Who Will Save Us Now? Discussion and Interest Thread

[Steerpike]

A brilliant post-2008 revision of the "Soviet Villain Squad" (i.e. Red Trinity, Red Shadows, Supreme Soviets, etc), Superbright.

Is Night Witch going to be an actual WWII Night Witch?

EDIT: Also maybe the Harpy should have encountered at least one of the Internationales? Maybe in prison? Maybe they fought?

[LD]

Superbright--> I'm interested in their age ranges- I get this amusing vision of solely 60-70 year old geriatric Soviet heroes spouting inspirational quotations while collectively destroying their enemies like Discworld's Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde, but I am sure there are some youngsters in the group.

Hippopotamus--> I like how you went with the 2 inactive members/larger membership list for your organization- yours in particular seems very well suited for that option of Xathan's!

Xathan--> Could the character thread please link to the other two major threads in its first post?

[Steerpike]

I've posted all the stats for my heroes. I think everything is correct. I reduced the Adventuring Detective Melee/Range stats by 10, as per your speculation Xathan, though they maybe still seem high? As it stands a Brute and an Adventuring Detective have the same Melee bonus, although admittedly they do massively more damage.

[Xathan]

[ooc=Patch 0.0.2 Update]
Heroes

Adventuring Detective and Android both had incorrect stat blocks. The Attack bonuses for both have been reduced by 10, and the Defensce scores for both have been increased by 10. This brings them in line with other heroes.

Paragon melee skills were improved to 7. In playtest, regardless of which combat system I was trying, the Paragon was vastly under preforming for their intended power.

Customization Options

Wealthy now reads: Wealthy: your character comes from a privileged background. You gain 10% additional wealth per turn

Respected is now: Respected: This hero brings respect to the team as a whole. Increase team reputation by 10. When gaining reputation, you gain 10% extra reputation.

Highly Charismatic is now: Highly Charismatic: You gain +4 to Media, and your team's starting reputation is increased by 5.  When gaining reputation, you gain 5% extra reputation.

Complications

Reformed Villain has been slightly changed: Reformed Villain: Due to a past on the wrong side of the law, people have difficulty trusting you. Your team starts with 10 less reputation, and you take a -4 penalty to influence checks to convince people to trust you. (Note that if you are a reformed villain and that is not publicly known, this does not apply)

General:

Character Creation rules have been added to the main rules thread. Sample character Liberty Bell's stat block has been updated to reflect proper character creation.

All threads now properly link to each other.[/ooc]

Do keep in mind that you have 8 free skill points to spend on whatever, however you want.

Is this noted anywhere? I didn't see it, and trying to "Reverse Engineer" Liberty Bell from the Paragon archetype doesn't lead to this conclusion.

Light Dragon had this correct, it's in the character creation thread. I coulda sworn I had moved it over to the Rules thread, an error I will be fixing. :)

Based on the current wealth cost of things, the "Wealthy" option seems basically worthless; the reputation ones don't seem all that much better with reputation costs also pretty high. My suggestion would be that given that wealth and reputation are expendable resources but most other customization options grant persistent character boosts, it would be better for them to provide an increase in the team's ability to gain reputation and wealth, rather than a one-time bonus.

You're absolutely right about this, and I'll be making those changes shortly. I'll also be including new purchasable customization options "Sell Out" and "Cash In," letting you trade reputation for wealth or visa versa, though it will be at a loss - it's intended to be there as a way to get a quick boost if you're just on the edge of that purchase that you want

The changes are on the sheets in the thread. e.g. I moved 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 from Skill A to Skill B.

Alright, I'll look them over and get back to you on that ASAP.

Enjoy my incredibly political team summary.

Oh, Superbright, I totally am. I love the ultra-communist team as a heroic team, and making villains for them is so much fun so far. :) Can't wait to see the individual members!

Really, want to take a moment to tell everyone I'm really loving the teams and characters you all are coming up with so far. :)

Also maybe the Harpy should have encountered at least one of the Internationales? Maybe in prison? Maybe they fought?

Just want to say if you guys decide to go that route, it'd be totally cool with me. I'd love for a bit of pre-game crossover to have happened.

Hippopotamus--> I like how you went with the 2 inactive members/larger membership list for your organization- yours in particular seems very well suited for that option of Xathan's!

I'm not surprised, it was Hippo's idea, I just got the details right. It does fit that particular team quite well. :)

Xathan--> Could the character thread please link to the other two major threads in its first post?

Will get that fixed, good catch.

I've posted all the stats for my heroes. I think everything is correct. I reduced the Adventuring Detective Melee/Range stats by 10, as per your speculation Xathan, though they maybe still seem high? As it stands a Brute and an Adventuring Detective have the same Melee bonus, although admittedly they do massively more damage.

That was the correct change yes. It's true the Adventuring Detective melee is a bit high, currently on par with the Costumed Adventurer, which is something I went back and forth on, but most of the time Adventuring Detectives in comics are shown at being pretty fair matches for their more flamboyantly dressed counterparts, so I'm gonna keep it there.

[Xathan]

Oh, if anyone's interested, I posted in the Character Creation thread (in a little spoiler block at the bottom) the Exarchs. I'd suggest reading over it, there's some worldbuilding details in there that might be good to know, but I kept it small because this isn't their story, its yours. I'll devote more time (and space) to villains, because that's more important to what's actually going on.

Also, wanted to thank everyone for the help so far. :) Did want to check - does anyone have any outstanding questions to me that have not yet been answered?

More world-building is coming.

Because I like doing this, here's my current To-Do list:

-Go though the thread a change all instances of Manipulate to Influence. Alternative: Change all instances of Influence to Manipulate, since you use Manipulate far more often.

-Write up the various combat systems you're working on so you can show the players as opposed to keeping it all in your head.

-Add the Team Mascot option

-Finish the Worldbuilding stuff, including posting a whole bunch of villains.

-Write up other things Wealth and Resources can be spent on. (this is not turn 1 critical)

-Reorganize the rules thread into something meant to be read by a sane mind.

[Rhamnousia]

I'm so glad people are responding well to them. It really validates all of my nail-biting and neurotic rewrites. I'm actually torn as to how old to make the remaining founding members. Vanguard and Night Witch will definitely at least have been born during the Great Patriotic War (superhero aging being a weird and unknowable thing), and the Red Spectre's age will be a big part of her mystique: the earliest photographs of her date back to the Cuban Revolution, but I'm considering going full-throttle and have her be old enough to have fought in the October Revolution.

I'm so down for Harpy having clashed with Internationale during her mafiya days, probably when they were punching one of her bosses to pieces.

Finally, I'm incredibly conflicted about what to make the last two characters, since I want to go for the most diverse thematic spread possible. It's probably going to be a Chinese cyborg battlesuit character who went rogue after her involvement in the June Fourth Incident and a pistol-wielding demoness who was summoned and bound by Rasputin, liberated by the Bolsheviks, converted to Communism, and now totally rejects the existence of the supernatural as being incompatible with the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, but other possible future members include a wily old Viet Cong who got his powers through CIA experimentation on prisoners of war, a brutal British squaddist, a young PKK guerrilla, or an African-American social activist and telekine.

On the subject of the demoness, Xathan, if I go that route, would it be at all possible to give her a unique complication in the vein of Rare Weakness? I was thinking that she'd be vulnerable to being temporarily banished and, while not permanently destroyed, taken out of action for a couple of weeks while she tries to crawl her way back out of a Hell she denies the existence of.

[Steerpike]

The Exarchs look great! Awesome to see Nemesis there as a weird sort of Punisher/Batman hybrid. Hyper Radiant Power Soldier made me smile. Drifter is cool - a nice allusion to Nomad, if I'm not mistaken. I have only one nitpick here: the preferred term, I believe, is "transgender," even when the word "transgendered" seems grammatically appropriate. "Transgendered" used to be a very standard term but it seems to have fallen out of the vernacular.

I reached Warmech and was like WHAT there's a Fourth Reich now? Did Warmech eventually topple that regime or is it still around?

Two more tiny nitpicks, of a different nature: a couple of the general customization options still refer to specific Archetypes. Also, I'm fairly certain the plural of "Gear" is "Gear," not "Gears" - more accurately "gear" is a singular collective noun that can refer to a collection of items. These are ridiculously teensy edits but I noticed them so I thought I should point em out.

[Xathan]

I'm so glad people are responding well to them. It really validates all of my nail-biting and neurotic rewrites. I'm actually torn as to how old to make the remaining founding members. Vanguard and Night Witch will definitely at least have been born during the Great Patriotic War (superhero aging being a weird and unknowable thing), and the Red Spectre's age will be a big part of her mystique: the earliest photographs of her date back to the Cuban Revolution, but I'm considering going full-throttle and have her be old enough to have fought in the October Revolution.

I love this idea. BTW, I originally had a customization option for long-lived or slow aging...then realized it would never be relevant in game, so kept it out. If you want them to still be younger physically even though they are much older chronologically, feel free to do so.

Finally, I'm incredibly conflicted about what to make the last two characters, since I want to go for the most diverse thematic spread possible. It's probably going to be a Chinese cyborg battlesuit character who went rogue after her involvement in the June Fourth Incident and a pistol-wielding demoness who was summoned and bound by Rasputin, liberated by the Bolsheviks, converted to Communism, and now totally rejects the existence of the supernatural as being incompatible with the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, but other possible future members include a wily old Viet Cong who got his powers through CIA experimentation on prisoners of war, a brutal British squaddist, a young PKK guerrilla, or an African-American social activist and telekine.

I love the Demoness who denies the supernatural so much it's not even funny. The others all sound equally strong, so I can't be much help there, but the first one I really want to see.

On the subject of the demoness, Xathan, if I go that route, would it be at all possible to give her a unique complication in the vein of Rare Weakness? I was thinking that she'd be vulnerable to being temporarily banished and, while not permanently destroyed, taken out of action for a couple of weeks while she tries to crawl her way back out of a Hell she denies the existence of.

That sounds good on the surface, yes. Since you're going the Loose Confederation route (I assume) it wouldn't be completely crippling for you to have that weakness. It would also give me a chance to introduce something once that happens that will be plot relevant later, so yes. Do you have particular circumstances on who can banish her, or is it just Mages...who have powers that she doesn't believe are magic?

The Exarchs look great! Awesome to see Nemesis there as a weird sort of Punisher/Batman hybrid. Hyper Radiant Power Soldier made me smile. Drifter is cool - a nice allusion to Nomad, if I'm not mistaken. I have only one nitpick here: the preferred term, I believe, is "transgender," even when the word "transgendered" seems grammatically appropriate. "Transgendered" used to be a very standard term but it seems to have fallen out of the vernacular.

Thanks a ton! Those are the two I'm most pleased with as well. And yes, Drifter is an allusion to Captain America's Nomad days. I wanted to have Captain America type that completely fell out with his country, and I figured America's perpetual issues with LGBT people would be an appropriate one. Plus, it always bugs me that of all groups, transgender individuals are probably the least represented in comics.

You are, of course, correct, and another player pointed this out via PM as well. Good catch both of you.

I reached Warmech and was like WHAT there's a Fourth Reich now? Did Warmech eventually topple that regime or is it still around?

the Fourth Reich is still a going thing, although much smaller. This will be made clear when I get to the full world-building post and Lady Dusk's villain profile, but it's basically a smallish, Nazi Latveria in South America.

Two more tiny nitpicks, of a different nature: a couple of the general customization options still refer to specific Archetypes. Also, I'm fairly certain the plural of "Gear" is "Gear," not "Gears" - more accurately "gear" is a singular collective noun that can refer to a collection of items. These are ridiculously teensy edits but I noticed them so I thought I should point em out.

Thanks, I'll go through and fix those! Nitpicks are fine.

A bit about how I write for Who Will Save Us Now? just because I'm sure it's riddled with errors like this: most of my days are fairly busy, so I typically am running errands and doing other things around the home while making notes in a notebook for things to add. At work, I then type them all up and add things in a notepad document at work, since I can shrink that down enough to not block my other tools even if I accidentally click it when a call comes in. I then email it to myself, run it through a spellcheck, and post it. Typically, by that point, it's 2-3am and I have no focus to edit, so even when I skim over it I'm going to miss things. So please do point out those little errors, otherwise I'll never catch them. (When the game starts, I'll not be posting the "Start of Turn" posts until the next day, when I have a chance to actually edit them - which should reduce the number of errors!)

[Rhamnousia]

That sounds good on the surface, yes. Since you're going the Loose Confederation route (I assume) it wouldn't be completely crippling for you to have that weakness. It would also give me a chance to introduce something once that happens that will be plot relevant later, so yes. Do you have particular circumstances on who can banish her, or is it just Mages...who have powers that she doesn't believe are magic?

If it's all Mages, then I think it should probably involve a decently-long and time-consuming ritual. What would also work is that she has to make a check when someone rebukes her with an Orthodox icon of Saint Basil the Great in order to avoid being hurled back into Perdition.

I also really love the lineup you have going with the Exarchs. It's almost a shame that Internationale never got along with them. And I'm excited to hear more about the Fourth Reich; I was really hoping you'd do something like the Boys from Brazil and I am not disappointed.

[Xathan]

If it's all Mages, then I think it should probably involve a decently-long and time-consuming ritual. What would also work is that she has to make a check when someone rebukes her with an Orthodox icon of Saint Basil the Great in order to avoid being hurled back into Perdition.

I think the way it will work is Mages can banish her as a result of "Capturing" her, but since that really won't be any different than being captured by any other character - it'll just take her out of commission for a week, same as any other capture that doesn't require you to rescue the captured hero. The actual weakness will be the Orthodox icon of Saint Basil the Great, which I love for being so oddly specific. DC 16 will to resist being banished for each round of exposure - slightly lower DC than the damage caused by Weakness because it's a "Save or Lose" type scenario.

I also really love the lineup you have going with the Exarchs. It's almost a shame that Internationale never got along with them. And I'm excited to hear more about the Fourth Reich; I was really hoping you'd do something like the Boys from Brazil and I am not disappointed.

Thanks! And yeah, that is kind of a shame. It possible they had prior amicable interactions with Crimson Arrow, who wasn't necessarily pro-democracy but more anti-the-current-Chinese-government.

And I appreciate it. I'll try to get full worldbuilding done tonight at work, or at least make a decent dent in it and post what I have. :)

[sparkletwist]

I like the Exarch writeups, and I'm all for more LGBT inclusiveness, but I have to scoff a little bit at Captain Patriot/Drifter. I don't really find any sort of widespread public backlash to be very realistic. This is comic book gonzo-land, after all, so we're talking about a public that has already had to deal with and come to accept mutants, cryptids, sentient androids, space aliens, walking undead, communist super soldiers, mages, telepaths, demons, and who knows what else. There are probably shapeshifters that can change from male to female and back again whenever they feel like it, and alien species with zero or three genders, and all sorts of other weirdness, so I just don't see people in this world, even 'murricans, really caring that much after being exposed to all that. Even the far right religious zealots are probably far more concerned with the fact there are actual demons running around than with sexual morality.

Anyway, crunch-wise, I like the changes. Am I correct in assuming that "Reputation" is really just a currency, then, as opposed to any sort of stat or used to determine anything else? For example, if you have 100 reputation and spend it all, it's not that you are inexplicably abruptly completely despised when last week everyone loved you.

[Xathan]

I like the Exarch writeups, and I'm all for more LGBT inclusiveness, but I have to scoff a little bit at Captain Patriot/Drifter. I don't really find any sort of widespread public backlash to be very realistic. This is comic book gonzo-land, after all, so we're talking about a public that has already had to deal with and come to accept mutants, cryptids, sentient androids, space aliens, walking undead, communist super soldiers, mages, telepaths, demons, and who knows what else. There are probably shapeshifters that can change from male to female and back again whenever they feel like it, and alien species with zero or three genders, and all sorts of other weirdness, so I just don't see people in this world, even 'murricans, really caring that much after being exposed to all that. Even the far right religious zealots are probably far more concerned with the fact there are actual demons running around than with sexual morality.

I see your point here, but this might be a case of to each their own. Part of the tone I'm going for is engaging in the general tone of the Bronze Age of comics, in which social issues did start mattering as part of the general response to things in the world. It makes about as much sense as the X-Men being persecuted for being powered due to mutants while the Fantastic Four were loved even though this reaction depends on the general public having a more detailed knowledge of genetics than they have ever had, or Falcon getting targeted by racists, or the Serpent Society targeting immigrants for making America "impure" as recently as the early 2000's in the comics. Part of it is the truism that angry idiots tend to be louder than most other groups, and so the backlash felt (to Drifter) much, much larger than it actually was, and that was aided by the fact that even in a world where they were exposed to such things, many people would still likely be at the least uncomfortable with transgender individuals and therefore keep their mouths shut, making the angry voices seem even louder in the silence. Part of it is also imagining (and mocking) the backlash that would happen in the real world if Marvel suddenly announced that Steve Rodgers was transgender - we've seen how well people react to those kind of changes already. Part of it is that, under Don't Ask Don't Tell, even without any kind of public backlash, Captain Patriot would have at least had to lose the first word in that name after being stripped of military rank. Another part is that Aliens, Demons, etc - all the things you mentioned - were known about but mostly in the background and not common knowledge until the early 2000's, so older people would have still had the same prejudices they had before.

Anyway, crunch-wise, I like the changes. Am I correct in assuming that "Reputation" is really just a currency, then, as opposed to any sort of stat or used to determine anything else? For example, if you have 100 reputation and spend it all, it's not that you are inexplicably abruptly completely despised when last week everyone loved you.

Thanks! And yes, you are correct. Things purchased with reputation are meant to be "favors" you can cash in on, sort of - in essence, you still have the goodwill, but you spend the political capital. Also, after large reputation purchases, since your team's image changes, your wealth gain decreases as people are a bit more leery of throwing money your way until they see how those changes play out.

[Steerpike]

I disagree, sparkletwist. In lots of comic universes, mutants and superheroes face extreme prejudice by dint of their powers and difference. You know, like this sort of thing. They're frequently a source of huge public anxiety, and more than one superhero has been called a freak or a deviant. Supheroes threaten the boundaries of what counts as human, and not everyone is OK with that. Even non-powered heroes like Batman or Iron Man often have a pretty precarious relationship with public opinion. Just because strange things are abroad doesn't mean that everyone magically becomes accepting, and indeed, there's a long tradition of using superheroes to talk about and explore the politics of identity and social justice.

Considering that Captain Patriot isn't just a superhero but a superhero that's specifically a paragon of American values (America's Favorite Son), it's not all that shocking to think that her transition would cause public consternation, I think.

EDIT: ninja'd by Xathan.

[sparkletwist]

That's essentially my point. Superheroes face prejudice because they are by normal human standards extremely weird, so in the face of all that weirdness suddenly mundane gender identity issues start to seem pretty small potatoes by comparison. People don't magically become more accepting, but they do choose their battles and probably find more common ground because they more or less have to. That said, I do agree that there's a long tradition of using superheroes to talk about this stuff-- but a lot of times it feels kind of silly. Dr. Genius being able to cure every disease except his son Timmy's cancer so we can have a very special episode where we talk about that issue may be socially relevant, but it's narratively dumb. I feel like this is in the same realm, although I'll shut up and go along with it if we're just doing a bit of handwaving to get the relevant social issue in there as a nod to the Bronze Age, which seemed to be what Xathan was saying.

[Steerpike]

I see what you mean about superhero-prejudice sort of dwarfing mundane prejudice, although I have to say that the human capacity for bigotry is pretty vast. Even if there are lots of aliens and weirdos on the news I don't think that centuries of heterornormativity, racism, and patriarchy would be easily erased. It's possible that some pre-existing forms of prejudice might even be exacerbated. I'm imagining Captain Patriot as a symbol of bold, all-American masculinity, hero-worshipped by millions of young boys who rush out to buy Captain Patriot action figures and costumes. When suddenly that image gets taken away, I don't think that a degree of public backlash is that far-fetched, at least initially.

I do think there are a lot of instances where social issues in comics are discussed with considerable sophistication (consider the way, for example, in which Kate Kane's double life is subtly reflected in the clashing art styles between her normal life and her life as a costumed hero), but I take your point that when handled badly it can become very heavy-handed, or even outright ugly (...like the way Kate Kane was denied a lesbian wedding because "heroes shouldn't have happy personal lives" - as if marriage was a guarantee of a happy personal life).