I was pleased to come to this forum today and find that an idea that had been banging around in my head had already been discussed ("A Paladin on the Hellmouth" thread, and the idea of the Fellowship as an Order for a LOTR Paladin game), the idea of an "abstracted" Paladin order, where each member has his or her own animus-granted powers, but they still manifest as a team or organization of sorts (the Fellowship, the Scoobies).

Wanted to blather on this a little more.

I think this is powerful juju for applying to the adaptation of existing genres. An "abstracted" adaptation of Star Wars gets you the idea that The Rebels are the Order, rather than Jedi Knights, and lets you have Han Solo as a Paladin just as much (and gives some delightful irony to his decrying the Force as horse pucky, with his player turning around and then using Animus to outrun some TIE fighters).

In a case of parallel evolution, the Scoobies as the Order thought had occurred to me before I sat down with this forum, too. I love that.

The same perspective enables the use of Paladin to create a superheroes game, while still capitalizing on truth, justice, etcetera as the core ideals of any hero (and, I love it, the source of their power). Anyone else ever heard of that most famous of orders, the Justice League of America?

Yeah.

Anyway, I dig it.