What the heck, I've got some time today. Might as well do something time-consuming with an annoying small font.
The Game: The Authority
The Publisher: Guardians of Order, now famously defunct
Degree of Familiarity: Some, but not a lot. I've run and played some Tri-Stat games, including Silver Age Sentinels, upon which this game is based, and I've read a few of the Authority comics
Books Required: Just the one.
The Authority dips heavily into the moral questions of Iron Age comics, but also dials the power level way the fuck up. The characters in the comic are outright referred to as a "pantheon," and their stance is basically "We're in charge, and we're telling you to be better" (not unlike curse the darkness, come to think of it) with an implied "or else."
I can get behind that. I love superhero games, and I love them even more when they take a stand and stake out some thematic ground, because there are approximately a squillion of them and I need a reason to play something besides Marvel Heroic if I want to get my superhero on.
I'm a little confused as to why the standard ranges of character points for chargen is included; seems to me that if you're playing The Authority, you should get Authority-level points and just be happy about that. That said, 200-300 points is apparently the standard for those characters, so I'll split the difference and say I have 250 points.
Step One: GM Discussion. I have no GM, of course, but I do appreciate the advice given in this step. Make sure everyone's on the same page about what game you're playing, how many points characters have and what that means, whether there are any rule modifications, etc. That's cool. For my part, I think I'll assume that my character is someone who is about to recruited into the Authority, but hasn't been yet - someone who is powerful enough to hold his own alongside Jack Hawksmoor and Apollo and so on, and morally of the right temperament. But that's really something I should do in Step Two...
Step Two: Character Outline. Ah-ha. This gives me four questions to create a character outline. Groovy.
- Is the character human? There's an implied "and to what degree?" here, since a lot of the Authority were at least somewhat human at one point. I think I want my character to be human, and to be a pretty normal fellow - grew up in a medium-sized USA city, has seen all the craziness of alien invasions, but it never quite got as far as him, and then one day, superpowers.
- What are the character's strengths? I want scary mental powers. Basically my character has an extreme form of biokinesis, and is able to activate neurons in other living things' bodies. That means he can shut off pain in other people or force their bodies to heal quickly, sure, but it also means he can have their bodies do things like stroke out or respond with uncontrollable fear, to say nothing of just tickling the pain center of the brain and sending them to the ground.
- What are the character's weaknesses? I think that for all my character's power, he's mortal. Sure, he can affect his own brain (it's made of meat just like anyone else's), meaning he can boost his body, but he's not immune from the injury that might cause. Likewise, he can't affect non-living things, so robots are out, and aliens aren't impossible but they're more difficult because they have different biology.
- What helps define the character? My character has a relationship with life that's hard to nail down. What's "life?" What makes a thing "alive?" As far as his powers are concerned, it's about what a given thing is made of and in what configuration. To him, living things are machines that respond in certain ways if you flip certain switches. Now, add to that his pretty Rockwellian, middle-class upbringing. He's not a bad guy, but he's not terribly cultured, either, meaning he's pretty sheltered and kind of naive. Point him at a "bad guy," he can paralyze the dude with a thought, but he hasn't really thought through the lofty moral implications of what he can do. More specifically, he's in his 20s, recent college grad (communications degree, considering grad school but he didn't know for what), and then woke up one morning with these amazing powers.
Step Four: Character Attributes. And here's where it gets screwy.
This system lets you customize the powers all to hell, which is awesome if you're patient and somewhat mathy. I'm generally neither, but I have an idea of what I want to do and I'm not totally ignorant of how this system works, so let's start by noting the ones I think I'd like:
Animal Control (they're alive!)
Contamination (I need to check this, but maybe)
Divine Relationship (you're dumb if you don't!)
Dynamic Powers (ergh. I don't really want to do this, but it might be the simplest way)
Enhanced Stat (to boost Body)
Healing
Heightened Awareness
Heightened Senses
Highly Skilled (almost certainly)
Illusion (if I can make you see shit, that makes sense)
Mind Control
Nullify
Plant Control (they're alive, after all)
Regeneration
Sensory Block
Special Attack
Fuuuuck, that's a lot. I have a bunch of points, though. Sigh. Let me look at Dynamic Powers. Yep, that's gonna be the smartest way to do this. OK, so power over Life is obviously a primal or universal concept (it's even listed there), meaning it's 20 points per level. I need to buy PMVs, too, which define things like range and area.
OK, so starting there, I want Area 5 (1km), Duration 5 (1 hour), Range 5 (100km), and Targets 5 (100 people). That's 20 right there, meaning I'm down to 182 points. I've still got plenty. I'll take 8 levels of Dynamic Powers, costing me 160 points. Aha, but how do limitations work? Oh, those are Defects, that comes later.
So, that means I have 8 levels of Attributes that I can mess with when it comes time to use my powers, so I can flux them into any of those powers above. Cool. I'll take Divine Relationship separately at 5, and Highly Skilled at 10. Those cost me 15 points. I've spent all but 7 points. I'll hold onto them and move on to the next step.
Step Five: Select Skills. I have 130 Skill Points to throw around, plus more if I decide I need them. I figure that my guy is good with physical skills, since he can create the neural pathways in his own brain instantly. To wit:
Acrobatics 3 (18 points)
Biological Sciences 2 (8 points)
Climbing 4 (8 points)
Controlled Breathing 5 (5 points)
Driving 3 (12 points)
Medical 3 (9 points)
Power Usage 2 (16 points)
Powerlifting 4 (4 points)
Sleight of Hand 3 (9 points)
Sports 5 (5 points)
Stealth 3 (9 points)
Swimming 5 (5 points)
Archery 3 (21 points)
Gun Combat 3 (24 points)
Melee Attack 3 (21 points)
Melee Defense 3 (21 points)
Ranged Defense 3 (36 points)
Thrown Weapons 4 (32 points)
Unarmed Attack 4 (32 points)
Unarmed Defense 4 (32 points)
Holy shit. Let's tally that up! 327. LOL. Little more than I had budgeted. Well, fuck it, I haven't taken Defects yet. I'd need 30 points of Highly Skilled to make this work (which gives me 330 Skill Points, less the 30 I get for free; that actually gives me 3 more because it needs to be an even number so I'll take another level of Stealth, I guess). I had 7 points in reserved, so that gives me 17 Highly Skilled, so I need 13 more, so I need 13 points of Defects. No problem.
Step Six: Character Defects. Yup. OK, first off, I know my Dynamic Powers has limits, so let's try and figure that out.
Well, shit. Because of what Dynamic Powers is (control over a specific aspect of the world), the restriction I was thinking of doesn't really apply. That said, if I can come up with even a 1-point Reduction, I save myself 8 points. Eh, looking at it, Reduction doesn't really work for me.
So let's start with Backlash. I'll take 3 points; if I blow a Dynamic Powers roll even by 1, I take Backlash - my neurons go haywire, and I'd leave that craziness to the GM. I'll also take Concentration 3. My character is Skilled enough to be useful even when not using his power, but when he is using it, he has to focus on it completely. Considering that "using this power" can mind control 100 people at once, that's fine.
I need 7 more points. Hmm. I'll take Not So Tough, reducing my Health by 30 (reflecting that perhaps my powers take a toll on the character's body). 4 more. I'll drop Divine Relationship to 4, so I just need three. Oh, hang on, I wanted to take something that reflected that aliens are harder to affect. Hmm. OK, I'll call that a Restriction - he takes a penalty to affect any non-human life form, penalty increasing based on how unfamiliar he is with it. Give him a day or two to study a thing, that penalty can go away, but in the midst of a fight he'll be less effective at first.
Awesome, that's me at 250 points, then.
Step 7: Derived Values. At the end, where they belong. Attack Combat Value is 9, defense Combat Value is 7, Health is 60 (because of my Defect), Shock is 12, Energy we'll skip.
Step 8: Background Points. This is basically just "finish everything up," so OK, let's do.
Ken Cook has just graduated from college with a degree in communications when he realized he could control the neurons of any living thing around him. Terrified at first, he rather clumsily tried to use the power to fight crime and wound up getting his ass beat a lot before realizing that he had to train himself up first. Fortunately that didn't take long, as performing a physical feat for him is more a matter of figuring out how and then blazing the neural pathways than actually training.
Ken hasn't really made a splash yet, but I think his first appearance in the comic would be quelling a riot or doing something else really grandiose and getting recruited by the Authority. Ken has barely scratched the surface of what his powers can do, and he's already starting to lose touch with how living things differ from machines (he and the Engineer would make an interesting pair together).
He hasn't settled on a superhero alias yet, but so far he likes the sound of Synapse. Likewise, no uniform yet - street clothes, hiking boots, doesn't bother with a mask because he can prevent people from recognizing his face anyway.
That'll do it!
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