The "anti-superpower alliance" is a time-honoured trope but like... what's these guys' plan for dealing with the people you can't choose to harm without superhuman willpower? (Which is a pretty cool concept btw, I don't think I've ever seen it before)
LET'S READ: Wild Talents: Progenitor (Watchmen for TTRPGs)
- Thread starter DragonCobolt
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Oh they're gonna come up with an idea.
(Spoilers: Telepathic shields? Only work when you're, like, aiming a gun at someone. Doesn't stop you from, say...laying a bomb.)
This could be... troublesome.
I'm pretty sure batman is 250 points total, with base stats and skills included.
Progenitor gives you 120 points for this stuff, so with 250+ points for powers on top of that, we're still in, like. X-Men league at least.
I'd say it depends on how Abe organizes his healing sessions to begin with. If there is a line of hospitals he visits (chosen randomly or by territory to make his tour more efficient or whatever) and Wallace just happened to be in the next one, then sure, it's a perfectly defensible position to heal him. If Abe went out of his way to heal the guy, though, then yeah, priorities.
"You were all terminally ill people healed by Tina" is, in fact, the very first campaign framework suggested by the game.
Honestly, skill issue. Upon exposure to her possession, I would simply develop powers to siphon willpower from other people. Problem solved.
I think indirect distributed threat still works. So, you have guys scouting the area and figuring out where metahumans are going to be and other guys planting bombs without knowing if they're going to harm the target or not, that kind of thing. If you're OK with killing lots of people, it can be done.
What can't be done is killing Amanda with basically any mundane means, and if you run the campaign with the "energy returns to the host upon carrier's death" optional rule, it's basically all pointless, you're just paving the way to new capes.
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Which would be a very frustrating position for them! Hilarious, but, also, distressing!
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It's likely that Marks, who have no powers except willpower don' t count as metahumans to them, at least until all the metahumans who need willpower to resist are gone.
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Fun minor historical fact: Lady Bird Johnson got into a fairly public feud with actress Eartha Kitt (sang "Santa Baby", the second Catwoman on the Adam West Batman show, and then eventually Yzma from Emperor's New Groove).
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Which always seemed counterintuitive to me, since it's called Blackula.
This is like saying Batman shows a remarkable ability of intimidation by making Jimmy Olsen crap his pants.
Gonna be honest, I forgot which J-name creep did what a long time ago. They're all blending together. Is Jarvis West the agony-beam guy or the addictive person or the asshole cop or the Matter-Man idiot? Or wait, is he the hypermind hippy? Should I feel bad about this?
Jack Grimes is so bad at being bad that he's accidentally protecting civil rights for minorities!
Frick, I knew there was a J-jerk I was forgetting...
Anyways, I can't blame Jedgar for this. I'd probably do something like that if I had his power, minus the bit where I leave Washington DC.
I mean for starters I don't live there, but also I think I'd try to live a normal life as GreatWyrmGold if the people around me were fine with GWG occasionally having a different face.
On one hand, this is silly. The mechanics of WT Progenitor's superpowers mean that metahuman victims of stronger metahumans are not only possible, but normal. There's no rational justification to exclude metahumans from metavictim spaces.
On the other hand, this is inevitable. Of course someone like Paige joining a metavictims activism group would cause a splinter between the moderates and the X-Men TERFs.
How many of the tourists do you think are involved in the weed business? Either as covert smugglers, or just indulging while they're there?
Add this to the list of Jedgar things I would not do if I was Jedgar.
Oof. Tough.
On one hand, Tina should not be held wholly responsible for the actions of the Shavians. On the other hand, if she is found innocent, her case could be precedent for Infinite Recruiter Beta to get away with commanding a platoon of his DE minions to massacre people he doesn't like. Is there a clear line between created minions you can't control and ones you can?
That sounds like it's just passing the problem to people who aren't Alyssa's boyfriend.
That's how it tends to go, yeah. When you're losing ground, recruit people you hate less. When you're gaining ground, last in first out.
I wouldn't call it a "feud" so much as "Kitt pissed Johnson off and got her US career stomped into the ground and had to go work in Britain for a couple decades until the heat died down". But same spirit.
I had forgotten about Marks to be honest. But yeah there's a campaign itself, you're all Marks trying to pull off Hulkbuster behaviour (the original Hulkbusters not what Iron Man calls his 257th suit of armour)
Which brings me to another question, do people in universe know about the "infectious powers"? Maybe someone can invent a machine to detect Marks?
Agony beam guy. No, don't feel bad.
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Okay, there's like, two guys with JW, Jason Weeks and Jarvis West. Jason is the super-genius whose nice, Jarvis West is the guy who mind controls people and causes agony in huge crowds, lol. Not THAT hard.
Angry, hurt people being irrational? Say it ain't so!
Also, while people know dark energy is infectious...people also know AIDS is infectious, it doesn't mean they're rational about AIDS. If morality and a condition are linked, people start getting real fucking weird about it REAL fast.
That's a campagin framework that's suggested! Also, there is a D.E Detector...and I don't...even remember if it works on marks. We'll find out!
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Sure, if you only include the J.W.s specifically. But when you add in all the other assholes whose first names start with J? Judith and Jack and James and Jedgar? Really makes me wish there was a TV Tropes character page or something for this setting.
That's morality as defined by the weird ones, by the way.
It was also a little annoying when they named the leader of Vietnam Ms. Nguyet, and the leader of the USSR Ms. Nguyen.
I'll try to remember that t stands for trees, and n stands for north
I'll try to remember that t stands for trees, and n stands for north
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This is why I call her Cam!
What are the stats on a nuclear weapon, anyways? This seems like a deescalation.
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It's actually not - while metahumans are scary amounts of power for a person, a nuke is still a nuke.
But, like, a bunker buster bomb is Width+10 in S/K with Burn, Area 10 and Penetration 7. Assuming a small fission weapon is orders of degrees of magnitude stronger...I'd say, Width+20 in S/K with burn and pen 10 in the immediate area, then like, 30 area dice for everything in a a mile, meaning that most people are dead, dying, or horribly burned, then 15 dice for everything a few miles beyond that, then 10 dice for everything past that, then it's just radiation (which is modeled as a hazard.)
For Amanda to make that, she'd need to throw down, like, hundreds of willpower.
Which does lead to the GM question that Wild Talents had never answered: Is it possible to use a Useful to create a nuke, then set that nuke off and, thus, get it for cheap?
Muhkat Lomorki
Draconic Sorcerer
Would a Progenitor be able to open a portal to Hell without any other powers, or would they need to create Hell first?
NotInventedHere
MSV, Desert Class
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I mean, Jack Grimes (and Linh Thi Li) have enormous-scale matter manipulation - I believe "12 million tons" was the previously cited limit? - is there anything stopping either of them just creating a critical mass of plutonium?
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They would be in the blast radius. It's not an absolute barrier, but it's still discouraging.
So, they need to create just less than a critical mass, get teleported out, then the last piece gets teleported in. What could go wrong?
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In Jack Grimes's case, he pissed off the local teleporter. And probably doesn't know how critical masses work.
That might be the real answer here. "No one with the relevant superpower knows anything about nuclear physics."
That might be the real answer here. "No one with the relevant superpower knows anything about nuclear physics."
1973: Rescue the Cat
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1973
STEW METRICS
Suspicion: 2 | Technology: 2 | Economy: 1 | Warfare: 1
STEW METRICS
Suspicion: 2 | Technology: 2 | Economy: 1 | Warfare: 1
Proggers said:
Good news everyone: Furries have been invented! Repeat, furries have been invented!
In January, James Closterman (to assist those confused by the Js, CLosterman is the incredibly powerful telekinetic who was a runaway cop and got empowered by J. Edgar Hoover.) He's a criminal, but not a supervillain and he proves it by moving to New Orleans where he uses his powers to fight fires, protect drunks from getting rolled, rescuing kittens from trees, and parlaying these heroics into getting laid.
A lot.
Meanwhile, a cease fire is signed in the Vietnam War, shortly after Tricky Dick takes office. President Johnson, stricken ill by the sudden reduction in violence in a third world country, is healed by Abe Sykes. (Okay, it is probably just the fact he's really old.) What's funny is since, like, Abe's healing is just taking your molecular structure and rewinding you back in time (sans your brain so you don't lose your memories) this means Abe is just rewinding time on the former president and adding years to his life.
We also get the official name for North Vietnam as of right now: The Progressive Republic of North Vietnam!
In Atlantis, a group of Atlanteans who are big followers of Grimes' "pragmatic" faction decide to try and kill Cynthia Carls! This extremely bad idea ends with a few of them smashed by big rocks and most of them alive. Ngoc Vo determines via telepathy that, no, Grimes did not tell them explicitly to kill the lady who made the island they're all currently living on. He just constantly talked about how she was a bad leader and stupid and was going to get them all killed and god, could someone not rid him of this troublesome hippy.
Cynthia responds by separating the two halves of the island with a 100 meter causeway which is both a sign of remarkable restraint and also CYNTHIA! BABY! JUST KILL HIM. Or exile him! Or something! Have Ngoc teleport him to Pluto, PLEASE.
February begins with Nixon starting to open up relations with China. Amusingly, this makes just as much sense in the ATL as the OTL because his lack of hypercharm would make people more willing to meet with him, versus LBJ, who...people try to avoid if they can because of the mind control and shit.
Tina Shaw's trial begins and she is tried as an adult, despite being sixteen. As that begins, missionaries from the Roman Catholic church land on Atlantis and, as news of Atlantis being split in half spreads, various countries try and claim the "split off" chunk as being theirs. Jack Grimes, hilariously, declares that his part of the island is the REAL Atlantis. Cynthia is probably watching in consternation.
March kicks off explosively with a team of IRA metahumans attacking London. Lin Wen, the superspeedster made by Abe Sykes way back in 1968 when he went on his heal-spree, and Paige Rampling - the energy protector who put Jarvis West out of our misery - both agree to protect the city in exchange for a yearly salary. London now gets to have front row seats to high powered super heroics. Does it count if you get paid? In the humble opinion of this dragon, yes!
The justice department in America begins investigating the use of mind control by former president LBJ, in a wildly unrealistic depiction of the US Justice Department! Meanwhile, Andrew Colt has struck up a kind of unlikely friendship with Ngoc Vo - while they were opposite sides on a war, and have pretty unhealthy memories of that time, both of them are the only globe scale telepaths that know the other exist. When you can talk to someone, mind to mind, at any point...becoming friends seems much easier. Quietly, Colt and Vo put their heads together. The results are that Jack Grimes is walking home on "Jacklantis" (as I call half that he got) when Ngoc Vo appears before him.
"Wha-" he says.
And then there's a pop and he appears in Fort Leavenworth, surrounded by a SWAT team giving him his miranda rights and telling him he's wanted for murder and assault. With him being pushed into jail at gunpoint - and presumably "you can't turn every bullet we'll hose you down with into air, buddy" threats - Cynthia reconnects "Jacklantis" and mainland Atlantis into one island again.
The trial of Tina Shaw wraps - despite being a sixteen year old beautiful white girl whose primary crime is healing people, the Shavians and the violence that they've done are just enough to tip the scales and she gets found guilty. However, they do give her the MOST minimum sentence possible! ...since it's a crime involving the massacre of an entire schoolyard, this minimum sentence is ten years without parole.
April starts with a real world event that happens mostly as it did in our timeline - the Israeli raid on Beirut to kill PLO members. THe twist is the IDF has a Tier Six Commando (that's 250 points - so, they have A Batman.) In Atlantis, a constitutional convention is finally convened, to cover making an actual government because the island's population is bigger than casual conversations and shrugging can manage. In New York, the WTC does not open as scheduled due to the whole "all the walls were turned into gas", but metahumans are hired to protect it.
The Progressive Republic of North Vietnam begin construction on several coastal installations. Claims are that they're for desalination. @Coyote Niff 's BLUELIGHT set to condition 4.
And we get...a new character introduced.
JEAN DAVIS - THE DISEASE
SUM UP
Proggers said:
Okay, firstly. Reminder: Model T usually uses his superpowers on people by teleporting into where they are standing and obliterating them in an explosion of gore while absorbing their memories, thoughts and feelings in a sado-sexual rush. Considering THAT, James Blaine (who is only mentioned here and nowhere else) got off LUCKY. Smack, minor psychic diddling, lost truck, superpowers? Holy shit that's like getting mailed a car bomb but the bomb is a dud and the guy who mailed it to you also packed in winning lottery tickets into the box. Damn.
So!
What are Jean's powers? Oh god, ANOTHER J NAME!?
What are Davis' powers?
POWERS
Her base power is a foci, one of the very rare metahumans who has a foci without gadgeteering. Because Davis does not have a power ring, or a magical sword. She has a subtle, indestructible, concealed focus that lasts forever (or until her death) and can only be used once per scene. But what does it DO, exactly? Well, it is called "Selarosis Maxilliae" and it is a sexually transmitted infection that, once it gets into your body (with an opposed 10d vs Body+Endurance roll), it sits there and does nothing.
No, it's the OTHER powers that do things: 7d in Read Minds (with the if/then [target is infected]), and 7d in Puppeteering Body (with the if/then [target infected], of course), and Plant A Notion at 7d (with the if/then [target infected.]) Planting a notion does only make someone think something, it doesn't make them act in a specific way, and it's fairly subtle - most people won't think twice about a strange thought popping into their head beyond "huh that was weird", and if she phrases it right, it can feel as if it came from themselves. The thought is not obviously NOT your thought, to be clear - it is your own internal thoughts thinking. They're just thinking what Davis wants them to think.
And, finally? She has the last ditched escape power: 3hd and it triggers on death. If she dies and is in range (400,000 kilometers) of an infected, she pops into one of their bodies at random. If they don't succeed in the roll off, their mind is wiped, their body transforms into a perfect duplicate of theirs, and her memories and personality replaces them completely.
Okay, enough calling BLUELIGHT, we need BLACKWATCH here too.
Davis is one of those characters who you mostly interact with through the people she's infected - and that depends on what she's doing. At the beginning, she doesn't quite know what to do with her powers, but by April, 1973, she has some idea: She starts an advertising company to start racking in money and subtly encourages her infectees to spread the infection - now, to be clear, she steps in immediately if she spots actual crimes - a few pedophiles find themselves puppeteered and marched into police stations (or off bridges, if I don't miss my guess.) We'll see how that develops as time goes on.
In May, we get introduced to another new character!
SASCHA MICHNIK - THE INVULERNABILZIER
SUM UP
Proggers said:
Oof, man. His personality is listed as "Glum, simple and a more than a little bitter. He's gotten something that thousands would kill for, and it's something he doesn't want. He paid for it with someone no one else really cared about, and she was the love of his life." Ouch, man. That's rough, buddy.
POWERS
So, something interesting: Sascha is the first canonically mentioned Tier 7 that has gotten a name and write up. When you start hitting the Tier 7s, you're in a very numerous group: The canonical average for Tier 7 totals throughout Progenitor is given at between 150,000 to 50,000 (varying based on how your games go), so there are a FUCK LOT OF THEM. So, lets see what a Tier 7 can do!
Sascha has 10hd in "reinforce flimsy stuff" - it only works on ridged stuff that's relatively flimsy, but if it fits the bill, it gains the power's width (so, 10) light armor, transforming a tubberwear container into superkevlar. Then he has 10hd in "reinforce durable stuff", which is the same thing save it is applied to anything tough enough to naturally have light or hard armor - that'd be concrete, kevlar, metal panes. It slaps 10 levels of heavy armor onto it, making them preposterously tough. He has one last power: Fortify the Inanimate. If he's used a prior power on an object, he can give it +10 health levels to the object.
His upper limit for application is 12 tons, and...the book says it costs him 20 willpower per use, as if the powers had willpower costs, but they don't have the willpower cost flaw. I think Greg saw this as a too powerful power to go without some weakness, but...like, Grimey doesn't have to pay shit to turn air into gold. But then again, Sascha's power is a lot more SPECIFICALLY powerful. He could, say, turn a jet airplane into something tougher than a tank, and able to withstand more damage than a battleship.
Sascha's first appearance on the timeline, by the way?
He gets 2 million dollars for half an hour's work on reinforcing the Sears Tower.
It probably does not cheer him up too much.
Abbie Hoffman (mentioned previously) negotiates a peaceful settlement of the Wounded Knee protest - which in our world got two people killed. No mention is made if it actually produced a concrete impact beyond that.
In Vietnam, Cam has decided that Deionne Bright is the only musician skilled enough to be a serious, credible threat to the musically induced stability of Progressive Harm and dispatches an assassin to kill him - unaware that Bright is protected by LITERALLY ACTUALLY SATAN (Disclaimer, it is a Dark Energy Construct, Not Actually Satan) so the assassin does not have a good time.
In the Sykes household, Amy is sent to live with cousins after changing her name - it is decided this is safer for her. But god, that has to fucking sting - her best friend is going to prison, her parent's marriage is falling the fuck apart, and now she has to pack up and move for her protection when she's immune to everything from gamma ray bursts to most black swan events. I think vacuum collapse might get her, but gravity wave fronts sure won't.
June is relatively quiet: The justice department probe into LBJ is deemed "Mindcrime" by the press, and a Tier Six criminal attempts to extort West Germany before being stopped by Boris Mizurski. The USSR and the USA meet about what to do with Dark Energy gadgets built by super-geniuses, but little progress is made. The only real big note thing is that Jack Grimes...gets out on bail. They set it insanely high but he remembered, "Oh right! I can literally make gold out of thin air."
In July, James Closterman solves a particularly nasty domestic abuse cum house siege without any casualties and, despite being surrounded by cops who technically SHOULD arrest him, he instead is given handshakes and allowed to just walk away. Then, BOOM! Unknown assassin just rolls up on the White House, wreathed in electricity, planning to obliterate Richard Nixon. He walks through gunfire, smashes in the front door...and then gets his head turned into solid antimony by...SPIRA AGNEW!? Yes, Spira Agnew, it turns out, is a TIER SIX MATTER MANIPULATOR. The Democrats are furious - after all, a big part of the campaign against LBJ was that he was a metahuman, but the nixon white house goes, "Listen, buddy, hypercharm and matter manipulation are very different."
There's a huge debate about this in the public. Like most things in America, it is not settled.
In August, an unknown metahuman steals 3 million dollars worth of money from a Spanish Bank. The case...is never solved... (unless your PCs wanna get involved?) Meanwhile, the US and the Progressive Republic of North Vietnam move from cease fire to an actual truce. Progress! In Atlantis, the constitutional convention drags as Jack Grimes' followers manipulate and drag their feet, hoping for their leader's criminal prosecution to be wrapped up before it's over. He appears in court, because I forgot that bail just means you get to leave jail, it doesn't mean that the crime goes away. Right! That's how the criminal justice system works, lol.
Catching up with our other court thing: Tina Shaw's case goes to the Supreme Court on appeal, and the law involving banning the creation of Dark Energy Creatures...IS OVERTURNED! She is released, much to Amy's pleasure, and the simmering fury of the extremist faction of the anti-metahuman organizations around the world.
In September, MINDCRIME wraps with...no charges filed! See, I told you I never said that anyone would be prosecuted! Realism wins!
But then a bigger news story breaks: The Senate convenes a trial to investigate My Lai, given the impetus to do so based on continued studying of the events in question, the easing of relations in Vietnam, and the fact that Amanda Sykes is still a huge symbol of the strengths and weakness of the prior administration. This time, she's not just questioned but actively shown the evidence collected showing her in the area. Tearfully saying she has no idea what they're talking about, one of the two hyper-geniuses spawned by LBJ (Bryson Maas-Thierry) comes up with a theory: It's entirely possible that Amanda could have altered her own memories of the incident.
This hits the paper.
And America freaks the fuck out. THe most powerful woman in the world might have altered her own memory, which is an alarming concept.
October sees the beginning of the Yom Kippr War in the middle east - with metahumans on both sides, making it the second major war with metahumans in it. At the same time, the IRA's metahuman team names itself Glóir (Glory) and assaults Mountjoy Prison. Lin Wen and Paige battle them, and a bunch of prisoners escape in the crossfire - but a bunch of guards are also killed.
November has the press and the democrats asking pointed questions about Richard Nixon and his remarkably fast peace talks with the North Vietnamese. Richard Nixon jinks left and pardons James Closterman - moving him firmly from lovbale rogue to everyday superhero, and Nixon tries to use the goodwill this generates to brush off the accusations.
Abe Sykes, FINALLY heals the state trooper that Jack Grimes maimed by, I remind you, TURNING HIS FACE SKIN INTO WATER. Now, Abe. Buddy. This would have taken you six seconds and you healed George Wallace before this guy? He had no face for FOUR YEARS. Speaking of Jack Grimes: With the full knowledge and permission of his judge, Jack Grimes starts turning seawater into oil and selling it to West Germany, France, Great Britain, other places. He doesn't sell it to America and very loudly and obviously goes, "WEll, I would but it'd seem like an attempt to...influence my trial..." (He said, obviously attempting to influencing his trial)
This doesn't get him out of legal hot water in time to get to Atlantis before the constitution is ratified and Cynthia Carls is given the role of "pro-forma executive" until the elections can be completed in 1974.
In December (just as in real life), OPEC doubles crude oil prices and Jack Grimes takes this opportunity to go, "Hey, whoever gives me the best deal gets my molecular powers to help em out." The House of Saudi hires the fabulously beautiful Judith Weissman (she was brought up ages ago and has mostly spent her metahuman life being pretty, marrying rich men, and mooching off them while doing nothing of note) to negotiate on their behalf, while "concerned citizen" Lyndon B. Johnson shows up to negotiate on the other side. Caught between two hypercharms twisting his opinion like taffy, Jack Grimes has a minor nervous breakdown.
Get...fucking wrecked, dipshit.[/QUOTE]
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Something's gone wrong with the formatting.
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Cynthia: (sinks Jack's Atlantis)
Jack: (turns water into sawdust to make a new island)
Cynthia: If you wanted your own island so badly, why didn't you start with that?
Jack: I forgot I could do that.
Oh for heck's sake.
Not the J-name (though I really want to compare the frequency of J-names in this game to J-names in the general population), the bit where Cobolt seems to have messed up a quote-tag.
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Aha, I figured it out!
I wrote [QUOTE -> } <-
Used the WRONG BUTTON!
I wrote [QUOTE -> } <-
Used the WRONG BUTTON!
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Man, Tina Shaw spent 6 months in jail for crimes that she literally did not commit. I hope things get better for her. The Disease seems like someone that you introduce to give the "free love" type of pcs big problems.
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to be fair, and this is me explaining slightly badly, she DID commit the crime of creating dark energy beings, which was made illegal until the supreme court overturned it. I only really figured that out on this post, cause I'm...dumb!