Mystery Men

[Judd]

I've been flirting with how to do super-heroic Sorcerer and here is my most recent attempt.

The starting Demon is something that happened to you that made you want to be a super-hero.  All starting Demons are these events that can manifest in a place (ala Crime Alley), an artifact or just a feeling (in game terms,  a parasite or maybe just inconscpicuous).

Other Demons may be: a sidekick who is always getting kidnapped, a super-villain who is in jail (Lore Boost ala Hannibal Lecter), flashbacks that lead to the hero having amazing skills, gadgets, artifacts

Humanity is justice and when you reach 0 you are no better than the creeps you put in jail.  You go to the dark side from Batman to Punisher and cross the line into killing those you deem as villainous.

Lore is your place in the masked world of super-heroics and your ability to operate within it.

How does one summon a flashback as a Demon?  

It happens all of the time in comic books.  You narrate a scene wherein the mystery man is trained in some way that gives them powers conferred by the flashback's demon.  

Cover is cut into two parts, one's vigilante personna and one's secret identity.

Descriptors


Stamina (what gives you the fortitude to fight crime)

Trained to Perfection:  You are trained to impossible heights of phyiscal perfection.

Symbol: Your strength comes from representing something larger than you and having to live up to it



Will (what drives you to fight for justice)

T, J, & and a side of A.W.  You do this because it is the right thing, gosh-darnit.

Demon of Vengeance: Every killer is the killer who murdered your loved ones and every crime is the crime that took them away.

Evil's Perspective: You fight for your own redemption because once you too were evil and now must fight to make the wrongs you perpetrated right.


Lore (your place among the other mystery men and women)

Lone Avenger: You fight the good fight alone.

Society, Legion, Squadron, or League: You belong to a group of epic heroes who gather regularly to save the world.

Wanted Criminal: Due to a misunderstanding or poor press coverage, many think that you are a villain.

Justice Family: Whether you are a stern patriarch, amazonian matriarch or a petulant child, your family fights crime.

No Mystery: You took off the mask and declared yourself a hero for all to see and now it is only a matter of time before they go after someone you love.

[urbwar]

Judd,

on a slight tangent:

I was just watching "Librarian: Quest for the Spear", which has the Spear of Destiny in it, as well as an appearance by Excalibur.

Because of the Spear of Destiny, I also thought about the Witchblade tv series, which had the Spear involved with the second season.

So I was thinking you could could do a dark supers game where the supers all use weapons of Legend (Excalibur, the Spear, Durandel, etc), and even throw in made up ones like the Witchblade, etc.

If you want to make it more intense, run it as a modern version of Charnel Gods....

Thoughts?

[Judd]

Thoughts?

I love the idea of super-heroic noirish modern Charnel Capes.  Super-heroes whose unholy gadgets wreak havoc on the world they fight to defend.

Unholy .45's, possessed cowls, god-haunted armor that keeps one's heart beating with clawed hands, etc.

That makes me really happy.

I just might run that.

Now I'm going to run home and re-read Charnel Gods.

[urbwar]

Thoughts?

I love the idea of super-heroic noirish modern Charnel Capes.  Super-heroes whose unholy gadgets wreak havoc on the world they fight to defend.

Unholy .45's, possessed cowls, god-haunted armor that keeps one's heart beating with clawed hands, etc.

That makes me really happy.

I just might run that.

Now I'm going to run home and re-read Charnel Gods.

Cool. I hoped you'd like the idea. I think it would be an interesting take on Charnel Gods. Kind of fits in the mold of Spawn, Witchblade, etc.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Cover is cut into two parts, one's vigilante personna and one's secret identity.

Good stuff, wondering on this part: if superhero=sorcerer and by the standard rules cover=what you are apart from a sorcerer, then why have a cover that describes you as a superhero=sorcerer? That's like having a cover as a "sorcerer" in normal Sorcerer, isn't it? Kinda redundant, and replaces Lore in almost everything.

Then again, one could argue that the secret identities never (or very rarely) impinge on what the heroes do (just when did Superman save the world by his journalism?), so they shouldn't actually have cover scores at all. Or at most the identity should come up as a descriptor of some kind...

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Food for thought:

1) Peter Parker's "cover" is Spider-Man

2) Superman's "cover" is Clark Kent

... if you want to bring this kind of weird metaphysical concept of Cover into things at all. For a more straightforward approach (which I think will make more sense to players, as opposed to Sorcerer-twinks like you, Judd), just have Cover be normal stuff, as it is in basic Sorcerer:

1) Peter Parker / Spider-Man Cover = photographer + amateur scientist

2) Clark Kent / Superman Cover = reporter

Best,
Ron

[Keith Senkowski]

So I was thinking you could could do a dark supers game where the supers all use weapons of Legend (Excalibur, the Spear, Durandel, etc), and even throw in made up ones like the Witchblade, etc.

If you want to make it more intense, run it as a modern version of Charnel Gods....

Thoughts?

Hey,

Have you ever read Matt Wagner's Mage?  The second series in particular fits this mold a bit.  Each of the characters is the personification of a legendary hero (Arthur, Heracles, Prester John, The Coyote from Navjo Myth I think, the Norns/Fates/Etc.).  That might fit the bill, but less dark.

Keith

[Judd]

Once we had gods and demi-gods and when their time was over we had super-heroes.  Now that their Golden Age has ended, what do we have left?  No Silver Age has been ushered in to replace the justice and the glory, only dark mystery men in darker cities, using what's left of the gods to remind the world that their power still exists for good or ill.

The Nameless Ones spilled towards our world from beyond creation and in that moment the Golden Age was over.  The age was ended but its heroes remained and fought.  Their shimmering capes, bright emblems and iconic symbols are almost all we have left of them since they were slaughtered.

The super-heroes ventured into the land between doors, the place where the teleporters traveled, where speedsters could vibrate into, where crystalline fortresses sat in solitude.  They died in those lands, what was once a place for them to celebrate their victories and bind the worst of their arch-enemies.

Now it is a tomb for gods, a charnel house where the world's finest men and women of a golden age rot and decay.

The Golden Age has ended, it is up to you to decide what age has come to replace it.

[Ron Edwards]

You lost me on the last post, Judd. What the fuck is that? Ages? Venturing?

Superheroes. Gritty. Grim. Stuff like in your first and third post. Why trowel all that piffle on top?

Perhaps there's some particular audience you're writing to who needs this stuff to make sure it's a real game, like [company name deleted]. If so, then great, but if not, then back way up, man. You were right the first time.

Best,
Ron

[Judd]

You lost me on the last post, Judd. What the fuck is that? Ages? Venturing?

I was playing at how I'd use Charnel Gods as a super-hero setting.  Thassall.

[Bailywolf]

I riffed a bit a while back on something like this...

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5278

Though I hedged things a bit, refusing to say "demons are metaphor" or "demons are real" within the setting framework I played with- I wanted both the Batman type, who's demons are internal and psychological (perhaps objectified as Ron suggested in the form of a gravestone or whatnot) and something like Spiderman, who's nature is fundamentally and literally altered by the inhuman within.

In Sorcerer terms, what was going on in Spiderman II?  Was that "demonic rebellion"?  

And tell me Doc Oc wasn't a classic low humanity Sorcerer in serious trouble with his parasite...  

I also like the idea that through convolutions of play and setting, the metaphor demon might become real and manifest.

An example I came up with a while back:

Stalker (AKA Randal Reading)
Origin:  A thin man in his late 20's with premature grey hair and colorless eyes.  In his Cover persona, he is unassertive and quiet- the sort of person described by neighbors as "Quiet... no trouble at all," after he is arrested for some horrible crime.  Randal returned to the city to burry his murdered parents, and stayed to run their small bookstore.  He waited patiently for the criminal to be caught (which he was), tried (which he was), and found guilty (which he was not).  The killer was released on a technicality, and represented by Josephine Jasper- one of the City's best lawyers, working pro bono for the publicity.  When Officer Oakley explained it to the quiet young man, Randal thanked him, and then went quietly crazy.  Something broke loose inside him, and after a bender of pills and booze, he experienced a vision of a hellish black bird chasing him though the city.  A bird of broken glass and rusty metal, with chips of mirror for eyes.  When the bird caught him, he thrashed in a pool of blood and filthy water, and when he saw his reflection in the pool he had become the bird.  Upon waking, he working in a frenzy- scouring alleyways and trash heaps and crafting his first suit and mask.  The mask, a hideous demon-bird, with hooked iron beak and mirror eyes.  The suit, a thing of rusty razor blades, abandoned hypodermic needles, nails, rebar, plastic, and old rubber.  That night, he took to the streets for the first time.  He has trained himself in sneaking and stalking in the urban jungle, but is frightened by what he becomes when he dons the Stalker mask, and tries to put it off as long as possible- only donning the mask when the whispers in his sleep become too loud, and only then hunting the worst criminals he can find.  He knows the Stalker doesn't care, and would be just as happy with innocent prey.
Scores
Stamina 5 (Cut from Teak, Urban Ninja)
Will 3 (Quiet)
Lore 2 (More than Mortal)
Humanity 4
Cover 3 (Randal Reading, rare book shop owner)
Price Awkward (-1 in social situations not based on the Stalker persona)

Stalker
Description:  A primitive mask and suit made from junk and trash, but which imbues Randal with supernatural prowess.  The mask permits him to easily track people through the urban environment, and to move with superhuman speed to catch them.  It hides him from detection, blending with the urban landscape, and the tattered garbage bag wings let him leap and glide with unnatural grace.  Finally, when the prey is captured, the suit's talons of broken glass, fishhooks, broken knives, and bent wire leave the viscous signature wounds which are the calling card of the vigilante known as Stalker.
Type: Object (the Stalker mask)
Power  7
Abilities: Cloak, Special Damage (lethal), Travel & Transport, Perception (tracking), Speed
Need: to hunt, to toy with prey, to kill
Desire: dominance
Tell: Mask seems to turn to follow you, suit seems to breathe even when unworn.
Binding: -1

Kicker:  On a recent hunt, Randal tracked the man who killed his parents back to Josephine Jasper's office and set about exacting some bloody vengeance from him before Josephine walked it.  In the chaos, he struck and gravely injured her, and abandoned his hunt in order to get her to the hospital.  The man escaped, but denied the kill, Stalker refused to help further, and so he hid the mask and suit, and called the ambulance and waited with her.  Josephine was grateful for his help, but also galvanized against the Stalker.  After coffee a few times, and an exchange of favorite books, she wants to get closer to the endearingly awkward bookseller- almost as much as she wants to see Stalker destroyed.  

For added nutty fun, the ugly scared wound in her side the Stalker's attack left might become her own demon- a throbbing reminder which fuels her legal efforts...  sometimes a metaphor is real too.

-B

[Ben Morgan]

As I was reading this, I was immediately reminded of a small vignette in the very first issue of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, that connects the comic to the original Sandman comic: "Wesley Dodds doesn't have nightmares anymore. Not since he started going out at night and putting criminals to sleep." Demons as motivation: "Do this and I won't torture you." I'm not much of a fan of the super-hero stuff, but this is niiiiice.

-- Ben