Welcome!
Aka is set in a world very much like our own, save for the existence of people with extraordinary abilities. Metahumans, as they have come to be called, derive their powers from multiple different sources and origins, but ultimately what matters is where they place themselves in the battle between heroes and villains.
Since the mid-1980’s, metahumans that have gone through a series of trials and training to be “Sanctioned” have been allowed to operate globally to combat villainous metahumans. The global organization known as Argus monitors and tracks all hero activity, acting as both a support network and policing agency. One of their most effective means of combating troublesome metas and rogue heroes alike is the Argus Special Enforcement Team, or A.S.E.T. for short.
Unfortunately, due to the secretive nature required for A.S.E.T. to operate, many people don’t have many positive things to associate with Argus when they take a surface look. To fill this PR void, the Argus Investigation and Detainment Division created the Argonauts: a team of young, up-and-coming heroes to take on a more public role to contrast A.S.E.T.
This is where your character comes in, as one of the new heroes invited to join the Argonauts. You have accepted the opportunity and traveled to Argus’ main headquarters near Zürich, Switzerland to meet your new team and see how you are going to fit in.
Being a hero is dangerous and no one can see what lies ahead clearly, but at least you have a team to face it with.
In this RP, you will play as a member of the newly formed Argonauts. Starting with a relatively green and inexperienced hero will give you the chance for greater character progression in my eyes as everyone plays the members of the team getting used to working with each other. Character creation is delved into a little deeper further on in the post.
For this RP, I’m going to be implementing a mechanics-lite system. Don’t worry about keeping track of any numbers, I’ll be doing all of that, but the goal of the idea is that it will make it easier to know what is and is not acceptable for your character to be able to do in any given scenario. We are dealing with superpowers in a vague text-based roleplaying system, which has been rife with absurd and disjointed feats in my personal experience. With this, it will hopefully make it clear whose characters are best suited for a task, or even capable of attempting a task. Those of you familiar with TTRPGs will hopefully find it intuitive, but don’t worry, more will be explained after characters are created and the IC begins. My goal is to make a simple system that allows for a greater depth and cohesiveness in group writing. If it falls short, we can always throw it out.
I hope you will all have fun in this RP, but I do want to caution against those who want to try and “win” or have the best or most overpowered character. That will not fly here and goes against the nature (I feel) of such RPs. If you want to play here, expect to be one of many skilled and creative writers crafting a shared story together. I also ask that you attempt to merge your character into the world that I, along with several others, have put many hours of work and attention into. It is not perfectly world-built by any means, but it is near and dear to my heart. I would suggest perusing the Lore Thread linked at the top of the post if you are unfamiliar with aka (or Are We Heroes as it was previously known).
Now that my spiel is over, on to the rules, and character creation!
Rules
- The OP’s (The Cyberiad’s) word is final in deciding matters.
- Don't be a jerk, disrespecting another player or OP will result in you being banned from this thread.
- See the Character Creation section for banned character elements and powers
- Play responsibly and realistically. Your character may have superpowers, but make them a believable character as much as you can. If you make a jerk character or have them do outrageous things, expect realistic consequences. If you take on a villain team full of killers on your own, expect to die.
- Do not godmod or egregiously metagame. Be aware of what your character can do with respect to other characters, and be aware of what your character can logically be aware of.
- Please do not post wip applications, I will not look at or evaluate applications until they are done.
- Have fun and work with other players to craft posts.
Character creation
Alright, now lets get on to the fun stuff.
Innate Heroism: The first thing I want to say is that you should make a character that wants to be a hero. Your character may have issues, quirks, or shortcomings (sometimes these things can be great if used properly) but the premise is that you were a solo hero who has been recently sanctioned, and invited to be part of the Argonauts. Your character should want to be a hero at heart, and be striving for that. Additionally, your character should be sane. Argus would screen out people with bad mental instability, so keep that in mind, please.
Rules on Powers: A very important element of superhuman rps is obviously the powers. In my experience in RPing, there are some powers that just really aren't fun to play against, or that unbalance things. I have also seen powers abused and twisted from their original interpretation. For that reason, I wanted to set aside this little portion to talk about them and help you understand what powers I will and won't accept for your character to have. The first banned power is Time Manipulation and similar abilities. If your character can stop time, there is literally nothing any other non-time manipulating character can do to stop you from killing pretty much everyone. So your character may not stop time, freeze time, slow time, accelerate time, or time travel either forward, backwards, or sideways (timeline hopping).
The second banned power is super speed greater than 100 mph. Speedsters present much of the same complications that time manipulators can cause, namely the ability to kill other player characters before they have a chance to defend themselves sans metagaming or godmoding.
The third banned power is precognition. This is only partially due to 'cogs ability to metagame with an IC excuse, but they can ruin plot twists (if the op allows them to by telling them what is going to happen) and/or they can state things and say 'well, my char has precog'. So I am going to avoid all that by banning precognition for player characters.
The fourth banned power is direct mind control and similar abilities that take control away from other players (note this is basically the general theme for the other banned powers; they take away other player's freedom or lessen it).
What I would like to see are more innovative abilities alongside the old classics. Try and be creative with your powers and abilities if you want, but don't make your character overpowered. I'll talk more about balancing in the next section, but even if you say 'I won't abuse that power' I don't care: if your character has an ability that can be exploited to turn into something op, I won't allow it despite how many times you cross your heart and hope to die.
Weaknesses, Drawbacks, and Limitations: Balance is very important to ensure things are as fair as possible, and on that notion I want to talk about how to balance your character. Just so we're using like-terms I want to define 'weakness' as something that your character has, either physical or mental, that could be exploited by another character to lower their effectiveness in combat. This means that 'being human' is not a weakness, so don't try to pull that as justification for having op powers. Your character does not necessarily have to have a weakness, but if that is the route you choose to go in an attempt to balance your character, there are some things to consider. Firstly, having something like a 'kryptonite' is not really a solid weakness. If it's a really rare and obscure substance then how or why would other character's have it? And if it's really common, how can you be effective at all? To top this off as a bad weakness, if it is a true analog to Superman's kryptonite, it would make your character basically useless if it is present. Try to have a weakness that is common enough to keep you from super saiyan, but that doesn't make you useless when exploited.
Drawbacks are another way to balance your character that instead of relying on external factors, focuses on ramifications of character powers. Possible drawbacks could include, but are not limited to, needing large caloric intakes or ways that using powers harm your character, like having flame powers that can still burn the user.
Limitations are hopefully self explanatory, but in short they are limits that you put on powers that could otherwise be overpowered. Some limits could be something like being able to fly, but only be able to fly carrying less than 50 lbs of extra weight. Keep these things in mind when making your character to increase the likelihood of your character being accepted.
Species: Sorry, I'm not allowing aliens or alien hybrids this time around.
Magic: For balancing purposes, you may not have 'magic' as an ability. Therefore, you cannot have a character that can cast spells. Why? Well, I feel that creates a character that is too much of a 'swiss army knife'. Now, magic CAN be an explanation for powers. That means you can shoot fireballs and call it magic instead of mutant human powers.
Tech: The tech level for this RP is roughly modern-tech. So if it isn't in current use it is not available to your character(that means experimental tech and prototype tech and theoretical tech is not allowed). The exception to this is having your character specialize in making advanced technology. This will count as an ability for your character to grant them access to this more advanced technology.
Money: If you choose to have your character be well-funded from the get-go, that will count as an ability. But note that Argus will provide some funding, to a point.
Application
- Code: Select all
[box][align=center][size=150][b][u]Argus Metahuman File[/u][/b][/size][/align]
[b]Name[/b]:
[b]Alias[/b]:
[b]Age[/b]:(At least 18, but should still be relatively inexperienced at heroism)
[b]Gender[/b]:
[floatright][spoiler=Appearance](place appearance description or image link here)[/spoiler][/floatright]
[b]Powers[/b]: (please list and describe. Do not just put links to superpower wiki)
[b]Drawbacks & Limitations[/b]:
[b]Weaknesses[/b]: (If applicable)
[b]Equipment and weapons[/b]: (please list, if applicable)
[hr][/hr]
[align=center][size=150]BACKGROUND[/size][/align]
[b]Nationality[/b]:
[b]Hometown[/b]:
[b]Personality[/b]:
[b]Bio[/b]:
[align=center][size=150]ADDITIONAL INFORMATION[/size][/align]
[b]Fears/Phobias[/b]:
[b]Skills[/b]: (additional languages, mechanical skills, etc)
[b]Theme[/b]:
[/box]