Thursday, December 3, 2015

The Wish-Fulfillment Tulpa Hero

SYSTEM: ANY

It might be interesting to gradually reveal that a character (presumably one whom the player has crafted so that you have no handles on him) is actually a tulpa, technically a creation of the minds of a small group of Tibetan monks. He can do super-powered things because they believe he can, and as other people come to believe in him, his powers are reinforced. The attachments he so despises (dependents and such) are fictional.

The two obvious things you do with such a character is change his powers because some other group has taken control, or create an opponent who is equally protean. If some small group of terrible Yakuza take over, killing the original Tibetan monks, then only the belief of the public can counter his monk-ey influences to make him evil. Suddenly the player character's hero status is threatened by public opinion.

Or the character is no longer affected by the original monks and the public, which might mean he's gone "real" and needs to be put down by those who protect reality from these incursions. ("I hear you, I feel for you, but we allow one superhero to become real and it's a slippery slope. Next it will be the three headed Arcturan space fungus with wings that wants to eat people. Where do we stop?")


No comments:

Post a Comment