CHARACTER CREATION CHALLENGE 2023: Marvel Superheroes (5 of 6)

THE GAME: Marvel Superheroes Revised Basic (1991)

The forgotten lab in the subfloor of a University of Texas building is ersatz headquarters to a team of newby superheroes calling themselves the Hill Country Heroes, so far three of them have made their own powers through science, and a fourth was born with them as a mutant. Two more heroes remain to be revealed.

Marvel Superheroes Character Generation

1. Get an Origin

2. Generate Major Abilities

3. Generate Variable Abilities

4. Generate Powers & Talents

5. Fill in the Blanks

Step 1: Get an Origin

Origin time. 08- Altered Human. Like Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four. This could be cool. As an Altered Human, this hero can raise one of their Abilities one rank.

Step 2: Generate Major Abilities

So, let’s see how our Altered Human turned out after their “event”:

• Fighting: 43, Excellent. Rank number 20.

• Agility: 40, Good. Rank number 10.

• Strength: 87, Incredible. Rank number 40.

• Endurance: 87, Incredible. Rank number 40.

• Reason: 02, Feeble. Rank number 2. Unfortunate. Ugh.

• Intuition: 89, Incredible. Rank number 40. Bumped up to Amazing (50) due to Altered Human.

• Psyche: 66. Remarkable. Rank number 30.

So what do we do with these numbers? The Feeble Reason is certainly troublesome, but it’s backed up by Incredible Intuition and Remarkable Psyche. With an Incredible Strength, the hero can routinely lift up to 10 tons, backed up by Incredible Endurance, Good Agility, and Excellent Fighting. So what if the reason this character’s Reason is so low is that they were exposed to a flawed super-soldier experiment that buffed them up, increased their instinctual faculties, but clouded their reason. This could be cool. So let’s leave Reason alone, and bump up Intuition to Amazing.

Step 3: Generate Variable Abilities

• Health: Equals the rank numbers of F, A, S, and E totalled. In this case 110.

• Karma: Equals the rank numbers of R, I, and P totalled. In this case 82.

• Resources: Rolled a 88. Incredible. Interesting twist, our Altered Human is quite wealthy.

• Popularity: Let’s do something different. This character is publicly known. No secret identity. Popularity is Good (10)

Step 4: Powers and Talents

Powers

65, so, four powers came with the alterations.

• 10, Sensory Patterns. Energy Detection.

• 11, Movement Powers. Swimming.

• 04, Resistances. Resistance to Electricity.

• 51, Body Control Powers. Animal Transformation - Self.

Talents

We get a 65 for number of talents, 3. What are they? History, Mechanics, and Journalism.

OK, so, see if you follow me. With a Reason of Feeble, History, Mechanics and Journalism wouldn’t be all that useful- but one of the powers rolled was Animal Transformation-Self. What if this character has two forms - normal college student with lower physical stats but higher Reason, and then an animalistic form where the physical attributes jump up and the Reason plummets to Feeble.

Step 5: Fill in the Blanks

1. What is your hero’s heroic name? FNG gives us “The Dapper Shade.” OK, I’m willing to admit on this character that the superhero names are not optimal, especially when you get the idea for a themed character. So, we have a character who has body transformation animal, lots of Intuition but little Reason when in hero mode, and Swimming. So, the animal form is probably an animal that is adept in the water. The text of the animal transformation power says the character keeps their own mental attributes, but for flavor’s sake let’s fudge it. The animal list in the Campaign Book only has eight animals in it… Hmmm. Hey! We’ve all seen those images of how terrifying a Tiger looks underwater? What if we applied that to a Dire Wolf, and named the character “Seawolf”? So, the character can transform from human to wolf form, and the wolf form has an uncanny adaptation to the water. So, we go with Seawolf. Which is my favorite arcade cabinet of the mid-70s.

2. How old are they? Seawolf is 24 and a grad student in the Journalism department.

3. Does the hero have a secret identity? How do they keep it secret? Virginia “Ginnie” Jerome enlisted in the U.S. Navy to get her GI Bill and pay for college. She had aspirations of becoming a great investigative journalist, and managed to become a Journalist Third Class during her four-year hitch. (Yes, I know the JO rating went away, but in my head this game is a period piece in the 80s.) While investigating a very secretive research project being carried out at the naval base where she was stationed, she blundered into an experiment that exposed her to a tailored dose of DNA-altering radiation and woke up days later in the base hospital. Unbeknownst to her, the base doctor was in on the project, and hid her exposure to the radiation from the rest of the Navy, in the hopes of seeing what would occur if she was spared the mental conditioning that the Navy planned on pairing with the physical enhancement. Ginnie mustered out of the Navy and started college in Austin, having no idea of what she was carrying inside herself. One day, when she was covering a campus protest, she observed a violent confrontation and instinctually transformed into her Seawolf form and interposed herself between the students and their attackers. The entire event was all over the news, as there had been plenty of camera on campus at the time. Her life changed overnight, and the Navy remained silent so as not to give away their research project. Unexpectedly, Ginnie found herself something of a celebrity figure and local heroine, since her first public appearance as Seawolf had clearly been defending the protesting students. She is uncomfortable with all the attention, but doesn’t see any way out of it. She is also afraid that the overwhelming power of instinct and emotion in her Seawolf form will completely subsume logic and reason when she is transformed.

4. How do they earn a living? Ginnie freelances as a local journalist, which used to be a losing proposition, but now that she’s publicly a hero she has gotten a number of writing jobs and even a couple of advertising gigs.

5. Where do they live? Ginnie lives at Kinsolving Dorm near UT Campus.

6. What is their personality like? Before the accident, Ginnie was quietly confident, and focused on presenting herself as a professional in order to get into civilian journalism and be taken seriously. After the radiation blast, her instincts and emotions run much closer to the surface, causing her to overcompensate to maintain a rigid sort of self-control that she only lets down when it’s just her and her fellow Hill Country Heroes. She is afraid of and frustrated by her Seawolf persona, letting the instincts take over.

7. Do they have any hobbies or pastimes? Ginnie is into history. She reads a lot, and watches documentaries. After meeting the rest of the HCH, she’s taken to playing tabletop games with them, but keeps agitating for more history and less fantasy.

8. What does the hero’s costume look like? In her first public appearance, her civilian clothing was shredded by her transformation into Seawolf, luckily her instinct was to run away before she transformed back. Later, the Hill Country Heroes created some garments for her that would stretch and conform to either her Seawolf form, or her hybrid “werewolf” form halfway between human and wolf mode, allowing her to resume human form with her modesty intact. These garments are usually a light gray color to match the fur that covers her in her transformed state.

9. Where did the hero get their powers? Ginnie’s powers are courtesy of a secret research project on behalf of the US Navy - but the Navy will never admit it.