which is what this concept of a world originally made me think of.

[Jasonft]

Actually, the world would fall apart quite thoroughly if you added a small caveat to the basic rule of said parallel.

What if for every 20 CP gained by murdering other humans you had to take one point of Mental Disadvantages that CANNOT ever be bought off? This way your 1000 CP ninja with all stats of 18/ Weapon Master/ etc also has terminal fear of spiders and uncontrollable Pyromania?

Multiply this by six billion people at the start and then let the effect run for twenty plus years. To say that the world would be a complete mess would be an understatement.

[Edit: The more kills you make the more Paranoid someone is out to kill YOU would be pretty common.]

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Jasonft

Actually, the world would fall apart quite thoroughly if you added a small caveat to the basic rule of said parallel.

What if for every 20 CP gained by murdering other humans you had to take one point of Mental Disadvantages that CANNOT ever be bought off? This way your 1000 CP ninja with all stats of 18/ Weapon Master/ etc also has terminal fear of spiders and uncontrollable Pyromania?

Multiply this by six billion people at the start and then let the effect run for twenty plus years. To say that the world would be a complete mess would be an understatement.

[Edit: The more kills you make the more Paranoid someone is out to kill YOU would be pretty common.]

Even that wouldn't destabilize society, much. The minute somebody starts to kill people in order to gain power, they become "serial killers." Serial killers tend to come to the attention of law-enforcement, pretty quickly, and the more frequently they kill, the more quickly they get caught.

Even the most successful serial murderers seldom kill more than a dozen or two people, across the span of many years, and their victims are usually weaker and more helpless than them.

They victimize children, or women alone with no family around, or other isolated individuals. They don't go after multi-millionaires, or elite soldiers, or people constantly in contact with those who love them and would miss them.

In other words, they don't go after high-point individuals, and the more they kill, the more clearly they establish their patterns. That gives the FBI (or whatever other agency is responsible for catching them) more of the information needed to track them down.

Throw in the fact that power would likely make unstable individuals even more unstable, and there's a pretty hard upper limit to how bad they could get before some FBI sniper blew their brains out, from 500 meters away.

Now, once the governments figured out this was happening, they'd likely try to take advantage of it, but even then you don't wind up with an inherently unstable situation. You just wind up with governments that cultivate double-O agents, and those men and women would tend to support the status quo, and not threaten it.

Of course, that comes with its own set of problems. Such individuals could wind up as Edward Morgan Blake as easily as they could James Bond -- but even that doesn't result in a crap-sack Lucifer parallel.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Of course, that comes with its own set of problems. Such individuals could wind up as Edward Morgan Blake as easily as they could James Bond -- but even that doesn't result in a crap-sack Lucifer parallel.

No, Just a really scary world for infinity.

Lots of these worlds seem to end up that way: good worlds, but not quite hell worlds.

[PTTG]

OK let's make a few real hells.

Luna and Venus switch places. Earth is racked with tectonic disturbances and volcanoes everywhere. A slightly mythical High Classical Greece considers this the ascendance of Vulcan.

A space probe returns from Europa in an alternate 1996, accidentally contaminates the ocean with an Europan alien plankton. It's toxic but eats Earth life, destroys the ocean ecosystem (and anyone who goes swimming). It's called Invasive.

A massive asteroid strikes the moon in 1880, melting a massive area of the Earth face and peppering Earth with debris. This debris is also highly radioactive, making vast dead zones around each crater. Called Zones.

A divine curse strikes a near-parallel 2008, rendering humans unable to gain sustenance aside from cannibalism, and rendering human flesh immune to natural decay, parasites, and prions. It's been 11 months. Somewhat tastelessly named "Donner."

In Hypergraphia, books are the only thing that keep the outsiders away, and only new books work. Write anything -- anything -- and place it by your door, or become one of them. 1950.

Resonance frequencies work differently in Chime. Even ordinary sounds that match the resonance frequency of a given object can and will rapidly destroy it. The development of electronic sound machines capable of producing a wide spectrum of sound was doomsday.

Genetically modified wheat overtook the ecosystem in 2024. Amber, as it is called, now suffers from extreme vitamin defficiency as super-aggressive wheat grows everywhere until the soil is entirely leached.

[Jasonft]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Throw in the fact that power would likely make unstable individuals even more unstable, and there's a pretty hard upper limit to how bad they could get before some FBI sniper blew their brains out, from 500 meters away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ber_of_victims

And that's just the ones we know about. Once one of them realized what was happening, it would get a lot worse. Then there's people like this fellow:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown

A religious leader who got 900+ of his followers to commit suicide and/or kill off the other followers depending on which version of whose story you believe. Nine hundred people at five points each is almost five thousand points - given to a man who could do this much damage in the real world. In this parallel people *want* to believe him so much they would flock to him by the thousands even knowing what is happening. Any sniper who draws a bead on him falls under his spell.

Sure the FBI would try and stop the plague of serial killers. America might survive more or less intact for a while. If the plague started in the 1940s much of the Third World would be overrun by insane unstoppable God-Kings at best.

1950s America had the Red Scare. 1920s America had Prohibition and gangsters fighting over territory. Try to imagine either when law enforcement has to fight bloodthirsty Ubermensch among the target group. The federal law enforcement agencies would try and stop the plague but ultimately would fail because there would be just too damn many of them to stop. Eventually even the First World nations would collapse under the strain.

Best case scenario you end up with America being a police state on a level we can barely imagine. But even then they would find it hard to stop the thousand plus point guy who wants to burn down entire cities for fun.

[Tuk the Weekah]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Now, once the governments figured out this was happening, they'd likely try to take advantage of it, but even then you don't wind up with an inherently unstable situation. You just wind up with governments that cultivate double-O agents, and those men and women would tend to support the status quo, and not threaten it.

And in totalitarian regimes, or really in any hyper-patriotic ones, how many of said double-0 agents would be willing to allow the head of state to execute them?

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Jasonft

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ber_of_victims

And that's just the ones we know about. Once one of them realized what was happening, it would get a lot worse. Then there's people like this fellow:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown

A religious leader who got 900+ of his followers to commit suicide and/or kill off the other followers depending on which version of whose story you believe. Nine hundred people at five points each is almost five thousand points - given to a man who could do this much damage in the real world. In this parallel people *want* to believe him so much they would flock to him by the thousands even knowing what is happening. Any sniper who draws a bead on him falls under his spell.

Sure the FBI would try and stop the plague of serial killers. America might survive more or less intact for a while. If the plague started in the 1940s much of the Third World would be overrun by insane unstoppable God-Kings at best.

1950s America had the Red Scare. 1920s America had Prohibition and gangsters fighting over territory. Try to imagine either when law enforcement has to fight bloodthirsty Ubermensch among the target group. The federal law enforcement agencies would try and stop the plague but ultimately would fail because there would be just too damn many of them to stop. Eventually even the First World nations would collapse under the strain.

Best case scenario you end up with America being a police state on a level we can barely imagine. But even then they would find it hard to stop the thousand plus point guy who wants to burn down entire cities for fun.

I thought the point transfer was restricted to only those who killed the victims, in an up-close and personal manner? If you count anybody who ever killed someone, in any way, then the crew of the Enola Gay instantly became like unto gods.

What serial killer could stand a chance against sane military personnel with such powers?

As for your lists, I see no more than a few dozen, in each. Even if you multiply that by 100, that's still a drop in the bucket compared to even the population of the United States.

Moreover, that doesn't even begin to address the fact that almost all of these people were mentally unstable in such a way that having powers wouldn't keep them alive in the face of sane, well-planned and determined opposition.