Character Creation Thread - Prince of Boredom :)

Anything that you want The Watcher to know about your character, please copy it over to your character creation thread, rather than relying upon him to track down info in any other public or private thread.  He has taken on a populous game, so the easier we can make it for him, the sooner we can get up and running.  Many thanks. :)
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:35, Tue 04 May 2021.

Name: Max

Playbook: Delinquent

Abilities: Teleportation, <still considering second power>

Max grew up on the streets to a junky who had no idea who his father was and wasn't particularly interested in being a mother. When his mutant powers first manifest, he went on a mini crime spree, stealing food, money, and "toys". He was eventually caught by a hero while in the process of stealing money from a bank vault he'd teleported into and given an ultimatum; get turned into the authorities and go to jail, or put the money back and attend the Academy.

Max hasn't admitted it to anyone (even himself), but the one thing he'd always longed for was a family. He's started to feel like the team might be that family, and as much as their antics and need to be "good" all the time might frustrate him, he might not always show it but he's got their backs.

Given what was mentioned in the World Design Thread, his father was likely a mutant (and probably not the most upstanding) so that could be a connection to the Marvel universe, as well as the hero that "rescued" him.
This message was last updated by the GM at 20:36, Tue 04 May 2021.

Name: Max
Playbook: Delinquent

Look: Man, White, Jaded Eyes
      Rebellious Clothing
      No Costume

Abilities: Teleportation, <still considering second power>

Labels:
Danger: 0
Freak: +1
Savior: -1
Superior: +2
Mundane: +1

Conditions:
[] Afraid (-2 to directly engage a threat)

[] Angry (-2 to comfort or support or pierce the mask)

[] Guilty (-2 to provoke someone or assess the situation)

[] Hopeless (-2 to unleash your powers)

[] Insecure (-2 to defend someone or reject others’ influence)

Relationships:
You keep trying to impress _________________ with your antics.
You and ________________ pulled an awesome (if illegal) stunt together.

Influence:


Delinquent Moves:
Criminal Mind
  When you assess the situation, you can always ask one of the
  following questions, even on a miss:
     - what here is useful or valuable to me?
     - how could I best infuriate or provoke ____________?
     - what’s the best way in/way past?

Troublemaker
  When you help a teammate through destructive, criminal, or
  rule-breaking actions, you can give them a +2 instead of a +1
  when you spend a Team from the pool.

Are you watching closely?
  When you mislead, distract, or trick someone, roll + Superior.
  On a hit, they are fooled, at least for a moment. On a 10+,
  choose three. On a 7-9, choose two.
     - you get an opportunity
     - you expose a weakness or flaw
     - you confuse them for some time
     - you avoid further entanglement
  On a miss, you’re hopelessly embroiled in it and under
  pressure; mark a condition.

Team Moves:
When you share a triumphant celebration with someone, ask them if
they think you’re cool. If they say yes, give them Influence and
take Influence over them. If they say no, mark a condition or
spurn them immediately. If they’re a teammate, then either way,
add a Team to the pool.

When you share a vulnerability or weakness with someone, give them
Influence over you, and ask them who they’d like you to be. Mark
potential if you show them that person. If they’re a teammate, add
a Team to the pool no matter what.

Potential: 0

I like it!  Are Max's 'jaded' eyes very noticeable as 'inhuman'?  Your character reminds me of Nightcrawler or Blink, any relations?

Nope, no relations to them, and Max looks completely normal. The "jaded" is not the color, but rather the emotion behind them. He grew up on the street and had to eat out of trash cans before he developed his powers, so he's dealt with living in the underbelly of society.

All good. :-)

Okay folks, I need some help!

As a Delinquent, Max gets 2 abilities. I am firmly set on one of those abilities being Teleportation; it's key to the concept. But I'm still torn on what to take for his second power. As a general rule I prefer to stay within the confines of the playbook, but I'm not getting a lot of inspiration. So would love some thoughts.

A Delinquent's powers are supposed to be "messy, deceiving, or frustrating" according to the playbook. The options given are:

teleportation, illusions, gadgetry and hacking, psychic weapons, emotion control, and power negation.

Now, when I originally made Max for another Masks game (that never got started), I took power negation, but only because I couldn't think of anything else, but I just don't see it being very interesting. Gadgetry and hacking are out because they're too cerebral for him. Emotion control is moderately interesting, but doesn't really jump out at me. Psychic weapons just seems a bit odd since I would expect them to be paired with some other psychic power. Illusions could be interesting, but I just don't see how it fits with teleportation (from a thematic perspective).

One idea I had was some sort of "electrical interference" power. The thought stemmed from me considering his background; once he acquired his teleportation powers, he started teleporting into places and stealing things. But you'd think he'd eventually get identified by security cameras, but I don't want him identified as a criminal (that's more in the Reformed's lane). But what if his teleportation power somehow disrupts electrical fields and causes electronics to fail? It would mean he would basically never be caught by security systems, but also could be a useful ability if he could learn to harness it.

What do you think?

If you want to explain his teleportation as a psionic manifestation of his will "drilling" a hole into where he wants to be, then you could also open up to illusions or psychic weapons. Psychic weapons would be even easier to explain without even going further into his teleportation: weaponize his teleportation itself! Now you're thinking with portals. :D

If you go illusions, maybe his teleporting is a "hard" use of his power, with the illusions being the same principle with a lighter touch, maybe something he developed later. Showing something that does exist somewhere that he knows about, so he can visualize it and open a "soft" portal to it, but it isn't really an opening to a place, just the image of something there. You could use an ability like that even in unconventional ways, like scouting out a place and then reporting back with a whole dang live map of it. Clairvoyance!

Warning, do not use this power on the bathroom. There will be clobberin.

Hmm, maybe it's more that I don't want him to have a power that is an obvious weapon? I guess I'm going for more of a trickster, con artist feel.




So this is my dilemma; illusions fit the trickster feel, but I just can't get excited about them for some reason.

What do you think about the "electrical disturbance" power idea?

Ah, yeah. If an idea doesn't spark that joy, it's probably not gonna work out.

I'm concerned about the electrical disturbance idea overlapping with Arc. There are a lot of overlapping ideas going around already, though, so it probably isn't a real problem.

Hmm, that's a very good point I hadn't thought about. Might need to think a bit more on it.

https://powerlisting.fandom.co...n_Barrier_Generation

So whenever someone breaches his barrier, they are teleported somewhere else nearby. Can be disorienting to the victim. A barrier could be placed just before his face which disguised his identity from cameras and such.

https://powerlisting.fandom.co...i/Spatial_Distortion

In a similar vein with electrical disturbance, maybe what he has is spatial distortion that he has been too lazy to master fully? Or if you'd rather keep him from being overpowered, maybe its more powerful manifestations just take more juice than he has/can access consciously. Instead, he has just figured out a few tricks he can do with relative ease, such as teleportation and temporary invisibility. Cameras can't see you if you and they are not entirely on the same plane. He may not even understand how it works if you don't want him to be too cerebral.

If you don't mind my saying so, I think that's a real neat take on it. That Max actually has this very powerful ability but he essentially figured out he could teleport and was like "yeah I'm good here." Sort of that gifted underachiever thing.

Thanks for the thoughts guys, and while they're not exactly what I'm thinking of, they have helped me with my brainstorming.

So reading through the page Counterforce linked, I went down the links rabbit hole which eventually led me to Spatial Perception (https://powerlisting.fandom.co...i/Spatial_Perception). Which sort of matched with an idea I had of Eidetic Memory, but seemed a little too minor.

So the basic idea is that when his mutation kicked in, his awareness "evolved" in order to be able to handle his teleportation (much like how most speedsters develop an ability to handle the wind shear caused by running really fast). The way I see the power is that he has complete "Spatial Awareness" of anything he can see or has seen (like an Eidetic/Photographic Memory specifically focused on Spatial Perception). So he can immediately identify exact distances between objects, can assess the speed of a moving object based on how its relative spatial location changes, etc.

Also, the way his teleportation works, he has to see where he is going, has seen the location previously (hence the photographic memory), or can "guess" the location (ie. on the other side of this door) but that's more dangerous.

Thoughts?

That's interesting in a pretty lowkey way. Not a tricky power, but a power that can enable a lot of tricky behaviour, if that makes sense. I think that makes it a decent fit for a Delinquent. It also gives him a lot of potential for growth, especially if he ever starts taking things more seriously.

Yeah, lowkey was what I was going for. I want his teleportation to be the "cool" power.

Looks fun!

When he teleports is it castling or apportation?

I'm using "castling" to mean that he's exchanging his volume and dimensions with the same volume/dimensions of whatevers where he' going.  Usually, it'd be air.  But it might be water.  I suppose it could be stone etc.  Castlign usually wouldn't create any noise (unless you wanted it to) and while, yeah, teleporting into the middle of a mountain might kill you it would be because of suffocation. In fact, that could even be an attack:  jump right above someone, teleport into a wall and then out again.  And 6-feet of wood and drywall appear above the target with no physical support...

Apportation, would mean that he's not exchanging volumes.  So, you'd get the characteristic explosion/implosion sound (the "Bamf") of air rushing to fill the void or the air suddenly explosively displaced.  And that version would, I imagine have more risk should he teleport into the middle of something...

Well, it seems Max creates portals rather than simply appearing here and disappearing there, as he was able to use his power to reach over to one of the food tables. I'm interested in how Max and Gateway's portals differ, and how they'd interact. My initial thought is that Gateway would have a more clear Nightcrawler-style sulphur and brimstone Bamf, simply because of his origins.

Nope, he never did that. What you might be remembering is that after spiking the punch, he teleported the empty bottle into the alley.

The intent there was to show he can teleport things he's touching, not open portals. But I may actually retcon that away.

I don't want to get into the physics to much, but he definitely apports. And it is traditional teleportation; he literally disappears from his current location and appears at another without using a portal or gateway, and without traversing another dimension (ala Nightcrawler).

That's why his mutation includes spatial awareness; it's necessary for him.

Oooooh. Yes, I remember now. What I was thinking was that he'd spiked the punch by reaching through a portal to pour the alcohol in. Still, definitely not remembering that right.

Nope, he was standing right next to it.

So much goodness here.  I am looking forward to seeing this all in play. :-)  You don't have to do anything else for now.