Let's create a superhero setting!!!

After the wave of collab projects from 2011 passed, I was left with quite a few ideas I never got to develop, and I must say I really missed those collaborative writing projects, and out of the blue I decided "why not make another one?"

So here it is. In the interest of avoiding the problems that plagued previous tvtropes collabs, here's a few guidelines I'd like to put forward:

• While anyone can contribute ideas, feedback, or characters to this setting, the major contributors, aka the ones who dictate the parameters of the setting and any overarching meta-plot there might be, will be those who can get whatever tasks related to this project they've taken on done within a reasonable amount of time.
  • That could be world building, a writing project, organizing background materials, or something else entirely, but the most important thing is that you get it done on time.

• Unless the contributors would rather have it otherwise, I'm hoping people will be willing to let other people write their characters if they don't have time, especially if the characters in question are important to whatever sort of Myth Arc the setting might have.

• If you end up quitting the project, please tell the others whether it's okay to use your characters and/or ideas and if not, whether they should be killed off/written out or removed from canon.
  • If you'd rather we use them, make sure to tell us how you wanted us to use them.

Now that all that boring stuff is over with, how about we start with defining the sort of setting we're working with. Below are a number of questions I hope will start some good old world-building and character building discussions, with my own opinions included in hottips:

Where should it fall on the scale between All Deaths Final and Death Is Cheap?*

What about the Sliding Scale of Cynicism vs. Idealism?*

Should it be set in a particular time period?*

Do our heros Fight Common Street Crime, or are such low level matters best left to the police in lieu of focusing on things like interdimensional clown terrorists and demonic zombie space invaders from Jupiter, which directly leads into...*

Where should this setting fall on the scale of silly vs serious, aka should we have interdimensional terrorists and demonic zombie space invaders?*

How tied together should the superpowers in the setting be? Should everything be linked to one Mass Super-Empowering Event, give everyone free rein to create their own completely isolated origin, or do something in between?*

Should we focus on an Avengers or Justice League esque team of supers or each have our own cast of characters who share a setting and frequently cross-over?*

How high should the average power level be?*

And last and probably least out of my priming questions, what should we call our supers?*

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Interesting idea. Not sure if I'd have the time to do any writing for something like this, but I'd love to help brainstorm stuff.

I don't think that's a rule that should be set down in advance. Instead, you should take each death and each possibility for resurrection and carefully consider its effect on the story's dramatic potential.

That should vary from character to character and from place to place. I mean, in Real Life we've got suburban American teenagers worried about whether or not their clothes are in fashion, and we've got starving Somalian child soldiers suffering sexual abuse. There's plenty of room for both.

Personally, I think it would be neat to set it in the mid-20th century, but with all sorts of anachronistically advanced technology thanks to averting Reed Richards Is Useless. I've just always wanted to see a story where a guy wearing a jet pack delivers telegrams to people.

I think the best choice might be something where regular street crime is the sort of thing they handle every day without too much trouble, with big alien/interdimensional invasions being major events that make them the underdogs, with threats inbetween those two extremes forming the basis for most stories.

If you're going to have a universe with any great number of superheroes, some silliness is kind of inherent to the premise.

It might be neat to have two or three Mass Super Empowering Events instead of just one. Like some people get their powers as a result of advanced alien technology, others as the result of genetic mutation, and others as a result of physical training and meditation.

Latter option sounds best to me.

I'd say strong enough they can out perform an entire police force, not so strong that they can out perform an entire army regiment.

The answer for that should probably wait until the origin of the superpowered beings is resolved.

edited 31st Oct '12 11:19:46 AM by RavenWilder

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

I'm interested. I have one idea in particular I'd be interested in exploring (or having someone else explore, if I don't have the time) and I'd love to offer any feedback I can. I also have lots of ideas for names.

Fear is a superpower.

Let's play around comic book death, it takes away much of the impact. Hmm maybe it could be explored. A hedonistic scientist (or the guy who hired him) wanted to avoid dying. The experiment went horribly right, an synthetic slime mold was injected into his brain shortly before his death. It had absorbed his personality. Living in a petri dish wasn't much fun and Tantalus( it's the first name I've thought of) started infiltrating human beings. Everyone else would stay dead. I am not sure whether this is more of a idea for a horror or a super-villain.

edited 1st Nov '12 3:54:22 AM by Mora

Dude, please format your text. It hurts my eyes right now.

edited 31st Oct '12 2:14:06 PM by Archereon

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Cool. If you think the idea is to much of a spoiler to just put out there, feel free to PM me about it and I'll tell you what I think.

I agree in principal, but Death Is Cheap is so overused in Supehero stories that it'd be kinda hard to pull off a Disney Death effectively, and I'd prefer things not reach the point where there's no risk of being Killed Off for Real permanently, unless the character or characters in question have complete immortality for in-universe reasons.

I agree with what you're saying here, but pretty much all settings have this in effect. However, most settings tend to average out to a point on the scale, and in general, I'd prefer a setting which tends to have a good balance of idealistic and cynical stories in it rather than skewed far to one side of the scale or the other like, for example, The setting my avatar is from.

That could definitely work as a sort of Alternate History setting (and there's definitely some cool stuff we could do with that), though what I had in mind was a more futuristic setting, set 20 Minutes into the Future where we'd see a lot of lesser versions of the technologies used by technologically empowered/tech using heroes, particularly cybernetics and genetic engineering. Now in a world where Reed Richards Is Useless is averted, that's entirely possible in the alternate 50's, but I tend to prefer the type of technologies found in our current notion of the future, possibly with a bit of Cyberpunk, though that's just personal preference. Perhaps it's just because I tend to prefer sleaker "futuristic" aesthetics as we conceive of them now over the Raygun Gothic style found in the mid 20th century's idea of the future.

Good point, though my question was more: "should this be an outright ridiculous and campy setting that's a homage to the Silver Age Of Comic Books or something which takes itself somewhat seriously but still has plenty of comic relief and inherent oddity?"

What I had in mind was a single Mass Super-Empowering Event that provides a variety of different potential origins for our Badass Abnormal characters, possibly indirectly if we're talking about Science Hero or (Villainous) Mad Scientist characters, who would presumably have been inspired by the new technologies and sciences the Mass Super-Empowering Event brought about. If we involve magic and/or Psychic Powers (and some of my ideas make extensive use of the latter powers), that could be explained as some sort of Applied Phlebotinum that was produced or involved in the event causing a Bizzare Baby Boom or indirectly resulting in The Magic Coming Back/unsealing various sorts of cans.

Specifically, the premise I had in mind for this was as follows:

Around 2020, a massive unidentified object enters the Earth's atmosphere at high speeds. Five smaller objects split off of it, and respectively crash in central Asia, America, Africa, and Australia. The core object itself lands in the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in devastating Earthquakes across the globe. Three years later, a research team based in the United Kingdom reaches the object's final resting place, a few degrees North of the edge of the Cape Verde Plain.

After a lengthy salvage effort, bits and pieces of the object are brought to just about every accredited research institute in the world, though a fairly sizable portion of it remains unaccounted for due to unauthorized salvage, theft, and so on. What remains are a variety of devices, materials, and mechanical parts previously unknown to the human race. Around this time, when the first children born after the Cape Verde Impact Event were getting old enough to communicate and interact with the world on a significant level, humanity had its first encounter with psychic phenomena.

A small number of children born during and after the Impact Event displayed anomalous, apparently psychic abilities. In some cases these individuals possessed abilities ranging from verifiable extra-sensory-perception or unusually acute empathy to the ability to read—and more alarmingly influence or even control in some rare cases—the minds of others.

In other cases, the anomalous children were able to mentally affect the world around them. In some cases, this entailed an ability to psychically manipulate small objects, others found they could influence temperature or electrical current, and still more were found to have even more bizzare "telekinetic" abilities. A superminority of the affected children manifested both telepathic and telekinetic abilities.

Over the next 26 years, extensive research of the components of the object (or whatever we choose to call it) resulted in a wide variety of technological advances in every field of science, medicine, and engineering. Of course, the most potent of these technologies generally depend on materials acquired directly from the object, and cannot be currently synthesized, making them available only to the most extraordinarily wealthy, powerful, and/or lucky individuals in the world. Of course, a large portion of the alien object still remains unaccounted for, and the five secondary objects that split off from the main unidentified object were never located, which leaves a lot of room for origins that tie into the central Mass Super-Empowering Event in different ways. The creators of the object were (or are!) for all intents and purposes Sufficiently Advanced Aliens.

If people are interested in this premise but want to bring in other forms of magic besides the psychic powers included, I've got some additional ideas I haven't really fleshed out at all regarding that, and there's no reason everyone who isn't a Badass Normal HAS to have their origin tied to this event, though I'd like to keep the world reasonably tight and internally consistent.

As for the rest of the questions, I'm entirely with you, though I think power level could stand to vary between characters.

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Ooh, I like that origin theory. It could tie in quite well with my character idea, which I will be P Ming you about.

Fear is a superpower.

I don't have the time, or that much inclination (I'm a little tired of superheroes) to contribute full-time to this, but I'm glad enough to see this idea revive with a genre I'm fond of that I'll at least take the time to answer the questions.

All Deaths Final, period. Yeah, there's cases where bringing back a character (or revealing they weren't actually dead, at least) can work; I'm making use of it sometimes in my current non-superhero project. But it's horribly abused in comics, and the sheer uniqueness of a superhero setting where everyone who dies is actually dead makes me root for the extreme on this one.

As noted below, I think this would work a lot better as a Shared Universe then a single collaborative work, so there's probably room for all ends of the spectrum here. Although I'd prefer to stay away from the excessively GRIMDARK stuff, both to avoid a Superman Stays Out of Gotham problem and because it's just kind of stupid.

I like the existing idea here.

Again, this one can probably vary depending on the hero. Raven Wilder's idea is good for the average power level.

Definitely yes. Enough friggin' "realistic" comic books, already.

Again, I like the idea suggested earlier, though I definitely think there should be a few characters with origins outside of it (including at least one magic/occult-based hero).

The latter, definitely. Although having at least one major hero team is always nice.

As I suggested earlier: very few "powerhouse" characters, to be used primarily when dealing with genuine cosmic threats, a few characters best suited for dealing with street-level crime, and the vast majority in-between.

Unless they're going to be the Not Wearing Tights type (which I'm not in favor of), what's wrong with just plain "superheroes"?

What I'd like to see is a setting that's internally consistent enough to pass as soft sci-fi with fantasy elements, and takes itself serious by default, but still has plenty of room for comic relief and humorous stories. I'm not sure if that's what you meant by realistic though, or if it was referring to things like The Dark Knight Saga which remove most of the setting's "unreal" qualities.

I'd still like there to be some ties between the occult/magic/other alternate origins and the Cape Verde Impact Event. Pretty much all science based heroes will be using technologies directly from or descended from the alien object's technology, and I was thinking that the Impact Event may have triggered a minor form of The Magic Comes Back.

I think that should probably depend on the character, as far as how much they resemble "traditional" superheroes. Some characters may play genuinely be of the Not Wearing Tights type, others might be The Cape or other tried and true archtypes. As far as the people born with telepathic or telekinetic powers as a result of the Impact Event, telepaths (colloquially referred "teps") and telekinetics (colloquially referred to as "teeks") works fine, and the few individuals with abilities from both categories are, in this premise, so exceedingly rare that they have no common name.

As far as the number of teps and teeks, I'm thinking about 1 in 1,000 people born after the Impact Event have minor telepathic abilities like a degree of ESP or psychic empathy, and maybe 1 in 100,000 people born after the Impact Event have minor telekinetic abilities. Perhaps 1 in 10,000,000 are both minor teps and teeks. People with "superpower" level abilities would probably start at maybe 1 in 10,000,000 for powerful teps, maybe 1 in 100,000,000 for powerful teeks, and so few individuals who are powerful teps and powerful teeks that their number can be counted on one hand.

On the topic of names, does anyone have a good idea for the alien object that initiated the Mass Super-Empowering Event and the rapid development of technology, if we're going with that premise?

edited 31st Oct '12 9:17:19 PM by Archereon

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Neither of those is what I meant - I'm thinking of the popularity towards "gritty realism" in The Modern Age Of Comics. I'd like see more fun comics (which doesn't necessarily mean "silly").

I agree with you there, though there should be some room for "gritty" stories in the setting as well as "silly" stories.

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Something to remember is that the reason superhero stories use Death Is Cheap so much is because superhero comic books run continuously for decades with characters too popular/iconic/merchandisable to leave out of the public eye for too long. I doubt that's gonna happen for any collaborative writing project on these forums, so worrying so much about Death Is Cheap seems a little silly to me.

Do like the Mass Super-Empowering Event idea, though. However, if it's gonna be set in the future, then a basic outline of how geopolitical issues have changed in the intervening decades will be necessary to keep people from contradicting each other.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

I like your Idea, but I also like what the previous guy said about the mid 20th century setting. You could go Diesel Punk With it instead of Raygun Gothic. The 1900s just has so many cool ethnic, political, and religious conflicts that Cyperpunk settings just don't have.

Either way, though, I'm definitely interested in this project.

As I understand it, Death Is Cheap has become a Genre Convention in superhero stories because of how much it's used in major comics and related media. The reasons you listed were just how it started. As far as the geopolitical situation in 2046, I think the first step is to figure out where the real world should be around the time of the Impact Event, then determine how the introduction of new technologies affect the world over the next 26 years or so.

Overall, I'm thinking this would work best as a world extremely new to "superheroes"

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I'm also interested in the project. Here are my opinions:

• Where should it fall on the scale between All Deaths Final and Death Is Cheap?

Deaths should be final as long as there's no doubt the character is dead (and that he or she is the correct victim.) Death should be taken more seriously, and characters should not be killed off unless you REALLY want to be rid of them. Exceptions allowed where logical (eg. a Sandman-type character might be *very* hard to kill.)

• What about the Sliding Scale of Cynicism vs. Idealism?

Leaning towards idealism, but not absolutely. I mean, what's the point of using heroes if they don't win? That's what drama and horror stories are for. Of course they shouldn't win ALL the time either, that's unrealistic and boring. Plus the really smart villains always win in their own way.

• Should it be set in a particular time period?

I prefer present day, but agree that the very existence of superhumans would cause more advanced technology to exist, simply because how their powers work would have been studied long ago. To keep technology from making the supers look too puny, we could limit it due to costs and materials needed.

• Do our heros Fight Common Street Crime, or are such low level matters best left to the police in lieu of focusing on things like interdimensional clown terrorists and demonic zombie space invaders from Jupiter, which directly leads into...

I think each would do his or her own thing, though most would be limited to really-obvious crimes for the simple fact that most people lack criminology training (spotting bank robbery is easier than foiling drug traffic.) Besides, common criminals would realistically adapt by NOT committing crimes during the day, avoid places where supers are known to be active etc. So most fights would end up being between heroes and villains, like in the comics.

• Where should this setting fall on the scale of silly vs serious, aka should we have interdimensional terrorists and demonic zombie space invaders?

I'd prefer serious, with the humor being mostly situational (ex. a hero forced to work with an obnoxious person) or possibly due to powers that just *happen* to look silly (like Slime Projection .) Still the occasional odd adventure would be OK.

• How tied together should the superpowers in the setting be? Should everything be linked to one Mass Super Empowering Event, give everyone free rein to create their own completely isolated origin, or do something in between?

I'd prefer a single cause, such as genetic manipulation, though of course, characters can use technology or martial arts instead. And if we introduce stuff like aliens or magic, well its a given there'd be more.

• Should we focus on an Avengers or Justice League esque team of supers or each have our own cast of characters who share a setting and frequently cross-over?

That should develop on its own, official superteams should definitely exist but we should focus on individual characters until the story brings them together.

• How high should the average power level be?

Higher than street-level but not one-man-armies, for balance's sake. Think most X-Men.

• And last and probably least out of my priming questions, what should we call our supers?

Superhumans, with Supers for short.

Personal suggestions: while costumed heroes and villains exist, there should also be individuals who are exceptions to their rules. These include:

• People with powers who use them for perfectly legal employment (super-laborers, SFX people, etc.)
• Characters who do not use secret identities (these will usually be neither heroes nor villains.)
• Antiheroes/Antivillains who do use costumed identities but do not fit well in either side. Vigilantes, usually.
• People with powers who just do not use them at all (either because they are useless, or they don't want to be thought of as freaks.)

Just my ideas.

edited 1st Nov '12 1:46:30 PM by Sijo

In my version, there are a fairly large number of minor telepaths or telekinetics in the world. It's important that in this version "telepathy" covers an extremely broad category of powers, and telekinetic an ever larger one. Each tep and teek is slightly different. Some might be Flying Brick type characters as a result of telekinetic (and if they're fireproof, probably thermokinetic as well) manipulation powers limited to their own bodies, which might be used unconciously or require a conscious effort to activate and maintain.

That said, the vast majority of psychics have extremely weak, situational, or unstable abilities, with only a few having abilities sufficiently powerful and controlled to make a career (of supervillainy, superheroics, or supercivilianhood) out of it.

The other forms of "lesser" superpower that are reasonably common are cybernetics and bioaugmentation, both of which can be purchased legitimately in most countries, and are quite common in technologically advanced nations, to the point where most members of a given nation's upper class will have them.

Commercially available augmentations are, for the most part, like their hypothetical real-world counterparts, which is to say they're generally quite subtle and limited in their functionality. The most advanced augmentations are those which depend directly on materials or parts found in the alien object that cannot be synthesized/reverse engineered. Each example of xenotech augmentations is unique, and they are generally found in the possession of the most wealthy and/or powerful organizations in the world.

Regarding the origins thing, the version I had in mind involves the discovery of a cache of alien technology that landed on Earth for reasons unknown. While much of the technology was impossible or exceedingly difficult to replicate, frequently due to the alien devices being made of materials we has never encountered previously, or simply being so advanced that modern science was unable to discern how it worked, those devices and materials we could replicate or at least understand were adapted for all sorts of purposes, particularly military purposes.

edited 1st Nov '12 2:35:15 PM by Archereon

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One of the big things to decide for any superhero setting is the legal status of superheroes. Are they all required to work for (or at least be registered with) a government agency? Is superheroing flat-out illegal? Is it illegal, but with a wink-wink/nudge-nudge acceptance from most cops? Or do anonymous vigilantes work openly with the police without any problems?

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

I'd say that depends on the nation.

The more liberal nations would probably outlaw outright vigilantism for the reason it's illegal in real-life, but permit superhumans to join the police or military if the weren't part of it already due to their orign story. Of course, most of those supers would end up being of the Not Wearing Tights variety, and obvious not everyone would want to use a Not Wearing Tights hero, so I imagine there's people who go ahead and act outside of the police and military for a variety of reasons. In more lenient nations, I imagine the vigilante supers would get off reasonably easy with the police so long as they didn't go around killing people for breaking laws.

In less liberal nations, I'd expect anyone found to have superpowers would be forced to serve their country's military/be a test subject, seeing as many of the more powerful supers and/or the technology behind them would be potentially massive strategic assets, which isn't to say people wouldn't defy the system.

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I think it also might depend on which way the hero goes on the whole "secret identity" thing.

In some places, hiding a superpower from the government might be a very serious crime, and it others it might not be illegal at all, though since I imagine vigilantism still would be, a super from either country who wanted to fight crime and such outside of the military and police would need to hide their identity.

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So far I agree with most of your ideas. A few more observations:

• I think the number of superhumans should be lower, about 1 in a million. Since the world population is already over 6 billion, this would mean there would be at least 6 million Supers on the setting. Also, most major cities have several million inhabitants, meaning there would be several Supers on each city, like in the comics. (Of course, we can adjust the spread as needed. After all, people move around, for a variate of reasons. Otherwise, countries like China would get the majority of all Supers.)

• Telepathy shouldn't be too common, because its one of the most feared of all powers. Its Power Perversion Potential is enormous; it's one thing to be afraid that a super might hurt you, and another that he/she might not only read your thoughts, but change them without your even knowing! Even if there are limits to this (ex. they cannot tap minds undetected) just the suspicion that they might be able to would bring a world of paranoia upon them. Most telepaths would probably hide their abilities.

So do you think some stories will play out as police proceduarals then?

Absolutely. If people with powers are reasonably accepted in the setting, some will join the police force specifically because it offers the training and support needed to be an effective crimefighter. Or because it's a paycheck that goes well with their power set.

Fistman may not be able to find crime on his own, but if he's a cop, it gets a lot easier.

@Sijo: Actually, by 2040, the world's population will probably be something around 10 billion if we're responsible about population growth, and maybe 12 billion if we aren't.

Btw, when I gave the percentages of people with powers, I was talking about the really, really weak telepaths who's powers basically consist of small things like occasionally experiencing another person's emotions as if they were their own when they're standing really close to them, being slightly better than average at guessing what others are thinking through subconscious mind-reading. That said, 1 in a 1,000,000 is a bit low, since at a population of 10 billion, that makes about 10,000 super-tier psychics. That sounds about right for powerful psychics, which would mean a dozen or so for every country in the world, though obviously, more would be found in areas closer to the alien object's impact site, and areas with higher populations would tend to have more due to the laws of probability. I imagine minor psychics (no appreciable power besides VERY trivial things) would probably be something like 1 in 50,000 or so, you might find one or two in decently sized towns, and a fair number in cities. Though the number of people born with both telepathic and telekinetic powers that originated from the CV Impact Event would probably be something like 1 in 100,000,000 (about 100 in the world).

There's also the fact that this setting is, as it seems to be conceived of now, is very, very new to superheroes and supervillains, and vigilantism is obviously illegal pretty much everywhere. (for the most part, supers who aren't associated with the military or police are expected to be Super Civillians)

Though that creates the (narrative) problem of Not Wearing Tights heroes being the norm, which some people might not like.

edited 2nd Nov '12 2:18:18 PM by Archereon

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SUPER HASTILY THROWN TOGETHER LATE REPLY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

1. We could take a third option and not kill people at all. I don't think will ever need to, anyways; we don't need to kill people to be edgy. I mean, even before the Legend Of Korra finale in which Amon and Tarlokk died, it was plenty dark.
2. How about A World Half Full?
3. We could use modern times, the setting you mentioned, and I think someone else mentioned Diesel Punk.
4. Post 15 summed it up better than I ever could.
5. I say as long as we don't get TOO ridiculous, we could throw some stuff like that in there (sort of like Doctor Who)
6. I like the one you wrote up, but I don't think that should be the sole source of powers.
7. I think we should use a Shared Universe, and the different works in it can cross over as often as the authors wish.
8. I'm really impressed with how Avatar The Last Airbender and Legend Of Korra handled supernatural abilities. I think we could learn from that if we ever needed any help in that regard.
9. I don't really think we should limit ourselves to just one name, as I think different people would use different terms (eg: We have polite terms for minorities, and we have slurs.)

edited 2nd Nov '12 7:38:34 PM by TheThnikkaman