Aberrant RPG - Low Key Campaign

[Karpomatic]

As I'm reading a lot of material in gearing up for a new campaign I can't help but wonder, how would a low key game like the show "Heroes" work in the Aberrant universe? It may work in the begining but, I have the feeling it will get out of hand quick. Any thoughts?

[BlueNinja]

I think you'd have to, as GM, limit (or maybe even assign) various powers to people. Also, possibly impose a penalty (similar to paradox from oWoD Mage, perhaps?) for using powers in public manners that would expose the PCs.

[TeleForce]

Instead of assigning powers to the players (which could be construed by those players as 'unfair') why not just make it a 10 or 15 NP game?

[Robert J. Lambert]

Because then you can't make people like Hiro?

[Karpomatic]

Thats the problem. I don't want to limit the PCs to what they can do. Maybe if there is an underlying tension that if they're exposed, the Directive will come after them...

[TeleForce]

Originally Posted By: Robert J. Lambert

Because then you can't make people like Hiro?

Considering Time Travel requires a Q of somewhere between 8 and 10, you aren't going to be able to create Hiro with a starting 30 NP Nova either.

And 15 NP can get you Temporal Manipulation.

[Robert J. Lambert]

Only if you taint yourself Harshly.

Temp. Manipulation requieres Q 5.

You would also need Teleport, at the very least one dot.

So, assuming you use up all your freebies on Quantum, you still need to spend 6 NP (getting 3 Taint in total). After that, if you push it you can spend another 6 NP on Temp. Manipulation for 2 dots, tainted sensing you to Taint 5, and spend your last 3 NP on a single dot of Teleport.

Huh....I guess you CAN do it.

[Karpomatic]

Interesting points but, we're getting off topic.

[TeleForce]

Your right, Thread drift. Sorry.

If you really want to keep the game low key and low powered, try running storylines that force the characters to deal with things on a low key level. Make them deal, not only with the concequences of their powers (and their use/misuse of them), but also on the mundane elements of their lives.

(one last bit if Thread Drift...Hiro only really reqires 1 dot of Temporal Manip thus you can save 3 NP for something else and potentially avoid that 5th dot in taint)

[Josh Brickman]

RE: Maybe if there is an underlying tension that if they're exposed, the Directive will come after them...

Change the setting from abby to RL.

Say you have 15 nova points and no aberrations. You look really buff and nova-ish... but no one knows what that means so it doesn't matter. You *look* human.

15 nova points, if you go public in a RL setting, gets seriously bad things to happen to you. The Directive doesn't exist, but the other alphabet .gov agencies do and they will want you. Various groups will want you in the name of national security, personal profit, world domination, global terrorism, etc. You will quickly find out that you basically don't have civil rights. You will also find out that they can kidnapt your friends & family and get away with it.

A good source book for this is "Jumper" in which a guy finds out he's a teleport... and as near as he can tell he's the only one. A much older book in the same theme would be "The man from tomorrow" or something like that (telepath). Marvel's the New Universe (published in the 80's?) had some good books with this sort of thing, DP7, etc.

So make a temporal nova if you wish, but your lethal soak is still only 2 and everyone has guns. Heck, you could even have 30 nova points for this sort of thing, it's the setting that keeps everyone in the closet. Disintegration is almost useless, in RL if you kill someone, people notice.

And there's always the chance that the Directive already does exist, and they have ways to figure out who is a nova.

Starting Rules:

1) No aberrations.

2) The ST needs to consider very strongly whether he wants to allow resources and/or influence 5.

[Blue Thunder]

The most important thing is to just flat out *tell* your players what the theme of the game is and make sure they understand. If you're playing WoD for instance, you can expect to play a depressing, sad, dark, gritty, and/or dreary game. Those are some of the overall feelings of the setting. So if your game is one where the characters must hide their abilities while still fighting to protect the world...then let your players know exactly that before they even make their characters. Let them know, and then affirm your claims in-game by creating an overall feeling of paranoia and suspicion, where the characters are alone and cannot trust anyone, but also cannot give up hope, etc., etc., etc.

[Andrew Murphy]

I would suggest limiting people to a single powerif you really want to keep it like Heroes, right now only SYlar has mutiple powers and thats because he's figured out a way to steal them from others permanent like.

Limit the points to 15 as others have said and if somebody wants to make Hiro allow them to buy techniques from Temp Manip at as Lvl 2 powers with a lower Q minimum (4 maybe 3). Another safe bet would be to ban Taint and alter the power max rules to inflict bashing damage (reference Matt straining against teh Hatian's block and getting a bloody nose)

[Josh Brickman]

only SYlar has mutiple powers and thats because he's figured out a way to steal them from others permanent like.

That's more of a theme thing than anything else. He kills someone with TK, he gets the ability to buy TK powers.

What they are doing is "life isn't fair, some characters get more points than others." Hiro & Sylar are 30+ point novas, the others are less. The way it balances is Sylar is a grand villian that is supposed to fight groups of PCs. In abby Hiro would be a plot device and not a PC.

However if one really felt the need to create Hiro with Q5 and not Q8, he could probably be done with Temporal Manip, Teleport, and Precognition. The way Precognition would be used is to 'send' him into the future or past where he learns things and then comes back. His "visions" thus span multiple shows... and yes, I know that's a cop out.

[Jesse Custer]

Originally Posted By: Josh Brickman

However if one really felt the need to create Hiro with Q5 and not Q8, he could probably be done with Temporal Manip, Teleport, and Precognition. The way Precognition would be used is to 'send' him into the future or past where he learns things and then comes back. His "visions" thus span multiple shows... and yes, I know that's a cop out.

Not really, especially since it seems that Hiro can't change the past. So even though he's "in the past", there's no functional difference from "he's observing the past".

[Courier]

Where it becomes a cop out is he appears able to interact with the past/future. He can ask questions, read papers, maybe even get killed or brings things forward/back with him.