Crosspost When everyone is Super is anyone Super

[Maine75Man]

I posted this on rpgnet and thought I'd cross post it for fun

First the fluff

God dies.

Well maybe not “The God” but a god dies.

A cosmically powerful being on the order of Cuthulu or Galactus dies
somewhere in the vicinity of earth.

The moon, Alpha Centuri, R’leh, the next dimension on the left
something like that. The point is it happens metaphorically close
enough that the only place for all that power to go is earth.

If this cosmic power had gone into one person they would have been
deified with abilities that knew no bounds. Instead the power is
divided up evenly among earth’s 6,794,502,517 people. The effect on
each individual is of course much, much less impressive.

Everyone on the planet suddenly develops super powers, But there not
very great super powers. Some people are really strong, some can fly
and some have heat vision but most people can’t pull off two of those
things let alone three. Those aren’t even the tip of the iceberg
either, everyone’s power is different. Like every weird ability the
comics ever thought up was past out and random and then they started
inventing more.

I’m figuring everything falls apart at first with mass chaos and panic
in the streets and the like. But the limited scope of the powers plus
the fact that everyone seems to be operating on the same level should
mean that society will return to some semblance of order sooner rather
then latter. Of course that would be when things really get
interesting.

[Maine75Man]

Now the Crunch

Mechanically I’m going with Wild Talents partially because it’s the
only super rules I’m familiar with at the moment and partially because
the power design is open ended, point based, and a nice balance of
crunchy and chewy. Also in Wild Talents the willpower mechanic makes
it harder for powers like mind control or ‘I turn you into a lawn
chair’ to work on other supers. Since everyone in the setting is a
super it nerfs those powers pretty hard, sucks for people who got
those powers but probably saves society in the long run.

I’m thinking everyone gets 25 points to spend, so powers start off
small but can be increased normally over time including using
willpower to advance in stressful situations. Everyone is considered
to have the “supers” permission for free so any intrinsics, hyper
stats, hyper skills and miracles that can be bought with that 25
points are possible. The two powers that aren’t possible are
permanent power removal or power stealing. Temporary power canceling
(which is cheap points wise and thus relatively common) or power
copying (expensive so rare) are ok but there aren’t any Arthur
Petrelli’s or Sylar’s running around stealing other peoples powers.
(Why because they’re thread killers that’s why)

Like most of these emergence settings, powers seem to spring from the
subconscious of the people empowered . Since every one gets the same
amount of points, every one is more or less on the same level. With 25
points people can get a few dice in a potent versatile effect or a
large pool in a more limited effect. It is virtually impossible to
cover all bases. Some people do get more bang for their buck. For
instance certain people (probably gamers, engineers, lawyers and other
people with efficiency mindsets) instinctively minmaxed their points,
giving their powers various, sometimes nonsensical limitations, but
gaining greater over all power. Others gained abilities that played to
their strengths (Special forces soldiers are scary enough without a
few hyper stats tacked on). Finally some powers have more staggering
implications to the world then others (I’m fire proof versus I can
make gold) Still there’s really a lack of “I win” powers, No Kal
El’s, Magneto’s, or Professor X’s. No Avengers or JLA level powers,
in fact there’d be barely be any Great Lakes Avengers level powers. .