Nature of the Gift

More about my super hero RPG project, The Gift. Lets talk about the setting.

Like the rules, the setting has been designed to be playable, rather than try to encompass everything seen in the comics. The typical super hero setting is a ridiculous everything-goes mashup. I love the sort of weirdness that type of setting enables. But I like to work out how society would react to weird stuff. Ponder the consequences. So I decided to keep it simple.

All people with powers get them from the Gift. They are a bit like Marvel's mutants, but with a few little quirks.

All over the world, normal people are discovering they have the Gift. Maybe they are the next step in human evolution, maybe it's an effect of some unknown technology, or maybe it's just magic. Whatever it is, it defies all we know about how the world works. 

Who has the Gift? A random cross-section of people across the globe. The emergence of powered people is egalitarian in its randomness. This means no governmental super-soldiers, no billionaire self-made heroes, no inheritors of century-old legacies. The Gifted don’t owe their special status to any existing power structure. 

If you have the Gift, you're just like everyone else, most of the time, but this is only your human form. Your other form is very different. No one would mistake this version of you for your human form. In this form, you are like a god. 

There are Gifted who can lift a hundred tons, run at the speed of sound, read minds, walk though walls, or fly. No two are exactly the same, but there are some elements they all have in common. 

No one’s sure why people get the powers they do. It is suspected that your powers and appearance are determined by the your subconscious mind. That’s why most empowered people have a coherent theme to their powers. 

Your appearance while transformed can be anything. Most people become idealized versions of themselves, wearing an appropriate costume. Tights and capes are very common. The “union suit” is a classic, traditional look. Less traditionally, many look like historical or mythological characters. Some don’t even look human, being furry or scaled creatures. A very few don’t seem like living things at all, looking like a robot or a walking pile of rocks. 

 

Now I said I was trying to keep things simple, but I also said I liked to ponder consequences. Next time, I'll talk about some of those consequences, including the American Hero Society, and 70 years of alt history.