Character Creation: Longshot City

Can never have too many supers RPGs.

The Game: Longshot City
The Publisher: Melsonian Arts Council
Degree of Familiarity: None yet, but I'ma give it a whirl soon
Books Required: Just the one (it's based on Troika! but doesn't require it)

I've said before, many times, that supers RPGs really need some kind of gimmick or sub-genre to help them stand out, be it a unique system (With Great Power...) or a focus on a particular type of comic (Cold Steel Wardens) or some other parameter that gives players a stronghold handhold than "supers" (Masks). Longshot City's gimmick, if you want to call it that, is a recognition that supers stories are by definition genre-hopping madness and leans into it. 

As with other Troika! derivatives I've read, this one has a great big list of archetypes that one chooses by rolling a d66. The system looks a pretty simple 2d6 + whatever sort of affair, except that you want to roll low in some instances and high in others, which I don't love, but I think my players will be able to handle it for a one-shot. Let's make a hero! After lunch.

OK, it's after lunch now.

Step One, Roll Stats. 1d6+3 for Skill (8), 2d6+12 for Stamina (21), 1d6+6 for Luck (12, rolling great today). 

Step Two: Determine Archetype. Roll a d66 and check the table, but I can interpret the dice in either order. A 2 and a 1, so either 12 (Elastinmorph) or 21 (Elemental). Well, having already done a stretchy hero (The Malleable Man, for Prowlers & Paragons), I shall go with the latter. This gives me Non-Mundane as my Origin (which just indicates which table I roll on), and Advanced Skills Energy Blast, Elemental Form, Command Element, and Fly. When I use my Blast in Elemental Form, it only costs 1 Stamina instead of 3. Neat! I must now roll for my Elemental Form: 1, Weather. My Elemental Blast does electrical damage (a la Storm). Neat! 

Step Three: Origin! Same drill, roll d66, only this time I don't think I can reverse the dice (but I'll look).

Oh, OK, so the Archetype doesn't necessarily determine which table my Origin can come from; some of them say "Any." In my case, it just means it has to come from not the Mundane table, which isn't a problem unless I roll a 2. Rolling...6 and 1, no sweat. That's either Trained by Monks or Time Capsule. Well, Time Capsule doesn't really ring true for a weather controller, so I guess I was trained by monks! That gives me the Skill: +2 Secret Signs - Enlightenment, and Wealth 0 (which is actually the better of the two options). 

Step Four: Personalize! Well, the obvious choice is to do a Kamar Taj/Kun Lun kind of thing and have my guy trained in some exotic location, but eh, I don't like being obvious. Instead, let's say that my character was trained by a monastic order originating in Venezuela, near Lake Maracaibo (look it up, it's pretty dope). One student in a generation develops the "heart of lightning"; the order resisted the conversion to Christianity that the rest of the Barí people underwent in the 60s, but wound up getting largely ostracized for it. My character came to Longshot City because the winds took him there (also part of the "heart of lightning" thing; the practice is to let the storms lead you where you need to go).

His real name is Elio Enriquez*, but to evildoers everywhere, he is called - the Heart of Lightning! Elio is a 20 something Barí man, dark skinned, black hair, brown eyes. When he calls on his elemental form, I think it's less that he changes into lighting and more than he gathers the storm around him - rain, clouds, lightning, and electricity coruscates over him, making notions like "clothes" mostly irrelevant. 

*He really should have a name in Barí, but the language is endangered and I couldn't find a list of names, so we'll assume that he has a name in his native language but goes by a Spanish name in the rest of the world.