Reichs and Fall, the WWII era Superheroics RP

Sorry, I was under the impression that we'd be dealing with mind reading, which can get a bit meta-gamey.

I also haven't watched/read Young Justice.

edited 22nd Jun '14 5:14:31 PM by Eachiunn

We're talking about watching Young Justice. Reading Young Justice is a different matter entirely, because unlike some adaptions, (and unfortunately, also like some other adaptions,) all the two works have in name is, well, the name, as well as the basic concept, and only loosely so. They're pretty different from each other.

Also, I'd suggest editing the first post, and putting in a list of accepted sign-up sheets, and possibly with links to each. That's up to you, though.

edited 22nd Jun '14 5:26:05 PM by kkhohoho

An excellent idea, I'll get on that shortly.

• Civilian Name: Ema Blanxart
• Alter Ego: Black Flame
• Age: 35
• Nationality: Spanish Catalonia
• Appearance: Ema's body is burnt beyond recognition, though her hair remains. Her hair is grey and wispy, the color of soot. She has black eyes, red irises, and white pupils. She is constantly wearing black spandex with a red A in a circle on her chest and a black cloak with a hood and a red trim. Her face is covered with a smooth, plain white, expressionless mask with two eye holes just big enough to show her eyes and a bit around them (think the eyeholes of Doctor Doom's mask). She wears black gloves with a red A in a circle on each of them identical to the one on her chest and black combat boots with red soles
• Powers: The power to create, control, and resist fire. Something sort of like what Firebenders do in Avatar The Last Airbender with added resistance to fire. If she directs her fire down, she can fly, sort of like the Human Torch. She can create explosions by concentrating her fire into a ball between her hands which she can throw. All her fire leaves behind the faint smell of gun powder.
• Abilities: Ema is a good shot. She is very strong, though not superhumanly so.
• Equipment: Fire resistant clothes, an El Tigre rifle painted black, and an Astra 400 pistol also painted black.
• Personality: Ema is stoic, distant, and a bit paranoid. Though she is slow to trust and slower to open up to others, she has a mischievous side to her and enjoys pulling pranks on others. She has problems with authority and being told what to do. If she disagrees with it, she will flagrantly disobey any order given to her, and she sometimes goes against orders out of distaste as to being told what to do. She has a strong and personal sense of justice.
• Bio: Ema was born to a poor working class family in Barcelona. Her parents were active members of the CNT, and, when she grew old enough to get a job, she joined the union herself when she took a job at a factory. As a part of the CNT, she became heavily involved with Catalonian politics. In the late 20s, she joined an affinity group associated with the FAI. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, she joined the CNT's militia and participated in the general strike shortly afterwards. She fought against the Nationalists throughout the war until early 1939 when she fought in Barcelona through its bombing and eventual capture. In the later days of the battle, she got hit by a bomb dropped by Nationalist forces, and just barely survived, her hole body burnt.
  
  She was captured by the Nationalists and taken to a scientist working for the Nationalist government. The scientist performed experimentation upon her in an attempt to create Spanish supersoldiers to help Franco's cause. After months of painful experimentation, finally a serum he gave her worked, though not as he had intended. The serum enabled her to conjure fire in her hands and melt her restraints. Stealing fire resistant clothes from the lab she was being held at and weapons from the armory, she began to use her powers to break her way out. As she left, she vowed to leave behind her old name and history, and created the name "Black Flame" for herself. Upon escape, she found the Nationalists had already won the war and she fled the country, modifying the clothes she had stolen into her current costume. Feeling as if there was nothing she could do to liberate her home, she instead turned her efforts to fighting to keep fascists from taking anyone else's home. As such, she engaged in attacks upon the Nazis in France, coordinating with the French Resistance. Because of her activities, she was raised as a hero by the French people, in secret, of course. As a result, MI5 agents approached her after one attack she made upon the Nazis and took her to a secret compound. In that secret compound, they offered her a position on a team they were creating to fight the Nazis. Despite her hesitance with working with MI5, her hate for Nazis overrode her distrust of secret agents working for a state, and she agreed to join.
• Misc: I'm leaving it deliberately ambiguous what happened to the mad scientist that created her. He's meant to be like mad Nazi scientists, ala Dr Arnim Zola from the Captain America movies, but for Franco's government rather than Hitler's.

edited 22nd Jun '14 6:17:48 PM by deathpigeon

Well, I was thinking about mind-reading too, but he wouldn't be very good at that with people who didn't want him to.

At least, at first.

I'd be okay with Telepathy as long as you made it something that requires consent from whoever your character is trying to communicate with (basically, s/he can send a ping of sorts to whoever s/he wants to communicate with and they can choose whether or not to allow him/her access to their thoughts.)

@Black Flame, seems good. I always did like pyrokinetics.

And I take it TK is fine?

re: Ema: expect lots of references to Homage to Catalonia for that. Or accusations of heresy from the more orthodox Communists/other members of the alphabet soup of organizations on the Republican side.

Yes it is, just don't expect to be lifting any houses any time soon.

Nah, that's to be expected.

Don't want to start off too powerful.

In short, don't worry about basing it off any superhero, WWII or not. Just get a concept rolling and go with that; there's no reason for your character to have a codename or a flashy costume. Yes those were comic-book conventions, but they're also unnecessary if you don't want them. I got my Gurkha after reading up on memoirs of the Burma Campaign and spending a while bingeing the Laundryverse RPG, for instance, no supers involved.

I'm sure Fyodor and Black Flame will have a lot of tension between each other. It's a conflict I have first hand experience with from arguing with tankies on the subject.

Oh great, we're going to have political arguments in this game.

Joy.

Hopefully not much beyond petty catfights between people over petty bullshit resulting from political disagreements (I've been in one of those. Even coming from a position of agreeing with one of the sides, the argument is just petty bullshit, in the end, and it's funny more than anything, looking back.) for laughs and drama rather than actual political argumentation.

I don't see Fyodor as the type of person who can logic his way through arguments. He's kindof an ignorant buffoon.

As I said, this particular fight has never been resolved logically, by either side, any time I've been involved in it and has essentially turned into to people waving their arms at each other in an attempt to slap the other person while looking away because they don't want to be slapped either. It's all good fun if played up for the comedy of it all.

Huh.

This seems a bit too lighthearted.

Well, I didn't mean that literally. I was being hyperbolic to point out how pointless, asinine, and petty my fights over it have been. Last time I got into one of those slapfights with a tankie, both of us broke Godwin's Law multiple times, including the opening shots. There was no intelligent discourse from either side. Not from me. Not from the tankie.

Would actually being set during WWII make Godwinning more or less likely I wonder?

Well, up until the end of WWII, most people thought of Hitler as just a gargantuan dick, as opposed to a mass murderer.

So I would say less likely.

@Sabre's Edge:

Except that the title clearly says, 'Reichs and Fall, the WWII era Superheroics RP '. I've actually been surprised that there aren't that many characters so far that really fit into the Superheroic mold. At this point, you might as well call it an 'Action-Adventurer RP' rather than a Superhero RP.

edited 23rd Jun '14 12:56:34 PM by kkhohoho

Bugger that. "Superhero" just means you're superhuman to some extent, not that you prance about with a spandex costume and a silly commercial name. In a well-run game there's room for Audie Murphy alongside the more conventional comic-book supers. Given that, you can easily afford to discard the regular conventions and go creative, drawing from sources other than pre-established comics.

Gotta agree with Kk. This is supposed to be campy flashy punchy time.

No, Superhuman means that you're 'superhuman to some extent.' Superhero implies that not only are you Superhuman, but that you also have a fancy outfit and/or codename, and fight badguys. Actually, you don't even have to be superhuman to be a Superhero; just look at Batman. It all comes down to semantics.

edited 23rd Jun '14 2:19:24 PM by kkhohoho

"Contribute in some way to the war effort" is the salient point here. Whatever the hell you're dressed in or called by others is entirely secondary, and probably will lead to much mocking in-'verse and out. You can go with that if you want; for my part I'll point out that regular battledress a) makes it less likely that you'll be targeted by an artillery spotter, and more importantly b) has already been accepted as workable in this game.

Otherwise, you're just asking me to make a backup character who fits those criteria in the technical sense. Furor Logistica, get those forms filled out...

(Plus, given what he's done, Batman is superhuman. Just because the story doesn't admit that he's breaking the laws of physics doesn't mean he isn't doing so.)

edited 23rd Jun '14 2:58:14 PM by SabresEdge