I have two questions about the Janus:
1) Can the hero and civilian identities be two separate personalities, a la Bruce Banner and the Hulk?
2) With the appropriate powers, could I use Dangerous Web to set up chains of events like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NnyVc8r2SM
1) I guess so, as long as that difference doesn’t dissociate the character from the story.
2) Maybe?
1) I don’t feel like a BB/Hulk like character is good here. The Janus is about mixing both aspects of their life in ways that make the Janus’s life interesting. When the Superpersonality doesn’t care about their sister being in danger you lose a lot of punch. Also the Janus than doeosn’t fully have to make decisions between their two lives.
On the other hand the Janus has the bits of split self-image in itself.. “When I wear this Mask I feel so powerful. Like I can do something in this world and help people” etc. This is shown when you switch your Mundane with your Mask label.
A BB/Hulk like character probably has two completely different sets of labels, not a simple switch – so it wouldn’t work in that way as well.
2) Not sure. It doesn’t feel like a Trap to me. If you set up a room with stuff before they come in than yeah. This is running into the room and taking everyone out proactively. Not using a trap for them to walk into.
1) I personally think that’s a bad fit. The core of the Janus is struggling with their dual identity, balancing conflicting obligations and figuring out where the mask ends and they begin. They’re one character pulled in two different directions, living somewhere in the middle. They make choices about which life is more important in the moment. Having the two sides of their lives be lived by essentially two different people cuts out all the delicious grey areas and replaces them with easy answers: Bruce is the scientist, Hulk is the WMD in purple trousers, and never the twain shall meet.
Better fit, in my opinion? Nova. The other personality and the powers that come with them are a scary and overwhelming truth that absolutely derails your life, and you’re only barely in control except when you’re not at all in control.
Honest advice, though: Masks is about exploring your identity through the lens of your relationships with other people, and split personality stories are pretty much always about a strictly internal struggle where other people are incidental at best. I personally wouldn’t mix the two, for that reason.
2) That particular video looks more like a regular Directly Engage to me, since Quicksilver is actively hitting people instead of setting up traps for them to stumble into later. But on principle, sure, superspeed is a great explanation for having set up disaster dominos with that move.
1) I think with some brainstorming there’s probably a place for this kind of thing (though not to an extreme Hulk degree) but it would need to be handled with a lot of care. The Janus’ story hinges on being one person — regardless of current mindset — desperately trying to balance the mismatched parts of their lives and figure out who they really are in the process. The overlap between their heroic & mundane halves is what makes a character a Janus, and the clearer the distinction & separation between those two halves, the greater the risk that overlap won’t occur.
2) Whether or not you can use any move to do X is about meeting the criteria for activating the move and then following its effects. Using superspeed to set up & then “reveal a trap you’ve left for someone” moments later sounds plausible to me (if not it’d fall back to “reshaping your environment” anyway, and that’s always Plan B), but note that the best possible result you can get out of dangerous web is “an opening or opportunity against someone”. So you can set things up to put someone off-balance or leave them vulnerable, but this move won’t take down a villain or recreate the effects of a directly engage or defend or anything.
The Quicksilver scene could be a few different things — there’s some defending, some directly engaging, some environment reshaping, and given it’s an intricate, extended sequence of him being a badass and saving everyone + taking down the bad guys with no complications at all, it could even be a moment of truth. But it ain’t a dangerous web. 🙂
In some ways the Janus is all about having different personalities. They will appear different to other people, they might feel different about themselves, they might even use the mask as a token for thinking different. But in the end, it’s all a trick, even if they trick themselves.
That isn’t quite the case with the Hulk.
Literally every argument against BB/Hulk in this thread reads like why BB/Hulk is a great idea. Trying to stay separate, but not knowing where one begins and the other ends? Having to struggle with your commitments in both identities (like, say, knowing only The Other Guy can stop Abomination so someone better push you out of this helicopter)?
Nah, I think as long as your PC feels some kind of commitment to being their worse half (the way all the PCs feel committed to being supers, right? That’s an expectation for the game?) then a Hulk Janus would actually be pretty bomb.
Yeah, BB and Hulk are played by the same person, so it all comes down to roleplaying. Besides the distinction between Bruce and the big guy varies according to plot. In the MCU, they both dig Scarlett Johansen for example.
That Quicksilver scene really feels like a moment of truth to me.