[With Great Power...] Ragnarok meets teenage angst!

[Anna Kreider]

So we just finished up our first issue of With Great Power last week, and wow. I mean... wow. Fantastic.  We had The Valkyrie, my character, who was chosen by the Norse gods to prevent the Ragnarok. She and her boyfriend Harry were killed and took a wrong turn into the Norse afterlife. While there, she was chosen by the gods, and Harry was given a second chance to earn a place in Valhalla by helping out the Valkyrie. (Admittedly, I got the idea from an old superhero cartoon; Birdman or Hawkman or whoever got his power from the sun god Ra – and I always thought that was fantastic.) And that origin totally colored the setting of the game.

Scene: The Valkyrie goes to Valhalla to seek the guidance of the Norse gods, who are slumbering but not completely asleep.

Scene: The Valkyrie seeks out the Norns hoping to see a vision of Soul Eater's death (the villain). The Norns task her with filling the eleven rivers with water from their well, and only when Valkyrie's great strength has been taxed to its limit does she see a vision of what she seeks in the well of the gods.

Scene: Soul Eater sits in the Hall of Judgement – a long hall with Egyptian style pillars and scenes from the Book of the Dead and other hieroglyphs on the walls of her huge hall. Beside her throne is the scale that is used to weigh the hearts of the dead.

On the other hand, Nightstalker, the other protagonist character, was the opposite of Valkyrie in every possible way. He was the sidekick of the Black Mask – a very Batman-esque kind of superhero. All of his power came from physical and mental training and high-tech gadgets, not from any mystical source like the Valkyrie. And all of his struggles were the sort of struggles that plague any teenager.

Scene: Jimmy's (Nightstalker) gymnastics coach tries to convince him that his attachment to his uncle (the Black Mask) is unhealthy and that he needs to consider his gymnastics career when picking a university. When Nightstalker remains determined to stay with his uncle, his coach calls Children's Services.

Scene: Children's Services show up at the residence of the Black Mask to speak with him – only the Black Mask isn't at home. They poke around and find Black Mask and Nightstalker's weapon stash and drag Jimmy off into foster care.

Scene: Nightstalker is deserted by the Black Mask and wonders if they can ever be partners again.

It made for fantastic contrast. Valkyrie's struggles were titanic battles with mythic forces – prototypical superhero stuff. Nightstalker's struggles were struggles with the real world. Ultimately, he was a sidekick, a supporting character. But the system totally supported making him a protagonist and having his struggles be just as gripping as the Valkyrie's battles with Egyptian gods.

And that is due directly to the Aspects. There's no ranking of Aspects; heroes' Power Aspects aren't any more important than, for example, their Relationship Aspects.  It all depends on how often it comes up in play and how much that Aspect Suffers.   Mechanically, Nightstalker was able to do just as much "stuff" as The Valkyrie, even though he was focussing on his gymnastics, his teachers, and his relationship with the Black Mask.

Lastly, I find myself loving the constant struggle between opposing ideals (we chose Independence versus Belonging). Because our game had such wildly disparate elements (battles with gods and teenage angst), having an overarching theme of these two ideals helped to keep the scenes feeling as if they belonged together.

In the end, Jimmy/Nightstalker wound up choosing independence over belonging. His Aspect of the Black Mask was Devastated and given over to the GM, and then Transformed into The Argonaut – an avatar of the Greek Gods. And I'm so excited about playing another issue because I can't wait to see Jimmy take ownership of his job as a superhero and become his own person.

The Valkyrie wound up choosing belonging over independence – or rather she consistently chose independence and consistently was wrong in making that choice. And ye gods, the loose ends! Her boyfriend Harry was Devastated but not Transformed or Redeemed – which is really gnawing at me. Did Harry earn his chance to move on to Valhalla? Was he transformed, given a new life by the gods as Valkyrie's partner? Did he become the chosen of some other pantheon? Who knows?

It was nice symmetry that the two characters started at opposite extremes and ended at opposite extremes.

Though the heroes triumphed over the machinations of the villain, it was obvious just how painful the consequences of fighting for that victory were.  Nightstalker lost his partner and mentor, and The Valkyrie nearly lost her boyfriend.

So, yes. Cool stuff. Very, very cool stuff.


~Anna