The Hoard Potato: Tapping the Hive Mind
Aug. 23rd, 2008 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
athelindA call for assistance to the DC comics fans out there in the audience: I need your ideas!
As many of you know, I'm currently running a superhero RPG set in an alternate DC universe, where Superman and other characters started their careers at about the times they made their comic book debuts, and time passed normally. Heroes aged, had children, passed on their names, powers, and/or missions, and, in many cases, passed on.
It's the year 2020, and the generation of heroes that were teenagers in the 1990s and at the dawn of the Millennium are now the stalwart core of the Justice League: Starwoman, Static, and the Blue Beetle fight along the grandchildren of Superman and Wonder Woman.
The sole player-character in the campaign is a teenaged girl who's adopted the nom de guerre of Robin, protecting the innocent in a Gotham City that has been without a Batman or any other costumed hero for 15 years.
However, I need interesting NPCs to flesh out the setting. In the interests of Harvesting Good Ideas, I pose this question to the LiveJournal Hive Mind:
If you were going to play in this setting, who would you want to play?
Guidelines:
Have fun with this; think of it as another LJ Meme. I know that a good chunk of the fun we've had has been from banging out the timelines, and laughing about the ways things just fall together -- often more sensibly than they did in the "canon" source material.
As many of you know, I'm currently running a superhero RPG set in an alternate DC universe, where Superman and other characters started their careers at about the times they made their comic book debuts, and time passed normally. Heroes aged, had children, passed on their names, powers, and/or missions, and, in many cases, passed on.
It's the year 2020, and the generation of heroes that were teenagers in the 1990s and at the dawn of the Millennium are now the stalwart core of the Justice League: Starwoman, Static, and the Blue Beetle fight along the grandchildren of Superman and Wonder Woman.
The sole player-character in the campaign is a teenaged girl who's adopted the nom de guerre of Robin, protecting the innocent in a Gotham City that has been without a Batman or any other costumed hero for 15 years.
However, I need interesting NPCs to flesh out the setting. In the interests of Harvesting Good Ideas, I pose this question to the LiveJournal Hive Mind:
If you were going to play in this setting, who would you want to play?
Guidelines:
- If I were actually enlisting players for a tabletop game, I wouldn't have much trouble with someone saying "I want to come up with someone completely original". In this case, though, I'm specifically asking for characters who fit the Legacy theme.
- Characters should be the Up And Coming New Generation, born after the New Millennium. I'm looking for characters who can team up with my 17-year-old Robin without making her "the kid". Think Teen Titans 2020. (Addendum, but thematically important, so it's goin' way up here.)
- DC is the Borg Publisher. Over the decades, it's assimilated characters who originated in several other publishing houses. For the purposes of the Legacy game, "The DC Universe" includes superheroes from National, All-American, Quality, Fawcett, Charlton, Vertigo, Milestone Media and MLJ.
- Some public domain characters, including Sherlock Holmes, have been established as part of the DC Canon, and, of course, Greek, Egyptian and Arthurian myth-cycles have played important roles in the backgrounds of several characters.
- Because they play important roles in the PC's Big Story Arc, I've locked the Batman Family Legacy and the Starman/Star-Spangled Kid Legacy.
- I've got fairly solid ideas for the following Legacies, but if you come up with something Really Good, I'm willing to toss my stuff out the window.
- Superman/Supergirl/Superboy
- Green Arrow/Black Canary
- Wonder Woman/Fury
- Captain Marvel/Shazam!
- Doctor Fate/Tim Hunter (Yes, you read that right.)
- Mr. Terrific
- Superman/Supergirl/Superboy
- If you want to come up with characters based on villain legacies, go for it; Robin 2020's staunchest allies are the grandkids of The Penguin and Man-Bat.
- As a general rule of thumb, Big Events Happened: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Invasion, Zero Hour, and all that. The details may differ, but they happened. If a character has had a Big Event Death, they're Still Dead. This includes Kara Zor-El, Barry Allen, Hal Jordan, and, yes, Superman.
Have fun with this; think of it as another LJ Meme. I know that a good chunk of the fun we've had has been from banging out the timelines, and laughing about the ways things just fall together -- often more sensibly than they did in the "canon" source material.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 03:53 pm (UTC)I don't know if you're aware of it, but The Shadow started not as a character but as a mysterious announcer. He was the host of a series of detective stories on radio, but was so popular that he became a superhero in his own right, by popular demand. In the original version he was just an unseen figure who knew everything, including What Evil Lurks etc etc etc.
Since nobody ever knew who The Shadow was, nobody could notice when he selected replacements for himself. Thus The Shadow is not the original, but still appears to be the original in all respects.
He has an extensive network of spies. If he appears at all, he appears as Fritz, the doddering and incompetent janitor who just happens to be sweeping the floor nearby when the cops, or main characters, are discussing their cases.
But for your world I see him delivering intelligence to your player characters. He is a voice on the phone, a signal on the radio, an envelope on the table delivered by an unseen hand. He knows all, sees all, and tells what suits him. He is everywhere.
In other words, my dear Boojum Snark... The Shadow is YOU. The voice of the Game Master.
Have fun.