Earth 10: Heroes and Villains

There's a significant issue I need to tackle regarding the framing of the campaign: is it more Earth 1 or Earth 9?

To put that in English, one of the things people love about the Silver Age heroes (i.e. Earth 1) was the outpouring of creativity for the re-imagined characters. There really were no carry over villains for the 'new' heroes (Green Lantern, Hawkman, Flash, etc.) and limited ones for those that had been in continuous publication where the demarcation between 'worlds' was less clear. Everything was new and fresh and vibrant (and sometimes downright goofy) and those creations were the foundation of everything we have now. It would be great to have Earth 10 be full of as much of the same new ideas as I can muster.

One of the things people love about Earth 9 (and the DC Animated Universe, the Arrowverse, Smallville, and I suppose the DC Cinematic Universe if there is anyone who loves that) is that they re-imagine all of those ideas from Earth 1, as well as ideas from Earth 2, and mix and match them. It is an enormously fun sandbox to play in, and it's what people expect when you say you're playing in the DC Universe. The issues, to me at least, are that,

1) as proliferation of stuff in the Infinite New Final 52 Crises era is that wedding yourself to that can put walls around your sandbox.

2) as I said, it's been done well in a couple of different places. While I started this experiment as a "what would my DC Cinematic Universe look like" I want to make sure I'm not just retreading.

To do that I'm putting in some ground rules for myself (and to an extent my players): I'd like to present/develop a 6 character rogues gallery for each hero, and no more than 4 of those can come from existing continuity. For the team itself I'll follow a similar set of rules - one half of the villains I introduce have to be entirely new. The other half can come from either Earth 1 or Earth 2, but need to be re-imagined.

Earth 10: Skills

I want the skills to be pretty broadly defined, but in the main they work by replacing the acting, effect or resistance stat with a similar aspect of the skill. This means, theoretically, that skills also need three ratings; not sure on that. But the applications of skills are pretty simple – if you’re trying something that is covered by the skill, use the skill instead of your stat.

I went through a designed a new list focused on what the character is trying to do, rather than necessarily how they do it, with a several different information gathering skills to go along with the combat and action skills. 

New Name	Factor	used for
Acrobatics	5	You may replace your Dex with Acrobatics for climbing, or your Influence to impress people with a gymnastics routine. If you choose to dodge in combat you may replace your Dex with Acrobatics for defense. When taking damage from falls you may replace your Body with Acrobatics to resist being hurt.
Combat	5	Pick one combat technique (such as Unarmed, Medieval weapons, Asian weapons, Firearms, Archery, etc.); you may use your AP in the skill to replace Dex or Str (or the base weapon damage) or Body (indicating parrying, blocking & rolling with attacks to reduce damage) each round. You may also buy it more than once to have skill in more than one technique, or increase the factor (by 3) to replace 2 stats a round
Connive	5	This is skill with deceptive thievery - it covers picking pockets, slight of hand, disguise, impersonation, forgery, grifting and other techniques. You may replace your Dexterity with this skill for any slight of hand, replace Int/ Will for producing forgeries or faked documents, and Infl/Aura when trying to disguise or impersonate. This can also be rolled to find contacts in the fields you're skilled at.
Influence	7	This skill lets you change people's decisions or behavior through social interaction. Replace your Infl/Aura with the skill when trying to convince people to do something. This can be becauser you're heartfelt and earnest or scary as hell (Superman v. Batman) but the mechanics are the same. This should not be used to do a 'tell me everything' to replace the Interview skill.
Interview	5	This is the skill for gathering information from talking to people, and it replaces your Infl/Aura when you do so. It functions a lot like Investigate but for people rather than things. It's not just getting people to talk but getting them to say things they don't realize they know, remember things they had thought were irrlevant, to expland upon their prior statements, and apply their own expertise to the questions at hand.
Intrusion	5	This is the ability to move about undetected and enter places despite security systems. You may replace your Dexterity with Intrusion when trying to avoid being spotted (normally this is Dex/Dex roll against potential observers Int/Will). You can replace your Int and Will with Intrusion as needed to spot and circumvent locks, traps and security systems. You can use Thief in place for Dex/Str to fit through tight places or escape binding.
Invention	8	This skill lets you invent things that mirror super-powers (and heck, doesn't everything mirror super-powers if you look at it hard enough?) It comes in three flavors - Gadgeteer for technological devices, Enchanter for magical devices and Ritual for ritual magic spells (which don't need a device but do need time). They let you replace you Int/Will or Infl/Aura with Invention when doing that creation, or when exploring how devices operate, and it can also be rolled to find contacts. You can buy this more than once (magical types often do).
Investigate	5	This is the key skill for analyzing clues and drawing accurate conclusions. It has several different types (Forensics for police procedure, Science for a flavor of high tech review, Divination for a check of magical factors) which each need to be purchased separately - science should then be flavored a bit for your preferred science. You may replace your Int/Will (or Infl/Aura for Divination) with Investigate when trying to figure out what happened somewhere and how it relates to the crime/mystery - each type will have differing situational efficacy. This Skill can also be rolled to find contects in the fields you're skilled at.
Medicine	5	This skill lets you heal damage to another character, and comes in three types - Physical, Mental and Spiritual - indicating the difference between biology, psychology & philosophy. You start with just one, and each you add increases the Factor by 1. This covers short term 'field' medicine, medium term 'surgery' and long term recovery, as well as giving you contacts in the fields of medicine.
Profession	3	This skill lets you do a job; you get to pick the job - reporter, soldier, truck driver, florist, insurance adjuster, lawyer, whatever - and replace any stats needed with the Profession skill when you use it. What Profession can't do is overlap any of the other skills, so if you job is as a police detective you likely also need Investigate and Interview, but those are the breaks. You may also use this skill when trying to find contacts in your field.
Vehicles	3	You may replace your Dex with Vehicles for operating one vehicle type (land, sea, air, space, animal). You may replace your Int and Will (or Infl and Aura) with the skill when it comes to repairing and modifying (or healing and training) the vehicles. You may add additional vehicle types at a +1 Factor for each (having all 5 is Factor 8)

Earth 10: Rules Changes 1

The first change is flattening out the dice curve. In any interaction between characters the acting character has a Difficulty of receiving characters action stat (Dex/Int/Infl) +3. The test is a d6 added to the acting characters action stat, if they meet or exceed the Difficulty they have connected. This means between equally matched characters they will connect 66% of the time. It’s a little high, but there’s a reason for that.

If they rolled higher than their difficulty the Excess can be added to their Effect stat (Str/Will/Aura). Subtract from that the targets Resistance stat (Body/Mind/Spirit) and that tells you the Outcome. It is entirely possible that the outcome will be 0 or less. Most of the time Negative numbers don’t matter. If you end up with a positive Outcome you did something. If it’s a binary exchange, Yes/No question then any positive Outcome means the acting character succeeded. If it’s not, the target’s Resistance Pool (which starts equal to their Resistance Stat but can go up or down) drops by the Outcome, and if it drops to 0 or less the target can’t fight any more – they’ve been knocked out, been completely outmatched in the game of riddles or have totally conceded the argument. The Resistance stat stays constant when actually, ya’know, resisting.

This is why the chance to connect is higher than the normal 50% in a matched competition – because in an entirely matched competition it requires a superior roll to have any effect. If both opponents in a fistfight have 4 Dexterity, 4 Strength and 4 Body then an attack that connects with exactly what it needs will still do no damage (4 Strength – 4 Body = 0 Outcome). I’m entirely comfortable with that as a story element, especially with the super-hero ideas of carrier attacks, but in want to weight things towards an outcome because I want to privilege action over defense.

Second, characters do have Hero Points, and can spend 1 to temporarily boost any stat, power or skill by 3 points. Their Hero Point pool is based on how powerful they are in other ways – the more powerful your hero is, the fewer you have. It is also possible to have negative hero points, which the GM can spend to mess with your hero in various ways. This is why Superman always has additional complications in an Earth 1 Justice League adventure – he’s got a lot of negative hero points for the villains to burn. Those negative hero points can be bonuses to the opponents scores, but they’re more often plot devices to slow, distract or briefly incapacitate the hero.

The third area for changes are the scores and their meanings. Change the weight curve so it starts at 12.5 and not 50 lbs. Now normal humans have a Strength of 3 (lift up to 100 lbs without an extra effort roll) or 4 (200 lbs without a roll) and a maximum of 6 (800 without a roll). With viable scores from 2 to 6 we have a 5 point range for ‘human’ adventurers, the minimum I like to see. This is what I had for the Legion pastiche, because that setting wasn’t full of Batman costumed adventurer solo heroes. Here I need to push things a little further for attributes that are Strength or Body. Let’s see….
# Level Description
1 Child Uncoordinated, lift 25 lbs, very easily hurt.
Limited language and reasoning, easily confused.
Looses cool, quickly upset or overwhelmed.
2 Teenager Gangly, lift 50 lbs, easily hurt.
Not a lot of intellectual experience, can lose track of arguments.
Wears emotions on sleeve, easily manipulated
3 Typical Adult basic coordination, lift 100 lbs, basic defenses
High school education, work through problems to basic solutions
Can carry on persuasive discussions and resist temptations.
4 Good Adult Athletic, can use superior coordination and musculature to good effect, 200 lb lift.
Advanced education in arts/sciences, can apply broader knowledge to problems.
Charismatic, good listener, natural salesman or entertainer
5 Excellent Highly trained, 400 lb lift,
Post graduate education in arts and sciences plus broad reading and studying.
Highly charismatic, natural born star or politician
6 Remarkable In top physical training, Olympian. 800 lb lift.
Multiple post graduate degrees
Magnetic personality
Now we get into ‘Hell, this person is superhuman, or may as well be if we had a way to measure it’. To get to here you are sixteen times better than a normal person in what are pretty broad categories. In the areas we can measure (that is to say Physical ones) a 7 is at the very least borderline superhuman and for our purposes only exists for extreme levels of physical training. The definition of a 7 is ‘are you better than the Batman but still human?’, and you should only be so in one stat. I could broaden things past 7 for the mental stats being still high end human up to 9, but I don’t want to. I’d rather than a clear distinction and then let people buy up skills. Of course Lex Luthor is superhumanly smart. Kobra is superhumanly charismatic.

7 Borderline Super absolute top reflexes, lift up to 1600 lbs, almost impossible to hurt with a punch
multiple doctoral degrees across differing fields
Magnetic personality backed with training in diplomacy, elocution and psychology
8/9 Low Super Physically superhuman, lift 1.5-3 tons, bulletproof skin
Natural genius in multiple fields
endlessly charismatic, backed with supernatural power
10 Superhuman Aquaman level Physicality
11 Superhuman Wonder Woman level Spirituality
12 Superhuman Wonder Woman level Physicality
13 Superhuman Green Lantern level willpower, Zatanna level aura and spirit
17 Superhuman Superman level durability
18 Superhuman Superman level strength

Fourth up, skills. Skills are the key way to get past these limits. Skill ratings are as follows:
4 Casual interest
5 Serious hobby, just starting profession
6 Basic professional
7 Established professional
8 Noted professional
9 Renowned professional
10 Famed professional, top 500 in world
11 Top 100 in the world - if you’re selling yourself as an expert X you’re probably here.
12 Top 10 in the world
13 Best in world – If your whole shtick is being the best in the world, well, here’s your spot.
14 Best in world history
16 Best in galaxy
18 Best in galactic history

Earth 10: DC Heroes Revisited

I’ve discussed my affection for the innovative late 1980’s DC Heroes RPG using the Mayfair Exponential Game System (MEGS) before, but here’s a recap of this brilliant but flawed game engine.

The DC Heroes role playing game is a great example of how limitations spark innovation. Game designer Greg Gordon had to build a game engine that would handle Robin and a pre-Crisis Superman at the same time, and he had to build it using the 1980’s preconceptions of game design – strong GM narrative control, dice consulted for every discrete action, no narrative currency for players. Gordon was bound by tradition to develop a mechanic that put those two on the same scale.

So he did: each ‘point’ on the chart was worth twice as much as the one before it. Robin, with 3 Strength, could lift somewhere between 200 and 400 lbs. Superman, with 50 Strength, could lift up to 28 trillion tons. They would now fit on one big, 50 point chart!

But that’s not the cool part. The cool part is that he then applied this to everything else on one master table. Each point of distance was twice as much as the one before it. Ditto for time. And they all interacted. Want to know how far the silver age Superman can throw Mount Everest (weight 30)? He can throw it 50-30 = 20 points of distance, or close to 2000 miles. How fast can he fly? Add his 20 points of flight to the fact that 10 points of time is 1 hour and bang, he can fly 30 points of distance in an hour – four times light speed. It’s a remarkably versatile use of the initial solution, and it works. It worked better in the 2nd edition, when they were modeling what I’m calling Earth 9 heroes, who are all weaker than their earlier incarnations so the scale could shrink. (I’m mucking with the scale even more, so Superman’s Strength does from 50 to 25 to our score of 18, so I can run the scale from 1 to 20.)

The other cool bit is that physical stats are mirrored mentally and spiritually, so in addition to the usual Dexterity, Strength and Body there’s also Intelligence, Will and Mind and Influence, Aura and Spirit. The same logic applies to all three. When you try to persuade someone you’re using your Influence to connect with an argument them and the force of your personality (Aura) to wear down their Spirit. Essentially you’re punching their Charisma with your Charisma. It’s logical once you wrap your brain around it.

It’s nice in session design as well. Assume the PCs are investigating a mystery: It’s a test of Intelligence and Willpower against the difficulty of the puzzle to gather clues. It’s a test of Influence and Aura against people’s Influence and Spirit to question witnesses or suspects. Finally it’s a test of Dexterity and Strength against Dexterity and Body to punch the bad guy into submission. Very logical.

It also opens up intriguing possibilities: a high Influence, low Aura character is one everyone likes but has a hard time ‘closing the deal’, or it will take people a long time to buy in. His interaction attacks will ‘hit’ but unless he rolls really well his low Aura won’t overcome the target’s Spirit. The converse of a low Influence, high Aura character is one who seldom speaks meaningfully but their successful arguments end the discussion – their high Aura has so much oomph that it immediately batters down the opposing Spirit.

More interesting are the mental options: a high Intelligence, low Willpower character is one who quickly identifies problems but lacks the mental strength to push to the solution. Your average Green Lantern, on the other hand, can miss a problem for a while (average Intelligence) but when they identify it they solve it instantly with their massive Will seeing through to the solution. That sounds like a lot of classic Green Lantern plots, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately the rules for Powers and Skills, and how they worked with Stats, and the point costs of character design were mess, the reliance on two different tables for determining outcomes was clunky, the hero point economy was much, much too fluid and the dice mechanic had too much swing to it. Those are all things I can fix pretty easily by returning to base principles and applying some 21st century game mechanics.

Earth 10: 17 default heroes

Here are the 17 repeating heroes of the DC universe. Eventually all of these will turn up in the setting, but not all of them are members of the Justice Alliance of America, Earth 10’s answer to the JSA and JLA.

Of course players can also choose to play recreated versions of existing characters who are not repeaters, or entirely new characters. My ideal for the Justice Alliance is ½ repeaters, with no more than one entirely new character. It looks like we might have that as our structure. 

#	Name	Powers	Sidekick	Earth 2	Earth 1	Earth 9
1	Aquaman	Water Adaptation + Swim Speed, Speak with/Control Fish	Earth 1 & 9 have Aqualad	Son of a famous oceanographer who set up an air-filled residence in ruined Atlantis and raised his son via Atlantean principles to survive in that environment.	Son of an Atlantean princess and a lighthouse keeper, Arthur Curry eventually was made king of Atlantis when the old regent died.	Outcast-at-birth son of an Atlantean princess and an immortal sorcerer, Orin was raised as Arthur Curry by a lighthouse keeper but became king.
2	Atom, the	Small Size + High Strength/Shrinking + Density Control	No	A man of diminutive stature trained to channel all of the power in the human body, Al Pratt is as strong as the largest most powerful weightlifter while having the speed and grace of a smaller man.	Having mastered the physics of dwarf star material Ray Palmer has complete control of his size and density, and is able to shrink down to subatomic sizes or channel his full density into a single point.	Having mastered the physics of dwarf star material Ray Palmer has complete control of his size and density, and is able to shrink down to subatomic sizes or channel his full density into a single point.
3	Batman	Master Detective, Stealthy Fighter, Bat-Gadgets, Bat-Vehicles	Robin	Orphaned by the act of a random gunman Bruce Wayne dedicated himself to fighting crime, becoming an expert fighter, skilled detective and impressive scientist, outfitted with the advanced technology his fortune provides.	Orphaned by the act of a random gunman Bruce Wayne dedicated himself to fighting crime, becoming the world's greatest detective, a genius scientist and master of a thousand martial arts disciplines. He has invented advanced tech preparing him for any situation.	Orphaned by the act of a random gunman Bruce Wayne dedicated himself to cleaning up Gotham and eventually the world. He is one of the world's best martial artists, a master of stealth, and a genius strategist, tactician and scientist able to out-plan any foe.
4	Black Canary	Martial Artist, Sonic Attack	No	Dinah Drake is an accomplished karate fighter dating a police detective Larry Lance, who she helps on cases as the mysterious Black Canary	the widowed Earth 2 Black Canary, Dinah Lance traveled to Earth 1 to fight crime  - and gained the power of a Canary Cry when she did so.	Dinah Lance is the daughter of the WWII Black Canary and was trained by the Justice Society to use a mutant canary cry and skills to fight crime.
5	Flash, The	Super-Speed (includes mini-tornadoes, vibrating through objects and dimension travel), Chemistry/ Science Skills	Earth 1 & 9 have Kid Flash	Jay Garrick is a chemist exposed to hazardous chemicals, he gains super-speed and becomes a hero	Barry Allen is a police scientist struck by electrified chemicals, he gains super-speed and becomes a hero	Wally West, the Kid Flash to Barry Allen with the same origin, takes on the mantle when Barry dies in the Crisis. Jay Garrick WWII's Flash.
6	Green Arrow	Master Archer, Gimmick Arrows of any concept, Arrow-Vehicles.	Speedy	Oliver Queen is an expert on Native American culture he uses his archery skills, trick arrows and fortune to fight crime.	Oliver Queen is a millionaire industrialist lost at sea teaches himself archery and returns to fight for social justice, eventually losing his fortune.	As Earth 1, though he gives up trick arrows. Queen eventually dies and is replaced by his son, Connor
7	Green Lantern	Ring makes solid energy constructs in addition to other 'wished for' powers i.e. anything	No	Alan Scott finds a Magic Ring that makes solid energy constructs, plus other 'wished for' powers, which his lantern directs him to use for justice	same powers as Earth 2, but Hal Jordan's but ring is alien super science, not magic, and he works as a galactic police officer for the Guardians of Oa	2 is WWII era, 1 is contemporary era.
8	Guardian, The	Master Shield-fighter, Urban Adventurer, Group of skilled teen henchmen	No	Jim Harper is a police officer, Master Shield-fighter, Urban Adventurer, Group of skilled teen henchmen	Jim Harper is a police officer, Master Shield-fighter, Urban Adventurer, Group of skilled teen henchmen	2 is WWII era, 1 is clone of 2 in contemporary era and teens are now all adult super-scientists.
9	Hawkman	Anti-Gravity Wings, Archaic Weapon Skills, Speak with Birds, Reincarnation Memories/Alien tech	Hawkgirl	Carter Hall is a reincarnation of an Egyptian Pharoah with access to advanced tech and multiple skills.	Katar Hol is an alien police officer Same wings and skills as Hall, but with alien science rather than past knowledge	2 is WWII era, 1 is contemporary, two linked via alien tech and reincarnation.
10	Red Tornado	Wind Generation, Robot Body	No	Ma Hunkle is a large woman with strong combat skills who dresses as a man to fight crime	an Earth 2 android built to destroy the JSA, he travelled to earth one to use his wind powers as a member of the JLA	1 is WWII era, 1 is contemporary
11	Superman	Super Strength Invulnerability, Super Speed, Flight, Super Senses, Heat Vision + Super Breath, High Charisma	Power/ Super Girl (don't work together)	Rocketed to Earth, Kansas-raised Clark Kent became a defender of Truth, Justice and the American Way!	The last son of Krypton, Kal-El lives among humans, trying to guide them and protect their world with his alien powers.	An alien orphan with fantastic powers, Clark Kent struggles to bring the American way of truth and justice to the world.
12	Vigilante	Master at Western/Cowboy skills.	No	Greg Sanders was the son of a Wyoming Sherriff turned NC Radio "Prairie Troubadour" who took up the heroic mantle to avenge his dad.	Greg Saunders was the son of a Wyoming Sherriff turned NC Radio "Prairie Troubadour" who took up the heroic mantle to avenge his dad.	Greg Saunders took up the heroic mantle to avenge his dad, then fight in WWII, after which he was frozen in time for 60 years.
13	Wonder Woman	Super Strength, Combat skills, Invulnerable Bracelets, Magic Lasso, Flight/Invisible Jet	No	Princess Diana, is an Amazon champion who wins the right to return Steve Trevor – a US intelligence officer who had crashed on the Amazons' isolated island homeland – to "Man's World" and to fight crime and the Nazis.	As Earth 1, but receiving the blessing of each deity in her crib, Diana is destined to godlike power. She spends some years powerless, but fighting evil with charisma and martial arts skills, but regains her powers given time..	As others, but with Diana as an emissary and ambassador from Themyscira to Patriarch's World, charged with the mission of bringing peace to the outside world. (and no invisible jet  - she can fly)
14	Zatarra/ Zatanna	Potent Elemental Magic + Weaker General-Purpose Sorcery, Must Speak Spells Backwards	No	Zatarra is a Homo Magus who speaks his spells backwards and hides his power in plain sight as a stage magician even as he fights evil.	Zatanna is the daughter of the Earth 2 Zatarra who came to Earth 1 looking for her lost father - she has the same magic, cover career and foes as he did.	Zaratta was WWII era, Zatanna is contemporary; Zatarra died in the Crisis that formed Earth 9.