Quote:Well, you should know that trying to pin down the tech level in a superhero world is like trying to eat jello with chopsticks. But I'll give it a try. Warriors' World is running about 30 years or more in advance of our state of the art. UN infantry has powered armor, AIs and robots can be built with relative ease. Beam weapons are just starting to make their appearance in military arsenals. Forcefield technology is understood, although outside of the occasional gadgeteer it usually requires a large permanent installation and a dedicated power source. Computers are more powerful, the Net more interconnected; because of the presence of electropaths and superfolk who can turn into electricity, computer security is signficantly more sophisticated and capable.
I know that you've detailed some of the history, but I would like to know a bit more, such as general level of technology (what kind of sci-fi stuff they have, how high tech some of the stuff is, etc.)
Quote:Earth, it seems, appears to be the galactic equivalent of the little convenience store inside the train station concourse. It's not exactly in the flow of traffic, but close enough that it's no trouble to go there. Aliens have been visiting the earth long enough and frequently enough that the folks who don't believe in them are the lunatic fringe, instead of the other way around. For instance, one of the big celebrities of the late 80s was an AI robot probe from an alien civilization who hung around the planet photographing and interviewing people for a year or so before returning to deep space.
maybe contact with aliens and what not.
Quote:No one's really sure, although every historian has his pet candidates. Pretty much everyone agrees Rasputin had to have been at least a proto-metahuman, but beyond that, well, the topic can cause fistfights at academic conferences. The key problem is that nobody can really agree where (and how sharp) to draw the line between human and metahuman -- a problem which has been plaguing professional sports since the 1950s. How fast can an Olympic runner go before he's too fast? How much can a competitive weightlifter lift before it's too much? A lot of people are uncomfortable putting an absolute upper limit on the levels of human achievement, but by the same token a lot of people view using metahuman enhancements in sports as "cheating". Extreme cases are easy to figure out, but the borderzone between is very fuzzy and few people want to look stupid trying to de-fuzz it. The identification of the metagenes in the 1980s has hurt almost as much as it has helped -- fully a third of the world's top athletes could conceivably qualify as "training-enhanced" (no inherent powers, but possessing enough metagenes that excessive conditioning results in borderline metahuman physical abilities).
Oh, and were there any "metahumans" before the twentieth century?
Quote:Doug wears motorcycle leathers, more or less. A custom design on the jacket, but really, that's all his "uniform" is. I suspect that the sentai "standard" uniform is really much the same thing, possibly by evolution from Kamen Rider... but I don't know that much about sentai, honestly.
You know, looking at Doug's uniform, I suddenly saw that it looked incredibly like a sentai uniform--you know, those guys in jumpsuits and helmets in colors of the rainbow what pilot giant robots--all those shows that were brought over here as power rangers.
Quote:You mean, other than the Fae and the vampires? If there are human(oid) immortals, they're doing the smart thing and not making a fuss about it.
So anyway, I guess this means that unlike nearly every other comic book universe there aren't any immortals around, beyond the gods
Quote:Mechanical time travel is not really feasible at this time, although the occasional gadgeteer has come up with workable but unreproduceable devices. There is at least one metahuman known to possess time travel powers -- a Rocky Horror Picture Show fan who goes by the predictable nom d'aventure of "Time Warp" (and who has courted Hexe on occasion). Doug has demonstrated time-related powers, between "Freezeframe" and "Fly Like An Eagle". The metabiologists figure it's just a matter of time before they figure the whole mess out.
and how about time travel?
Quote:I believe she's a Lieutenant Colonel, but I'd have to check with Peggy or Helen to make sure.
Oh, and if Doug is a colonel, what rank does Silverbolt hold?
Quote:Then what rank is Hexe? Brigadeer?
>
>Oh, and if Doug is a colonel, what rank does Silverbolt hold?
>
I believe she's a Lieutenant Colonel, but I'd have to check with Peggy or Helen to make sure.
Quote:Probably. To tell you the honest truth, the paramilitary ranks have entered the game because I used one for Doug in the story and not the other way around. As such, they haven't quite "standardized" yet for all the team members.
Then what rank is Hexe? Brigadeer?
Quote:I think it's not so much that as he's just a snob.
Oh, and with Doug's references of "crunchies" in the early chapters, and his early career as a villain to get into Warriors, was he ever part of a pro metahuman, brotherhood of evil mutants type of group or movement?
Quote:In precisely the same way that 2003 is just like 1973, only different, dude.
So basically Doug's world is like our world, only different dude.
Quote:Actually, there are a lot of differences. I haven't said anything about politics here, for example. Japan is far more nationalistic/racist than in our world, for example, but that's something that I've mentioned a few times in the story proper. The sequence of American presidents is quite different, the European Common Market nations unified a bit earlier, the whole space program is different (and in fact there are several, including a UN program). The differences in computing technology are signficiant; ubiquitous computing and wireless network connections are to Warriors' World what electrical outlets are to us -- you just don't go somewhere without expecting them. There's a reason the WW version of the Internet is called the Tapestry -- it's a much denser and more richly-woven structure. Economically the planet is better off, because it's no longer a closed system and the extraterrestrial balance of trade is firmly in Earth's favor.
Other than armoured walking tanks and antigravity, it hasn't had the sort of science fiction "The entire world changed because of one new thing" thing going on.
Quote:Oh, yeah, there are vigilantes. They're almost institutionalized in some places like the USA (where they have a 50+ year history of operations).
Um, oh, right; are there any actual vigilantes in Doug's world or are they all incorporated into officially recognized teams like Warriors?
Quote:Nah, Doug's just a relatively low-key bigot. And not a terribly consistent one. He looks down on normals in general, but he's constantly making "exceptions" for the ones he spends any amount of time with. Lisa isn't a crunchy, for example -- at least not since the end of chapter 1 -- and he'd get upset if someone else were to refer to her in that way. But if he'd never met her before, he'd dismiss her out of hand without a second thought. It's not one of his more admirable traits, but the fact that he's willing to ignore his prejudices so easily is a bit of a counterbalance to it.
Oh, and with Doug's references of "crunchies" in the early chapters, and his early career as a villain to get into Warriors, was he ever part of a pro metahuman, brotherhood of evil mutants type of group or movement?
Quote:All good questions. And they're deliberately not answered in the campaign world. Around 1988 I wrote up a history of Warriors' World to explain these and other issues that bothered me, but when I offered it to the triumvirate of GMs at the time, it was declined. A year or so later I turned that timeline into GURPS I.S.T., so if you can find a copy of I.S.T. (or GURPS Supers), you can see what I thought should probably have happened to get us to the point where we were. (For what's happened since 1990, check out the page The IST World in the 1990s on my website.)
Why, and how, is the U.N. able to have, basically, its own standing army? How did the U.N. get so powerful? Does the United States actually pay its dues in Doug's world?
Quote:Just like in I.S.T., metahumans are forbidden from serving in national militaries. Private teams, corporate teams, clubs and all manner of organizations are okay, but conventional forces must remain conventional. In the campaign world, France's attempt to defy the Security Council by establishing a (new) national superteam in the early 1990s was the cause of a great deal of international tension, and at the moment is being dealt with in that time-honored diplomatic way -- it's being ignored until they actually do something vaguely military. For the most part, they're simply a PR stunt, and have stayed that way for most of a decade.
And speaking of the ol' U.S., are there any metas attached exclusively to the United States military?
Quote:The Warriors are reserved for metahuman or metahuman-level threats (or worse), or for alien contact situations, or for outright illegal military action. (Case in point: if this were Warriors' World -- and the campaign wasn't stuck in 1998 at the moment -- I'd be expecting to see the Warriors deployed to Iraq any day now. Not to aid the US invasion, but to help repel it, if the US goes ahead without UN approval.)
And if so, where does the jurisdiction come in? When do you call in your own nation's metas or on the Warriors?
Quote:Honestly, I don't know the full story -- the campaign started long before I joined (to the best of my knowledge none of the original players remain!), and while I remember hearing the history at least once, most of it didn't stick with me. I do remember that the Warriors started as a private team based in New Jersey. They branched out into two groups, with the new one on the west coast, I think -- the teams were named Warriors East and Warriors West. Then, around 1984 or 1985, the U.N. banned nuclear weapons and national superteams, and the Warriors won the contract to be their super police force to enforce these bans, among other tasks. East moved to London, West moved to Japan, if I'm remembering right, which prompted the name changes to Alpha and Beta respectively, since having Warriors West in Tokyo made no sense at all. (I don't know why those locations were chosen; this was before my time.) At the same time, Warriors, Inc., became Warriors International. Anyway, we've been successful enough over the past 20 years that we've had no real challenges to our contract when it has come up for renewal. We're funded directly by the Security Council.
And, say, how did the Warriors get founded anyway? Whose idea was it? How did it get a UN charter? Who funds it?
Quote:We have a hundred or so powered-armor infantrymen (UN peacekeeping troops from around the world) who act as guards, etc. around the Mansion.
And does Warriors have any regular troops as back-up, crowd control, etc
Quote:While we do have a jet -- loosely based on (ie ripped off from) the X-Men's old Blackbird, we rarely use it anymore. Instead, we have Skitz, his teleport gates, and access to a spy satellite network. Skits can open a gate to anywhere he can see, even if he only sees it via a TV screen. (He can also open a gate to any location he's got memorized -- and for a devastating attack in combat, he's got the bottom of the Marianas Trench memorized.)
Nearly every super-team has an iconic transport: the FF has the Fantasticar, the Avengers have the Quinjets, the Titans had their T-Jets, etc. How about the warriors?
Quote:A lot of this can be found in drips and drabs throughout DW2, but basically, Doug was born in 1962 in Hollywood, CA. His father is a major player in the film industry, his mother is a socialite and equestrian (former Olympic champion). Both are "old money". He was what he calls a "Beverly Hills Baby", growing up very, very rich among the very, very rich in the 1960s and 1970s. He is an only child, although he has several cousins, all of whom he hasn't seen in years. Since going public with his powers in the middle-late 1980s, he's been somewhat estranged from his parents, who see the kind of grandstanding and crazy behavior that marks his public persona as somewhat tacky; there are also political differences that have made for some tension.
What is Doug's family situation, anyway?
Quote:It's never come up in the game, but in the DW world it has -- note the passage in chapter 11 where Doug mentions that Madonna has sent him prerelease copies of her albums so he can see if he can use anything from them. He would not stop her from capitalizing on anything he happens to be able to use, which amounts to pretty much endorsing her music.
Speaking of Doug, does he ever endorse any musicians? Like, "I like his music. So should you."
Quote:There were several. Do you know more about which on you're thinking of?
who remembers that someone mentioned a good AMV on this forum. What was the title again?
Quote:I hope it's a one-way gate, or people on his end are gonna get REAL wet from the water pressure of several hundred atmosphere's pouring out...
(He can also open a gate to any location he's got memorized -- and for a devastating attack in combat, he's got the bottom of the Marianas Trench memorized.)
Quote:Um, Josh? That's the devastating attack. He points the gate at the bad guy(s) and opens up to the Trench.
I hope it's a one-way gate, or people on his end are gonna get REAL wet from the water pressure of several hundred atmosphere's pouring out...
Quote:I just want to state for the record that firing an Omega class weapon on the ground, let alone in an atmosphere, is a bad idea (tm). Based on some _very_ rough calculations (and I know there's more than what I did, but it should be in the ballpark), the water will come out at a rate of over 100k/sec/sec - assuming a gate 4 square meters in area you could flood the island of Manhattan to a depth of 1 foot in just under 45 seconds, and the entire state of Rhode Island to a depth of about 1 foot in 20 minutes!
He points the gate at the bad guy(s) and opens up to the Trench.
