Radio City 2112: An Evil Mastermind RPG Sign-Ups

Yeah, just go with what feels like it works; don't worry about the physics of it. (Because that's mostly bullshit anyway.)

I'm thinking about playing a gangster villain, but I know Starbound's cautious about bad guys who need henchmen. Would a character with six or so wiseguys in their employ be too much?

I think that'd be fine, yeah. I just don't want the henchmen to be in the thick of things more than the villain. I'd like the villain to get their hands dirty when a fight breaks out.

Interested.

I have an idea, a villain called the Time Turner. He can't travel through time, but he can bring objects from different eras and timelines to the present. So he can summon everything, ranging from a boulder from Ancient Times, a dinosaur egg, a bunch of weapons from World War II, a laser weapon from a timeline where the Cold War wasn't cold, etc.

He has limitations, of course. He can't bring anything living through the time vortex he creates (unless it's something like an egg, because the egg protects the creature inside from the effects of being exposed to the vortex), and he can't bring something gigantic like the Apollo 11 rocket. How does that sound?

Edit: Crap. Double post.

edited 25th Mar '13 6:33:58 AM by Stratofarius

That's just having a varied arsenal you can summon, mechanically you are not going back in time and drowning Dr. Doom as a baby so you're probably good.

Sounds like Funny Valentine and Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.

How does a Badass Normal police inspector which had to raise his proficiency to Batman-like levels to avoid the Can't Catch Up effect sound?

edited 25th Mar '13 7:43:32 AM by AtomicNut

Interest, will decide which of my ideas will be used later.

Maybe. How does it sound if a character has 'impulse' telekinesis, as in she can create a push in any direction but can't actually grab and hold with anything but her hands and otherwise is a Badass Normal?

Alright. So I've got a few ideas floating around now. One's for someone with super-calculating abilities (anyone who's seen the Fringe episode "The Plateau" will know what I'm talking about) who is mostly likely an assassin. The next is a reluctant sort of highschool hero who can shrug off damage depending on his mood. The calmer he is, the larger amount of damage he can straight up No-Sell (problem is, he sucks at being stoic). The last one is a cat burglar who can erase herself from a person's field of view, and even remove herself from their memories (this one is still a work in progress, as I'm trying to flesh out and define their powers more).

@ Strat: I dunno, I'm always a bit wary when it comes to time travel for various reasons. And is there anything stopping him from using his powers to just steal something from one of the characters a few days/hours/minutes into the past? Is the item he brings in permanently stuck in the future, or does it return to its rightful place in the timeline after a given period? I'm afraid it might muck up things a lot, sorry.

@ Atomic Nut: Sounds cool, though I hope you try to at least give other players a fighting chance. To be 100% honest, I'm kind of scared to see what you'd come up with... especially given that this is the future and I'm being vague about tech levels... <.<;;

@ Plumbum: I think that sort of push telekinesis might be okay, yeah, as long as you don't overdo it.

@ KSPAM: The first two, if balanced right, could be interesting to work with I think. The last one I'm more iffy about, but you're still trying to define her powers, so I can wait to see it more defined.

He can send it back after a while, and he can't pick things from the hero's past because he doesn't know it. He has to know about the time period and location he's taking stuff from. For he to pull a pacifier that leads X to becoming a hero, he'd have to know the place and the exact time said pacifier is in.

Yeah, but when you think about the number of super-brains in this setting combined with how easy it already is in 21st century, not super Earth to dig up info on a person's past, the likelihood of a well-connected villain like yours retconning big name heroes at will becomes a lot more likely.

References ahoy!

• Name: Subject 1138 Andromeda Hawkeye.
• Age: 24.
• Gender: Female.
• Appearance: Extra-long hair does have its uses. Ah, the midday sun!
  • Costume: N/A; Andromeda prefers wearing simple clothes, since anything more elaborate will mess with her abilities.
• Personality: In a nutshell, Lawful Good. Andy (as her friends call her) is the person who's nice to others on principle, obeys laws because they're the land's laws, and who'll stand for justice no matter what it costs her. That said, she is a quiet person, preferring to spend her time reading, tending to her garden and managing The Green Dragon - Lutecia's tea ship - rather than run around cutting thugs' hamstrings. But, all things considered, she simply cannot see evil and let it pass.
  Aside from that, Andromeda is a polite, happy person, treating everyone else with respect and trying to cheer their mood up if they need it.
• Biography: A descendant of both Luti and Tia, Andy's parents were a pair of super-powered crime-fighters who managed the tea shop when they weren't burning crooks to a crisp or gutting them like fish. Andromeda had a happy childhood; the fact that her parents sometimes returned home rather late at night didn't bother her. Her powers manifested when she was ten, and since then she honed them, for her righteous nature did not let her rest while she saw injustice and evil deeds around her. At first, she was an active superhero, but when her mother was injured fighting a supervillain, her parents moved to the country, leaving her the shop, and she settled down. Since then she juggled being a superhero and managing the tea shop, even finding time to tend to a garden of flowers and to read from the huge collection of books her parents left her.
• Abilities: Much like Tia, Andromeda is a Transform Weapon, able to shapechange her own body into various shapes. It ranges from using her hair as a scarf, to using her pinky as a key, to transforming her arm into an Absurdly Sharp Blade.
  Her shapechanging ability grants her limited regenerative powers — she can shape-change wounded areas and heal them much faster than normal, but this requires both time and concentration and as a result cannot be used reliably in the midst of the battlefield. The same applies to diseases and poisons.
• Equipment: Nothing special.
• Additional Notes: owns the Green Dragon, a successful tea-house/shop in one of Radio City's cosier areas. Her apartment is on the building's second floor - in fact, it's the same one Luti used, though it is much changed from that time.

• Name: Waltazar Rusonam - The Walrusmaster
• Age: 23
• Gender: Male
• Type: Neutral
• Appearance: Physically looks like this, but doesn't wear that fancy fighting stuff. He wears a coat made out of the hide of a walrus, with its head being a hoodie and the tusks positioned on the sides of his face. He also has a simple shirt and shorts on, but they're only visible if his coat is off.
• Personality: A very friendly, boisterous man who is trying to make a place for himself in the city as he continues his quest.
• Biography: Born to a tribe of animal trainers in the frigid northernlands, Waltazar was a Walrusborn. He was able to go into the Temple of the Walruses Past and understand the magical writing on the pages of the Walrunomicon, granting him the powers that were his birthright. As he studied the pages, and the book spoke to him and told him what to do, he learned the ways of the Walrusmaster.
  
  But after he had spent years mastering his powers the book gave him a quest: to head to the lands that in ancient times had been the home of the wise elder Walruses, and to seek out the trophy of their legacy. There's just two problems. First, Walt has no idea what in the hell to look for, just that "he'll know it when he sees it". Second... apparently this place called Radio City got built right over the place sometime in the last few thousand years. For the last few weeks, he's been living on the streets, trying to find whatever it is he's supposed to find, and sometimes punching a villain or crook trying to cause a commotion.
• Abilities:
  • Walrusborn: Waltazar is strong enough to lift a regular walrus over his head, hold his breath for several hours, swim very quickly, endure cold environments, and his ability to use Walrus Orfs lets him communicate with animals.
  • Reader of the Walrunomicon: As a Walrusborn, once he fully studied the Walrunomicon, he had the secrets of Walrusmastery etched into his brain. He can telepathically command any walrus to do his bidding, as well as open up a portal to one of his Walrus Sanctuaries to bring forth his Walrus companions. And the book also taught him English. Magically. Anyway, he can summon walruses, but for magical reasons, he can only have one walrus companion at a time, as well as up to half a dozen walrushes.
• Equipment: He doesn't have any equipment, just his clothes.
• Additional Notes - Types of Walrus:
  • Walrus
    • Just a regular walrus.
  • Wallrus
    • A walrus that is roughly thrice as large as a regular walrus*
      and therefore nearly ten times the area and thirty times the weight
      . It is very slow on land, but it can take a beating.
  • Walrush
    • A walrus that is about the quarter of the size of a regular walrus, but even on land can run very fast, and have claws on their flippers for greater mobility. These are vastly easier to summon than any other walrus, and used as informants rather than as fighters.
  • Maulrus
    • A walrus wearing its ancestral armor made out of Damascus Steel that's been tempered and quenched in the blood of polar bears. Its tusks are made from steel as well. It has flails made by a spiked ball chained to each of its front flippers, and a great hammer on its rear flipper.
  • Walrog
    • The dark walrus of the deeps, said to only be a beast of legends, claimed to exist in the oceans of multiple universes at once. Its body is perpetually covered in such intense flames that even swimming in water cannot put it out. It the size of a Wallrus yet moves with the speed of a Walrush. It is an incredibly dangerous technique since even Walt cannot fully control it, and he has to focus his energy into maintaining its existence in this plane. Of course, because summoning it was a forbidden technique, it was the first type of walrus Waltazar set out to summon, and it took quite a while to repair the hut he accidentally destroyed.

• Name: Grog Nugnon, Caveman Detective*
  Technically a Cro Magnon, but the news figured it was easier to call him that. It's a touchy subject.
• Age: 34
• Gender: Male
• Type: Hero
• Appearance: Just like this, suit and all.
• Personality: A person who cares about helping others, and tries to be fair, but sometimes his baser instincts are hard to ignore.
• Biography: Born over fifty thousand years ago, Grog was a regular Cro Magnon until a meteor shower. One of them landed near the cave, and was the only one willing to go out and touch the rock from the sky. But when he came back, something was different. He felt... different. Smarter. Stronger. And he wasn't the only one, seeing as numerous others from different caves who touched different rocks also began acting strangely. For the next several years, Grog fought against the prehistoric supervillains who had sprung up However, when fighting Urglon the Eater, his sidekick and wife were killed, and Grog found himself fighting Urglon with a broken arm, underwater. With all his remaining strength, he held tight onto the villain's neck and broke it, finally killing his nemesis. Then Grog floated down, ready to accept his death.
  
  Until he was found fifty thousand years later, frozen in a chunk of ice. After being thawed out and introduced to the world, Grog eventually became a detective for the Radio City police department, and known for being dedicated to his job, as well as for a kindness that makes him more 'human' that the usual assholes on the force.
• Abilities:
  • Evolutionary Remnants: Grog's original power was to develop ways to adapt to new dangers and situations. However, being frozen for fifty thousand years nearly exhausted that ability, effectively halting it, leaving him with only the powers he gained in the past. They are listed here, with the names being semi-literal English translations.
    • Bigskull: Grog is a quick learner. He was able to adapt to the future and learn English quick enough, and then familiarized himself with modern technology.
    • Hardhand: Detective Nugnon is tough and has above-average strength that lets him swing his club very hard, and throw rocks well.
    • Firesight: Grog can send out an intense beam of light from his eyes, capable of illuminating an area, or acting like a spotlight. This allows him and everyone around to see in the dark.
    • Leapleg: Grog can leap ten meters high, and can land from a high-velocity fall unharmed.
    • Hurtfix: A reactive metabolism that lets Grog eventually recover from must injuries, and makes him immune to gangrene and tooth decay.
• Equipment:
  • Club: A club made out of a meteor that is as strong as iron, which Grog used in the past, and was frozen along with him. He wields it instead of a baton, and it is strapped to his belt.
  • Bag of Rocks: A small bag of rocks Grog has on his back near his shoulders, where he can quickly grab one for throwing purposes.
  • Service Pistol: A laser pistol or something? Whatever they have in the future.
  • Service Vehicle: A Ford Crown Victoria Hovercar, model 2110.

edited 20th May '13 6:19:29 PM by nman

Except he doesn't have connections? And he's not a mastermind? He'a a History teacher who was exposed to a time vortex and went mad with history.

Okay, couldn't decide hero or villain so I decided to go for a character who makes villains her enemy but would be shunned by real heroes tok with character development room to go fully either way! (She could take the 'Extremist' out of Well-Intentioned Extremist or she could end up Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and go full villain)

• Name: Jessica "Angel" Crowley
• Age: 24
• Gender: F
• Appearance: Angel has that quintessential hair colour for any telekinetic - bright blue and cut down before it even gets halfway to shoulder height. She has eyes to match, and a slim athletic frame for the rest of her body.
  • Costume (If Applicable): She always wears civvies, but usually keeps her face covered.
• Personality: Angel thinks she's doing what's right. Very pragmatic, Angel will double-cross and even occasionally genuinely work with anyone to get closer to her goal of uniting Radio City again instead of having it under several criminal overlords.
• Biography: Jessica was a normal girl. She had a hobby, like everyone else, even if everyone else's hobby wasn't parkour. She would spend many a day gleefully hopping the rooftops in Radio, making jumps that to others seemed to defy human limitations, but just came naturally to the girl.

Even despite having what many would describe as a badass hobby, she still got a lot of stick from her peers. In fact, one day it got so bad, she decided to pick up a random rock and throw it at one of the boys who was busily taunting her. The rock came straight out of the other side of his head. She remembers the day well, how far she ran, and how absolutely nobody was brave enough after that to come forward and get her arrested like she should have been.

She found out what it was that had caused it - she was a natural-born telekinetic and she seemed to use the power with no conscious effort. But she didn't want to be a hero. She just wanted to be a regular girl. She trained to control her power better, but did not

Five years later, Jessica's mother was caught as a hostage in a bank robbery. The demands were clear - they got the money and a free escape or all the hostages died. The police attending were spineless and useless. Even as she begged them, they refused to enter the bank and risk the hostages, even if their compliance would mean the hostages died or the robbers got away free anyway. She instead charged into the bank on her own. Although she was shot in the shoulder during her charge, she managed to capture every single robber without getting the civilians hurt - her mother included.

She might not have wanted to be a hero but she was damn well going to have to be if the police were this inept. Jessica formed the Guardians, taking the pseudonym Angel as their leader - she called them enforcers of justice that would take whatever means they needed to unseat criminals. But truthfully, they're a gang. A less evil gang with good intentions, but a gang on the slippery slope nonetheless. She took out a gang that trafficked through the docks and claimed it as the headquarters for the Guardians.

• Abilities: Angel is telekinetic and has two ways of applying the same power
  • Full Telekinesis: Angel can lift and throw the object with her telekinesis. If the target moves a large amount (unconsenting living objects, machinery with many moving parts) it will usually break her focus on this ability before she can do something useful. Strangely, she also seems to be unable to telekinise herself.
  • 'Impulse' Telekinesis: Faced with anything that moves, Angel resorts to rapid forces as described above. This kind of telekineses she can use on herself, leading to a pseudo-Flash Step and difficulty in falling to her death.
  • Le Parkour and some fistfighting skill.
• Equipment: Angel carries nothing, relying solely on her abilities. She would carry a gun but she doesn't know how to use them safely.

Would someone with superhuman building skills be too broad/not unique enough? I was thinking of my character having creation abilities that involve manual construction with a touch of imagination-based and reality warping. Like he can create things that by all means shouldn't exist, but he couldn't create a device for reality-warping or things he would never consider. Since he grew up in a family of heroes and feels like he has to be a hero, he can't create mind or biological altering devices for already living creatures. Sure he could for something he's making, but it boils down to "Creating memories/personalities and a shape" so unless they were purposely created to be alterable he couldn't alter them.

I have no idea what you're trying to say in that last sentence, but.

So impossible constructs are fine. Though reality warping is also something I'm always iffy on, and yes I would like you to be less broad with your description.

Oh, and I almost forgot:

@ desdendelle: Andromeda is accepted.

@ Nman: Walrusmaster is accepted. However, please tone down Grog's jumping capability. I think leaping several stories in a single bound might be overdoing it for our power levels.

@ Plumbum: Abilities seem to check out, though what's her lift capacity for Full Telekinesis? Also, could I get more details on the Guardians? Are they Mooks? Superpowered NPCs? A group for other players to join?

So hows a character that can manipulate materials to form creations? Like they could have a missing arm and create a fully functional brick arm from absorbing part of a wall. Or they could ram two bird corpses together and make an unholy bird zombie thing.

Oh, I'll drop this NPC's sheet here just in case he'll make an appearance.

• Name: Uagen Zlepe. (Pronounced 'Ooh-ah-gen Z-le-peh', BTW.)
• Age: 150 at the very least.
• Gender: Male.
• Appearance: Uagen looks like a normal human, except that he's covered in green fur and has a monkey's tail. He's tall, lanky, and bumbling.
  • Costume: N/A.
• Personality: Ever the Absent-Minded Professor, Uagen rarely leaves his home, preferring to study the world at large from the comfort of his armchair. Even though he's quite bumbling (he even has a bad stutter that seems to resist all attempts of curing), in the end he'll do the right thing if present with a tough choice. If he won't chicken out, anyway.
• Biography: An extraterrestrial genetically-modified human, Uagen took refuge in Earth after a bad run-in with a Gigalithine Globular Entity. Choosing Radio City as his home, he became one of Lutecia's regulars. Now, a hundred or so years after, he's still buying tea from the same shop.
• Abilities: He's really long-lived, and can use his tail and feet as hands.
• Equipment:
  • Rotors built into bracelets and anklets. They're useless on Earth as they were designed with a different sort of world in mind.
  • A DiaGlyph writing tablet and its stylus. Basically, a way to write fancy 3D glyphs that are something between a drawing, a poem, and a piece of prose.
  • His aunt Slider's necklace. It's not special, but he values it very much.
• Additional Notes: Yes, it's the same guy from the last RP.

edited 25th Mar '13 3:00:43 PM by desdendelle

@kkut: I'm sorry, but I feel like you're trying to define your powers way too broadly for me to want to accept it at the moment.

@Strat: Even as a history major, he could know X hero was in Y spot fighting Z villain with W equipment, then swipe said equipment from that moment and cause issues with the timeline. Among other things. And even if he could swipe things from alternate timelines as to not fuck up our own, well, "summon everything" may be an exaggeration, but there are so many things he could grab, especially with the alternate timelines open to him, that I'm going to have to say no. I see too much potential for abuse in your idea.

EDIT: Also, discussion thread is officially up, so all players from the prior games, let's get everyone up to speed on the setting.

@ desdendelle: Kay.

DOUBLE EDIT: @ Nman: After changing Grog's jump capacity, I will accept him.

edited 25th Mar '13 3:05:41 PM by Starbound2

So, more world info: in 2025, City Hall finally set up a program to sort of "officialize" the Supers. Dubbed L.E.A.S.H.(Leading the Extraordinary and Atypical to Stop Harm), Supers may sign up to be paid by the city, in exchange for being on call for the city. They only need to reveal their identities to the city administration, and will then be given access to police-band radio, a special hotline phone for immediate communication, and a monthly salary for continual service, along with insurance benefits, tax returns, and scholarships.

• Name: Hank "Stalwart" Sanderssen
• Age: 20
• Gender: M
• Appearance: Hank is a short, unassuming man, rounded in the face and body. His hair is short and brown, and he stands at about 5'4". He needs glasses to see and wears his grandad's old tweed suits; he's not quite sure where the punctures on the back came from, but they're patched now.
  • Costume (If Applicable): When the entire suit of armor is on, Stalwart somehow grows to be almost 7 feet tall. The armor itself is fluted armor◊ with a sallet◊. He also grows to about seven feet tall, his body completely consumed by a blinding white light shining from within the armor.
• Personality: Look, man, Hank doesn't want anyone to cause trouble. He isn't a hero, he's a peacekeeper. He was chosen to be Stalwart, so there's no shirking that—he knows shit will hit the fan if he does—but he thinks that his job is best done preventing anyone from wrecking the city or hurting innocents. So, sometimes he beats the shit out of Heroes, sometimes he beats the shit out of Villains. It's all the same to him, they're a threat to the city, he wrecks them, then goes on with his life. One thing he does care about, though, is a normal life. He zealously protects his own identity, but on that same count relishes any opportunity to have fun outside the armor. If, you know, he gets a call from a friend to go to a party, but he hasn't finished his patrol, or nobody's shown up to rob the place he's been guarding... ahhh, it's not like it'll go anywhere that he can't go to recover it!
• Biography: Hank grew up knowing that, eventually, he'd be Stalwart. The shadow of Dad's failure to live up to it always loomed over him the skipped generation coming to make its due. He has certainly tried to lead a normal life, majoring in Superheroic History and working as a security guard at Grandad's museum. However, history has this way of reapeating itself. One night while cleaning the place up, about to leave for the next shift, he heard quite the commotion: the museum was being robbed by a supervillain! He had an obligation to stop them, but he couldn't just shoot them in the face, they were... well, a supervillain! So Hank groaned with exasperation, hauled his ass to the other wing of the museum, and there finally donned the Armor of The Stalwart, handily beating the two-bit Supervillain(Captain Invulnerable, whose only weakness was later revealed to be lead) who would dare pillage his theater. Knowing that nothing good could come of simply refusing the call, Hank immediately rushed to City Hall and declared that the Armor of The Stalwart had found a new hero, and signed up for L.E.A.S.H. He's currently in his second year of studying Superheroic History, and has a fucking huge test up at the end of the week!
• Abilities: Hank possesses the Armor of The Stalwart, a mysterious suit of armor that was brought into the museum one night. When he puts on the armor—which seems much too big for him, he gains the powers of Stalwart. The inside of his armor emits a bright white light, completely concealing the wearer; if the visor is flipped up, the light can blind someone for several minutes at close range or serve as a powerful light, searing away smoke and other illusions. The light also helps in that it basically means that Stalwart doesn't have any eyes. The armor itself is extraordinarily tough, having demonstrated in the past to withstand shells from a tank and get up a little bit later—not that that battle with Tankmando was easy or anything. This same endurance translates to strength; the upper limits of Stalwart's strength has been, with some strain, throwing a sedan twenty feet. The armor also came with a pike and tower shield. The pike itself isn't much, just very sharp and unbreakable; modern combat armor can resist it. The pike is primarily a mode of transport, as by winding back and "throwing" it while still hanging onto it Stalwart can effectively fly. However, the piece de resistance is his shield: If Stalwart declares his battle cry, NOT ONE STEP BACK!, he can place his shield in front of himself and lock in place. He cannot move except forward, very very slowly, but becomes more or less impossible to knock around; the area in a ten-foot cone behind him is similarly protected with his shield, ensuring protection from blastwaves and the like. He has one crippling weakness, though: should any part of his armor in any way get knocked from his body, he will lose his powers and the armor will just become an entirely-too-large and obsolete suit of medieval armor.

edited 25th Mar '13 3:16:18 PM by Taco