Plebes and Powers: A Cynical Superhero universe

[hyzmarca]

So I just watched Superman vs The Elite and have come to the conclusion that Superman's moral system is totally fucked up, so I'm just putting this down off the cuff. If might have some flaws.

Superheroes have always existed since the dawn of time. Mythological heroes like Gilgamesh, Achilles Hercules, and Hector are pre-modern superheroes whose tales have been exaggerated. Superpowers, though beyond those of mortal men, where rarely enough to turn the tide of a battle. Most Superhumans are merely talented natural athletes and none were above what would be considered street-tier today.

They were mostly low-level street tiers, never any real demigods.
This all changed during World War II, as both the Axis and the Allies raced to create the Atom bomb, a few Superhumans were exposed to doses of radiation powerful enough to to unravel their DNA and unlock their hidden true potential, creating the first Powers.

In 1945 the world was introduced to Powers in a spectacular way as Boy Scout and Ubermench clashed in the skies over Berlin. Boy Scout defeats his Nazi counterpart, just barely, and brings Adolf Hitler to justice. The Fuhrer stands trial for his crimes in this reality and is sentenced to lifetime house arrest. He eventually dies in his own bed of pancreatic cancer at the age of 105. Ubermench is exiled to the moon.


In modern times the League of Powers and Talents regulates all superhuman activity and protects Earth from alien invasion from their artificial moon known the barbican.

The League is an all-inclusive organization, representing all superhumans no matter their race, creed, nationality, or legal status. It is roughly divided into two political parties. The Heroes, led by Boy Scout, believe that superhumans (and Powers especially) have a duty to protect and guide the unpowered plebeians. The Villains, led by Ubermench (returned from his exile wiser and distancing himself from his Nazi past) believe that having power give them the right, and perhaps even the duty, to take what they want from those weaker than them.

Since outright conflict between the two groups would devastate the planet, the League enforces a system of rules designed to maintain the status quo.

1)No Power or Talent may kill another under any circumstances. Violation of this rule is punished by permanent banishment to the X-Zone, a universe that has already suffered it's heat-death, where nothing can live and yet nothing can die.

2) Killing a member of a Superhuman's registered support group is also forbidden and punished by banishment into the X-Zone.

3) Sharing advanced technology with the plebeians, either individuals, corporations, or governments, is forbidden. Because of this rue the world socially and technologically resembles real life 2012, despite the fact that the Powers have FTL spacecraft, anti-gravity, cancer cures, and universal vaccines against all disease.

4) Crimes against plebes are to be dealt with by plebe justice. While the League punishes crimes against Superhumans and Supporters, it does not accept the authority to punish violations of plebeian law (even when Plebeian government beg them to do so). So when Boy Scout arrests Goldmonger for stealing all the gold in Fort Knox and murdering several plebes during the act, he goes to a plebeian jail and has a trial in a plebeian Court and breaks out at his pleasure because it is literally impossible for any plebe facility to contain him.

5) Superhumans can't take over plebe governments or involve themselves in plebe politics.

Since Talent is genetic and hereditary, most Talents and Powers are the children of Talents and Powers. The League has an apprenticeship program that matches young Superhumans up with established members who have similar powersets. They are taught how to control their abilities and indoctrinated in the importance of maintaining the status quo. On rare occasions, some Talents will be allowed to "upgrade" themselves into Powers via controlled exposure to radiation (the League has perfected the process in the years since World War II).



Terminology
Plebeians (often shortened to Plebes): The masses, mortal men and women with no actual superpowers of their own.

Superhuman: A person with a natural genetic mutation that makes him superior to Plebeians .

Talent: A street-level superhuman, better than normal humans but not so much that he can ignore plebeian authorities. Most Superhumans are Talents.
(Examples: Batman, Taskmaster, Daredevil)

Power: A high-tier Superhuman. Powers can slaughter entire armies of plebes with trivial ease and often do.
(Examples: Superman, Phoenix)

Supporters: Derivatively refereed to as pets, those are the plebeian friends and family of a Superhuman. League rules give them special protections over normal plebeians. Many supporters don't know that they are supporters, and have no clue that their Patron is really a superhuman.
(Examples: Lois Lane, Aunt May)

Renegades: Superhumans who violate the League rules. Heroes and Villains, even the most bitter of enemies, will drop their feuds and team up to stop a Renegade, usually.


The PCs, ideally, are extremely low level Talents (of the really good at mumbletypeg sort, nothing that world be noticed) who are upgraded when a cask containing nuclear waste from a local power plant falls off a truck and breaks open on the street near them.

Lacking the indoctrination of most Powers, they can choose to be heroes or villains and maintain the status quo for the greater good or go renegade and attempt to tear down this dystopian nightmare world where the strong are never punished for brutalizing the weak.

[Endovior]

Boy Scout defeats his Nazi counterpart, just barely, and brings Adolf Hitler to justice. The Fuhrer stands trial for his crimes in this reality and is sentenced to lifetime house arrest. He eventually dies in his own bed of pancreatic cancer at the age of 105. Ubermench is exiled to the moon.

Uh... no. That would not have happened; if Hitler was captured and tried, then he was executed, period. No fair court in the world at that time would've let him get off with less... and if the court was unfair, then he was murdered by a vigilante shortly after (probably alongside the judge).

If he was involved in any sort of atrocities, Ubermench would've been executed too, unless he had some kind of power that would make it impossible to do so (Wolverine-type regeneration makes the short list).

[hyzmarca]

Ubermench and Boy Scout are straight up Silver Age Superman expys. The Death Star doesn't have enough firepower to scratch them, much less World War II era Earth. And Boy Scout believes in the sanctity of human life to the point that he would have let Hitler go free under an assumed identity in Argentina if the death penalty wasn't taken off the table.

[Stubbazubba]

Good for Boy Scout, but the nations of the world would have demanded Hitler's death.

[Fuchs]

Good for Boy Scout, but the nations of the world would have demanded Hitler's death.

As the description makes it clear - what the nations of the world want means nothing, only powers matter.

[Endovior]

Okay, so that needs to be made more explicit, about Boy Scout defying the nations of the world to let Hitler go free.

Then, we need to find out what Boy Scout did next, when some vigilante, likely Jewish, tracked Hitler to Argentina and killed him.

[Fuchs]

It should be "Übermensch", not "Ubermench".

[Stubbazubba]

Good for Boy Scout, but the nations of the world would have demanded Hitler's death.

As the description makes it clear - what the nations of the world want means nothing, only powers matter.

Then he's violating the moral code he enforces later on, specifically Rule #4. Hitler was a plebe, his crimes were plebeian in nature, and he should have been tried and sentenced by plebe justice. If that's the case, then yeah, that's weird, it certainly doesn't logically follow from the rest of the post, and needs to be made clear.

[the_taken]

Because of a string of serial murders of jews in Argentina was getting out of hand, The Kapitalist Kohen (a Talent) volunteered to investigate. He found Hitler was behind it all, who turned himself into a cyborg to live and hunt jews forever. TKK went apes-shit and killed Robot Hitler. Boy Scout X-zoned KK for the transgression, and looked the other way when Übermensch 'accidentally' re-animated Robot Hitler.

Zombie Robot Hitler is really boring and not very threatening. More like a racist parking meter with limited speech capabilities.

[hyzmarca]

Rule 4 isn't his own moral code so much as it is a compromise with Ubermensch and the other villains. He wants to do more, and in the beginning he could do more, but as the number of Powers increased the threat of escalation became too much.


If Boy Scout was the only Power then earth would be a boring utopia where no one ever got sick or hurt and violent crime was literally impossible due to his constant vigilance. But an actual knock-down drag-out fight between him and Ubermensch would raze cities, possibly entire nations. A full on- Power civil war would devastate continents and kill billions.

So he tries, personally, to minimize the damage without crossing the line that would make the villains push back. He isn't always successful and a lot of innocent people die because of that.

Because of a string of serial murders of jews in Argentina was getting out of hand, The Kapitalist Kohen (a Talent) volunteered to investigate. He found Hitler was behind it all, who turned himself into a cyborg to live and hunt jews forever. TKK went apes-shit and killed Robot Hitler. Boy Scout X-zoned KK for the transgression, and looked the other way when Übermensch 'accidentally' re-animated Robot Hitler.

Zombie Robot Hitler is really boring and not very threatening. More like a racist parking meter with limited speech capabilities.

Hitler spent the rest of his life under guard and died a senile old man alone and forgotten.

[deaddmwalking]

I don't understand the narrative benefit of having Hitler survive, but still be dead in the 'present day'. If he's dead already, he's not going to contribute to the ongoing story anymore. If he needed to perform some interesting historical event within the last 10 years, it might make sense to keep him alive, but is probably unnecessary.

When Hitler saw Ubermensch defeated by Boy Scout, he might have realized it was over and killed himself.

Particuarly if there was a Soviet analog as well.

In fact, if there wasn't, any history that starts with WWII would diverge too quickly from historical events to really have much hope of being recognizable to modern audiences.

The collapse of the Soviet Union could be tied to the banishment of a soviet superhero for violation of the rules.

[Stubbazubba]

Rule 4 isn't his own moral code so much as it is a compromise with Ubermensch and the other villains. He wants to do more, and in the beginning he could do more, but as the number of Powers increased the threat of escalation became too much.

OK, fair enough. That makes sense.

[FatR]

So I just watched Superman vs The Elite and have come to the conclusion that Superman's moral system is totally fucked up,

The cornerstone of Superman's moral system is the fact that he, in most of his incarnations, can destroy the Earth, and can take over too, if he manages to take out a couple of metahumans who stand a chance in a real no-holds-barred fight against him. Even at his lowest power level he's a major world power on his own. His greatest fear is letting his might get into his head and becoming yet another super-tyrant, so that's why he holds himself to an uncompromising moral standard. In fact "Superman vs The Elite" illustrates pretty well exactly what he fears to become. While I agree, that superhero ethos in general turned into a screwed-up thing once the villains were allowed to murder people by truckloads, instead of robbing banks and whatever shit they were up to before the dark age, Superman's morality outlook in particular makes perfect sense.

[hyzmarca]

I don't understand the narrative benefit of having Hitler survive, but still be dead in the 'present day'. If he's dead already, he's not going to contribute to the ongoing story anymore. If he needed to perform some interesting historical event within the last 10 years, it might make sense to keep him alive, but is probably unnecessary.

It's the first time Boy Scout took a stand and said, 'no I'm not going to participate in a murder for revenge', as revenge is the only real purpose of the death penalty. Hitler was defeated and harmless and there was no good reason to kill him. That set the tone of everything that came next.

Boy Scout's steadfast refusal to kill defeated villains was perfectly reasonable at first. It was only in the long term that the consequences of this became intolerable due to the villain population growing out of control. If he had been willing to let Hitler die, if he had been willing to execute villains as they appeared instead of simply containing them, then the world wouldn't have been so crapsack.

There is a soviet analog, of course. Anyone immoral enough to expose large groups of people to lethal doses of radiation can create Powers, it's controling them after they are created that becomes difficult.

Boy Scout was a nuclear scientist who had an accident and immediately become as much a liability as an asset because he started dictating his own morality to the President. Ubermensch was a brainwashed 14-year-old Hitler Youth exposed in a desperate last gamble that failed. The Soviet counterpart, Sickle, was a farmboy in the Ukraine exposed as part of a government project (which killed a lot of people, including his parents) that was disguised as an accident. When he found out the truth he went on a roaring rampage of revenge that effectively destroyed the USSR.

[hyzmarca]

So I just watched Superman vs The Elite and have come to the conclusion that Superman's moral system is totally fucked up,

The cornerstone of Superman's moral system is the fact that he, in most of his incarnations, can destroy the Earth, and can take over too, if he manages to take out a couple of metahumans who stand a chance in a real no-holds-barred fight against him. Even at his lowest power level he's a major world power on his own. His greatest fear is letting his might get into his head and becoming yet another super-tyrant, so that's why he holds himself to an uncompromising moral standard. In fact "Superman vs The Elite" illustrates pretty well exactly what he fears to become. While I agree, that superhero ethos in general turned into a screwed-up thing once the villains were allowed to murder people by truckloads, instead of robbing banks and whatever shit they were up to before the dark age, Superman's morality outlook in particular makes perfect sense.

The big problem with Superman Vs the Elite is that Superman himself was causing a lot of collateral damage in his attempt to subdue the Atomic Skull non-lethally.

There's no way in hell that he didn't kill a few dozen people when he was knocking Atomic Skull into cars and buildings during both of their fights. Having a super-powered brawl of that size in the middle of Metropolis is just negligent.

[Vebyast]

I think the setting is worth thinking about. In particular, there is an extremely interesting interaction between Rule 1, RP, and combat. Combat can only end via role-playing, so your primary goal in a fight is to engineer a situation that makes the opponent unwilling to continue. Not only does that make for better stories than running around in a dungeon killing goblins, the party has plenty of things to do out of combat as they try to demoralize their long-term enemies.

---

As a side note, it seems like everybody is working on the same topic this month. "Ok, you can give up now, or we can finish this, and that would suck for everybody."

[sake]

But the marvel/dc moral extremes where everyone is either so lawful stupid that they refuse to use deadly force even when the safety of the entire universe is on the line or execute a pyschopath who has personally killed/mained hundreds and proven to be uncontainable by law enforcement agencies... OR they're a complete voilent nutcase extremist that sees nothing wrong with gunning down old ladies for jaywalking is one of the stupidest aspects of cape comics. And any story where they try to lampshade or validate it tends to be just plain groan worthy and insulting. Do we really need an entire setting built around the whole concept?

[FatR]

Well, to be fair, sometimes DC superheroes kill enemies that are obviously incorrigible and too powerful to contain, like Darkseid and Anti-Monitor, same thing for Marvel. And frankly, the main reason why superhero moral doctrine doesn't generally work in these verses anymore lies in the nature of mainstream superhero comics, namely episodic stories based on the same unchanging status quo. In a verse that has the same initial inputs, but is more concerned with making sense that with rehashing the same plots again and again, subduing criminals and letting the court pass sentences them (which likely would be capital sentences in case of shits like Victor Szasz), would be the most sensible course of action for well-meaning superpowered vigilantes. Well, and construction a prison in Dimension of No Escape for supercriminals who can't be contained by normal means, but aren't seen as irredeemable, would be high on the list of priorities of any Justice League-equivalent. This doesn't work not because the law in a superheroverse inherently must be stupid and prisons made of cardboard, but because the status quo is god and villains only very rarely can be dealt with permanently.

EDIT: I advise OP to read Empowered which (if you don't mind all the bondage fetish going on) contains a fairly good example of a cynical superhero verse, with an unspoken agreement about not icing each other between superheroes and majority of supervillains and some ugly situations arising around it.

[hyzmarca]

But the marvel/dc moral extremes where everyone is either so lawful stupid that they refuse to use deadly force even when the safety of the entire universe is on the line or execute a pyschopath who has personally killed/mained hundreds and proven to be uncontainable by law enforcement agencies... OR they're a complete voilent nutcase extremist that sees nothing wrong with gunning down old ladies for jaywalking is one of the stupidest aspects of cape comics. And any story where they try to lampshade or validate it tends to be just plain groan worthy and insulting. Do we really need an entire setting built around the whole concept?

Probably not. My main concern is building a setting where the vast majority of superhumans, hero and villain alike, are totally disconnected from humanity at large (thus the use of the derogatory and insulting term, Plebes to describes the mortal masses). It should be to the point that most heroes have more empathy for the villains that they fight against than for the bystanders who get caught in their crossfire, simply because they are that disconnected from humanity, but without making them total douchebags like The Boys did.

[K]

Superman vs. the Elite is basically DC's black-and-white answer to The Authority. I guess that's fair since the Authority is clearly a rip-off of DC's best heroes, so having Superman beat Authority-clones is also fair game if the Authority can have a Superman-clone and Batman-clone as gay lovers.

I am a great fan of The Authority because they really do kill the super-villains, but they also go after war criminals and solve social issues. One of their tag lines is "why don't super-heroes ever go after the real bastards?"

The problem with Superman vs. The Elite is that is doesn't really frame the Authority's moral argument correctly. They are simply problem-solvers who kill only when that's the only way to permanently end a threat, and have spared villains whenever they could be made useful. Since they only get involved in global threats and "extinction-level events," they operate on the moral level of a nation like the US and not like the spoiled vigilantes like DC's The Elite.

There is no point where The Authority would dick around with Superman, torture soldiers for kicks, or even execute single villains whose killing power is only great enough to smash up street corners. That's all just "kick the puppy" moments to get the audience on the side of Superman and to distract from the Authority's actual mission of stopping global threats, the actual support for their sometimes brutal actions.

[angelfromanotherpin]

The Authority are deeply inconsistent. In their first and third stories they make clear efforts to protect people (even non-human people like God's stomach bacteria) as much as possible even in the heat of s super-battle. In their second story they throw (an alternate world) Italy into space, killing in cold blood an entire country to get the fraction of them that were hostile aliens. In their fourth story they go after the leaders of rogue states in the opening, but against the actual enemy of that story they kill all the super-soldiers and recruit the man who gave them their orders.

So they don't seem to have a coherent moral philosophy at all. When the Hat rains acid on everyone related to people who he decided to execute with no due process, that's not out of character for the Authority, because basically nothing is.

[FatR]

Superman vs. the Elite is basically DC's black-and-white answer to The Authority. I guess that's fair since the Authority is clearly a rip-off of DC's best heroes, so having Superman beat Authority-clones is also fair game if the Authority can have a Superman-clone and Batman-clone as gay lovers.

I am a great fan of The Authority because they really do kill the super-villains, but they also go after war criminals and solve social issues.

Too bad that most of their solutions are bullshit that will only make things worse. And, in fact, are quickly forgotten and do not lead to any long-term changes in status quo. Until the world gets mostly destroyed. The Authority's problem is that it uses the same fucking approach of brief, episodic story arcs with very little in the way of long-term overarching story as mainstream superhero comics. So while villains routinely get ganked, or writers sometimes pretend that the Authority solved their pet real-world problem, the status quo is still god, and a new crop of villains will grow right away. And will be forced to up the ante in terms of threat and atrocities. So Authorityverse ends up far and away worse than DCverse in terms of muggles being endlessly fucked over by metahuman conflicts.

The problem with Superman vs. The Elite is that is doesn't really frame the Authority's moral argument correctly. They are simply problem-solvers who kill only when that's the only way to permanently end a threat,

Or when it is convenient for them. They kill shittons of enemy civilans (basically, little more than slaves to enemy rulers in either case) as collateral damage in both of the two initial arcs. In second case explicitly to terrorize the enemies by showing that they are even more ruthless than them. And do explicitly kill non-threats for revenge (the evil Doctor after he was rendered harmless by becoming enlightened) or go out of the way to torture their enemies (Seth).

That's all just "kick the puppy" moments to get the audience on the side of Superman and to distract from the Authority's actual mission of stopping global threats, the actual support for their sometimes brutal actions.

Well, the darkest side of the Authority (the fact that they are basically a bunch of people who use their position as the world's strongest superpower to behave like jerk gods, who shower people with gifts or kill those who offend them, directly depose governments or leave muggles to rule themselves, depending on their current mood, protect civilians or give zero fucks about them, as angelfromanotherpin described above) sort of cannot work in the verse which has Superman (and all of DC heroes in the comic version of the story) in it. So they had to work with their habitual cruelty (do I need to remind that for The Authority sodomizing a disabled enemy with a jackhammer is a reasonable form of personal revenge; or other reasons why all of their enemies need to have world-destroying plans or eat babies, so that we won't forget who's the bad guy here?).

EDIT: Well, if anything, The Authority is a great illustration where people of average intelligence and integrity will end up if they decide that having godlike uncontrolled power allows them to change the world for the better - as they see "better".

[K]

The thing to remember about the Authority is that they are basically an allegory for the modern first-world nation-state. A lot of what they do is moral compromise, quixotic social experimentation, and asymmetric responses to threats.

So like a modern nation, they have installed dictators in the hopes of fostering a better situation and they have committed senseless civilian casualties. They do follow the philosophy that asymmetric responses to threats are a form of deterrent (shock and awe, for example). They've muddled things up royally when meeting other cultures.

Like modern nations, the only thing they are really good at is handling emergency response and war. Everything else is the same kind of inconsistency and brute response that you'd get from a first-world nation (for example, killing that one Doctor is a perfect allegory for the ethical problems of capital punishment that plague many a nation).

[Korwin]

Why aren't the normalos passing laws that grants superpowered villains diplomatic immunity / law immunity?
In the current setup they are only screwed when the 'heros' try to subdue the villains. Why try to imprission them? When they can walk away any time they want?

[hyzmarca]

Why aren't the normalos passing laws that grants superpowered villains diplomatic immunity / law immunity?
In the current setup they are only screwed when the 'heros' try to subdue the villains. Why try to imprission them? When they can walk away any time they want?

They're just going through the motions, really. Since only Powers and stop Powers, it's the willingness of the heroes to stand up for law and order that prevents the setting from turning into Wanted.

A world where supervillains can try to do anything with total impunity is bad, one where they can do anything with total impunity is far worse.

There's also an element of social shaming to it, which is the only thing that keeps some of the young and immature supervillains, drunk on their own power, from crossing the line between stealing the Eiffel Tower and raping the President of France on live television.


But yeah, prisons designed to hold Powers basically work on the honor system. There's no locks on the door, just check in and out at the front desk. Room Service will put be mints on your pillows and we've got a five-star golf course.