Playbook Spotlight: The Transformed
“You can remember what it was like, to look normal. To have skin. To not feel every eye turn to you once you stepped outside. To not hear the gasps and exclamations. You remember when you could look forward to a life of normal problems. When you weren’t labeled a monster every step of the way.
“Those were the days, huh.”
The Transformed used to look normal, maybe even unexceptional, but all that went away with some change. Maybe it was a mad science experiment, or a mutation, or live-saving cybernetics. Regardless of what it was, the Transformed is now very obviously not a regular human. They can’t hide their change, no matter how much they might want to. Many regular people see them as just a monster. Their struggle is all about that question: what are they now? Are they the monster that everybody sees them as? Are they the voice in their head, regardless of what their body looks like? Or are they some middle point between the two?
The Transformed is inspired by characters such as Cyborg (Teen Titans), Mettle (Avengers Academy), Beast (X-Men), and The Thing (Fantastic Four), among many others.
(Note: Brendan Conway is still ruminating on the playbook name for this one, but we’re going with Transformed for now.)
What about some who never looked quite human, like Nightcrawler or many other X-Men characters? Would they be Transformed or something else. I mean, Nightcrawler’s whole schtick is nothing like this, only his inhuman appearance. He’s more like the Beacon or X-Men: Evolution style… A little Deliquent.
One of the things I love about these playbooks is that characters aren’t limited by their powers/appearance. For Nightcrawler, you can play The Beacon and focus more on his personality, which is really the thing that makes him shine. And a character who appears somewhat normal could actually use The Transformed. Someone like X-23, even though she doesn’t look inhuman has a personality that makes it difficult for her to fit in and identify. Her teammates are just as put off by her monstrous past as they would be by a monstrous appearance.