Gadgeteer: List of Fictional Gadgeteers

[Daigoro]

<<This is a sister thread to List of Real-life Historical Gadgeteers.>>


So thinking about listing Real-life Gadgeteers led me to thinking that a list of Fictional Gadgeteers would also be a useful exercise. It’s probably easier to come up with entries for this list, especially by looking at comic characters, because they’re written that way.

It would also be interesting to see the different ways that they may be hampered from having their innovations become world-changing industries, such as from character flaws or external interference.

Some easy starters-
The Professor from Gilligan’s Island—Uses coconut-punk technology, but has incompetence in Shipbuilding.

Dr Otto Octavius / Dr Octopus (Spiderman 2 version)—While building one form of technology based on his knowledge of fusion physics, he manufactures the required tools based on a completely different field, AI and robotics. Unfortunately, his crit fail during the prototype phase for his robotic arms reveals some bugs which are not listed in the Gadget Bugs Table, they try to possess his mind.

Tony Stark / Iron Man (movie version)—Obviously a Gadgeteer, but I suspect the scriptwriters were GURPS players when they came up with this exchange in the first movie, between Obadiah Stane and his head scientist.
Obadiah: “Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!”
White-coated guy: “Well, I'm sorry. I'm not Tony Stark.”
Which is another way of saying, “We’ve got similar IQ and skill lists, but I didn’t have the points for Gadgeteer.”

[ULFGARD]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

<<This is a sister thread to List of Real-life Historical Gadgeteers.>>


So thinking about listing Real-life Gadgeteers led me to thinking that a list of Fictional Gadgeteers would also be a useful exercise. It’s probably easier to come up with entries for this list, especially by looking at comic characters, because they’re written that way.

It would also be interesting to see the different ways that they may be hampered from having their innovations become world-changing industries, such as from character flaws or external interference.

Some easy starters-
The Professor from Gilligan’s Island—Uses coconut-punk technology, but has incompetence in Shipbuilding.

Dr Otto Octavius / Dr Octopus (Spiderman 2 version)—While building one form of technology based on his knowledge of fusion physics, he manufactures the required tools based on a completely different field, AI and robotics. Unfortunately, his crit fail during the prototype phase for his robotic arms reveals some bugs which are not listed in the Gadget Bugs Table, they try to possess his mind.

Tony Stark / Iron Man (movie version)—Obviously a Gadgeteer, but I suspect the scriptwriters were GURPS players when they came up with this exchange in the first movie, between Obadiah Stane and his head scientist.
Obadiah: “Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!”
White-coated guy: “Well, I'm sorry. I'm not Tony Stark.”
Which is another way of saying, “We’ve got similar IQ and skill lists, but I didn’t have the points for Gadgeteer.”

The Doctor. In his own way, always meddling with tech to make stuff work. Doesn't build gadgets, exactly, but modifies them in interesting ways.

Any "good" Star Trek engineer. Turns rocks into phase couplings or somesuch. Scotty. Tores. LaForge. O'Brien. Seriously -- they could fix ANYTHING with nothing. And jury rig stuff that no one else seemed to be able to handle.

Batman. In various incarnations, he builds/designs his own working super-advanced prototype equipment.

Superman. I don't care if it's "Kryptonian tech." He built robot supermen who were almost as good as him in some older issues.

MacGuyver. Duct tape, random stuff, bamboo plane. 'Nuff said.

The A-Team. Lock 'em in a closet with junk, they come out with a working APC and a machinegun. Being elite troopers, they somehow never seem to actually KILL anybody, though.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by ULFGARD

MacGuyver. Duct tape, random stuff, bamboo plane. 'Nuff said.

It's MacGyver. And don't forget hs Swiss Army Knife.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by ULFGARD

The Doctor. In his own way, always meddling with tech to make stuff work. Doesn't build gadgets, exactly, but modifies them in interesting ways.

Any "good" Star Trek engineer. Turns rocks into phase couplings or somesuch. Scotty. Tores. LaForge. O'Brien. Seriously -- they could fix ANYTHING with nothing. And jury rig stuff that no one else seemed to be able to handle.

Could these be a limited form of Gadgeteer- only for fixing ultra-tech devices, as they don't usually create things whole-cloth? Dr Noonian Soong, Data's creator, and Zefram Cochrane, the warp drive guy, would be the full Gadgeteers.

Batman. In various incarnations, he builds/designs his own working super-advanced prototype equipment.

Yep, either him or Lucius Fox. I would've said just Lucius in Batman Begins, but Bruce builds the mobile phone sonar network in Dark Knight.

Superman. I don't care if it's "Kryptonian tech." He built robot supermen who were almost as good as him in some older issues.

A good argument for a focus-limited form of Gadgeteer (similar to for Modular Abilities on Powers p63). I would almost argue that by default Gadgeteer should be focus-limited to a particular type of tech, but I guess in many settings there's no more than one available tech anyway.

MacGuyver. Duct tape, random stuff, bamboo plane. 'Nuff said.

The A-Team. Lock 'em in a closet with junk, they come out with a working APC and a machinegun. Being elite troopers, they somehow never seem to actually KILL anybody, though.

Focus-limited again?

[Walrus]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Could these be a limited form of Gadgeteer- only for fixing <...> Focus-limited again?

Action has such version of Quick Gadgeteer: Solder and Duct Tape -50%.

I'd say nearly any heroic team includes sone kind of Gadgeteer:

- Reed Richards from Fantastic Four;
- Igon Spangler from Ghostbusters;
- Donatello from TMNT;

etc.

There are a lot of villain Gadgeteers, e.g. Alistair Smythe.

Don't mix up some non-gadgeteer occasional inventors like Peter Parker (in some versions his web goes from technological device), or The Shocker - they are likely to have Signature Gear or Gadget-limited Advantages (or both) but not actual Gadgeteer. They may have some extraordinary inventions but they usually make them off-screen (or even in the past) and can't qualify for Gadgeteer.

[Flyndaran]

The A Team wasn't so much a gadgeteer issue as always being imprisoned in a near fully functional auto shop.

MacGyver at least did more with the ever classic household chemicals.

[Phil Masters]

Pretty well any comic-book science guy with a stated name ends up displaying some level of Gadgeteer. The list is going to be tiresomely long. What impressed me about the Iron Man movies was that they managed to find a live-action visual vocabulary to translate that. (And he drove an Audi. If you know the engineers I know, you'll get that.)

The Doctor used to be rather more of a Gadgeteer, particularly in the Jon Pertwee/UNIT days. These days, the writers tend to lazy short cuts to fit into one-hour single-episode plots, so they just say that the sonic screwdriver does everything.

Leonard of Quirm is the Discworld manifestation of the trope.

[dcarson]

Doc Savage who also has like Batman Gizmo by the dozen.

Peter Parker has it limited to webbing. In the webbing is gadget instead of being generated by his body canon he kept inventing specialized webbings. Immune to cold, heat resistant, nonconducting etc..

Captain Future often built a special device.

[Danukian]

Michael Weston from Burn Notice pulls off some decidedly MacGyverish feats of gadgeteering.

[Flyndaran]

Doctor Who used to be a Science Fiction show with some fantasy. Now it's reversed with greater emphasis on flash and frenetic energy.
I could really love the new version if I could stop comparing it to my beloved original. I learned how to count by knowing which channel was PBS. :)