Young Danger Girls in Love

I ran a role playing game once set in a superhero background, and I wanted a system more rough and ready than the role playing games then commercially available.

Such rough and ready systems rely on the moderator’s discretion more than might be wise for a commercial system, but my players trusted me to be fair. If offer this to any interested fan of the genre, merely to show one way of inventing quick but playable characters.

For some reason, all the players, male and female both, wanted to play females, and insisted on Spider-Men levels of soap opera romance in the play, so I built that into the rules.

It was meant to be more of a game of intrigue, conspiracies and puzzles, so the actual power level of the supers was less important than how clever they were at talking to the NPCs, and ferreting our clues.

The game started with the players having agreed to join a special teen investigation squad of the Justice League, run by The Question, with Batgirl and Booster Gold as his lieutenants.

(Booster Gold, in my background, is 25th Century the remote descendant of John Carter, Warlord of Barsoom. Batgirl was the granddaughter of Flash Gordon, who is not on Earth, but is still alive. Steve Rogers was the son of Anthony ‘Buck’ Rogers, who disappeared in a mine cave-in in the 1930s.)

The Question is a conspiracy theory buff who believes that, for example, the pyramids of Egypt were build by an alien race from a planet called Thanagar. He believes Superman is living in disguise in Metropolis, when everyone knows Superman lives in a fortress of solitude at the North Pole. He believes a worldwide criminal conspiracy with its origins in the fall of Atlantis, led by an immortal alchemists named Vandal Savage, is conspiring to take over the world. Ho ho. What a nutbag!

CHARACTER CREATION:  Character creation will be as simple as possible. You get to establish the following:

STEP 0: Pick a name, costume or look, and what power or powers you’d like to have.

STEP 1: Pick One Parent: one of your parents, father or mother, is a famous adventure hero. You get to pick. Do not worry about how old or young the parent is: we are working on comic book time here. John Carter, Warlord of Mars, fought in the Civil war, and he is still 35 years old. Indiana Jones fought in World War II, and he is still 35 years old, too. Nancy Drew is old enough to have a child if you want to be hers. There are time travelers, parallel dimensions, and evil clone-makers, so don’t worry about it.

Moderator gets to pick the other parent.

STEP 2:  Pick a foe: you did an act of major heroism that got you front-page above-the-fold news coverage. Knowingly or not, you defeated a villain or thwarted his plans. You get to pick the villain who is mad at you.

Moderator gets to pick who that villain’s best friend or mob boss is, who is also mad at you. Just keep in mind that strong villains like weak villains, so if you pick Sergeant Shultz as your archfoe, he is going to be Hitler’s nephew.

STEP 3:  Pick a Crush: you are in love with some one. It can be shallow puppy love or a deep and lasting devotion, but it has to be present at the start of the game. You can always switch later, or take a vow of celibacy.

STEP 4: Pick a Headache: Every hero has a headache. It can be a thing you need or a thing you fear or an NPC you must protect or a psychological limitation, but it has to be something that can give your friendly moderator a dramatic hook.

The moderator will assess the size of the headache. Big headaches show up infrequently; small headaches show up frequently.

STEP 5: Assign points to stats. You have 50 points to spend.

Strength is the ability to manipulate physical reality with your hands, and your ability to resist being manipulated your self: bending steel bars or having bullets bounce off your chest.

Wits is the ability to manipulate thoughts and symbols with your brain, and your ability to resist being manipulate by hypnosis, telepathy, and mental invasion: inventing a suit of armor or shrugging off a mental attack. Professor X cannot read the mind of Doctor Doom. Get used to it.

Power is the ability to manipulate physical reality with your brain. You think it, and something happens. Power is a measure of how powerful your superpower is. Powers are limited to one realm of phenomena: Iceman controls Ice, Magneto controls Magnetism, The Human Torch controls Flame, and so on.

Magic is the ability to manipulate mental reality with your body, by means of speaking words and making gestures. You recite the spell, you point your finger, something happens. Mental powers are treated as if they are magic, so that Professor X is considered an Adept, but he acts at the Alpha level of power.

In addition, you may spend points on:

Home — this means there is a special environment where you have a home field advantage. For 10 points you can survive and move easily in it, such as Namor’s ability to swim to any depth; for 20 points you can control some minor aspect of the environment, such as Aqualad’s ability to create walls or blasts of water to entrap or knockback foes; for 30 points you can control major aspects of the environment, such as Aquaman’s telepathic ability to summon and control every form of sea life on any planet; for 40 points that environment is your puppy, such as Neptune’s ability to cause tides and currents, storms and earthquakes at sea, or create horses. An environment can be the ocean, the underground, outerspace, another planet, a parallel dimension, the astral plane, or anything of that sort. The Moleman is a perfectly scary villain who spent his points on Home/Underground.

Fly — Fly costs 10 points (same as Home/Air).

Wealth & Influence—for 10 points, you can be as rich as J Jonah Jameson, Oliver Queen or Professor X, for 20 points, as rich as Bruce Wayne or Doctor Doom.

Minor Advantages—05 points.

• Enduring: no need to eat, sleep or breathe.
• Armored: Difficult to injure or rapid healing factor. One row shift up (some one with beta level power resists damage at alpha level; someone with Wondrous strength resists damage at Superhuman level)
• Stubborn: more resistant to mental attack than normal. (one row shift up. A normal resists like an adept)
• Warded: more resistant to magic than normal (one row shift up. A adept resists like a thaumaturge)
• Special Damage: your power and penetration of one attack is greater than normal (one row shift up. Wolverine, a mutant whose power is self-heal, buys claws that do as much damage as Cyclopes. Captain America, Athlete, can do as much damage as Iron Man with his shield).

Major Advantages—10 points.

• Eternal: Able to exist in any environment. Old age and weariness don’t happen to you.
• Invulnerable: Impossible to injure with normal weapons. Two row shifts up (some one with beta level power resists damage at omega level; someone with Olympic strength resists damage at Superhuman level)
• Sacrosanct: nigh impossible to affect with magic (two row shift up). You cannot be turned into a frog.
• Iron Will: nigh impossible to affect with hypnosis. Mind cannot be read (two row shifts up)
• Unearthly Damage: your power and penetration of one attack is much greater than normal. (Two row shifts up. Lex Luthor, of portly middle-aged guy, can do as much damage with his armored suit as superman.)

Delta Power: FREEBIES! These are powers too minor for the moderator to care about. They include photographic memory (Batgirl), the ability to translate any language (Lingo), a bump of direction (Oscar Gordon), or a knack for machinery (Forge). You can have one free of charge.

MAGIC: There are three ranks of magic— Adepts manipulate personal energy: hypnotism, telepathy, astral projection.  Thaumaturges manipulate the ambient mystical energy of the universe, ectoplasm: Mystic bolts or magical shields, or to perform acts of transmutation or telekinesis.  Theurgists are able to summon and command the energies of gods and godlike beings, Faltine, Satannish, the Vishanti, Agamotto, Ikonn, Oshtur, the Seraphim, and so on. Theurgist magicians can routinely travel to other dimensions, erase the memories of crowds, seal off mystical valleys from outsiders, banish evil spirits, create pocket dimensions, bless and curse.

COMBAT: Combat is resolved by a resistance roll of the attacking value against the defending value. In a straight-up fight, Superman can beat up Iron Man, but it takes him longer than it takes to beat up Bruce Wayne or Aunt May. There is really no chance of Iron Man defeating or escaping Superman, unless he does something clever or unexpected.

In combat, you may attempt to use your power or your wits or magic (if you have magic) rather than fisticuffs to settle matters: Merlin the Magician (who as a strength of Aunt May) and Superman (who has a magic of Renfrew) are evenly matched.

Using wits requires advanced warning, unless you are Batman. He can pull some sort of bat device from his utility belt. When Supergirl flies down and snatches Lex Luthor in the air and flies off with him, there is really not so much he can do.

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION— I am not willing to police your firewalls. Anything you know, your character knows. You may use OOC information with the moderator’s permission. You are from the future, or from a parallel dimension, or from the batcave, and where you are from, the knowledge is known. Everyone from the 20th century knows the Black Knight was Mordred, but it was secret at the time. Everyone form the 30th century knows Superman was Clark Kent, but it was secret at the time.

That’s enough to get started.

Examples:

Superman: str30, wits 0, pow 20, mag (+10) fly 10  Superhuman, Literate, Alpha (eye-rays) Renfrew. Extra: 10 Fly. (note that JLU supes needs a spacesuit to fly in space) Parent: Jor-El, super-scientist; Foe: Lex Luthor; Love Interest: Lois Lane; Headache: kryptonite.

Lex Luthor: str 0, wits 30 pow 0, mag 0 Extras: Delta power = technological intuition. Wealth = 20 (at this level he can run for president and fund Project Cadmus).

About John C Wright

John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.

May 12, 2025 @ 10:13 pm

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