City Bonds. Now imagine a supers-team like JLA, Stormwatch or The Authority not just linked to a city but an entire planet. Or an Intergalatic defenders such as Green Lanterns, Guardians of the galaxy, Infinity Guard or OMEGA Men. Would you change City Bond to “Location” Bond to represent the PC area of action?
City Bonds.
City Bonds.
It think I wouldn’t because the emotional impact would be less and less. Yes saving the planet is cool; but it is about saving the people you know, saving your home. That is your connection to the world. Those stories have more impact to me.
Are you saying that Green Lanterns don’t care about their sectors as much DD loves Hell’s Kitchen? (Mmm…I see your point, but dramatically speaking I think I must disagree).
Green lanterns usually care about earth or Oa. (Or star? City). The other stuff in the sector seldom comes up in the stuff I read.
Ok. It’s not about starting a flame about who cares what, but that in comics there are other locations supers care, besides (just) a city. Specially in teams aimed to protect large areas (be it planets, solar systems, galaxies, sectors, universes or dimensions). So I think, City Bonds could be reworded to mirror that.
Yeah, there wouldn’t be a problem changing it something else as long as the hero was also beholden to them in return and cared about how they thought of them. “Location” doesn’t imply responsibility, the people within, media, etc. The City represents so much more than a location. So as long as those things are taken into account, it would work, yes. But I think that can be addressed well enough with a text box somewhere rather than changing it to something generic.
I’ll be sure to make a note of it in the text though – The City and Law Enforcement could easily represent other equivalents, as long as the deeper meaning is taken into consideration.
What would be a nice an elegant solution.
To be honest I don’t see it as a problem that needs a solution. Almost all superheroes have a city they live in and have to deal with it (and all that entails) along with some form of law enforcement. If you want to map something else to it – for example, for Guardians of the Galaxy. I might change The City to “The Galaxy” (so that it represented a general perception of the galaxy on them) or, if it was a more local game, that particular planet (they are guarding the galaxy though). For Green Lantern I’d change The City to their sector proably but it might be a bit tricky if the only form of law enforcement there was the hero (I don’t read Green Lantern – any hero whose weakness is a primary color I have trouble getting behind).
How does burning a bond withthe galaxy work in the fiction?
The opinion of the Guardians in general would go down most likely. Becoming Outlaws/Outcasts/ other out words. If you name is “Guardians of the Galaxy” but you go around wreaking havoc, have your name slandered, etc. it would affect your Bond with it, just like with “The City”
That’s exactly what I wanted to say. Sometimes there are heroes not stuck to a city but have a wider area to protect. Being able to change City Bond to “Area” (whatever) Bond (considering everything in that area such as population, media, etc.) would let players expand the universe.
For instance, consider a game of Avengers-type group where their characters have different “responsibilities” or “area of action” that assemble together to fight a greater evil. Most of them could have a City bond but others could be more Planet bonded or maybe dimension bonded (Thor with Midgard?).
Mixing different Bonds also produce different characters and open up the scope (scale?) of the game adventure.
Yeah – well I mean you can put Bonds into anything you want. Thor can make a Bond with Midgaard while still having a Bond with the city – I mean he lives and fights to protect NYC right? If the game was only about Thor in Midgaard and what people thought of him didn’t matter, then yeah I’d say go for it. Change it up.
To be clear – I’m not saying “never change The City or Law Enforcement. I’m saying we’ll provide explanation for when and why you might want to do that in specific situations like you’re talking about. I agree with you 🙂
Tim Franzke consider for instance, Omega men. They are outcast of the ruling system (Law Bond negative) but struggle to protect the Vegan system (System Bond positive).
I don’t know what those words mean, I am sorry.
You could use the term Community and Peacekeepers for larger scale communities and peacekeeping organisations.
Its also fine for Worlds In Peril to focus on the “Heroes of your city” style teams in order to maintain a narrower focus.
A superheroes game (Especially a PBTA game) doesn’t need to tell every kind of superhero story out there. In fact, in trying to do so, you may weaken the system or bloat it into being an unwieldy, generic mess.
Extra +1