The Campaign Builder's Guild

[ooc]Omigosh!  Supers campaign!  Quickly churning a setting out for the weekend, and I want it to be a crazy kind of pan-cosmology.  It's basically our Earth, pretty much identical until 2009, when the fun starts.  Anyhoo, read the damned thing!  (Sorry, very short at the moment)[/ooc]
[ic=Beginnings]There is no single name for the madness that began in those early days of January, 2009.  Science cannot name it, for the anomalies that comprise it are all unique and unrepeatable.  It has many, many names, and for each human who remembers it, it means something quite different.

In Uludag, Bursa, a thunderclap sounds inexplicably in a park, and a dozen witnesses will swear they heard a voice amid the noise.  Two young newlyweds will dedicate themselves to discovering the meaning of its words.  She will learn the song first sung by Allah to Adam in the wildness of Paradise; he will learn the first hateful cry of the Adversary as It ascended the throne of Gehenna.

Three teens in Singapore City fall into a hole in space-time, reappearing mere moments later but rendered blind, mute, and wise beyond comprehension.  They wage an urban war against the servants of the Anti-Dharma, bringing enlightenment to a city slowly collapsing toward solipsism.

A golden light envelops a quiet street in Columbia Heights, Washington DC, blinding a homeless man and rendering four others comatose.  One will wake days later and, suddenly possessed of superhuman strength, attempt the assassination of the President Elect.

Those are the first, as far as we know.  But there have been hundreds since.  Lives altered in a myriad ways, some subtle, others grand.  Miraculous births; transformations of the flesh, mind or soul; glorious new creations on an Earth gone wild.[/ic]
Setting
Between twenty and fifty years after the First Revelation (a popular name for the event among America's NeoPuritans).  A more advanced world, a more confused world, but not more or less delightful on the balance of things.

Tone
Think Neil Gaiman's Sandman crossed with Alan Moore's Watchmen.  The PCs are far from ordinary people, and these are far from ordinary times, but as always normal folks are striving toward a manageable and predictable life.

Themes
Transformations - every miracle works a unique change upon those who were privy to it, and not always for the better.  Some are changed in unobtrusive ways, or their alterations are considered good in their local culture.  Geniuses rise to the top of their fields; physical supermen render mundane athleticism obsolete; singers with crystalline voices cure cancers and madness with their songs.  But others are reshaped into beasts, or their substance is made elemental, or they are divested of flesh entirely.  Monsters are born, and deviant criminal intellects scheme dark wonders.

New Faiths - human spirituality has had to adapt to a changing metaphysical reality, and as always, people interpret the new within the logical framework of the old.  There are new messiahs, new prophets, new buddhas, and new promises of transcendence.

Strange Worlds - there are other planets where humans dwell, that cannot be called quite parallel.  They are simply Other, their existence known, even now, as but the gentlest of whispers.  Few travel between them: only the blessed, the lost, and the irredeemably damned.

Characters
Ingrid Bessel, 22, is preparing dinner when a bullet passes through the flimsy drywall of her apartment, entering her brain.  In those last fleeting moments her mind slips and falls, almost by accident, into the nascent subconscious of her own unborn child.  Comatose but alive, she will give birth to herself in a telepathic reincarnation, and so make her first stumbling step toward Nirvana.

Kirill Maslov, a serial murderer rotting in an Alabama prison cell, suffers a stroke and becomes suddenly aware of the wild rhythms of his inmates' beating hearts.  He has become attuned to the human machine, and knows, as though by instinct, a thousand ways to kill without a weapon in his hands.

Sometimes Gwembeshe feels like his mind's running away from him.  A dozen thoughts crash through his head in a second, and he gets dizzy and has to catch his breath.  Then sometimes his chest gets really tight and hurts almost like its vibrating really fast.  He looks all blurry, but he knows his eyes aren't the problem.  When that happens, he doesn't want to move; it feels like he could explode.

So all the origins are spiritually-based, especially with regards to modern religions?

I assume there are going to be some individuals attuned to older deities, if the setting is pan-cosmological, rather simply than modern religions?  The voice of Zeus or Thor in that thunderclap?  I'm wondering how much the exact nature of the spiritual resonance or anomalies are keyed to the subjective beliefs of the one who experiences them: it seems, for example, that in the case of the newlyweds their changes weren't wholly in sync with their personal beliefs, at least on a conscious level.  Could, for example, a devout Christian evangelist suddenly find himself the avatar of Anubis, or does it not work like that?

Whatever the case, I'll be following this setting eagerly.

You have an interesting start here. Is religion to be a heavy focus of the game?

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawSo all the origins are spiritually-based, especially with regards to modern religions?

I assume there are going to be some individuals attuned to earlier deities.[/quote]do[/i] have some kind of relationship to the spiritual motifs of past and present earth: the Demon-Bodhisattvas, for instance, do act a lot like you'd expect a regular Bodhisattva to, but they certainly don't call themselves by old Buddhist words.  And there's also the bit about them being demons (another inadequate description).

QuoteThe Voice of Zeus or Thor in that thunderclap?

all the way down[/i] in Turkey.  But it'd more likely be someone like Bai-Ulugan, a local ancient divinity.

QuoteI'm wondering how much the exact nature of the spiritual resonance or anomalies are keyed to the subjective beliefs of the one who experiences them: it seems, for example, that in the case of the newlyweds their changes weren't wholly in sync with their personal beliefs, at least on a conscious level.

Could, for example, a devout Christian evangelist suddenly find himself the avatar of Anubis, or does it not work like that?[/quote]You have an interesting start here. Is religion to be a heavy focus of the game?[/quote]more[/i] asserted when mothers birth babies that can hiccough typhoons.  Singapore, for example, is widely considered a gateway to Hell.  No-one can really prove it, but folks tend to agree the place just isn't the same after the Battle of Eighty-six Armies rampaged through Downtown Core.

I'll post some more NPCs, organisations, and some cosmological ideas soon.  Any suggestions (of powers, spiritual influences, historical events, technologies etc.) are more than welcome.

Ok, interesting.  A lot subtler than I was originally thinking, and more compelling.  The "deities" or numinous figures prompt transformations or revelations rather than straight-out "possessing" people or selecting them as avatars - I can see this now in your opening, I was just misinterpreting.

By the way, I wasn't inquiring whether the voice that spoke in the thunderclap specifically was Thor or Zeus, I was more wondering whether those sorts of pagan deities were around in the setting, considering their lack of modern worship - I was just invoking the thunder as an example.  I think you answered my question, though - if I'm not mistaken, collective belief/reverence doesn't affect the power of a deity/power as such on Renegade Earth.

Since you said you were welcoming ideas, here's a random snippet I wrote - I don't know if it fits with what you're creating, but feel free to take as much or as little as you like:

[ic=The Dweller]In Manchester, England, static blares on the television in a cheap flat smelling of piss and stale pizza.  A charlatan magician sprawls naked on his frayed sofa, a gluey strand of drool dangling viscously from his lips, his scuffed top hat in his lap and a rheumy film of cocaine caking his nostrils.  As his sallow limbs twitch in the throes of the overdose the magician perceives in the white cackle of the television a pattern that suddenly resolves itself into speech'¦ a face'¦ eyes that gaze back from the frenzied void.  The darkness in the depths of his hat unfolds, grasping, enveloping, embracing him like some tenebrous lover; the Dweller of the Abyss insinuates its whispers deep within him, a sibilant insemination.  He spasms, ecstatic, and spends himself in the wasting black.

When he rises, refreshed, he speaks with the white-noise Word of Choronzon, and all who hear him are helpless to resist his hissing, unintelligible call.  He walks the streets of the city like a somnambulist or amnesiac or Old Testament prophet, followed always by a steadily growing congregation of Void-touched, seduced by the Dweller's crackling and infectious Will.
[/ic]
Picturing a guy who opens his mouth and white noise comes out (or can come out when he chooses to speak with the Word), representing a kind of Nietzschean abyssal meaninglessness (the abyss has gazed back)... but perhaps too alienating?

I like it, but it's a bit dark for the general tenor of the campaign.

Here's some more random stuff:

It is impossible to say how many Powers exist.  In many places Empowerment has significant stigma associated with it, and locals are therefore reluctant to expose themselves.  Besides which, public announcement inevitably brings visits from the likes of the Protectors, Unity, Throne or the Infinite Army.

Metalanguage
The instincts, desires and patterns of comprehension common to all people.  Unsullied, it allows a speaker to communicate with '" and understand '" any other human being, regardless of their language.  The Truesayers analysed and quantified the metalanguage, and the language they constructed from it (called Felicity) is proclaimed the truest expression of infinite human consciousness.

However, Felicity is subtly flawed.  The Truesayers have engineered its principles so that its speakers (inhabitants of Dominion and the principalities of Prosody) obey, instinctively, the insidious and labyrinthine precepts defined by the Sophist Kings.

Other permutations of the metalanguage include Gehennan, Gloomverse and Stellar.

Unity
First established by Putin in the early years of the Revelation, in order to deal with Russia's high incidence of Empowered individuals.  As membership grew, it adopted a more general (if high-level) policing role, as well as spearheading Putin's search for Controlled Ascendancy.

Eventually, with the rise of such figures as Purity and Tirade, Unity became increasingly divorced from the Russian chain of command; only their public face, Patriot Star, remained liable to Public censure while the body of the organisation operated with near impunity.

Today, Unity has expanded beyond (some say discarded) its nationalist ideals, manipulating events not only globally, but on other worlds.

[blockquote=Delicious Magical Mud Party]Purity and Tirade[/blockquote]
So these are individuals - Powers - correct?  Both sound potentially fascinating... great non-standard super-names.

Holy shit. I just discovered Unity is a real Russian political party. Coincidence??? Probabably. But still... now what am I gonna call them?

More coming.

I like this. Definitely stokes my love of universalist sci-fi (like how Stargate had old deities being aliens). It actually has some echos of a setting I was going to put together for some short stories; exploring how the world would react to magic if it suddenly appeared is a lot of fun.

Are you going to be using Mutants and Masterminds for this system, or some other super RPG?

On a literary standpoint, what is going to be the focus of your stories? The journey of the heroes? Or the interplay between society and "the other"?

I've never used Mutants and Masterminds. I'll probably stick with Fudge or break in the One Roll Engine.

The story focus depends on the sort of characters. I got the idea after reading the Marvel Civil War event series, but the tone is a marriage of Sandman, Watchmen and Midnight's Children. There are many kinds of plots: the occult, personal journeys of an empowered individual seeking self-realisation through their gifts; stranger and more epic quests for transcedance; political intrigue and more overt warfare (although the more spectacular empowered are kept out of conflicts because that would otherwise lead to an unstoppable escalation and eventually the introduction of the likes of Basilisk, Cuchulain and Mechanical Dream, the empowered equivalents of weapons of massive destruction); then diplomacy, adventure and conquest on the otherworlds and even the search for the tetragrammaton, the One True Word which all the permutations of the metalanguage reflect.

As for the relationship between society and the empowered, Renegade Earth does take some cues from Civil War. Those who cannot conceal their empowerment are, in many countries (particularly the world superpowers), forced or "encouraged" to register. Many would argue that this is a good thing, because the government is able to "best make use of the talents of its exceptional members". The United States, with its cult of celebrity combined with the ingrained superhero mythology, succumbed to the rhetoric incredibly quickly: While nominally subordinate to the president and serving as advisors with "special insights", the empowered tribunal of the Presidium is the real head of state.

In many ways Renegade Earth is remarkably more advanced than it likely would have been had the Revelation not occurred. As mentioned before, there are people who can cure pretty much any disease, and the brightest minds in the world are capable of feats that not only stagger mundane folk but defy any kind of recognised science. There are machines in every modernised household that can store and interpret dreams and even portable devices that can record subconscious thoughts. Human cloning is a reality, though the empowered are not legally permitted to do so (the very rich get away with it). Shapeshifters provide an inexhaustible supply of stem-cells, though so-called mutable organisms have volatile biologies and even very small cultures of cells can develop in potent and nasty directions. On the other hand, there are also people who can eat other people without using their mouths and a guy who speaks only soul-numbing white noise. There's a woman who kills any unborn baby by her mere proximity and a boy who transforms into a ravaging deformed man-wolf the size of a house. The androgynous lunatic nuclear god-human Am Omega used to be called kid Alpha back in the early days when the yanks still thought comic powers were cool, but then it figured out it was basically god and then everyone else figured it out and now it's banished from the world and thankfully someone else's problem (the kings of the Inward Space don't appreciate that).

And just to clarify the whole divine question: everybody has got it wrong. Everyone. Theists, atheists, agnostics, nihilists, and unthinking "drones" alike, they all have no idea. The purpose of the Revelation and the source of the empowered is something almost totally beyond their conception. Almost.

I like this. Especially your characters. Those small personal stories of sudden revelation and ability that seems to go in wildly different directions for each individual. There is no pattern, just like one would expect in a world where, as you say, "everybody has got it wrong". The Empowered are a force of unpredictable change.
I also find the abilities you have given them intriguing by themselves. These are interesting, new, fickle, and sometimes bad "superpowers".
Do the Empowered have equal rights with common humans, or are they the property of the state in some version of neo-slavery?
What are the powers of Basilisk, Cuchulain and Mechanical Dream? Who controls these living weapons?
How frequent are the happenings?  

Basilisk ossifies organic material - sort of like Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva - by being looked at. Cuchulain is the aforementioned child that transforms into the nasty beastie. He's part Hulk part Nordic avatar. Mechanical Dream is... well, I'm not quite sure. But it sounds cool, yes?

Spontaneous happenings aren't very frequent these days, but it is common for the children of a Power to experience one. This has led some scholars to suggest that genetics has something to do with it. It doesn't. Some people, such as Lamia and Ingrid Bessel (well, depending on how you look at it), experienced the happening before birth. In Lamia's case every expectant mother in the hospital miscarried and many of the babies in the maternity ward died as well.

You make a very good point about the lack of pattern. Even so, humans, ordered as the are, have tried to force a pattern on the events. Thus we have high profile powers adopting mythical, biblical or otherwise spiritual names such as the Antediluvian, Oroboros, Choronzon, Chrism and the like. Others adopt sensational titles such as Powerhouse, Entropos and Typhoon.

These names are deceptive, making them seem larger than life. Entropos, for example, is merely an old man who accelerates the decay of his environment when his mood drops. His house rapidly aged and fell down on him when his wife died and when the paramedics rushed him to hospital the ambulance equipment broke down. He seems to be immune to aging, but he's still an old, miserable man and ruin follows him.

Then there's Choronzon, whom Steerpike introduced. He's nothing special, just a human channel for something distant and cruel.

And here's Chrism:

In his twenties Chrism was afflicted with mysterious unhealing wounds that bled restorative bile, and studied by scientists who kept him confined in a hidden facility with other powers. He eventually escaped and created a transformative alchemical solution with the help of the genius alchemist Luo Xue, who had by that time already changed herself into a completely different life form. The solution worked, but scarred him horribly. He appears covered in third degree burns and wears a sealed suit that is constantly bathing his body in soothing fluid (ironically developed from his own bile by his erstwhile jailors). He is a skilled alchemist and can still produce restorative materials through the extraction and chemical stimulation of his own cells.

Chrism is believed to be the one fully human child of Allmother. He is therefore not a distinct power with a unique origin but, like all her 'children', a continuation of Allmother's mutative somatic line and thus an extension of her being. He is currently in league with Throne, but his allegiance is ultimately to the House of Alchemists.

It is always enjoyable that whenever you introduce a new character you refer to another not yet introduced character. Makes the world seem alive already just by virtue of you having a lot of unpublished ideas.
But you also do the reverse and refer to someone you have already introduced, but never by name, as you just did with Lamia. That's maybe a bit confusing. Maybe you should do a list somewhere of the known "individuals".
And while Cuchulain and Basilisk sound powerful, they are hardly superweapons are they? They are powerful in localized instances, but they are not exactly capable of distant mass destruction.
Perhaps Mechanical Dream (and yes, it does sound awfully cool) is a comatose patient who makes nearby machines "go to sleep". Which of course would make it terribly difficult to take care of him. But he could act as a perpetual EMP weapon.
Is Lamia shunned? Or do people use her for abortions for example?

Sorry, I got those wrong. Gorgon, Basilisk's sister, is the superweapon. Basilisk is still very powerful because it doesn't automatically ossify those who see it. It takes a day for the process to become noticeable, which is a scary long time for a person with that kind of chops to be walking around unnoticed. Add to that the fact that it sheds its body as a snake sheds its skin making it all but impossible to track by mundane means, and you have a very, very scary creature indeed. Yes, its effects are local. But you won't know they're happening. It was incredibly difficult to capture it and put it away, and like any clever government, its captors decided it would be better to keep it alive and see what good could come of that. None, I'll wager.

(If the public had ever figured out a Power was the cause of the mysterious contagion that decimated a series of major cities, that would have been a nightmare for power/mundane relations. The fact that it is still alive makes some folks very uncomfortable - partly because of the threat it still poses but also because it serves as a reminder that Basilisk was only discovered due to being active in a media-saturated environment; in less developed places where news is harder to get, a creature like that could prove far more troublesome)

Cuchulain is easily a superweapon. He's nigh unkillable and, again, as big as a house, and he bays mournfully and deafeningly, causing the earth the bubble and erupt and swallow buildings and people. He wasn't originally that terrible but the British scientists (in what was appropriately called operation Caladbolg) figured out his transformations are brought on by events that remind him of the trauma of his empowerment, so they amplified it, warping his genuine memories into a gruesome horror epic. He could very easily destroy a major city from the inside in a matter of minutes. He wouldn't necessarily obliterate the people, but in a city like New York, with so much available to come crashing down as we all well know, they would be as good as dusted).

It's worth remarking that Cuchulain and his superhero/villain-seeming lot are a very small minority. Most are more like the ones mentioned in the first post. I'll shift back into low gear now so we don't lose track of the little picture.

Lamia has isolated herself from most of humanity for their sake. She isn't a malicious person, just terribly alienated, and she's trying to find a place where she'll neither hurt nor be hurt. She has fallen in with the Infinite Army (formerly called Infinity), whom she assists in a mundane political fashion. They are also protecting her from the likes of Entropos and the Maledict, who would love to get their hands on a being potentially capable of killing the next generation of the human race (or so they believe).

I like your idea for Mechanical Dream. I'll tweak it and see where we get.

So Gorgon does what? The same as Basilisk but on a larger scale? (promise this will be my last question about the big picture Empowered :p)

I don't know yet. She isn't Basilisk's actual sibling, she just adopted him.

Just a few dudes and dudettes:

Allmother: born Ndege in New Kenya. Her means of empowerment is not known. At the age of twelve she became noticeably pregnant overnight, causing a violent uproar in her community as her family searched for the culprit. Eventually it was determined that she had not in fact been impregnated. Her conception was, by all appearances, completely immaculate. Giving birth only weeks later her child was discovered to be a genetic clone of herself yet bearing virtually no physiological similarity to a human. It did not survive, but she would go on to mother dozens of other creatures, all of which shared her precise genetic makeup. She is a shapeshifter, possibly the most variable one on Earth besides the Protean, but rather than altering her own anatomy she parthenogenically creates new shapes via gestation. Among her 'children' are Chrism, Teratos and the Chimera.

Anwar Baz: one of the earliest empowered. For a long time his musical works and grimly epic poetry were considered unmiraculous, albeit stunningly well crafted. It was not until many years later when his Black Sonata was posthumously discovered and performed, inadvertently summoning Maitreya-shadow the herald of the Bodhisattva of Dread, that people began to suspect he had been other than normal. Since then all of his works post-2014 have been found to contain hidden occult significance across many layers of interpretation. Mundane 'sorcerers' champion him as the modern Aleister Crowly and practice the rituals uncovered in his writings and constantly interpret new ones, though very few of either sort have any real effect. Only the magically empowered, such as Axtetly and Red Rabbi can manifest his true sorceries.

Aurora: born Neda Perun, third child of the Russian hero Enmity. She possesses the innate power of prophecy. Under the tutelage of her more potent sister Zorya (deceased) she developed her other notorious gift: the brief reanimation and control of the recently dead. She has a fraternal twin who is not a Power. His very existence is known only to a few, to preserve his safety.

Felix: born Martin Stall, he is a playboy millionaire constantly rated among the top ten most beautiful people in the world (all of whom are empowered). He does not recount the circumstances of his empowerment; in fact, he was looking at his reflection in a lake when the image leapt out of the water, strangled him to death and replaced him. Due to his high profile and eagerness to capitalise on his gifts, he has been targeted in a number of anti-power attacks. This has led him to employ Wolf Guard members Morton Petrossian and Kasa Chaudhry in his entourage.

Kirill Maslov: an American serial-killer turned hitman. He operates on a low scale but across the entire country, and is so talented his methods are practically untraceable. His gift is a total comprehension of the human machine. In a more noble creature that might have inspired undreamed of medical breakthroughs. In Kirill Maslov it has created the perfect monster.

Leadman: born Garisson Authement, his body is made of an incredibly dense quasi-organic metal, making him weigh well over a tonne. He is utterly without finesse and even now in his mid-fifties sometimes destroys things by grabbing them indelicately. He used to be an enforcer for the Sons of Libetalia, but he was retired after an encounter with the Human left him psychologically unstable.

Perigee: a young woman who achieves a state of superintelligence and untameable mania when the moon is closest to the earth, resulting in artistic works of unparalleled beauty and scientific proofs for questions no-one ever asked. One of her sculptures sits on the front lawn of the Presidium: it is actually a dormant refractive gate with an unkeyed destination. Another of her works, a mathematical exegesis of the esoteric poems of Anwar Baz, has been understood by only four known individuals: Mustanen Heikkinen, Michael Axtetly, Luna Abruzzese and the Second Icon. The work has not yet been adapted into a more intelligible form. Either this is impossible or those who have understood it simply do not want to share.

Red Rabbi: an unnamed sorcerer active in the principalities Prosody. He is believed to be exploring the occult power inherent in the various permutations of the metalanguage and has had dealings with the External Being Gevurah. He has also had contact with both Eser Ganem and Throne but the consequences of such meetings are unknown.

Wolf: a notorious ex-member of the British paramilitary organization AEGIS, with a chilling predatory instinct and carnivorous appetite. He is known for his violent methods and love of terror tactics, and strained the limits of the Protectors' 'don't ask don't tell' policy with regards to the methods of its high-level operatives. He developed a strong relationship with Fergus Ross (Cuchulain) and finally split with the organisation when he discovered the method by which they were cultivating the boy's 'talents'. He recently established an international protection service Wolf Guard with such high profile clients as Emil Cerl and Felix. Because Wolf Guard includes ex-foreign operatives among its members, he is treading on dangerous ground. His former employers may soon send someone to deal with him once and for all.

I want it in comic form with Dave Gibbons as illustrator.

How many children has the Allmother given birth to?  Thousands?

I feel like the tone and texture of this has shifted a bit since its inception (that's not a bad thing, though!), moving towards more extravagant/flashy/impressive powers and a more otherworldly landscape; closer to the heroes of Wild Cards or Marvel than the very mundane, fragile heroes of Watchmen (with the obvious exception, though I suppose Adrian would be an exception too).  Was this an intentional shift, or is it just that I'm ony picking up on the intended feel now?

I would so love to write a comic. That would be shweeeet. And Dave Gibbons is wonderful.

As for the tone/texture change, I just shifted into high gear for a bit. That was the more epic side of things. I'm going to get back to the nitty gritty now.

On another note: I just checked out Wild Cards. I don't feel so clever now. Dammit.

EDIT: yes, thousands.

[ooc]This is a setting update, detailing transformations of Renegade Earth as a consequence of player action.[/ooc][ic=EMPOWERMENT]...doesn't happen to just anybody. It is a catalyst, an impetus toward spiritual discovery and temporal accomplishment. Cab drivers, homeless alcoholics and store clerks have been empowered, as have fighter pilots and special ops hardcases, but no bus driver finds himself so thoroughly changed yet remains a bus driver. To be empowered is to be gifted with the means to seize opportunities often dreamed but until now thought beyond one's own reach.[/ic]
No-one in our group is especially religious, but for some reason when I asked them what sort of adventure they wanted to run as an intro to the setting they insisted on a party of fundamentalist Christian covert enforcers...

Well, I rolled with it, and thankfully I already had an organisation called Throne, with close ties to the Catholic Church and other, seedier, Christian operations. So the players were agents of god, at large on the mean mad streets of London in the latter half of the twenty-first century among brainfreaks and cyberchangelings and a thousand kinds of strangeness. It didn't last long...

Members of Throne's London Chapter

Chrism: a remarkable scientist and alchemist, and a devout member of the Second Age Church. His tissues produced fluid with restorative qualities that science never replicated. His allegiances were divided between Throne and the House of Alchemists, and he foolishly played them against each other.

Ernest Gao (PC): an English-Chinese mathematician and sorcerer, on occasion employed by Throne as a 'consultant'. He attempted to prove the divine origin of empowerment through thaumaturgic experiments. Unfortunately, the community of sorcerers is terribly small, and the subset of Christian sorcerers is much smaller still... thus his works were never peer reviewed before his untimely death.

Dipti Krishnatreya (PC): codenamed 'Seraph'. She is capable of projecting images into people's minds by eye contact. These images are of profound personal significance to the receiver, appearing as angels or nature spirits or gods according to the receiver's belief system. The images usually stupefy the viewer through some combination of awe, joy, revulsion and holy terror. During her tenure as a Throne operative she believed her ability was a manifestation of divine presence.

Leicester Weather (PC): pronounced and originally spelled Lester. He gained a measure of Sanguinity's haematomorphic ability when he received a transfusion of her nanite-stimulated blood. This was undertaken as a part of Throne's Active Ascension Directive (AAD). His power had many limitations that Sanguinity did not, presumably as a consequence of his foreign biology.

Mark Church (PC): codenamed 'Cherub'. He has the appearance of an eight year old boy but the physical capabilities of an accomplished professional athlete. He is also a stone-cold killer.

Others: Kent P. Wodehouse, priest and exorcist of the London underground (deceased); and Willemina Berg, interdimensional cryptolinguist (deceased).

What happened...

Chrism had discovered that his own 'healing humours' were beginning to consume the very tissues that produced them. His fellow philosophers within the House of Alchemists could help him at tremendous expense to themselves, but only if he would provide something significant in return. He began directing Throne operatives away from Alchemist activity in London, and even sent them on missions that directly benefited the Alchemists.

After the death of Willemina Berg during a grossly mismanaged sting operation, the Angelus Team (the PCs) began cluing in to Chrism's increasingly desperate game. They employed Ernest Gao to investigate Chrism's activities (Mark Church had been arrested and imprisoned and his player took on Gao, an existing NPC, as a replacement). By that point Chrism was already expecting trouble. He convinced his superiors that the Angelus Team had turned traitor, and his superiors authorised a hit against them. Kent Wodehouse went to warn them and was killed in the crossfire during the assassination attempt, which also killed Ernest.

At last Leicester and Dipti confronted Chrism. After explaining everything to them, Chrism shot himself in the head. An emergency response team was already on its way (alerted by Chrism, who obviously was not very contrite) and intercepted Leicester and Dipti as they were fleeing Chrism's estate. Leicester caught a bullet in his brain. Dipti was apprehended, and tasked with explaining the whole sorry mess.

Quote from: BugritLeicester Weather (PC): pronounced and originally spelled Lester.

Erm, how else would you pronounce Leicester?

EDIT: Less obnoxiously, it sounds like a great set of characters and a great game you ran with them! :)

Quote from: Kindling

Quote from: BugritLeicester Weather (PC): pronounced and originally spelled Lester.

Erm, how else would you pronounce Leicester?

As an Australian, whose exposure to the word is exclusively through British media, I'm aware that many of my peers have no idea how to pronounce that word, just as they wouldn't know how to pronounce "Siobhan". The point, though, was that the character's name was Lester, and he changed it too Leicester, because roleplayers are juvenile and capricious and like their characters to engage in harmless stupidity.

QuoteEDIT: Less obnoxiously, it sounds like a great set of characters and a great game you ran with them! :)

Thanks. More to come. It ended up being a veeeery long campaign.

Quote from: BugritThanks. More to come. It ended up being a veeeery long campaign.

Awesome, I would love to hear more! I know this game is only really in the superhero genre loosely, but I still feel I'd kind of learn from hearing more about it, as I've never played a supers game and have always struggled a bit to imagine how they would actually play out beyond like "here's a supervillain, fight!"

In terms of the actions of the characters, I honestly wouldn't call this a superhero setting. I created Renegade Earth in great part as a response to classic supers comics, which I can never take seriously. Superpowered individuals seem to exist in a vacuum, wherein they never really affect the world, so much as they affect other superpowered beings (with some collateral damage now and again).

Renegade Earth is an exercise in "What happens when Tony Stark concentrates his vast wealth on the public weal? What happens when Reed Richards commits his astonishing intellect to civil projects? Or politics?"

There are no "supervillians" in Renegade Earth. No-one is conspicuously trying to conquer the world. Empowered individuals have simply supplanted mundane humans in the most powerful of the world's positions, or have created new organisations that act according to established custom, notably AEGIS, Presidium and Unity.

In short, I guess the only thing limiting a superheroes campaign is the assumption that characters would limit themselves to superheroics. Why do that, when in public eyes you have the gifts of angels or demons or gods? The organisation called Throne is financed by the Church of the Second Age, which believes these gifts presage the coming again of the Messiah. In Israel there is an organisation called Keter that is committed to the empowerment of the entire Jewish race (There is no longer a Palestine). Empowerment is changing the whole world, even if it has happened to a fraction of a percent of the global population.

Addendum: the most quintessentially "comic book" 'powers to have existed thus far are Kid Alpha and The Enharmonic. Kid Alpha in his current state can be likened to "Doctor Manhattan with a serious hardon for genocide" and The Enharmonic is now scattered across the spectrum of some unimagined cosmic medium.

With the setting clearly established in our minds, we decided to move onto higher stakes. This time, the players were 'superterrorists', their agenda was global anarchist revolution.

It wasn't until all the characters were written up and I'd plotted out half the campaign that I realised the players were crafting an homage to Metal Gear Solid.

Sons of Libertalia

Nestor Vorobyov: the one-armed marksman. He had no paranormal power to speak of. He was simply balls-to-the-wall crazy and charismatic as hell. He, like his unnamed superior, believed that empowerment was the instrument of Chaos, the driving principle of the universe, and that a global anarchist 'eutopia' was long overdue.

Viper: an ex-member of the elite paramilitary unit les enfants terrible. Whenever he remains stationary and slows his heart rate he is functionally invisible. Also, those who encountered him are incapable of remembering details about him once he departs. This includes recorded media; someone could memorise a drawing of his face but would not associate it with him unless they were referencing it while looking at him.

Terrence Stamp (PC): a former Presidium interrogator. He can integrate his mind with that of a nearby person, sharing their thoughts and impressing his own upon them. With sufficient time and effort, he can even manipulate their motor processes. Due to his frequent mind integration he eventually lost all sense of personal identity. The Presidium managed him for a time with artificial personalities, but each of those in turn deteriorated. Soon after being interred in the Presidium's Retirement facility he was 'rescued' by the Sons of Libertalia. For a time Cordelia Maas kept him stable through a regimen of holographic meme impression, supplying him with motivations consistent with her personal agenda.

Cordelia Maas (PC): a hyperintellent engineer, psychologist and neurologist with obsessive compulsive tendencies. She often worked as a freelance with AEGIS and Altman Pharmaceuticals, and she made groundbreaking contributions to the field of subliminal impression.

Codename Octopus (PC): a chess prodigy, master sharpshooter and shapeshifter. His genes and physiology are constantly changing, so that across the span of a month he will inevitably transform into a wholly different person. Through a combination of chemistry and psychosomatic suggestion he can both direct and tremendously accelerate this process, but it is very painful.

Hassan Shamoon (PC): the notorious 'Burning Man of Pakistan'. His body weighs approximately 500 kilograms and has an 'idle' temperature of between 300 and 500 degrees Centigrade. When making a conscious effort he gets much, much hotter. He does not eat, and draws oxygen through his skin. If denied oxygen he reverts to an inert metal, comparable to the substance of which Garisson Authement is composed. He spends most of his time in a suit devised by Unity scientists which regulates his intake and exhaust. He can direct waste energy as a concentrated beam through outlets in his gloves. Before being rescued by Nestor Vorobyov he was being used as an inexhaustible energy source by Chinese separatists (they lived to regret it).

Penny Dreadful (PC): a musical pioneer in the genre of sub-Coma, she could manipulate frequencies of sound to produce temporary impressions of possible futures. This allowed her and her companions to live the consequences of certain actions and determine if they were viable before actually undertaking them.

Others: Jiri Svoboda, a corporate accountant and one of Octopus' marks; Peng Jian and Lei Ting, 'brother' demolitions masters with a single mind, connected by an almost-tangible electromagnetic field; Codename 2D, Terrence Stamp's handler; and Valiant, Cordelia Maas' brainscrubbed bodyguard, with various chemical augmentations and sub-dermal armour.

In case you missed it, Vorobyov is Revolver Ocelot, Viper is Solid Snake, Terrence Stamp is Psycho Mantis, Cordelia Maas is Naomi and Codename Octopus is Decoy Octopus. Hassan Shamoon and Penny Dreadful are replacement characters for Cordelia's player, who is establishing a trend of low survivability. She doesn't mind though.  The 'Others' are extra characters available as temporary PCs so that players can remain engaged in each other's storylines. Don't ask me why the psychic is called Terrence Stamp. I have no idea.

What happened...

(Forgive me if I get a few details wrong. It gets confusing.)
Chrism's body is secured by Throne, but en route to an experimental facility it is hijacked by unknown persons. It is at this time that Viper goes AWOL during a routine assassination in some South American backwater territory. Very few people have been memetically imprinted with the memory of Viper's appearance, and Vorobyov wants to keep it that way, so no one is sent to find him. Meanwhile, these interesting things are happening to the PCs:

Codename Octopus' deep cover operation of several years is blown. He is shot half to pieces during a corporate meeting (in which twelve other people are killed) and escapes to his storehouse where his Shifting apparatus is located. Accelerated shifting produces accelerated healing, but he's stuck with several very uncomfortable bullets in himself.

Terrence wakes up in his vacation apartment surrounded by broken furniture, freezing cold (its late autumn and the balcony door is open) with a massive headache and a bunch of extra memories. He cannot remember Sons of Libertalia, but he remembers a woman named Madeline Ashton, and he 'knows' that he must consume her mind. (For the record, the player remembers SoL)

Cordelia Maas is in one of her labs working on a new brain array for a line of private sector anthroids that will bypass current international sanctions against Artificial Intelligences. The facility suddenly goes into emergency lockdown and her personal scanner indicates foreign, nonhuman presences in the upper levels, butchering her researchers. She and her bodyguard Valiant get ready to kick ass and take names...

(The events starting off the player's personal adventures are written by them, and are called Kickers: 'events or realizations that your character has experienced just before play begins. They catalyze him or her into action of some sort.' I believe they were first introduced in Ron Edwards' Sorcerer. It's my job to tie them all together so it seems like the events were always related)