Superhumans changing the course of history

[Cancer]

Re: Superhumans changing the course of history

 

The core rulebook for the Wild Talents system includes a discussion of various ways in which a game-world universe can diverge from the real universe. It divides it into five (?) different color-codings. One of those is how mutable the course of history is by individuals with superpowers. Others include "morality" (that's the wrong word, but I can't dredge out the right one now; the old Silver Age is at one extreme, and law-of-the-jungle dystopias are at the other) and power level.

 

I haven't used that system much, but the discussion there is interesting because I hadn't had it framed explicitly before. It made me realize just how strong my old Silver Age roots are.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Superhumans changing the course of history

 

Well, superhumans changing the course of history is one of the few neutral-to-positive tropes of the Iron Age. Silver Age and , to a lesser extent, Bronze Age tend to be "status quo" settings where the world isn't appreciably better or worse for supers being in it. I think you could probably have Silver Age morality (good and evil mostly clearly defined with a handful of exceptions; supervillains don't casually kill and body counts aren't ridiculously high; superhero deaths are quite rare, and DNPC deaths are also uncommon; the government and big business aren't actually conspiring to screw over the general public and rule by secret cabal) coupled with an Iron Age commitment to "realism"(i.e., supers can and do change the world). That's pretty much the way my campaign is set up, actually.

[Cancer]

Re: Superhumans changing the course of history

 

Yeah, I agree that those axes are not orthogonal, but the discussion is worth reading if you can mooch the book for a while. It is lengthy. Their game-world is "a world gone mad", so their core game-world deliberately goes bloody, violent, amoral, and chaotic. They make the explicit acknowledgment that's a choice, though, and make at least general mention of what happens with other choices.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Superhumans changing the course of history

 

If we start from the premise that in the everyday course of being superheroes, their first job is "fighting crime", the first question would then be, "how much of an impact will the existence of superheroes have on regular crime?" The second question would be, "how much of an impact will the existence of supervillains have on regular crime?" Will violent crime rates go down, or up? Will non-violent crime rates be affected?

The next set of questions might have to do with such things as war, terrorism, and super-crime. Will war become less common, if there might be supers involved? Will terrorism become non-viable(unless, perhaps, there's supervillains and/or super-tech behind it)? How commonplace will supercrimes be(any crime where superhumans are the perps, and/or the scale of the crime is unusually grandiose)?

Next, if some super-genius superhumans can develop supertech, how will this affect a) the economy(another tech boom, one that seems to go on and on?), society(super-duper phones, affordable android labor, flying and self-driving cars, cheap energy leading to cheaper everything else), c)the military and law enforcement and crime/terrorism (blasters, powered armor, mecha?), d)entertainment(holovid, simgear(jack in and experience reality through someone else's experiences))

Then you can look at some specific major recent historical events: 9/11 and the War on Terror; the Tech Boom of the 90s; the OJ Simpson case; the LA riots; New Orleans and Katrina; the 2004 Tsunami; Biggie and Tupac; political dissent in China, Iran and Myanmar; the Global Warming debate; the Israeli-Palestinian issue; etc.

How would/could the existence of superhumans affect all of these things?

[Doctor Agenda]

Re: Superhumans changing the course of history

 

I heard my name....

 

In the Alts world, superpowers were common, but mostly weak, with about one-in-ten people having something in the under ten-point range, and about one-in-a-billion on the cosmic end. Space enthusiasts were quick to realize how valuable people with diminished life support requirements, immunity to radiation, 3-D direction sensing, +5 INT, etc.; would be in advancing space exploration. Not to mention the more powerful types who can act as human booster rockets or are completely space-worthy.