An odd idea

Any

There's an eruv bounding about four square miles of Manhattan. If I understand correctly (and I might not; apologies if I don't), it's a thin wire that symbolically separates "public" from "private" for Orthodox Jews, so that they can behave more or less normally on the Sabbath. That means that they can do things that would normally be considered work...like carrying things.

But it's not just Manhattan...other cities have eruvim. Cities like St. Louis, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, and more.

New York has rules, such as the maximum thickness of the wire is a quarter-inch, and it must be at least fifteen feet above the ground.

It's inspected by rabbis every Thursday night, presumably so they have daylight Friday to fix it, if necessary. And Manhattan's costs about $100,000 a year to maintain.

Do they ever get broken in superhero fights? Especially fights on a Friday night? Are there Orthodox Jewish superheroes who protect the eruv because keeping all those people inside on the Sabbath has economic consequences? Do tech whiz superheroes invent stronger materials to compose the eruv? If it costs too much for the eruv to be replaced, do they quit?

Thoughts on a Wednesday afternoon. I have no answers, but you could probably make a scenario out of bad consequences.

Villains for the Family

While I'm waiting for the player to respond, let's think in general terms about villains.

I'm going to use Strange City as a setting, and I've established that villains exist in about a twenty:one ratio with heroes. While I think arch-villains should probably be specific to the hero and so I'm not going to create them yet, I can list a couple of tropes that I want to use or subvert.

The villain K-Osprey already exists and functions as my Joker analogue. I doubt he's specific to the OG hero, but certainly Adult Sidekick will know of K-Osprey aka Chaos-Prey aka KOS-Pray.

I probably want to do something with reformed villains, both those who have failed to reform and those who succeeded. Actually, making the Police Commissioner a former villain might be interesting. Because that isn't common knowledge (I only just thought of it), I could slide it in as ancient history or have it as ad adventure thread in itself.

(It might be an adventure thread: I'm sure that Revived Mystery Man would think that the reformed villain is only faking and should be put to death.)

The villain who has lapsed again... maybe someone with a kind of telekinesis such that locks can't actually stay shut around him or her? Bullet-proof, but regardless of intention, nothing stays locked if the character touches it. But the character is guilty of looking wrong and so gets arrested on a regular basis. And, of course, even if he or she works for a company, he or she cannot work late and lock up. Just can't; the lock comes undone.

Given that, how do you make money? Well, if money problems come along, you steal it. More accurately, you reach into the bin and take it because they've forgotten tho latch the ATM ((again). (Heh. A real job for that person involves working in an area without any actual cash, like in an investment firm.)

Idea for the triptych one-on-one campaign

I have not felt creative in weeks, but the other day I decided to revisit the idea of a single-player superhero game but with the person playing three different heroes...a “hero family” if you will.

Now, the actual fact is I asked a friend if he wanted to try it, and he said yes, and offered me a Mutants and Masterminds character as the nucleus. I don't have his permission to name him or the character, so I'll be a little evasive. For now, we'll call them the Solo family, but suffice it to say that they're all insect themed.

The original character is a transformed hero (actually transformed by the Silver Storm, I believe, in an abortive campaign that collapsed after two episodes). This hero is PL10 and I am helpfully informed that the character is consciously a legacy hero, named after an in-game hero from the 1970s.

So after thinking a bit, here's what I came up with.

Remember that the core idea is three characters, and in the M&M game system it makes sense for the characters to be different power levels. I picked PL10, PL12, and PL8.

The 1970s is like forty or fifty years ago, now, but it makes sense for the OG hero to have had a sidekick who is now grown up. I don't actually want to deal with an ex-hero, so my choices here are someone who ages slowly, some kind of construct or person with the sidekick's memories, or maybe an armored hero, where the armor handles the natural degradation due to age. (I'm sure there are other possibilities: the child of the OG hero, for instance, or the OG hero and some kind of time travel.)

What I proposed is a grown-up sidekick, some kind of mutant who ages slowly (she's now in her fifties and finally looks twenty; I imagine the antagathic effect kicked in at puberty and it has taken her 45 years to get from 12 to 20 in appearance. She has sidekick to a number of heroes (well, sometimes leading from behind. "Uh, that skylight's a pretty obvious trap, Green Alpaca. Maybe going through the window?") and is ready to strike out on her own. (And face it, having to ride the storms of adolescence for forty years is kinda painful.) She inherited the OG hero's wealth, so she has a place that, while not ostentatious, is large enough and well-situated.

But...PL8 makes me think of mystery men and high school students, so I went with the time travel aspect and mystery men. The PL8 hero I'm thinking of is some 1930s mystery man (or woman; we're assuming a full body costume) who has been caught in a Groundhog Day thing for nearly a hundred years. The hero has a good right hook, insect venom weaponized in a number of ways (sleep! paralysis! Death! Binding! Whatever!) and a cavalier attitude about what should happen to "the guilty."

And it makes sense for the sidekick to have taken that character in during the adjustment. In fact, the house might be a revolving door for various down-on-their-luck heroes.

Now, supporting cast.

The house needs a staff, and one that can be trusted. So there's a cook and a cleaning person and probably a maintenance person. Haven't but a lot of thought into them, but they need to be there.

The Golden Age mystery man needs a descendent of some kind, or the child of someone who was important to them back in the day. That person will be ancient because they're just normal.

The current hero has been defined as homeless, so I figure the plot of Annie will come up at some point.

That's what I've proposed. Once I have those nailed down, we can create arch- and recurring foes.