Category: Worlds in Peril: Character Builds

There was a request by Stacie Winters to see the character builds that my players put together for our “The Outsiders” campaign. So, here they are as they current stand: you’ll notice their bonds and power profiles don’t conform to starting characters, but that’s because we’ve been playing for a couple weeks. Most recently, Sprite and Scope were caught on the news (accidentally) destroying public property and (politely) facing down the cops, so they’ve each got -1 bond with the people of Windy City. Whoops!

For context: the premise of our game follows the four remaining members of the short-lived team “The Outsiders.” They were a party of 6 socially conscious college students who made plans to come together and put their powers to use bringing down woefully corrupt and completely untouchable billionaire industrialist Benjamin Nero. But, they screwed up – they didn’t get Nero – their team leader was killed – they left another team member for dead – and in a world where super heroics are federally regulated, these well-intentioned vigilantes are now on the run.

———

Secret ID: Aksels Balodis

CODENAME: Codec

LOOK/OUTLOOK: Twitchy, Baltic, messy hair, dark rings under eyes

COSTUME: short coat with hood sewn into the collar, bandana over lower half of my face, compression-style pants

MANEUVER: 1

INVESTIGATE: 2

PROTECT: 0

INFLUENCE: 1

SMASH: -1

ORIGIN: What I Carry

Working Toward: Redeeming Myself (Your actions, or an outside force, destroys a Bond you hold dear and you blame yourself for it.)

NEMESIS: Agent Steel

POWER SUMMARY: Can tune into/broadcast over different frequencies: Radio, electronic, mental, otherworldly, deathly

SIMPLE

Listen in on a local frequency; Pull information from a wireless device.

DIFFICULT

Broadcast into a local frequency; Collapse a signal by projecting its inverse.

BORDERLINE

Overload someone’s mind with psychic static (“mind blast”).

POSSIBLE: Convert one type of frequency into another.

IMPOSSIBLE: Broadcast a signal over the entire globe.

LIMITATIONS: Headaches around strong electrical pulses; Often distracted; Paranoiac tendencies. Occasionally Difficult.

BONDS (Threshold: 9)

CITY 0

LAW 0

Sprite 2 (Understand each other)

Coyote 3 (Good friend)

Scope 2 (Complementary)

Windy City U. 2 (Social butterfly)

Origin: What I Carry

Whatever you’ve got, everybody else wants it. Whether you did it to yourself or had it done to you, whatever gave you your powers is something that can, or at least could be theoretically, replicated again. There are a number of agencies, organizations or people after you so they can do just that.

✎ The thing I’ve got that everybody else wants is the psy-crystals embedded in my body — in my wrists and at the base of my neck.

✎ To the best of my knowledge, the people that want it are the Institute for Psychic Research, Utopia Now, and a vague-yet-menacing government agency.

“I’m Aksels Balodis, aka Codec. I’m the first generation son of Latvian immigrants. Because of this, I tend to be a bit oversensitive about fitting in and trying to act ‘American,’ whatever that might mean. Fortunately, I’ve got other things to worry about nowadays. About a year ago, while scouting out a location for a film project, I came across these weird, ochre-gray crystals. I picked them up to figure out what they were, and they just started burrowing into my skin. And as horrifying as that was, soon after I started hearing things. At first I thought I was going crazy, but with some practice and research I figured out how to hone my new psychic power to listen in over the various frequencies surrounding us: I can hear the radio, phone conversations, people’s thoughts, ghosts… It’s a noisy world, turns out.”

“I worry though. One of the reasons I’m so twitchy is because I’m pretty sure I’m being stalked or something. Because of some indiscretions when I was first figuring out my powers, there are several groups who know about me and are interested in these psychic crystals. The Institute for Psychic Research, for one. They’re mainly scientists who are trying to figure out how all this superpower nonsense fits in with physics and the like. There’s also a weird tech startup called Utopia Now. They’ve built some useful machines, but their beliefs are kind of odd–they legitimately think cryptocurrency is the way of the future, for instance.”

“Besides all that though, I’m working right now on trying to redeem myself, in my own eyes and also in the eyes of my teammates. Especially Santiago. I feel like if I had tried harder to get through to Jason, he’d still be alive. I don’t know why he suddenly cut off communication. Sometimes I listen in to the voices of the dead, but I’ve yet to hear his.”

————-

Secret ID: Katerina Tuvi

CODENAME: Sprite

LOOK/OUTLOOK: Blonde, curvy, timid, green eyes, trying to keep it all together

COSTUME: red skirted costume with a low-cut top and high collar, red boots, and red domino mask accented with blue pauldrons, a blue belt, blue wrist wraps, and blue crests on her boots.

MANEUVER: 1

INVESTIGATE: 2

PROTECT: 1

INFLUENCE: 0

SMASH: -1

ORIGIN: An Accident

Working Toward: Understanding (Your greatest failure and what allowed you to get past it comes up in play.)

NEMESIS: None… Yet

POWER SUMMARY: Manipulation of ambient electrical currents within herself and her general area

SIMPLE

Manipulate a taser-like electrical charge from the inside-out; Overclock my brain to run like a computer

DIFFICULT

Fly using ion wind; Drain electricity from a machine to charge up my powers

BORDERLINE

Create a charged shield that would reflect projectiles or blasts

POSSIBLE: Create an electromagnetic field around her to interfere with and manipulate electronics

IMPOSSIBLE: Creating a storm

LIMITATIONS: Cannot touch people/go swimming with people, Stutters, Must release electrical build up every 24-48 hours. Frequently Difficult.

BONDS (Threshold: 8)

CITY -1

LAW 0

Mom 2 (Always close)

Codec 2 (Understand Each other)

Scope 1 (Unnerved but wants to understand her)

Coyote 1 (Scares her and she’s uncertain about him)

Daniel 2 (BFF’s from middle school but have grown distant)

Dad 0 (He’s selfish and a user)

Officer Doug Drake 1 (Sprite saved him!)

ORIGIN: An Accident

Changes: You got your powers as a result of a mistake, freak accident or experiment on yourself you hadn’t seen coming. It was a traumatic experience and your memories of it are confusing and disorienting. Your powers might change or your body itself might change overtime as a result of the incident. Write down how the experiment changed you, how it still might change you in the future and who else was affected by it.

✎ The accident changed me when I was 16. My mother and I were hiking, and struck by a freak lightning bolt from a distant storm. My mother had some resulting nerve damage and muscle damage, but is mostly okay. After that, my brain kicked into overdrive and I graduated high school early. I entered college with a large scholarship, and now I’m a sophomore at 18. My electrical powers developed around a year afterward and have been getting slowly stronger. I became a superhero to cope with the sense of loss and confusion after the accident. My mother doesn’t hike anymore, and my father is usually stressed out because of work and personal life issues.

✎ The future effects on my body is still unknown but what could happen is, I could wear a constant aura of electricity; massively interfere with most technologies; drain electrical devices without conscious thought; develop speed powers as the charge builds; leave my body behind and become a being of electrical energy; or cook my body as I transition into an elemental state.

✎ An enemy I made because of the accident is unknown… For now

“I’m Katerina Tuvi, and I was in a freak accident that gave me the power to control electricity, including the bioelectricity in my brain to increase my intelligence. I’m of average height, curvaceous, with short-ish blonde hair and green eyes. I stutter when I speak because the electricity sometimes gets my brain going faster than my mouth can keep up. I’m shy outside of costume as Sprite, and have a hard time talking to people in general.”

“I’m upset about Jason’s death because I feel like if I had been a little smarter, I could have calculated the probability of that happening and at least we would have had some warning. But I also realize that’s a dumb thing to be guilty about, so I just end up with tons of guilt and nowhere for it to go.”

———-

Secret ID: Manuel Montoya

CODENAME: Coyote Kid

COSTUME: yellow and gray in geometric patterns, complete bare arms, a red sash belt, and a coyote mask that covers part of my face

MANEUVER: 0

INVESTIGATE: -1

PROTECT: 1

INFLUENCE: 1

SMASH: 2

ORIGIN: The Monster Within

Working Toward: Proving Myself (Another character goes out on a limb for you, knowing all the while they’ll suffer fallout because of it.)

NEMESIS: Owl (cannibal/killer spirit inhabiting a man’s body)

POWER SUMMARY: Can take on the attributes, skills, and appearance of a coyote thanks to a jerk god in my head.

SIMPLE

Changing into a coyote of various sizes, wreath my tail in flames

DIFFICULT

Using enhanced senses of smell and hearing or claws/teeth while remaining human-looking

BORDERLINE

Expand and compact earth and stone

POSSIBLE: Going full godbeast (running a loop around the world and raising mountains, taking out the organs of other creatures without immediately killing them, myth stuff)

IMPOSSIBLE: Interact with the spirit world – physically, speech, et al

LIMITATIONS: God Coyote has a Mind of His Own, and It’s A Really Stupid Mind. Occasionally Difficult.

BONDS (Threshold: 9)

CITY 0

LAW 0

Codec 3 (we have each other’s back)

Scope 2 (comfortable speaking up)

Sprite 1 (I don’t have a problem, she has a problem)

Grandpa Montoya 2 (always knows just what to say)

Girlfriend 1 (strained romance)

ORIGIN: The Beast Inside

Trigger: You have a beast living inside of you that takes over whenever an emotional state is triggered. Define what triggers your beast taking over and how you change when your beast takes over. Your beast also has goals that do not match your own and when your beast is unleashed, they pursue those goals until the conditions or state that unleashed your beast are done away with.

✎ My beast takes over when I am hopeless, afraid.

✎ The goals or instincts of my beast are to engage in hedonism at the cost of anything and everything; petty vengeance, sexual excess; casual willingness to kill; incredible gluttony.

“I’m Manuel Montoya, and I am the unlucky inheritor of an ancient feud between Coyote and Owl. I’m tall but angular, on the lightweight wrestling team, with short, thick hair and brown, open eyes.”

“Coyote takes over when I’m afraid. Recently, the things that have made me most afraid are the Owl attack and the incident with Jason.”

———–

Secret ID: Sang-mi Kim

CODENAME: Scope

COSTUME: Black body suit from head to toe with openings for her eyes and her hair to spill out, red pacing up and down the arms and red flexible material running up and down the sides, a silver belt of chakrams/discs/the like

MANEUVER: 2

INVESTIGATE: -1

PROTECT: 0

INFLUENCE: 1

SMASH: 1

ORIGIN: A Freak

Working Toward: Starting Anew (build, discover, or occupy a new location worth fighting for.)

NEMESIS: None… Yet.

POWER SUMMARY: Superhuman visual acuity and associated mental processing – telescopic, microscopic, spatial reasoning, etc

SIMPLE

perfect recognition of visual tells, disabling a team of trained fighters whose moves I can observe, strike a human-sized target out of arm’s reach that I can make out distinctly

DIFFICULT

seeing with perfect 20/20 clarity out to a distance of 10 miles/on the level of microbes, strike a human-sized target out of arm’s reach who could hear me if I shouted, react faster than a speeding bullet

BORDERLINE

seeing with perfect 20/20 clarity out to a distance of 100 miles/on the level of atoms

POSSIBLE: seeing on other frequencies

IMPOSSIBLE: seeing subatomically/out of the solar system

LIMITATIONS: Intimately aware of every lie and half truth aimed at her; Strongly distrustful of others; Germ phobia. Almost Impossible to fit in.

ADVANTAGES: a collection of throwing discs, chakrams, etc of various sizes and weights

BONDS (Threshold: 6)

CITY -1

LAW 0

Coyote 2 (Trustworthy)

Codec 1 (Feeling transparent is unnerving… but not bad?)

Sprite 1 (I like her but she’s frustrating)

Nick Nulty 2 (personal trainer, confidante, make him proud)

ORIGIN: A Freak

Feared: People hate and fear that which they don’t understand and, unfortunately for you, you fall into that category. People know you are different just by looking at you, write down what makes you noticeably different from others that produces a negative reaction most places you go so it affects your everyday, mundane life.

✎ I am feared and feel like I don’t belong because I pre-empt the actions and speech of the people around me and dissect their lies, while radiating weirdness in my every action.

✎ My everyday, mundane life consists of isolation, judgment, and petty reprisals for imagined social transgressions.

“I’m Sang-mi Kim, and I was born with the ability to see incredible distances and discern movement on an impossibly close scale. It’s a secret that’s held me apart from people my entire life – from classmates who can’t understand how I know so much about them, to my own family. I’ve grown up seeing them try to hide how frightened they are by what I can do.”

“I’m a little taller than average, with long, dark hair. I avoid direct eye contact with people I don’t know – my eyes are light brown, but the way they move is strange and unsettling. I train in boxing with an ex-almost-champion who treats my abilities like an asset instead of a curse.”

“I’ve been more closed off since the accident. It’s not that I blame myself, exactly – I just don’t know how I failed to prevent it, when I should have seen it coming.”