When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

[zornwil]

What happened?

 

Mine (the group I GM, the superteam being the Justice Squad) does rule the world, prmiarily one of the team (Laughton) being the one driving and caring about doing so, another on the team who could possibly object the most strongly (Nexus, the one of two brainiacs along with Laughton, each 250+ INT level in HERO terms) being generally okay with that as the least of all evils and so long as Laughton allows for the appearance of free will.

 

Laughton has basically infiltrated all the world's conspiracies towards power and all the world's governments. After the group dispensed with Dr. Doom/President Domovitch of Russia (triggered by Doom's own attack on them), their only other contendor for Earth domination willingly stepped back to focus on going "around" the Justice Squad and work around the galaxy more. So, given this, given the threats of both humans and paranormals on Earth who aspire to power, and given galaxy-wide threats on Earth, the Justice Squad has taken an active role in running the Earth.

 

It's primarily a benevolent dictatorship. The super-genius of Laughton basically allows him to know what the 6 billion people on the planet are doing, and he manipulates activities from behind the scenes to assure a prosperous and peaceful planet. Even on an individual level he strives towards control. He uses what has become a legendary process of leaving 3x5 cards with instructions for people with correct advice on what to do next to avert a disaster or become fortunate. Nobody knows who is behind these cards, but the public has found quickly that following the cards leads to success, not following them leads to failure. Laughton watches out for imitators and stops them. Increasingly, the world's governments are converging on regional blocs of unity along the lines of the EU, but not really following that model so much as the new South American Union which Laughton started his national level of power bases from, and the South American Union has had unprecedented success. In many ways, and certainly in terms of governmental actions, free will and democracy are illusions.

 

A brief backstory here re the next part...the Earth's inhabitants are well aware of life beyond this planet, and aware of multi-dimensional life even. Earth was rudely awakened first by a trivial skirmish, which I won't go into, which was really a lead-in into an "attack" (attempt at consumption) by a sort of combo of Cthulhu and Galactus known as Eternity. Eternity for a number of reasons focused his attack on Earth, which in turn and also as influenced by Eternity's defeat has caused great interest in Earth by extra-terrestrial powers.

 

Increasing encroachment on the Earth led the Justice Squad to decide to relocate the planet and leave a misdirection (which upon close inspection is actually an extremely realistic 1:1 scale CARDBOARD version of Earth...) in its place. Rather than attempt to hide it, they broadcast their intent. Through a relentless and superpowered public relations program they convinced a consensus of humanity to accept this, though there was also physical conflict which has led to a permanent revolutionary force that continues to work against the Justice Squad's dictatorship. Some very small number "know" but cannot prove that the Justice Squad is manipulating the world's governments and people and continue to try to prove this. An even smaller number, less than a dozen, know that Laughton is specifically behind it but cannot prove it. The small ragtag and disparate resistance continues its quixotic struggle.

 

Curious what others' experiences have been if their supergroups or individuals have reached this sort of Authority level of power, even if left unexercised as such.

[Split Decision]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

The closest thing I have played in, is the idea of a small and relatively underpowered superteam fighting against such a totalitarian super-ocracy. It was a theme of the campaign world that Ordeal (then known as Nighthawk) ran in that we'd sometimes have to go somewhere to liberate an oppressed people from a dictator, whether despotic or merely illiberal.

 

I think that if I was a player in the type of campaign you describe, I'd get bored after two or three adventures as a secular god of the world. I'm more interested in the Daredevil than I am the Thor. And in terms of power and (a value-neutral kind of) arrogance, these characters put Thor to shame.

 

Sounds to me like they've become the ultimate supervillains. It could not have been thus however without the avenues made available for them to enact their scheme, placed by the GM. If you are happy playing this game though, go for it! Supervillains are, as a rule, cooler.

[zornwil]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

The closest thing I have played in, is the idea of a small and relatively underpowered superteam fighting against such a totalitarian super-ocracy. It was a theme of the campaign world that Ordeal (then known as Nighthawk) ran in that we'd sometimes have to go somewhere to liberate an oppressed people from a dictator, whether despotic or merely illiberal.

 

I think that if I was a player in the type of campaign you describe, I'd get bored after two or three adventures as a secular god of the world. I'm more interested in the Daredevil than I am the Thor. And in terms of power and (a value-neutral kind of) arrogance, these characters put Thor to shame.

 

Sounds to me like they've become the ultimate supervillains. It could not have been thus however without the avenues made available for them to enact their scheme, placed by the GM. If you are happy playing this game though, go for it! Supervillains are, as a rule, cooler.

The focus of the game has shifted off-planet, it's not about ruling the world per se, that was mainly the last of the on-world stuff that matters.

 

I don't see them as supervillains though neither I nor the players agree with them politiically (PS - for this real world - for a world filled with super badguys and so on, opinions may be more mixed in the group). But we know why they do what they do and we don't dislike those characters for it.

[zornwil]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

PS - while it could not have been thus without the GM/play group allowing for it, as a GM I am not about to EVER stop the players from wherever they want their characters to go. And I think it's an interesting exercise in seeing PCs have godlike powers, what do they do? Of course, if the players wanted to go in some direction I hated, I'd stop playing, but I wouldn't try to point them in any one way or another.

[Split Decision]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

good answers, good answers. Now that they are superplanetary beings, are they again challenged by their opposition in a more traditional way?

[zornwil]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

good answers' date=' good answers. Now that they are superplanetary beings, are they again challenged by their opposition in a more traditional way?[/quote']

Yes, in terms of bad guys, good guys sorts of stuff. Actually, now they have threats that they are again afraid to take head-on. The one dimension to be honest that I haven't nailed down is the inter-personal sorts of challenges, but I'm getting to an approach to that by revisiting NPCs and coming up with new ones at the right "level" and with the right new set of concerns that I hope will be of interest.

[bubba smith]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

What happened?

 

Mine (the group I GM, the superteam being the Justice Squad) does rule the world, prmiarily one of the team (Laughton) being the one driving and caring about doing so, another on the team who could possibly object the most strongly (Nexus, the one of two brainiacs along with Laughton, each 250+ INT level in HERO terms) being generally okay with that as the least of all evils and so long as Laughton allows for the appearance of free will.

 

Laughton has basically infiltrated all the world's conspiracies towards power and all the world's governments. After the group dispensed with Dr. Doom/President Domovitch of Russia (triggered by Doom's own attack on them), their only other contendor for Earth domination willingly stepped back to focus on going "around" the Justice Squad and work around the galaxy more. So, given this, given the threats of both humans and paranormals on Earth who aspire to power, and given galaxy-wide threats on Earth, the Justice Squad has taken an active role in running the Earth.

 

It's primarily a benevolent dictatorship. The super-genius of Laughton basically allows him to know what the 6 billion people on the planet are doing, and he manipulates activities from behind the scenes to assure a prosperous and peaceful planet. Even on an individual level he strives towards control. He uses what has become a legendary process of leaving 3x5 cards with instructions for people with correct advice on what to do next to avert a disaster or become fortunate. Nobody knows who is behind these cards, but the public has found quickly that following the cards leads to success, not following them leads to failure. Laughton watches out for imitators and stops them. Increasingly, the world's governments are converging on regional blocs of unity along the lines of the EU, but not really following that model so much as the new South American Union which Laughton started his national level of power bases from, and the South American Union has had unprecedented success. In many ways, and certainly in terms of governmental actions, free will and democracy are illusions.

 

A brief backstory here re the next part...the Earth's inhabitants are well aware of life beyond this planet, and aware of multi-dimensional life even. Earth was rudely awakened first by a trivial skirmish, which I won't go into, which was really a lead-in into an "attack" (attempt at consumption) by a sort of combo of Cthulhu and Galactus known as Eternity. Eternity for a number of reasons focused his attack on Earth, which in turn and also as influenced by Eternity's defeat has caused great interest in Earth by extra-terrestrial powers.

 

Increasing encroachment on the Earth led the Justice Squad to decide to relocate the planet and leave a misdirection (which upon close inspection is actually an extremely realistic 1:1 scale CARDBOARD version of Earth...) in its place. Rather than attempt to hide it, they broadcast their intent. Through a relentless and superpowered public relations program they convinced a consensus of humanity to accept this, though there was also physical conflict which has led to a permanent revolutionary force that continues to work against the Justice Squad's dictatorship. Some very small number "know" but cannot prove that the Justice Squad is manipulating the world's governments and people and continue to try to prove this. An even smaller number, less than a dozen, know that Laughton is specifically behind it but cannot prove it. The small ragtag and disparate resistance continues its quixotic struggle.

 

Curious what others' experiences have been if their supergroups or individuals have reached this sort of Authority level of power, even if left unexercised as such.

reminds me of marvels squadron supreme mini series

[Lord Liaden]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

I guess my game group must be more traditional. Over one campaign their PCs probably did become powerful enough to rule the world, but it never occurred to them AFAIK. They just kept facing more powerful threats (in-between role-playing downtime) until the campaign came to a mutually-agreed-upon end.

[Vulcan]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

One of our characters became President of the United States in the current game... is that close enough?

[CoreBrute]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

Depends...how did the other characters handle it?

 

Excellent stories by the way.

[Split Decision]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

Seems like it's too time- and money-consuming for anyone to dabble in the Presidency. How much in-game effort did you spend on that subplot?

 

It would be a blast for a politics junkie like me but I imagine I'm in a distinct minority

[Vulcan]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

Seems like it's too time- and money-consuming for anyone to dabble in the Presidency. How much in-game effort did you spend on that subplot?

 

It would be a blast for a politics junkie like me but I imagine I'm in a distinct minority

 

That particular player lined that up, mostly in 'between adventures' RP. The rest of us...well, didn't know that the guy running for President was the same guy in the Sovereign power armor (in character, anyway!).

[Split Decision]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

I think that's a good way to handle it. But now that he's the President, how does he have time to get out and fight crime?

[Vulcan]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

I think that's a good way to handle it. But now that he's the President' date=' how does he have time to get out and fight crime?[/quote']

 

For a while the player played a different character. Then he decided he wanted to play the old character, so he set up a 'Fielding-bot' to run the country while he played superhero...

 

That backfired big-time though. Malachite came along, and displaced the Fielding-bot...

 

So we all got stuck in this whole 'The Watch has turned agaisnt America so they need to be arrested immediatly!' Plot...

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

They actually pulled back from doing more active superheroing on earth... they still hit big stuff (Warlord, Istavha Vahn, Eurostar, Mechanon), but many of the things they did were in space.

 

They basically turned into the JLA.

 

I had one character who decided to try and take over the world (sorta turn villian, become a dictator in a banana republic for a while to build a power base and take everything over with huge high tech and a supers friendly set of laws).

 

I shut the game down because of it. That just wasn't something I want to GM. Now part of the reason the character decided to do that was based on some stuff I did as a GM that was basically not very good - I rolled some 17s and 18s on GM roll. So the fault was as much mine as anything.

 

I wanted the team to be the JLA, not the Authority, and made that clear up front.

[zornwil]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

They actually pulled back from doing more active superheroing on earth... they still hit big stuff (Warlord, Istavha Vahn, Eurostar, Mechanon), but many of the things they did were in space.

 

They basically turned into the JLA.

 

I had one character who decided to try and take over the world (sorta turn villian, become a dictator in a banana republic for a while to build a power base and take everything over with huge high tech and a supers friendly set of laws).

 

I shut the game down because of it. That just wasn't something I want to GM. Now part of the reason the character decided to do that was based on some stuff I did as a GM that was basically not very good - I rolled some 17s and 18s on GM roll. So the fault was as much mine as anything.

 

I wanted the team to be the JLA, not the Authority, and made that clear up front.

I'm surprised if going supervillain that he didn't or the group didn't sort of force that to NPCism.

 

Or was the player looking for an angst-and-redemption arc?

 

Or just not really focused beyond the next moment?

[psychonaut_raz]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

We stopped playing.

 

lol

 

I was running a game set in the Marvel Universe where most of the characters had reached Authority levels of power, and the players were half-joking about taking over the Shi'Ar Empire because they were sick of aliens causing trouble on Earth....I moved interstate around the same time though, so the game ended.

 

When I moved back too much time had passed for us to pick up where we left off, so deus ex machina allowed for all the heroes to have been kidnapped a la the original Secret Wars to explain why nothing had happened in so long. The players all took on new (much lower-powered) characters with the new direction of discovering what had happened to their predecessors, and when the predecessors were eventually rescued, they mostly took on a backseat role as NPCs to help train a new generation of heroes.

 

I like playing with big concepts, but I don't know if I'm really prepared for that much of a shake-up of the status quo to let them actually take over the world/galaxy...

[Balabanto]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

The players have considered taking over the world two or three times. But usually simple things, like their family, or one of their fellow heroes saying "Are you crazy? We're not accountants! We don't know how to do this stuff!" prevent any serious attempt from being made.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

I'm surprised if going supervillain that he didn't or the group didn't sort of force that to NPCism.

 

Or was the player looking for an angst-and-redemption arc?

 

Or just not really focused beyond the next moment?

 

 

Part of it was i went a little to iron age in the major opening sequence, and the characters was extremely good guy and a little too judgmental (think the bad paladin stories that you have heard). His background really fit the approach he was going to take (he was taking over for everyone's best interests).

 

So it was me misreading the character, and because I knew a good chunk of what happened was because I screwed up, I just dropped it. I hadn't GMed in a while and was feeling a little insecure.

[zornwil]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

The players have considered taking over the world two or three times. But usually simple things' date=' like their family, or one of their fellow heroes saying "Are you crazy? We're not accountants! We don't know how to do this stuff!" prevent any serious attempt from being made.[/quote']

Heh, it's a lot harder to phrase challenges on the accounting or other knowledge areas to 2 200+ INT characters!

[zornwil]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

Part of it was i went a little to iron age in the major opening sequence, and the characters was extremely good guy and a little too judgmental (think the bad paladin stories that you have heard). His background really fit the approach he was going to take (he was taking over for everyone's best interests).

 

So it was me misreading the character, and because I knew a good chunk of what happened was because I screwed up, I just dropped it. I hadn't GMed in a while and was feeling a little insecure.

Yeah, I hate giving the wrong signals and/or not reading the signals correctly. I accidentally did that to Lamrok in a game, improperly communicating the tone I was looking for and compounding that by somewhat misunderstanding his character. Although fortunately it wasn't intended as long-running but rather as a lmiited run thing to both test M&M and run a different sort of supers game than we had been running.

[Metaphysician]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

I think in the Vanguard campaign I ran, the PCs started strong enough to take over the world. . .

[Peregrine]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

I think in the Vanguard campaign I ran' date=' the PCs started strong enough to take over the world. . .[/quote']

 

And grew from there, if my lurker's memory serves...

[Chromatic]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

The focus of the game has shifted off-planet, it's not about ruling the world per se, that was mainly the last of the on-world stuff that matters.

 

I don't see them as supervillains though neither I nor the players agree with them politically (PS - for this real world - for a world filled with super badguys and so on, opinions may be more mixed in the group). But we know why they do what they do and we don't dislike those characters for it.

 

Speaking here as the player of Hamlet Laughton, I put in a great amount of thought about how the PC would work to set up this benevolent dictatorship. There are some interesting bits of character background that Zornwil didn't bring up this time (he or some of us in the past have though when discussing the Justice Squad):

 

1) In addition to being omniscient, the character also has super anonymity. (game mechanics: invisibility w/ invisible power effects) This certainly allowed for greater flexibility in becoming the enigma behind the root of all conspiracies (which he was somewhat of an expert on being a paranoid conspiracy theorist).

 

2) The PC is not human, but maintains his own humanity as a base form, and has over the course of the campaign's eight years never looked into his own background--scratch that, has actively made decisions to avoid getting involved with anything around his background or the alien race which he is actually a member (including never looking into the rumors of a brother on Earth). The race by the way is suspiciously evil, highly suspect, capricious to the point of willful deviousness, and widely feared throughout the galaxy as destructive manipulators. The PC's belief in free will and freedom of choice rightfully extends to his own self persecution and that he should not be judged by the reputation of a race of beings but by his own actions.

 

3) there have been multiple sessions were indentured or enslaved groups were freed or fought to be defended by the PC's, and even though there is a clear delineation in the beliefs of the PC's (Laughton sees the world in shades of gray, uses plausible deniability as a tag line, and has no qualms about manipulating others for the greater good. While Nexus (the other uber-brain) is definitely a four-color hero, performing good for good's own sake) the team has always been consistent and shown great umbrage at any kind of reduction of rights. This lent towards the PC's actions to build a power base where the citizens could experience a world better than they alone could create, and a sense of foster-ship of the Earth. After all, when you have the intellect of Laughton, even the smartest human is but an insect. His ant farm just happens to have 6 billion+ sentient beings living on it.

 

4) The PC has extensive resources for monitoring and surveillance (think Eagle Eye) combined with financial influence on a multi-national scale (willing puppets acting as rulers/leaders in dozens of nations) before the attempt to take over.

 

All in all, it was a concerted effort of at least a game year or more (and two or three years in the making in campaign time) planning and setting up the possibility to allow for Laughton to become the defacto ruler of Earth.

 

While I don't approve of the actions of the PC (!yes I play him!), there was never any doubt that the actions and incidents that lead up to this result were all manipulations for the greater good.

 

It also tied up the Earth in a nice neat package that can be viewed from the perspective that we just twisted the zoom function back an order of magnitude (or two) to have the campaign deal with bigger problems.

[zornwil]

Re: When your superhero group became powerful enough to rule the world?

 

Thanks, Chromatic, glad you added. I should have pointed out as well that there was, in the end phase, a deliberate "how do we end worrying about Earth" metagaming so that did prompt some of this at least in timing, though as Chromatic mentions it all seems a natural progression in particular for Laughton and his desires.