October 31, 2014
Facility outside of Ely, Nevada
"I am Dr. Ian Deere Gott. I hope that introducing myself in this way produces a friendly, familiar atmosphere for us to work in. That being said, please refer to me as Dr. Gott, Dr. G, or the Doctor in the future. I am glad you have all accepted my offer to work under me.
"I imagine that none of you quite believed me when you first heard the offer. Working with superpowers? The ability to make people superhuman? Impossible. Yet, so is the idea of a superhero, and yet there are reports of them coming in slowly. There is even a few superhumans here in Ely. Overall, though, the United States has a few tens of thousands of superhumans, with the whole world having perhaps a hundred thousand. Why are so many in America? Why are ten percent of all American superhumans in Nevada, which has less than one percent of America's population?
"To understand, you must understand this: Very few of the superhumans are natural. Maybe half of them overall, less than half of American supers, a couple dozen Nevadans. The rest? They were made from the kind of stuff that has been making these guys superheroes, only concentrated carefully, with special preparations. I've found some of their methodologies, some of their notes. I don't know much, mind you, but what I know, I can tell you.
"First: The ingredients are many, and varied. Anthrapyrene, holly extract, radion. I have some samples of a few dozen or so ingredients; I'm seeing what I can get in the future. Second: The results were mostly consistent, although they varied with the subject, and sometimes they went horribly wrong. A few percent died outright. Third: These superpowers tend to be a bit stronger and stranger than natural ones, for whatever reason, although the variance in both is high enough that it might not mean anything. Fourth: Using multiple formulas on one person is possible but not recommended. It's less stable, and the end powers less impressive. Finally...the dangers are severe. Many of the formulas mess with your head. Often, they mess with your body. For instance..."
Dr. Gott presses a button. A door opens; a strange, horse-sized, pale beats lumbers out at you. It is tripedal, with two massive clawed hind legs and a foreleg around the thickness of a human arm but two or three times the length. Its torso seems squashed, leaving the creature less long than you might expect; its back has scaly ridges. Its hide is covered in white hair, with scales coming in around the waist and dominating the thick tail. Its head is ratlike, and full of small holes; you see an iridescent wormlike creature sticking out of one. The whole thing is covered with dull pink eyes and oddly-shaped scars.
"This is an extreme example, whom I have named Stormwolf."
"A better name than I got from them..."
"Now, now...in any case, I'd advise against testing your formulas on yourselves. In fact, I forbid it."
He pauses.
"I have my reasons for wanting superhumans. Someday, I'd like to sell powers to people if I can, once it's all figured out. Find volunteers, capture subjects, do whatever you must...I expect results in the form of superhumans and some kind of research notes, soon. Say...by the end of the month, submit some theories? And try to assemble a little team or something by then.
"Around this facility, we have a number of facilities. Aboveground, we have typical types of laboratories and storerooms. Underground, we have apartments for you, machinery for processing the formulae, reinforced chambers for testing formulae or powers, and holding cells for those creations too dangerous to let out of our sight. We also have medical facilities, a library, a dining hall, high-speed Internet, a rec room, the works. Just don't abuse my...hospitality.
"When your contracts are through, you may leave and will find your salary in your bank accounts. In the meantime, if you want to request various facilities, merely ask; of course, anything of great expense will require you to either requisition or justify it. Requisitioning usually requires you to give me something, a formula, a parahuman, whatever, before you can expect much. Justification...basically, explain why you need it, and if I believe it, you'll get it.
"That should be all you need to know. Get to work, and I expect results soon. Technical whatchamajiggers can be found in your offices, which are next to your bedrooms. Big map over there, smaller laminated ones in your rooms. Any questions? Good!"
You are scientists making superhumans. You want to get the favor of your boss more than the others do, as well as relaxing and whatever other goals you want. To do this, you can either build up useful notes for the creation of superhumans, as well as creating a number of superhumans, or you can try to sabotage the others and make them look worse. Or you can try something completely different--run wild, this is surprisingly freeform.
One thing you can't do, however, is take the formulas yourself. That could cause...problems.
Name: What did you introduce yourself to Dr. Gott as?
Gender: When you go to the bathroom, do you go to the one with the stick figure with a dress on or the one with the stick figure without a dress?
Appearance: What do you look like?
Personality: Can you describe what your thinkings are like?
Talents: What makes you special? Three points to be spent on the following:
-Burly (1): +1 on rolls related to physical force or toughness. Useful for restraining failures or subduing potential subjects.
-Connected (1): You know some locals already. This will help you negotiate in town.
-Likeable (2): Makes Dr. Gott like you more.
-Null (1): Makes you unaffected by powers. Lucky? you.
-Powered (2): You have a superpower! You can make a suggestion, but in the end I will be deciding what it is. I will be fair, I will try to grant your request, but don't abuse it!
-Silver-Tongued (1): +1 on rolls related to convincing people to do stuff. Useful for getting people to agree with you.
-Stealthy (1): +1 on rolls to sneak around. Helps with kidnapping potential subjects, avoiding the law, etc.
Suggest others, if you like.
Optional Backstory
1. Take ingredients (you can claim up to 10 Basic Ingredients per day) and mix them. You can mix up to three formulae per day if you do nothing else, or less if you do other actions. Provide a working label or I will. These formulae can include up to 5 ingredients.
2. Get a subject, somehow.
3. Administer the formula to the subject.
4. Record results.
5. Draw conclusions.
These formulae typically give superpowers, but some (especially simpler ones) do not. Non-superpower-giving formulae (and, for that matter, superpower-giving formulae) can be combined into further recipes.
In general, you have two options: You can perform your work openly, or secretly.
On one hand, if you do it openly, you will get more favor with Dr. Gott, because he can tell you are making progress. On the other hand, if you do it openly, others can use your research to aid theirs.
You can PM formulae you mix to me if you want to be secretive. Heck, you can probably even hide experiments!
Note, however, that anything you want credit for needs to be public. If you want credit for a formula, you need to share how you made it. If you want credit for a superhuman, you have to share its existence and abilities. If you want credit for some theory about how these work, you need to cite experimental evidence.
If you're feeling eevil, you could also do espionage against each other. You could steal research notes, steal spare ingredients, maybe even kill favorite subjects of the competition.
Each turn is one day.
You can typically do three Major Actions in a day. These include recruiting subjects, mixing formulae, and extensive testing.
You can also do two Minor Actions in place of a Major Action. These include testing a formula on a subject, quick testing of the subject, seducing people in town, and a wide variety of stuff.
Finally, you can do any number of inconsequential actions, like chatting with subjects, obtaining ingredients, submitting requisition forms, calling your newly-seduced girlfriend to explain why you can't make it to your date (specifically, you're waiting for that new leg to come in after getting mauled, but you don't want to say that), whatever.
In general, try it and I'll let you know if it can't work ("Um, no, building a scale replica of the Death Star is not a Minor Action"). I try to be flexible, though.
Depending on the actions people take, a turn might involve some subturns to deal with rampaging experiments, RP, or whatever.
At the end of seven days is one week.
Each week, you get evaluated. This can increase Favor or decrease it, depending on how much you seem to have been screwing around. General ideas of rewards:
+25 Favor for a reasonably-supported, wide-reaching hypothesis.
+10 Favor for an extremely useful superhuman, or a good hypothesis, or an important one.
+5 Favor for a useful superhuman or an interesting hypothesis.
+1 Favor for a pathetic but potentially useful superhuman or a vague hypothesis.
-5 Favor for filling the cells without corresponding useful stuff.
-10 Favor for not doing much in particular
This can all be modified by a wide variety of factors.
Shipments of reagents also come in at the end of the week. Each one gets rolled for; (1d6-1)d6 apiece.
This is probably the biggest problem you will be facing: Where will you get the people to turn into superheroes, supervillains, or monsters? There are a variety of possibilities...
Kidnapping
Ah, a classic! Kidnapping individuals, by stealth or force, is a convenient way to get around the fact that some people might not want to risk being turned into monsters and forced into some level of servitude in exchange for a chance at superpowers. You must specify a level of "desireability," poor, average, or good. Poor subjects are less desireable than most, but probably won't be missed much. Good subjects are better-quality, but their absence will be noticed immediately and a top priority. You can also give additional criteria (female, young, red-haired, whatever), which may provide additional modifiers to something or another. For instance, children are easier to catch but will be more publicized if they go missing.
Wheeling and Dealing
Then again, some people do want superpowers. You can't advertise in a newspaper or a billboard or something, but you can head down to a bar, talk about superheroes, and before you know it end up with a contracted experimentee. This gives you a bit more limited experimental base, and you usually can't just lock them up (or at least really shouldn't), but avoids pesky legal/willing problems. They're also less likely to be stressed, which might affect the outcome of the experiment.
Call a Friend
You probably don't have any friends in town at the start, but you can get them. If they like you enough, you might be able to convince them to take formulas! Warning: This should only be done with reasonably tested formulae, or else you risk alienating a friend.
Any questions?
