Rip It & Run! Super-powered Characters II...

If you look at pulp fiction and its various tropes, you’ll see that, every now and again, there’s a character who has supernormal powers, abilities beyond the strictly normal, which help push forward the stories in which they’re involved. Characters like this aren’t a bad thing: they’re usually gateways into the extra-natural and are often value-added members of a campaign. In my career as a Call of Cthulhu Keeper, I’ve often run supernaturally augmented characters and they’ve been a boon every time. Here’s how it’s done...

Each of these character types needs to grow from discussion between the Keeper and the player. The character in question ends up with an unexplained talent that would potentially give them an edge in the story to come. In each case, discussion of what benefits the character will have, along with all of the possible side-effects such ‘powers’ would entail, should take place. In every instance, the players should expect to take the rough with the smooth. Every ‘power’ should be defined in terms of its extent and capabilities – this is crucial: each side of the equation needs to know the rules in order for this to work.

In most cases, the character with super-powers will be generated at the creation phase; sometimes however, the acquisition of such capabilities can arise from encounters and accidents that take place within the unfolding narrative. The Keeper may decide that a character may well adopt the extra capabilities listed below as part of their collective storytelling and may decide not to allow such characters to be generated ‘on the fly’. Equally, shorter story arcs may invite such characters to be generated at the inception. It really depends upon the requirements of the narrative.

(Cunning readers will observe that this list is a continuation from a previous post. For other strangely-powered character templates check out that other listing.)

Character Number Seven: The Prognosticator

A common trope among Call of Cthulhu characters is the magical practitioner who sells knowledge for cash. Often these characters are simply con-people, carnies or the like, preying upon the gullible in order to fleece them of their pocket change, who stumble inadvertently into Mythos goings-on. Most of the time such characters bumble their way along using skills like Psychology or Fast Talk, but what if they actually had powers? What if they could really read the future?

Mechanics: This requires that the character choose a shtick, something around which their powers crystallise. This could be Tarot cards, a crystal ball or reading the stars. However they do their thing, have them roll their skill (this will probably be an “Art” of some sort, listed on their character sheet) and then give them some kind of cryptic insight that they can then mull over at leisure. Depending upon their level of success, the information they receive should be more-or-less solid, but it should always be somewhat nebulous. For instance, a poor roll might reveal that the party is in danger from ‘something red’; a better roll might reveal that danger is approaching from something that is coloured red; better still, there is a door that is red behind which there is danger; or even better, the door is not actually red, but the flashing light from a nearby police car makes it seem to be so. There are endless iterations… Needless to say, in this instance, the party is free to interpret things as they see fit when they stumble onto a crime scene with flashing police car lights and a suspiciously lit door nearby…

Essentially, the Keeper can use these sessions to drip feed information of greater or lesser credibility to the party in order to help them find their way forward. It requires a little forethought and some ingenuity to interpret the rolls of the player, but such detail adds a great sense of “weight” to your game.

Character Number Eight: The Old Soul

The character is the reincarnation of an ancient entity and subconsciously carries information and knowledge within their psyche to which they ordinarily would have no access. Alternatively, the character contains within themselves a second consciousness – magically imbued from a distant reality - that occasionally vies with them for control of their corpus. Whatever the reason, in the context of the relics of ancient civilisations or realities, these individuals become remarkably capable and reflect knowledge of things which they absolutely should not have.

Mechanics: This is a common trope of much Mummy fare. Movies like “The Mummy” (there are several with this name, starting in 1932) and books like The Jewel of Seven Stars and She (along with its sequel Ayesha) really dictate how this kind of story unfolds. Essentially, the character is a reborn ancient with stakes in a conspiracy which has manifested in the present. This is usually something along the lines of the re-emergence of an ancient evil in the present day. An old trope has the reincarnated character as the revived romantic interest of the ancient evil being, but this is a tricky path for a novice player to negotiate well. More dependably, the reincarnated character is a protector of some ancient knowledge or artefact that will destroy or deter the evil one and they will have insights as to where the object or knowledge currently resides, along with an innate understanding about how to use it.

To make such a character work, the referee needs to seed their campaign with events that create moments of déjà vu or create dream sequences that are sparked by events that touch upon the ancient lore with which the character is associated. Does the evil manifest behind the symbol of a crescent moon? What happens when your character is served a croissant one otherwise uneventful breakfast-time? When a photo of a long-unclimbed sacred mountain – along with the report of a mountaineer who seeks to be the first to conquer it – manifests in the morning ‘paper, how does the character react? Why is it that, when presented with a cluster of clay tablets covered in cuneiform script, there is one that the character can read as easily as a primary school text? There are many possibilities…

Character Number Nine: The Time Jumper

The character comes from the far future and has travelled bodily (or has taken over an existing body) in the current temporal location. They may be fully conversant with the experiences which led them to this pass, or they may be suffering a species of partial, or total, amnesia. Either way, certain temporal events, either impending or transpiring, fill them with trepidation or outright horror.

Mechanics: Depending upon the requirements of the Keeper’s narrative, this character might be an alien being (with the ability to shapeshift) or a human being from the far future, who has bounced backwards in time to escape some kind of impending disaster. If the former, then the character is generated according to the creature specifications listed in the rulebooks. Whenever they fall unconscious or go to sleep (or are otherwise required to do so), they must ensure that their true forms are not witnessed by their possibly unwitting associates. Races such as the Serpent People are an ideal choice for this character type, although the Keeper might insist that the character has arrived from the distant past instead of the future, for reasons of canon sense. Another useful species is the technologically advanced Nug-Soth who are able to shapeshift. Finally, the Great Race can crowd out their host’s consciousness during a time-bridging mind-swap, in order to have their way.

If the character is human and has contrived to travel back in time, it remains for the Keeper and the player to decide if they have travelled with their memories intact or not. Depending upon the needs of the narrative, the other party members may know of the character’s disposition, or it may be a surprise for them to find out. This character is one that is a good fit when trying to insert a new character into an established party, especially if it serves the unfolding story arc.

The important element that makes this character work is the establishment of crucial temporal milestones which drive and compel the character. Of intense interest to the character (whether they are consciously aware of it or not) are certain moments in time which give rise to the sequence of events that caused them to jump backward (or forward) along the timeline. The development of certain technologies; the assassination of an influential personage; the discovery of a long-hidden locale – these are all things of which the Time Jumper might be aware and which they might try to hinder or assist. The character might be drawn by dreams or forced to make Idea or Know Rolls when confronted with pertinent information, if they are overtly ignorant of their status; or, if they are cognisant of their purpose, they make seek to influence those around them to examine or investigate things which will help them to avoid the disastrous future events to come.

The canon of time traveller fiction is wide-ranging and comprehensive – most referees will have several examples at their fingertips. Ray Bradbury’s short story “A Sound of Thunder” is a prime example and H.G. Wells’ The Sleeper Awakes is another mine-able work from an earlier generation. “City on the Edge of Forever” by Harlan Ellison, the twenty-eighth episode of the Original Star Trek series is a great example of a character from the future travelling into the past with pressing narrative concerns. Any or all of these could be mined to great cosmic effect for the purposes of a Call of Cthulhu game.

Character Number Ten: The Savant

Due to some kind of inborn neural incapacity or accident, the character has gained uncanny intellectual skills and capabilities; these come, however, at the expense of certain other areas of expertise.

Mechanics: We’ve all seen “Rain Man”; we know about savants and their reputed capabilities. This is the character that embodies these notions.

To begin with, there are a number of truisms about these sorts of beings that must be defined in tandem with the player and they boil down to the following: do you want to reinforce the stereotypes established by Dustin Hoffman in the movie, or do you want something that skates a little closer to the truth? If the former then there is little to do other than to select a range of skills – related or randomly selected – and double them to a maximum of 90%, while simultaneously reducing all social skills (Bargain, Fast Talk, Psychology) by 50 percentiles to a minimum of 5%.

In addressing how these characters might arise in reality, we have to look at how savants emerge in the real world. Some savants are genetically spawned; that is, due to an accident of biology, a person might arise with an array of extraordinary abilities, but with a commensurate lack in certain social areas, as outlined above. Other savants manifest as a result of extreme accidents: electrocution, suffocation, birth trauma, blows to the head. Oftentimes such individuals are found to have capabilities or knowledge that they never had previously. Such skills can range from piano playing to the speaking of foreign languages to which previously they had no exposure. It must be noted that such abilities often do not last, often tapering off after as little as a handful of months. We've all read Flowers for Algernon...

Genetic savants may simply be individuals who are on the autism spectrum and who display certain high-functioning adaptations to the condition. They might have certain skills—or areas of specialised knowledge—which they execute at superhuman levels of capability but are prone to catastrophic collapse in the face of setbacks or failures. Keepers should make such personalities roll Sanity whenever they fail in the performance of one of their enhanced skills, especially if the failure is a critical one, or one that is crucial to the advancement of the party’s narrative goals. The loss of confidence and the ability of the character to conduct themselves appropriately in society, critically affects them, rendering them catatonic or otherwise incapable as if they had failed a typical Mythos-initiated Sanity encounter.

Character Number Eleven: The Survivor

The character faced an encounter with an extraterrestrial or supernatural entity which has left them with certain sensitivities to further contact. These may be physical—such as a type of allergic reaction—or psychic, allowing the character to sense when members of the alien species loom.

Mechanics: How this effect might work depends upon the type of creature selected for its instigation. Many Mythos creatures are slimy and disgusting, comprised of unearthly elements to which an average human entity might well be allergic: mere proximity might be enough to instil a physical reaction in a person who had adversely encountered the entity in a past episode. Alternatively, if a person had once been psychically, or mystically, dominated by a member of such a paranormal race or entity, they may well be predisposed to “hear” psychic or occult resonances of the beings if they come into proximal range. Either way, the Keeper and the player need to decide what horror was the cause of the attack and how the resulting character detects the presence of these entities when – or if – they appear.

It needs to be said also, that contact with alien beings for an extended period, allows the Survivor to have insights into how these alien minds work. Whenever the character encounters strange phenomena or random clues left by their past nemeses, allow them an Idea Roll (or maybe a Cthulhu Mythos Roll) to be able to infer that their old foes might be at work once more.

Along with these sensitivities, the character might be affected by a number (1D4, say) of phobic responses that inadvertently afflict them. If their alien foes were mostly blue in colour, the character might have a phobic reaction to overwhelming occurrences of that hue. The sound of clicking knitting needles might put them in mind of alien claws, or the smell of cigarette smoke might have the same reek of alien breath – the Keeper and the player should confer on which catalysts might set the character off.

Of course, the main source for such a character is Mina Harker from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As his psychic domination of her takes hold, her ability to win free becomes increasingly undermined. As well, she becomes privy to Dracula’s methods and activities through dreams, intuition and other manifestations of his psychic presence in her mind. While this is a good template for a supernatural form of domination, there’s no reason that such scenarios could not be rooted in the alien or other paranormal sources such as those the Mythos provides.

Character Number Twelve: The Promised One

The existence of the character has been pre-ordained and their presence in the world has unexpected meaning for members of a certain race, group, or species. Whether the character is happy about this state of affairs depends upon the exact circumstances of the condition, however some unexpected benefits of the role may be discovered.

Mechanics: For the purposes of this character type, the Keeper and player should consult the specifics of such people as the Dalai Lama or the Mahdi, either according to factual record or by narrative means (by watching the 1986 Eddie Murphy movie “The Golden Child” for example). Other instances from pulp literature are also useful to mine – Barbara Hambly’s Bride of the Rat God is an excellent source. The defining trait of such a character is that a certain section of human society perceives them to be an object of some cosmic significance, either a herald of the End Times or an Agent of Change. Even if they aren’t.

One way of instigating this trope is by having the character bear some outward sign of their inherited destiny, such as a birthmark or other odd pigmentation. This means that the character is obvious to the Faithful wherever they go. A more subtle manifestation might be an astrological significance of their birth, coupled with a peculiarity of birth location – over water during an eclipse, or such. If the Mark of Destiny is not immediately obvious, then it will lurk like a time bomb in the character’s back story, awaiting the right moment to detonate.

This trope can also be manifested in a random fashion too. Have the party of characters go about their adventuring, foiling cultist plots and garnering mystical and occult spoils until one of them picks up an object of seemingly benign supernatural consequence. If the character meets a specific requirement (high POW; high APP; whatever) the object becomes spiritually bonded to them, marking them as significant to a particular Mythos crowd. And it might not mark them out as a new high priestess; it might simply identify them as a worthy sacrifice. The object won’t be literally glued to them either; it will just follow them serendipitously wherever they go, blithely defying all their attempts to lose or dispose of it (the Keeper can have a lot of fun with this…).

However the Mark of the Promised One manifests, it comes with some useful side-effects. Firstly, the cultists excited by the Mark will have plans for the Promised One and will not allow harm to come to them (at least, harm not of their own devising); secondly, the Promised One – within certain strictures – has a degree of control over their followers, demanding – if not freedom of movement outside of cultish oversight – a certain degree of luxury and gilt within their cage; and thirdly, a possible ability to command the cultists to perform certain duties or to leave certain associates unharmed.

It’s possible as well that assumption of the mantle might come with a few magical abilities of a low-level consequence, such as a random psychometric skill, allowing the Chosen One to understand the general intent of a touched individual, or a low-grade healing ability of some kind – the Keeper is free to decide.

*****

Some might say that having such characters in your game will unbalance the gameplay. That’s indeed a possibility, but only if the Keeper allows that to happen. There are two mitigating factors. One, characters in Call of Cthulhu don’t last very long: if a super-powered character seems to be distorting the action unnecessarily, rest assured they won’t be doing it for long (or you’re doing something very strange as Ref.!). Second, it may not be immediately apparent, but almost all of these “powers” are narrative-based and only work because the Referee allows them to. For the most part, these players are only going to be responding to the cues that the Keeper gives their characters; it’s not as if they’re actively facilitating their role in the transpiring events (in most instances). In essence, no matter how outré these “abilities” are, they’re no more or less damaging to your story than lobbing a copy of The Book of Eibon at your assembled party members would be. The characters will react as their players see fit.

So, if you want walk on the spooky-side for awhile, let your players take on some super-powers and see how it shakes up your game!