"Welcome to the City, Hero."
—The Porter's greeting.
Superheroes? In MY roleplay? It's more likely than you think.
Cape And Cowl is a multi-fandom superhero roleplay set in a metropolis known only as 'The City', which had its entire police force disappear in fall of 2008 (when the game began). Their replacements are characters pulled from other worlds by an advanced machine known as the Porter to serve as 'heroes', with previously-unpowered characters gaining superhuman abilities in the process. Known for being very fast-paced. Found here.
The game concluded on Jan. 12th 2014 and now has a sequel game called Mask Or Menace, which is ongoing as of 2019. Can be found here.
The Cape And Cowl series contains examples of:
- All of the Other Reindeer: Relations between the PCs or 'Imports' and 'native' NPCs tend to be... strained at best. Justified by the amount of chaos the characters' presence has caused in the City. However, Imports have since gained much more acceptance along with legal citizenship in their new home, since they helped save thousands of civilians from the HIVE.
- Alternate History: The Cityverse's history deviates from our own in many ways besides the Porter.
- Anyone Can Die: Thanks to the Porter's tendency to bring people back. Unfortunately, this means when people do die, it's usually in the most painful way possible. For maximum resurrection trauma.
- Arms Dealer: An early source of income for the Coalition was selling advanced battle mechs to North Korea. Jack 'Weasel' Hammer fulfilled this function on a smaller level in the City.
- Attack of the Killer Whatever: The City can be threatened by pretty much anything. It was once attacked by pigeons.
- Bad Future: The CNC2020 spinoff, set in a future where ImPorts are persecuted by the government.
- Big Applesauce: The City is basically a nameless alternate universe counterpart to New York.
- Cardboard Prison: The facility for imprisoning captured supervillains, nicknamed Superjail, is an impregnable high-tech fortress... which bad guys still regularly worm their way out of.
- Celebrity Paradox: Dealt with in-game. The instant a fictional character is Ported in, all media materials (films, books, games, etc.) related to them are erased from reality. They can be recreated if the character leaves, though.
- The Commissioner Gordon: Standard policy for the understaffed police force, which has little choice but to cooperate with vigilantes in order to keep the City safe.
- Cosmic Retcon: The 'Running the Gauntlet' plot saw the reality of the Cityverse rewritten to introduce new elements like ghosts, aliens, and fictional countries.
- Cryptic Conversation: It is notoriously difficult to get a straight answer out of NPCs like Grinbitch and the Kashira Players, on the few occasions that it is even possible to communicate with them.
- Deus est Machina: The Porter's powers seem to be almost limitless- at least when it comes to player characters.
- "Die Hard" on an X: One plot had Superjail held hostage by Nazis and supervillains, while John McClane and Aldo Raine were loose inside. Hilarity Ensued.
- Differently Powered Individual: Most player characters are referred to as 'Imports' or 'metahumans.' And now artificially-created native superhumans are called 'Metamen.'
- Elite Mooks: Villains have tried a variety of ways to make their minions a match for the heroes, such as turning them into vampires or outfitting them with body armor and rocket launchers. It rarely helps.
- Empty Quiver: One plot revolved around the theft of a nuclear warhead by supervillains, and an attempt to use it on Washington D.C.
- Enemy Without: A nasty accident between Minako and Kyoko leads to a whole lot of Imports being trapped by their Shadows.
- Falsely Reformed Villain: Many supervillains have managed to forge successful and lucrative 'legitimate' careers through their 'reformations.'
- Fountain of Youth: Most of the City was turned into children by a magic spell.
- Hate Plague: Cylon-Nazi nerve gas that slowly drove people into conflict with each other.
- Holding Out for a Hero: The initial premise of the game was that the player characters were the only hope of restoring law and order in the City after the police force vanished. Since the government declared the place a disaster area and failed to act, it was up to them to fight crime and rebuild the justice system.
- Involuntary Shapeshifting: In a Fisher Kingdom style, the Porter assigns all non-humanoid characters (like Transformers and Talking Animals) a human form, sometimes with Transformation Trauma in the meantime. There have also been plots where characters were unexpectedly transformed into animals and robots.
- Leno Device: Sometimes news posts will appear, offering a native's-eye view of how the presence of the player characters is affecting the world.
- Like Reality, Unless Noted: The game's setting is almost exactly like the real world, except for details like having Superior Purchase instead of Best Buy and a different President. And of course all the superhumans.
- Love Is in the Air: Affecting Trowa Barton of all people. A specialty of Aphrodite.
- Magnetic Plot Device: The Porter. Between the AI's twisted sense of humour and plain old malfunctions, as long as it's running the City's bound to be an exciting place.
- Muggle Power: Vulcanus' ideology appears to be Type One: stealing powers from Imports for the sake of giving them to 'the people.'
- Mundane Fantastic: Aside from the occasional superhuman brawls, the people of the City try to carry on as usual. The City's culture has adapted to the situation so much that there are even superhero-themed strip clubs.
- Musical Episode: Courtesy of a character from High School Musical, who used his powers to make everyone sing and dance.
- No FEMA Response: New York City has lost its police force? Don't expect the federal government to do anything about it! Possibly justified by the fear that anyone they sent in would just disappear as well.
- Power Nullifier: At one point, depowering guns appeared that could temporarily disable superhuman abilities.
- Red Shirt Army: Ordinary cops, soldiers and civilians stand almost no chance against most Import supervillains.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Averted. The presence of so many super-geniuses and advanced technology users Ported in has already begun to have impacts on health, technology, and international politics.
- The Reveal: Several: Iron Man is actually a sentient suit of Tony Stark's armour. Los Angeles is run by a massive criminal conspiracy. The President is Stan Lee. And an international conspiracy is seeking to mass-produce superhumans.
- Running Gag: Many, in and out of character: bueno, Norman's computer, eating glass, the Major's weight...
- Show Within a Show: Iron Man: The Musical.
- Status Quo Is God: To a certain extent. The City will always have enough crime to keep the heroes busy, but will never be wrecked too badly to recover, and the Porter will always continue bringing in new characters.
- Storming the Castle: At one point a large number of characters launched a massive attack on the HIVE. It succeeded, but the HIVE remained a threat for a while longer. Two years later, a Vulcanus base in Greenland was assaulted in order to prevent the creation of a superhuman army.
- Superhero School: The X-Men have set up their own Xavier Institute in the City for Imported students. Now being run by Remus Lupin.
- Superpower Lottery: Many of the powers granted by the Porter are bizarre, such as generating teacups at will, making it rain baseballs and extremely good apple pie, and extreme sandwich-making skills.
- Superpowered Mooks: At one point the HIVE attacked the City with an army of superpowered mutants.
- Super Registration Act: A common worry of Imports, especially the X-men. Superhero activity is currently permitted and loosely regulated by the authorities- basically, the main rule is "don't be The Punisher."
- Wham Episode: The revelation of Iron Suit, the introduction of the HIVE and their subsequent assault on the City, the disposal of the Iron Suit by the Porter, and the entry of Vulcanus were big game-changers.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Unless Deported without warning, leaving your Cityverse friends to wonder whether they'll ever see you again.
- Zeppelins from Another World: The HIVE and supervillains have used them. A zeppelin nightclub was actually operated by characters for a time.
