[CURRENTLY FULL] Return Of The Old Guard (Superheroes, Mutants&Masterminds 3E)

Started by TheGlyphstone, March 12, 2015, 12:04:59 AM

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Kolbrandr

I feel like my concepts as I noodle them out are a bit grandiose to go with the vibe you have in mind here as far as the situations of retired heroes, which I don't want to force you out of, going to withdraw. Which, ha, when I started the M&M wave there (though it went well beyond me obviously) I kinda feel crappy about, but I also think thematic campaign integrity is important, and I keep straining at its edges when I plot each thing out.


Angie

Since I'm playing the "Kid" of the group, I imagine my Psychic girl actually only recently learned that she even has powers-being Psychic, her powers probably caused colossal headaches so she's been on migraine medication up until the alien invasion, and it wasn't that the meds stopped working, it was that she stopped taking them because with the whole invasion thing and emergency services tied up it was impossible to get them. Then she realized, as the headaches returned, it was Psychic power desperately trying to get out.
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TFcommando

It looks like there's still space and I love M&M 3e, so how about this...

A sexy sorceress prodigy, bit of a femme fatale with revealing costume, playful banter, sometimes scandalous... back then.  She helped the genius inventors work out some sort of dimensional barrier to keep demons and elder gods away from Earth for good, and helped herself right out of her main duty as a sorceress. 

Since then, she's spent her time writing books and teaching classes on the magical lifestyle, the philosophical aspects (and maybe the tantric sex magic parts of it)... she doesn't have a real apprentice, since you can buy a phone with superpower apps at the Targ-Mart instead of studying for years.  She's also let herself go a little from her prime and is now more MILF-y than supermodel in appearance.  Still acts racy and suggestive though.

Power-wise, a variety of magical blasts, teleportation, anti-magic powers (Deflection and Nullify), move object.
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TFcommando

A question on technology... was super-inventor tech everywhere, and now nothing works (save for hobbyists who like the old cars and guns?) or are there still some things working, like keeping the lights on and the cars running?  Because if it really is a dark ages level, a lot of humanity could die off very quickly (See SM Stirling's Dies the Fire for an exploration of a sudden return to medieval tech levels) and the world would be beyond saving. 

My hero might be even older than she looks, thanks to magical gene, to be closer to the 30 year retirement timeline.  "Are you still acting like that after all this time?"  "Darling, I've perfected it!"

It also strikes me that training some apprentices would be one way to help fight back against the aliens.  Finding those with talent would naturally be a challenge (and they'd probably be in dangerous, inhospitable places, in need of rescue!).
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TheGlyphstone

So the way I'm picturing it, the inhibitor fields aren't blanketing 100% of the Earth from the start. They're projected, emanating from some unknown sources (potentially a mystery/plot to pursue at some point) that the aliens deploy to protect their forces and cripple opposition. So anyone inside the fields is reduced to muscle-powered transport and black-powder weaponry - effectively a handful of antiques or museum pieces, since super-tech has been around so long; but outside the areas covered by the fields, civilization can persist on the local level as long as it doesn't appear to be offering anything that looks like resistance to the alien harvesters. There are lots of problem areas with the lack of long-distance transportation and a heck of a lot of people are dead (mostly in the large cities), but there's still hope. The Emberverse is awesome, but I want to tell an alien-invasion story, not a post-apocalyptic one.

Elven Sex Goddess

Just to flesh out my understanding of the backdrop.  A alien invasion comes, harvesters of earth's resources.  Most of the large cities destroyed.  A EMT type device that is not world wide, yet is used effectively against the mounted defense forces of earth, nullifying the tech equipment with surgical strikes.  That small towns,  that do not resist have no military associate with it.  Are left to their own devices.  Now the questions I have.  Is there a like aspect of 'V'.  Will there be alien sympathizers, that assist the aliens.  If technology is been in most cases rendered inoperative.  Does that mean no internet, no broadcast of television and like cell phones.  Are there exceptions to the technology.  Like in the Pacific Rim.  Where the digital Jaegers are knocked inoperative.  However the analog nuclear are not effected.   Sorry for the questions, just wanted to get an idea of your vision scope of what you conceive with the world setting.   

TheGlyphstone

TBH, I'm making a lot of this up as I go along, so keep the questions coming! The more you ask, the more I have to answer, and the more fleshed-out the world gets.

Early stages: More or less, yes. The largest cities have been destroyed and/or colonized; I'm imagining the 'first strike' was a series of kinetic impact attacks on large cities, from projectiles that then 'hatched' into attacking swarms. The nullifier effect is very EMP-like, but it's more of a persistent radius effect than a pulse - anything electrical or electronic in the field just shuts off and can't function.

Alien collaborators/sympathizers- there were quite a few of them early on in the invasion, but they disappeared pretty rapidly. The aliens don't communicate with people, but it's obvious they consider humans to be just another resource to be harvested, so the problem of people trying to assist the aliens solved itself. Captives mostly disappear into the hive complexes (yeah, I'm being lazy and going with a Bug Swarm theme), but some of them do reappear as 'thralls', humans with opaque bubble-like helmets on their heads and obviously completely under the control of the invaders - they get used as cannon fodder, living shields, and disposable scouts by alien forces.

Communications: Long-distance communication is extremely spotty. Prior to the invasion, Earth had a ton of satellites in orbit, and probably some outright orbital colonies, but they're all gone now. With the loss of the satellite networks, most communication is limited to line-of-sight or hardline setups; you might still have a portable phone, but without any relay points, it's limited in use. The internet (or whatever replaced it) is all but obliterated, since the servers and data centers were located in the cities. Television works if you can find one and are in range of a local broadcasting station - the big studios, again, were in the cities, but there's still surviving local stations in operation.

Exceptions: The field only suppresses electrical/electronic devices. This description applied to well over 90% of Earth's technology by this point, I'm thinking cheap, portable cold fusion or something similarly sci-fi, but chemical reactions and biological phenomena aren't suppressed. So an internal combustion engine or a laser rifle would be disabled, but a gunpowder weapon or a steam engine (if you could find someone who knew how to make it) still works. So your gadgeteer concept's devices would have been exempt, since they were fueled by bio-electricity; if you decide you want to pursue the android/gynoid idea instead, we can work something out.


TFcommando

Yes, since my concept is playful/flirty/outrageous/exhibitionistic, I want to make sure her feel isn't at odds with the setting.

Have you ever read Strikeforce: Moritori?  It had an alien invasion by aliens who travelled from planet to planet to loot... they were tough fighters and used the technology they stole (that they could understand) to great advantage.  They stayed in orbit over Earth and descended to raid wherever they felt like... they had total control over the skies, so it was all in-city fighting. Life continued as somewhat normal, with a heightened state of readiness and defense.  Since they wanted to pillage instead of destroy, they weren't bombarding the planet from orbit.  The Earth developed a way to make people superhuman, at the cost of all but a year of their life at most.  Great book.

The aliens might not need to black out all the world... if they could demonstrate it and keep it on in a few places, and that they can do it to anywhere else who resists at any time, most people would go along if they keep the lights on.  Speaking of "V,"  the TV series had LA as a free city like Casablanca, where there was no military activity from either side, and both could mingle and communicate (and spy, of course).  A place like that could be interesting. 

Though there's been a reply since I started this too.  With a lot of communication down, the heroes might be the ones linking civilization together, delivering mail and the hope that goes with it, coordinating resistance and so on as well.

Regarding invulnerability, Impervious is a bit tricky to use, but another option is Immunity.  Immunity to Bullets costs a mere 5 points and is absolute.  In this case, you'd want to go with Immunity to Energy Weapons, since that'd be the most common weapon the bad guys would be using. 

I'm thinking of Catteyla from Queen's Blade as her body model.  (NSFW)  https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/71956915/CatteylaB.png
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Angie

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TheGlyphstone

-A sexy/exhibitionist character is fine, as long as you're not going in looking for fun sexytimes with aliens. Human-alien direct interactions will have a distinct horror-esque flavor to it.

-Never read it, but it sounds interesting, and I can see some parallels. Here, the invaders are methodically, if somewhat slowly, strip-mining the Earth of everything it could possibly have of value, so they do need a consistent land-based presence. Surviving human resistance cells generally hide in valleys, caves, old mines, and other places where they're safe from orbital drops or kinetic strikes.

-The aliens definitely don't black out the whole world, the communications breakdown is primarily a side effect of the destruction of infrastructure during the fighting. Anything that threatens them or gets in the way of their harvesting gets squashed, but otherwise they pretty much ignore humans they're not in the process of collecting. The idea of the heroes working to set up communications and coordinate a larger resistance effort is an awesome one - I can see that as a big milestone along the road to victory.

The alien weaponry will mostly be bio-based, actually, to go with their bug-swarm theme. Crushing claws, Piercing spines, acid sprays, etc. And yeah, M&M is pretty easy to smash into a bazillion pieces, so all I plan to do on that front is 'please don't'. :D Something like Immunity to Acid could be justified if it fit the character; Immunity to Biological will get a 'NO' and a scowly face.

Angie

I'm going to just presume that my psychic powers are able to affect the aliens, or you probably would have said something before now!
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TheGlyphstone

Absolutely. There might even be times when having a psychic will be extra beneficial in that regards...

eternaldarkness

I'm going to bow out of this one. The setting is putting a serious cramp in my style though it sounded cool at first.

TheGlyphstone

Quote from: eternaldarkness on March 15, 2015, 02:28:43 PM
I'm going to bow out of this one. The setting is putting a serious cramp in my style though it sounded cool at first.

Unfortunate, but okay. Pity I don't know what your style is/was, accomodation might have been possible.

So, our current roster so far looks like:
TFCommando - sorceress/magician
Angiejuusan - youthful psychic
-ElvenSexGoddess - Unknown, gadgeteer or gynoid?

Muse - expressed interest?
-Batman4560 - expressed interest, speedster?


That's 3 definite and 2 possibles. I'll keep on schedule by starting up an OOC/character creation thread tomorrow, but recruiting will stay open until I have 4-5 concepts that I like.

TFcommando

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on March 15, 2015, 01:25:09 PM
-A sexy/exhibitionist character is fine, as long as you're not going in looking for fun sexytimes with aliens. Human-alien direct interactions will have a distinct horror-esque flavor to it.

-Never read it, but it sounds interesting, and I can see some parallels. Here, the invaders are methodically, if somewhat slowly, strip-mining the Earth of everything it could possibly have of value, so they do need a consistent land-based presence. Surviving human resistance cells generally hide in valleys, caves, old mines, and other places where they're safe from orbital drops or kinetic strikes.

-The aliens definitely don't black out the whole world, the communications breakdown is primarily a side effect of the destruction of infrastructure during the fighting. Anything that threatens them or gets in the way of their harvesting gets squashed, but otherwise they pretty much ignore humans they're not in the process of collecting. The idea of the heroes working to set up communications and coordinate a larger resistance effort is an awesome one - I can see that as a big milestone along the road to victory.

The alien weaponry will mostly be bio-based, actually, to go with their bug-swarm theme. Crushing claws, Piercing spines, acid sprays, etc. And yeah, M&M is pretty easy to smash into a bazillion pieces, so all I plan to do on that front is 'please don't'. :D Something like Immunity to Acid could be justified if it fit the character; Immunity to Biological will get a 'NO' and a scowly face.

Are the aliens baffling and completely inhuman, like the Mi-Go?  Some of the references made me think of them, the mining, the bug-theme, the body-horror and such.  The ship too, ala Cthulhutech.

Other options were "Less advanced people with some superior technology..."  the sorts who are barbarous and greedy, invading for fun as well as profit, because they can, and the "more advanced people," who simply don't care about "lesser" beings, like the Earthlings who were here first.
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Angie

Quote from: TFcommando on March 15, 2015, 05:35:49 PM
Are the aliens baffling and completely inhuman, like the Mi-Go?  Some of the references made me think of them, the mining, the bug-theme, the body-horror and such.  The ship too, ala Cthulhutech.

Other options were "Less advanced people with some superior technology..."  the sorts who are barbarous and greedy, invading for fun as well as profit, because they can, and the "more advanced people," who simply don't care about "lesser" beings, like the Earthlings who were here first.

As long as they're not Cryssalids, dear god, please no.
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Angie

Oh hey, Glyph, any idea where in the world will we be starting? Will we be swiping an established universe, using our own world, or something new?
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TheGlyphstone

Quote from: TFcommando on March 15, 2015, 05:35:49 PM
Are the aliens baffling and completely inhuman, like the Mi-Go?  Some of the references made me think of them, the mining, the bug-theme, the body-horror and such.  The ship too, ala Cthulhutech.

Other options were "Less advanced people with some superior technology..."  the sorts who are barbarous and greedy, invading for fun as well as profit, because they can, and the "more advanced people," who simply don't care about "lesser" beings, like the Earthlings who were here first.

Enigmatic and inhuman at first for certain, at least in-chararacter.  Much less Cthulhu/Mi-Go and more the bad guys from Independence Day, though. I've got some cards related to this  that I am holding close to my chest right now, because the info could relate to one of the many possible victory conditions, but I can spill zee beans OOC on request.

Quote from: Angiejuusan on March 15, 2015, 05:38:11 PM
As long as they're not Cryssalids, dear god, please no.

Oh, I plan on finding inspiration stealing liberally from all sorts of other media. Alien, Zerg, Tyranids, X-COM, Cthulhu...Chryssalid Zombies are quite tame compared to the process that creates a Thrall, for instance. >:)

Quote from: Angiejuusan on March 15, 2015, 05:56:40 PM
Oh hey, Glyph, any idea where in the world will we be starting? Will we be swiping an established universe, using our own world, or something new?

Well, it's Earth. I was wavering between having the resistance cell/camp the game starts at be in the Appalachian mountains - like, West Virginia-ish, or in the eastern Rocky Mountains, but I'm open to alternative suggestions. US mountainous regions just came to me first for locality.


Angie

I asked because I kinda hit upon the idea of my character being Japanese (I'm building her as we speak, er, type), so I can fit anywhere, I just kinda wanted to know where we are.
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TheGlyphstone

Ah, okay. Sadly, I know very little about Asian geography, so exploring there will have to come later.

Angie

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on March 15, 2015, 07:18:11 PM
Ah, okay. Sadly, I know very little about Asian geography, so exploring there will have to come later.

I was figuring more family of immigrants anyway. The parents know of Etsuko's powers and her (current) status as a costumed hero, and while they don't like the whole 'risking your life' thing, they do like the whole doing good with her gifts thing. And yes, they are a Complication!
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TheGlyphstone

Presumably living in a small town or one of the countryside refugee camps, then? Family-related Complications make me cackle with evil anticipation. :D

Angie

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on March 15, 2015, 07:20:51 PM
Presumably living in a small town or one of the countryside refugee camps, then? Family-related Complications make me cackle with evil anticipation. :D

There's also an uncle who is a former hero-he got permanently retired after getting hit with something that turned his powers off permanently. I'll PM you the background info when I'm done with it.
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