More thoughts about solo superhero RP

Well, actually the rest of yesterday's thoughts.

What I was thinking was that alone, you'd have something to emulate story structure above the whole scene/conflict thing. MHR does this a bit with the Doom Pool. I was thinking of a more generalized version that could be grafted onto anything.

Again, this is me thinking out loud. I haven't tested any of this, and I've optimized my thoughts towards superhero games.

An adventure is broken into four parts. Larry Brooks calls them Setup, Response, Attack, and Resolution, but we’re going to go with Steve Kenson’s terms, because they’re specific to superheroes: Threat, Investigation, Challenge, and Comeback.

Each stage garners you story points of some kind, and you need a certain number of points to get to the next stage. The number of points you need starts at the point level of the opposition. So part zero is that you have to figure out who or what the opposition is worth. (You don’t have to figure out what the opposition is, but what it’s worth.)

Another decision we make at the beginning is to pick one of your complications or qualities or challenges, and say that the villain’s plot (whatever it is) is going to deal with that. It will mirror it, exacerbate it, result from it, or whatever. So a secret ID might mean that you have a secret identity plot. If you don’t have formal qualities or disadvantages, then look at the description of your character for something that causes the character trouble. You also have to figure out what the value of the adventure/problem is. (I have not yet figured out how to decide on the value; this is spitballing.)

At the end of each stage, you fulfill the ending condition and spend the story points, so you start the first three stages with no points. You do get to keep excess points in the transition between third and fourth stages because the excess points become tokens that help you win at the end.

Stage	Threat	Investigation	Challenge	Comeback
Get points for	Lose to villain Introduce a character or plot device Introduce the problem Create stakes Find a reason not to change your problem area	Reuse a setting Reuse a character or plot device Learn about villain Scuttled by problem Find a reason not to change your problem area Create or raise stakes	Reuse a setting or character Attack villain Introduce a complication Deal with problem and fail Deal with the consequence of a complication you introduced	Reuse the plot device Reuse a character Resolve a complication Use information learned about villain
Lose points for	Nothing. Usually this sequence is quite short in comic book adventures, so everything gets you points and nothing loses them.	Win a fight with the villain Deciding to attack villain directly Ignore problem Lower stakes  Undo effects of an earlier complication	Win a fight with the villain Lower the stakes you've established	No idea at this point. What sort of thing do you want to discourage, or that should end in failure?
To end: Enough points and…	Hero decides to act	Hero decides to get something that will solve the problem, or to set in motion the plan to attack villain	Hero fails because of problem	Hero deals with both problem and villain.
Other rules	If you go against the villain, and he loses, that’s part of his plan. Maybe a lower point here?	If you go against the villain, and he loses, that’s part of his plan.	Again, if the villain loses, he has a contingency plan, either something that works better if he's in jail or a revenge-from-beyond-the-grave thing	Can’t introduce new significant characters, powers, etc. Extra story or plot points can be used for special effects, like Determination in ICONS (though I don't know how well that will work—will it unbalance games that already have a determination point mechanism, or does it replace that mechanism?

Note that you can introduce characters settings in any of the first three stages; you just don’t get points for it.

Next I'll try a thought adventure.

Solo Superhero RP

My gang likes superheroes (we started with Champions, a couple of decades ago) but it's not the only thing we play. Right now we're playing Trail of Cthulhu, and 13th Age is next on the docket.

But really, I don't play at all right now--I've just started a job with a seventy-five minute commute, so I'm out of the house at six AM and generally get back twelve hours later. (Actually, seventy-five minutes is the time going there, when I can avoid traffic. On the way home, I can't particularly avoid traffic, so it's usually a little over two hours. And I'm driving, so I can't do work while I'm driving.)

I'm still trying to sort things out organizationally: I'm dropping all sorts of things on the floor. (Sorry to all of you I owe things.)

If I get to roleplay, well, it will probably be solo, except for the occasional play-test that I organize and which has to happen and which I have no idea how to make happen yet. But I digress to wail.

Anyway, on the drive in this morning, I was thinking about solo superhero games. ICONS and the Mythic GME work well (in my experience), but I think Supers! would work just as well. Even DC Heroes might work. I find that Mutants & Masterminds, Champions, and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying have too many bits for me to track; they don't end up being a good solo experience.

I think there are two flavours of solo roleplaying, at least as far as superheroes is concerned: solo roleplaying that adapts existing adventures, and solo roleplaying with improvised adventures.

The first is nearly a subset of the second. The game you're using handles task resolution, whether it's done on a task basis or an outcome basis. As long as you know what you have to do, you're fine. The solo part of it seems to fall into a couple of areas:

• Scale the opposition to the hero(es)
• Generate the kind of randomness you find when multiple people are adding to the mix
• Make less visible the things you aren't supposed to know

(I assume that Steve Lopez' dictum applies here. We're trying to be fair to ourselves.)

The improvised flavour changes how you scale the opposition (it's not about ways to adapt, and some way of creating the "story" part of it. That's not strictly necessary, but it's rather like the difference between masturbation and sex--the story adds the emotional component.)

Like so many of my posts, this is less finished than abandoned, but here you go.

Presenting...Liveboy and Deadgirl!

I was reading something about politicians that brought to mind the old saying, "The only thing that could bring him down is being found with a dead hooker or a live boy."

That sounds like a pair that fights crime, to me. Still, I have no urge to write Strange Hooker Corpse, the Series, so try this barely more wholesome pair. I just stole time from work to scribble this down.

Liveboy

Was he born with the power? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it was always there but it took the lightning bolt to make it active. 

Oh, yeah. In his late teens, he got hit by lightning. He was into hair gel and leather clothes with many zippers at the time, so the current theoretically passed through him, with the only obvious effect being that he can't wear a timepiece without it stopping. (That includes a smartphone...if it can display the time, it won't work for him.) His name is Garth. Or Mark. He's not sure, but he responds well to the "ar" sound. 

That was in the nineteen fifties. He doesn't really age any more. Okay, that was two effects from the lightning. Three, maybe: sometimes the past is hazy, and when he remembers it again, it's not the same. He's not really keeping track, though. He's generally a happy guy. Zen masters like him. He lives in the moment a lot. 

And he can animate anything. (Okay, that's four.) It's easiest if it was alive before, of course, but really, anything under a few hundred kilos. (He doesn't do trees....okay, he once did a bunch of saplings because this lady in a tree nursery had been really awful to him, but that's it.)

If you're thinking, this guy doesn't sound like much of a hero, you're right. He's not. That's where Deadgirl comes in.

Deadgirl

(Note that she's not Dead Girl, of the X-Force. She's Deadgirl. She'd date Boston Brand if he weren't so creepy looking. And they weren't both, you know, dead.)

Liveboy still isn't sure exactly what he did (it mostly matters when she's a pain) but she lives in him. He's like, a condo for her. It's painful and difficult for her to leave during the daytime (though she's done it a few times), but trivial at night. She's in astral form. And she has the kind of drive that must have made her a fearsome thing when she was alive. She was in her late teens when she died, too. She says eighteen just to make things easier but really, it might have been a couple of years either way.

She's a ghost. She's got the usual assortment of ghost/astral projection powers. She can't easily possess people but she can make things move. She can see on the astral plane. Once she went into somebody's head to see if he was a sociopath or not; apparently they're different inside.

She doesn't leave an astral cord between Liveboy and herself. He's just where she lives, and she finds him much easier to manipulate than some other shmoe.

She has a couple of goals:

• Find out who she was, and why she died. (Also when she died. Her existence before being in the Elysian Fields is kind of hazy.)
• Stop it from other happening again.
• Stay away from the Elysian Fields...she thinks they're kind of like crack for dead people.
• Help Liveboy figure out who he is. (He's never asked for this help; she's just taken it on as a project.)

The Stories

She gets them into trouble and he reluctantly goes along, because she has a tendency to attract necromancers, werewolves, witches, and notable skeptics and then they show up at his residence du jour.

House rules...ICONS

System: ICONS

There have been several posts on G+ and the FaceBook group asking for house rules. I'm going to put them here where I can amend them.  Because often I don't even know that it's a house rule.

I only discover it's a house rule when I go and try to check the rules for evidence, and then discover that it's something I mis-remembered or made up out of the whole cloth. Plus, I play a mix of original ICONS and The Assembled Edition—not intentionally, and I try to hew closer to the assembled version, but I've been playing a long time, so it happens. When we discover that the rules do or don't allow a certain thing, we might just do it that way from then on, or claim that there's a whiff of GM-ium in the air that allows it.

Advantages and Improvised Anything: Because I'm old...uh, old school...I often just do stuff if it makes sense in the narrative. I could do it with Advantages and stunts, but  often I just do it. Now that I've thought about Advantages, I can do it with them, but it would take concerted effort to get me to do it the "right" way. So I probably won't.

Fast attack...with yourself: I allow characters to use Fast Attack to combine attacks with themselves for a +1 to the attack. A character who combines and pushes can have +2.

Improvised weapons: So someone does X damage with a strike...for example, we'll say 4. If the hardness of an object is between X and X-3, I say that it does add +1 to the damage, but is damaged or destroyed. (Actual weapons can be different. A pair of brass knuckles could be defined as Strike 1, but you can claim that they're made to do striking. They're probably good up to Strength 6, because you don't hear about people accidentally deforming their brass knuckles in their fist.)

Stretching with improvised weapons: In the Stretching description, it says that you use the lesser of Prowess or Stretching to hit someone. I pretty much ignore this. I don't want it to be difficult to hit someone with a pole...like I want you to suddenly have an effective Prowess of 1, but you get better if the pole is longer. Ewww. If the Stretching is 1 or 2, I just take one off the Prowess to reflect that it's not something you're used to. (And if it's one of your powers, I assume you've trained.) (If I were more mechanically minded, I'd subtract the Stretching from the Prowess, but I'm not. Minus one is enough for me)

Specialties on Slam and Stun rolls: With me, you can use any applicable Specialty levels on the rolls for Slam or Stun attacks. So if you have, say, Wrestling you can apply that level to escape attempts or to the roll to see if you Stun. But you have to pick one place to apply each level of specialty...so if you have Power (Blast) Expert, one level could be +1 to hitting and one level could be a +1 for slamming.

Temporary Qualities: I don't know if it says this in the rules, but certainly I let my players and characters pick up a quality for a few episodes if necessary. Often they're bad qualities, but not always. I generally don't worry about buying them off...that happens naturally in the narrative...but I suppose you could use the experience system as given.

Advantages, and the getting thereof

SYSTEM: ICONS

Just a caveat: What follows is my interpretation, not holy writ handed down by Steve Kenson.

One of the things that happened when ICONS reappeared as The Assembled Edition was the addition of Advantages. My guess is that Steve Kenson looked at all the things he was doing with Determination Points, sometimes without spending Determination Points, and decided he needed a more generic name and method.

So the first thing to remember is that you can still spend a Determination Point and do what you did before: you can use Determined Effort or Push a Power or Retcon something. That's pretty much the same. But now, instead of saying, "Oh, you spend a Determination Point to do that," we say, "Oh, you spend an Advantage to do that."

Now, a Determination Point gets you an Advantage, and an Advantage does pretty much what a Determination Point did before. So that part hasn't really changed. In fact, if you want, you can ignore all the rest of the stuff and keep playing that way. If you're happy with it, great. I'm not going to call you out.

But there are situations where you should have an advantage over your foes, and you don't have Determination Points, or where it should just come about as a consequence of doing those things. You shouldn't have to spend Determination Points in order to scare someone because you're dangling them off a really tall building and you claim you'll drop them if they don't talk. You shouldn't have to spend a Determination Point to know that the robot is, duh, a robot and that while mental powers might not work, dunking it in seawater might do something.

That's the other part of what Advantages are for.

So we're going to ignore the spending-a-Determination-Point method for getting an Advantage for the rest of this post. It's a given. We're even going to ignore the whole Get-compelled-by-your-Quality-to-get-a-Determination-Point. Also a given.

Not quite a given is the idea of giving yourself Trouble. This is like being compelled. It's the generic version of being compelled. Any time you give yourself Trouble, you get an Advantage in return. Sometimes the Advantage is immediate (the GM says, "You have an Advantage") and sometimes it's in the form of a Determination Point (which you can spend for an Advantage...Determination Points are really just a way to store Advantages for later).

There are three ways to get yourself an Advantage:

• A maneuver
• A tactic
• It's lying on the scenario ground, free to take

The last one is the easiest. If the place you're in has the Quality "Gloomy Victorian mansion" and nobody has turned on the lights, the GM probably says, "You get +2 on your Stealth Effort." That's a use of an Advantage, but nobody talked about Advantages. You don't have to pay for it because there it is: it's dark. Go for it. You're in an Aardian healing machine; your regeneration gives you some of that drained Strength. It just is. Accept it.

The big difference between a maneuver and a tactic, it seems to me, is that one is paid for by taking a test, and the other is paid for by taking Trouble.

Let's take the fire-breathing robot I mentioned the other day. There's a weak spot in the mouth.

• A maneuver would be to roll awareness and see if you noticed the weak spot in the mouth. Maybe you make the roll, maybe not. If you make it well, you might get two Advantages out of it. Hey, if your awareness is 8 and you have telescopic vision and you happened to be looking at the robot when it belched flame, you've got this pretty much locked up. 
• A tactic would be to go in the mouth and accept the Trouble that it has these powerful jaws and maybe you won't be able to get out before the next gout of flame. Now, if you're resistant to fire and you have phasing or something, maybe the GM says that's not Trouble at all. But if you're in danger of being turned into a bacon bit, well, that is Trouble. It has to disadvantage you to be Trouble.

Coming up with a maneuver is usually pretty easy: you make an appropriate roll. Obviously, you're going to try and slant things to your advantage...if your character's Prowess is 7, then maybe you want your feint to be a maneuver, because you're pretty sure that you'll make the roll:

"On this turn, I feint to the left of Gasbag, so that I can get an Advantage and increase my effort by +2 on my next Slam roll against him."

On the other hand, maybe your Prowess isn't so high, but you're tough. Instead, you're going to use a tactic that makes you easy to hit, but increases the  chance of hitting.

"On this turn, I stand perfectly still, trying to entice him to come in closer so I can hit him. I'm going to take the Quality Easy Target until I move, so others don't have trouble hitting me. I'll use the Advantage for +2 to my effort when I swing at him."

Of course, nothing says that the Trouble has to be immediate...so long as your GM agrees, you can make it anything that inconveniences you.

"I really need an Advantage, but I'm out of Determination Points and I can't think of a clever maneuver. Okay...this fight is going on longer than I thought it would, so I was supposed to meet my sweetie, Francis Honey, at the theatre, and I'm late. I want to take the Trouble Sweetie Ticked At Me."

 You can use Advantages with improvised weapons. I'm sure I've seen this mentioned somewhere.

"He's too far away? I uproot the streetlight standard (that's a Strength maneuver) because I want an Advantage that I'm going to spend on Stretching 2."

Or:

"I throw the tanker truck at him, so my ranged attack is effectively Burst."

ICONS isn't the only game with Advantages and Qualities, of course.

It takes a bit to get your mind around it, but the Advantage system and the Qualities are quite flexible.

The Parvenu

John Holmes asked for an adventure with examples of many features that would help show the game. Here's an outline for one called The Parvenu.

Setup: The PCs just got their powers—at least one in an accident that put them in the hospital until this test. The session starts, in fact, in the Parker Lance test area for the newly expressed. The PCs are being put through their paces. (Others, such as those with a Gimmick, Unearthly, or Artificial origin are also invited—it's kind of a "coming out" in the super community.)

Test Day

The PCs are driven out and back by a bus. Even if they have their own transportation, the officials inviting them insist on the bus. Because...

Because the test area is in another dimension. It's safer to test supers that way. The bus has interdimensional travel but only this dimension. It drives down a dead end alley at full speed and appears near the test area.

The test area is six buildings set up around a "town square" and a hidden bunker in the country. The bunker is for the observers; it has scientists, doctors, and technicians who operate things. The bunker is more like a pillbox, and can hold about two dozen people. It normally has a dozen. Half are observers. One is Slipstream, a member of a well-known superhero group, the Freedom Squad.

(Outside the test area are two radioisotope electrical packs, each the size of a bus, which provide the power. If the GM wants, there can be an entire working installation for the manufacture and repair of the test there—so the Parker Lance test area is great for a locked-universe mystery—but I digress.)

The buildings are:

• a six-storey office building
• a bank
• a bar beside/behind a coffee shop
• a department store
• a city hall
• a police station

The centre of the "square" has a gazebo-bandstand structure. Each of the four corners of the square has a statue of a person—supposedly a town founder. Feel free to add other town square details so players can show off their powers.

The test involves rescuing some observers (robots) from a series of threats, and then dealing with the giant kaiju-robot that is "causing" it. (Fans will know that this is a refurbished robot taken from Dr. Tekno Black, one of the greats in mad science.) The PCs start off locked in jail cells but aware that the kaiju-robot is about to attack.

First they have to escape. Some powers make it easy, and all of the PCs have their gadgets or equipment.

Simple tests here. Pass or fail to get out of the cells; degree of success might indicate how far they travel. Anyone who helps other PCs escape gets a determination point.

The kaiju is a giant bipedal lizard thing with a flaming head, one clawed paw, one frozen paw, and a tail. 

Once they get out, the robot has to cross the square to get to them. There are (robot) civilians in the square, threatened by the kaiju-robot. Players who need guns can find them in the arms of the (robot) policemen, but there is ample evidence that the bullets are not effective against the giant thing.

Threats are allotted one to a player.  The exact threats depend on your players, but possibilities include:

• bystanders about to be crushed by the tail
• a blast of flame breath on bystanders
• a falling building (the department store and the gazebo are both rigged to fall)
• a jet of water from the ground from a bursting water main
• electrocution from downed power lines
• a tail smash causes the earth to crack open and swallow a bystander

Again, simple tests but without a chance of a second try, so use of Determined Effort is valid. Encourage them to spend Determination Points or to create Advantages by maneuvers or by giving themselves Trouble.

We assume that brute force isn't enough to defeat the kaiju-robot (though some powers might make it easy). There are several ways to defeat the kaiju-robot. For instance:

• Combined attacks might defeat its Damage Resistance.
• Falling walls or buildings might do more than enough damage.
• They can overload its senses; that's a pyramid test against Difficulty 6.
• There is a weak spot in its mouth that lets the PCs get to its "brain" without the Damage Resistance applying; that's a pyramid test of difficulty 7 (4 if you're in the mouth, but you will get burned).
• The operators can be controlled with mental powers, if a PC can find the operators.

Those knowledgeable about superheroes or Dr Tekno might know these Qualities; the GM should bring these weak spots out so the PCs can discover them.

• A PC who sees the mouth open might see the weak spot in its mouth.
• A technological hero might recognize the kind of sensors it uses.
• With an Intellect or Awareness test, perhaps a player can find the operators.

First they have to discover the quality, and then take advantage of it, probably involving a pyramid test.

Whether the PCs win or lose, the observers take notes. Slipstream greets them afterward but has to talk to the Freedom Squad.

ELEMENTAL KAIJU-ROBOT

Prowess	4	Coordination	6	Strength	8
Intellect	4	Awareness	4	Willpower	-
Stamina	16
Specialties	None
Powers	6	Damage Resistance
	4	Flame breath (blast) Limit: Preparation
	5	Slicing claws and teeth (Strike: slash)
	5	Cold touch (Affliction)
	4	Smashing tail (Extra Limb)
Qualities	Seven-storey tall robot
	Weak spots
	Learns about opposition

After the fight, the PCs get in the bus to go home.

The First Offer

Just after popping back into our dimension, a hologram of Dr. Tekno Black  appears on the bus. (He's supposed to be in prison.)

He offers them a job. His organization can train them, refine their abilities, and maybe get them some cool swag—plus, when his plans do succeed, they'll have good positions in the new order. His caveat is that it has to be all of them.

He doesn't demand an answer now, but says they can get in touch with him. He'll keep an eye on them.

The hologram vanishes. The bus driver calls back—sorry about the delay. Engine trouble. She says she has seen nothing.

The Second Offer

By the time they get off the bus, Slipstream is waiting there. The hero won't offer them a place on the team, but will offer them training with some local heroes, the Justice Pack. Slipstream gives them information, wishes them luck, and leaves.

If the PCs tell Slipstream about the offer from Dr. Tekno, the hero looks concerned. "How does he keep doing that?" Slipstream asks the PCs to keep the Justice Pack up to date, and they'll pass the information along.

Interlude

The PCs have a couple of options:

• Ignore it all—in which case Dr. Tekno gets more insistent. Eventually he frames them by committing a theft and leaving the money in their homes. 
• Join Dr. Tekno for real—in which case you're playing a supervillain game.
• Join Dr. Tekno but planning to reveal his plans, which is beyond my scope at this moment. My only advice is that Dr. Tekno doesn't necessarily believe them, so there's a loyalty test and a watchdog NPC.
• Go to the Justice Pack.
• Strike out on their own. In this case, what  remains of the Justice Pack comes to them.

Try to encourage them to make a group decision—Dr Tekno only wants them as a group.

The Justice Pack

The Justice Pack's headquarters is on a small island in the bay or river near the campaign city.

Unbeknownst to either the Freedom Squad or the PCs, the Justice Pack has just had a break-up. Everyone has left but Flashmob, a duplicator, and his powers are currently unreliable so he's afraid to recombine. (He'll do all the support stuff at the base.)

He's willing to teach them what he can, but they have to join the team. The team has some resources. (Transportation, training area, connections with government.)

The PCs might still have doubts, but Dr Tekno thinks they've made up their minds. So he attacks.

The kaiju he sends comes out of the water, as all the best kaiju do.

The Other Kaiju

Dr. Tekno uses the kaiju he modelled the robot after. PCs might think it is the same one, but Dr. Tekno has a kaiju mind-control unit on this one—a fine mesh laced over its head.

The monster is specifically proof against the technique they used on the robot (Dr. Tekno knows about that) but it has other weaknesses.

True to his current insecurities, Flashmob works support while the PCs handle it.

FLASHMOB

Prowess	4	Coordination	4	Strength	3
Intellect	4	Awareness	4	Willpower	4
Stamina	8
Specialties	Athletics, Technology
Powers	5	Duplication Extra: Horde
	2	Super-speed
Qualities	Eager to please but not on the front line
	Knows everybody
	Justice Pack repository
	Right now, all his powers have the Limit: Unpredictable.

THE REAL ELEMENTAL KAIJU 

Prowess	6	Coordination	5	Strength	8
Intellect	4	Awareness	4	Willpower	4
Stamina	12
Specialties	Mental Resistance Expert
Powers	8	Growth Limit: Constant
	5	Flame breath (blast) Limit: Preparation
	5	Slicing claws and teeth (Strike: slash)
	5	Cold touch (Energy Drain vs Will)
	4	Smashing tail (Extra Limb)
Qualities	Controlled by nigh-indestructible gadget
	Wily
	Quick to anger
	*Growth gives "Large."

Lame villains of the day.... King's Wood

SYSTEM: ANY

Do these names not inspire an emotion in you? (Granted, it might not be fear, apprehension, or loathing, but disgusted amusement is an emotion, right?)

They are:

• Tree Rex, emperor of the plant world! (Qualities include "You can do anything with plants!" and "Dirty filthy animal urges")
• Air Apparent, maker of illusions! (Qualities include "See it to believe it" and "Life's a breeze")
• Sleeping Beauty, she who controls dreams and plants posthypnotic suggestions! (Qualities include "Sultry, seductive, and soporific" but not "Slept her way to the middle")
• Pope of Roam, the man with speedster control. (Qualities include "Can control the speed force but never use it himself")

They usually have one or two captive speedsters and a carnivorous plant with them. They get access because Sleeping Beauty has arranged entry to whatever place they need, and sometimes protection against those meddling heroes.

Fallen Icons: Scott Stewart, formerly Clockwise, Second of the Cosmic Watch

SYSTEM: ICONS

Time travel is a tricky thing. There are unintended consequences that can create multiple universes. And, though human science hasn't caught up to this point yet, every universe created makes the existence of the cosmic "bubble" that contains all of them just a bit more tenuous.

The race that protects the reality stream—the Watchmen of the Cosmos—have one rule that stands above all others: No time travel. They don't prevent time travel. (Examples among earth's heroes are legion: The Streak, for example, has traveled both forward and backward in time; Exemplar had membership in both future and present groups.) Some small number of those are trying to destabilize history, either to bring about the future that they want (in the case of the Autoarchons or the Onyx Corps or the Semioticians, to name but three) or destroy the cosmic bubble entirely (the Nimble Flame).

Instead, the Watchmen have a corps of agents throughout the galaxy who are attempting to preserve what they call the Ideal Calendar. These seconds (the Seconds of the Cosmic Watch) must attempt to stop tampering events without themselves traveling through time. To help them, the Watchmen have crafted for them miraculous weapons: the Second Crystals, implanted in a wristband. A Second Crystal is limited only by its wearer's willpower and imagination.

In Nevada there is a test facility for a small aircraft company: Flying Iron Aircraft. The head of their test pilot group, Scott Stewart, used to be a Second of the Cosmic Watch, until he broke the single most important rule of the Watchmen.

He traveled in time.

He had done it before, in the company of the Streak, but this time he took a time machine from Chase Hunter, Chronomaster, and went back to save the woman he loved.

The Watchmen did not banish him. (For all their power, the Watchmen have peculiar limits; they have never been able to eliminate Dexether, the renegade Second.) They took back his crystal, and passed protection of this sector of space to another Second.

Now he lives with Cadence Ironside, the woman he saved. Together, they run Flying Iron Aircraft.

If you ask him, Scott will say that he made his choice, and he abides by it. But his wife will tell you that, sometimes in his sleep, he says the Oath of the Seconds:

Because I fought when Chaos beckoned
The Cosmic Watch hails me its second.
Every second, every day
Ever vigilant we stay
Preserving all events we may.
From Chaos and Disorder's power
We of the Watch protect each hour.

Scott Stewart

Prowess	5	Intellect	4	Determination	-
Coordination	4	Awareness	4	Stamina	12
Strength	4	Willpower	8
Specialties	Military, Pilot (Master), Power (Cosmic crystal) Expert
Powers	None.
Qualities	Fearless, for good and bad
	Will do anything for the woman he loves
	Long history, with guilt, enemies, and allies

Clockwise, Second of the Cosmic Watch

In his prime as the Emerald Moment, he had the Cosmic Crystal on his wristband.

Name	Clockwise (Scott Stewart)	Prowess	4	Intellect	4	Determination	1
		Coordination	4	Awareness	4	Stamina	8
		Strength	4	Willpower	9
Specialties	Aerial Combat, Military, Pilot (Master), Power (Cosmic Crystal)
Powers	Cosmic Crystal Cosmic Power (Device) [Constructs] Limit: Limited to user's Will score; Limit: Needs daily recharge.						10
	Extra: Effect [Adaptation]
	Extra: Effect [Blast]
	Extra: Effect [Flight]
Extra: Effect [Force Field]
Extra: Burst
Qualities	Part of a galactic paramilitary organization
	Fearless, for good and bad
	I fought the law

His biggest enemy was of course Withershin, the rogue Second.

Notes

The comic book item has a ridiculous number of powers, but for these write-ups I wanted to keep the number of powers down to six or less, with the rest being stunts. I hope I chose wisely, and that the Qualities involved will help you generate enough Determination to stunt the extra powers. The Adaptation power takes the place of universal translation and life support or the occasional flying to the center of the earth or whatever. (I know that the Adaptation power doesn't officially do translation, but it's in the wheelhouse of this concept, and really, the stories are almost never about translation difficulties; as a GM, I'd just give it to him.)

Constructs is from Great Power. I decided that he stunts the Space flight extra to his flight, though he does use it frequently.

EDIT: Did I really forget to give the prime version three Qualities? Yes. Yes, I did.

Fallen Icons: Erzebet Sforza, some day to be Harrier

SYSTEM: ICONS

In the heart of New York City is a girl who will know the past.

Erzebet is the latest reincarnation of a Mongolian girl, Monkh, who was betrothed to the Khan Garuda in his human identity. He blessed her with eternal reincarnation, and she carries on his fight against the naga, or dragon-people. At some point in each life, she becomes aware of who she was and whose spirit she carries, and undertakes her mission. Khan Garuda gave her three things to help her in her fight: first, wings, with a magical flying harness; second, great strength and enhanced eyesight, which come when she realizes her identity; and third, a mace that came from the stars and that can damage any magic.

Erzebet is five. Her parents do not know. In fact, they are not even aware that they have a Mongolian ancestor. Her father, Jorge, is a janitor for a large industrial firm. Her mother, Katrina, is a seamstress.

If the naga discover who she is, they will kill her, and delay her reappearance by years.

They killed her when she was Harrier.

Name	Erzebet Sforza	Prowess	5	Intellect	4	Determination	–
		Coordination	1	Awareness	4	Stamina	5
		Strength	1	Willpower	4
Specialties	Athletics
Powers	None.
Qualities	A child
	Many past lives, currently unknown
	Hates snakes

Harrier

Her last incarnation, Sheila Falcone, was an Egyptologist at the Smithsonian.

Name	Harrier (Sheila Falcone)	Prowess	6	Intellect	4	Determination	2
		Coordination	5	Awareness	5	Stamina	12
		Strength	7	Willpower	5
Specialties	Athletics, Investigation, Military, Weapons (Melee), Wrestling
Powers	Flight Limit: Indestructible winged harness						5
	Super-senses (+1 Enhanced sight, Telescopic sight)						2
	Strike (Device: Mace of Garuda)						8
	Extra: Secondary Effect (Nullify, Limit: Magic only)
Qualities	Hatred of snakes and naga
	Remembers every previous life
	Loves the people in her current life

This image is from Deviant Art:

(Okay, what's with the bare midriff thing?)

EDIT: How embarrassing! I had transposed her Intellect and Determination. Fixed now.

Fallen Icons: Laurel Kitchen, formerly Nightingale

SYSTEM: ICONS

And Nightingale was one of the significant heroes.

So far as anyone knows, Laurel Kitchen owns two small businesses in town: a flower shop and a martial arts studio. She is mostly busy with raising her twins, Oliver and Felicity, and running the flower shop. It's a far cry from the days she brought down international drug cartels and stopped madmen from destroying the world.

Only a few years ago, she was the heroine Nightingale, child of the first Nightingale. She was married, tempestuously, to the aptly named Quarrel. When he died, she was pregnant with their children, though she didn't know it at the time.

She's not sure how her mother fought crime and raised a child at the same time: raising twins seems like more than she can manage, sometimes. Laurel is still good, but she knows she's not in crime-fighting trim any more. Yet. She plans on getting back to it, but the twins are babies still, and she has these twenty-five pounds to lose, and...

Well.

The assumption among the public is that she died when Quarrel did.

In the meanwhile, she turns out to be good at the business thing, and the ridiculously-named Saffron Thyme does a fine job of running the dojo and giving after-hours access to vigilantes who need practice or training. 

Name	Laurel Kitchen	Prowess	5	Intellect	4	Determination	–
		Coordination	4	Awareness	4	Stamina	7
		Strength	3	Willpower	4
Specialties	Athletics, Business, Drive, Investigation, Leadership, Martial Arts Expert
Powers	Sonic scream Limit: Must be able to speak.						6
	Extra: Burst (Constant: must happen for all Sonic Scream powers)
	Extra: Effect [Stunning]
Qualities	Legacy of Justice
	Single Mom, Double Children
	Computers Hate Her, and the Feeling Is Mutual

If the PCs need a place to work out, they might get steered to her dojo. Sure, during the after-school time it has a horde of children and moms who want to get in shape, self-defense classes and a little weapons work besides, but at night?

Some of the best in the world come there. The basement is not unfinished: it holds durable and high-tech equipment that can stand up to some of the toughest people in the world. The first aid service is excellent.

Nightingale

If you want to play her in her prime, she doesn't have the lack of sleep implicit in the Single Mom quality (among other things).

Name	Nightingale	Prowess	6	Intellect	4	Determination	4
		Coordination	5	Awareness	4	Stamina	8
		Strength	4	Willpower	4
Specialties	Athletics, Business, Drive, Investigation, Leadership, Martial Arts Expert
Powers	Sonic scream Limit: Must be able to speak.						6
	Extra: Burst (Constant: must happen for all Sonic Scream powers)
	Extra: Effect [Stunning]
	Super-Speed (Motorcycle)						4
Qualities	Legacy of Justice
	I'm a Fighter, Not a Lover
	Computers Hate Her, and the Feeling Is Mutual

Here's an image from the always excellent Project Rooftop: