Howdy all, was wanting to get my fellow dumpshockers opinions on a new campaign I'm starting. Basically I'm incorporating characters from the Marvel and DC universes into the Shadowrun setting for a new campaign I'm going to be kicking off soon... as part of this I'm looking to rewrite a fair bit of the background of SR to account for the new 'powers' that will be springing up around the globe.

I plan to have Superman show up sometime around 2048-2049 and then other heroes phase in thereafter... maybe Batman in 2050, Spider-man in 2055 and so on. I plan to include most of the main heroes from each universe, with a few of the diddy ones. That means the JLA, Avengers, X-men, Fantastic Four, Teen Titans, etc. plus most of the big solo heroes from both... as well as most of the main villains.

So what I'd like from you all is some input on the following:

1) What effect do you think the emergence of these heroes and villains would have on the SR universe timeline up until 2063. For example, the Bugs in Chicago, the presidential election campaign, the Arcology Shutdown and things like that.

2) Can you think of any changes to the classic origin stories of these heroes to give them an SR twist? Maybe the Fantastic Four get exposed to cosmic radiation whilst attempting to take part in the Probe Race for example (though that would make them fairly new heroes!) Where would the heroes be located? Maybe Spidey would be a KSAF photographer!!!

3) Can you give me any tips for handling super-powers in the SR setting, any useful house rules or little tricks. Maybe even write ups for your favourite heroes in SR!!!

4) What kind of laws would SR develop around heroes? What about the Megacorps? I could imagine Dr. Doom would rather be in charge of a megacorp rather than sitting about Latvia all day... and he probably would have the means to do it!

5) How would the powers-that-be in SR (Great Dragons, IE's, etc.) interact with Superheroes/villains... do you think they'd get on with any of them? Who would side with whom and who would possess the real power?

6) Can you come up with any cool adventure ideas or particular events surrounding a certain hero/villain?

Well, Marvels 2099 comics have a feel similar to SR.

Mutants i could see as a result of surge. the Probe race for the fantasic four would work.

For some realism on how that level of power would play out, abberant has a good setting. Lots of corperate supers, plenty of conspiracies and shadowruns.

Most heros should probably use critter rules, and tie a lot of the 'natural' powers dircetly to essence. Id say make 'superhuman' replace magic, at priority A/30 pts for heroic power, and priority B for lesser powers, or just one limitied power. (so make Cyclops a B, since his power has so many down sides, despite its Force).

123 points would be street level, on par with mere mortals. you could emulate a lot of what you want with edges and a high number of points.

also, you need some system for large dice pools and auto-successes. Lots of heros should not have to roll when shot at (either dodging bullets, or just staging damage down).

nah, you can handle stuff like that with something like Mutant Power: Hard to Hit (attackers suffer +1 TN to hit the superhero per level of this power).

I was thinking Spidey 2099's origin is perfect for SR... probably Aztechnology (given Gabriel's Mexican background and the corps shadiness...), maybe a UniOm subsidiary!

And Batman would be as easy as pie.

Although you probably need to relocate him.

I'm for all the heros EXCEPT Superman. Think about it. Someone as tough as he is could have taken on all the Insect Spirits in bug city single handedly. Leave Supes at home please.

I agree on Superman. Unless Orichalcum is a type of Kryptonite (Or, as in the DC universe the stuff is as common as peanut brittle for villains) Superman and anything tougher is just too much.

Unless you keep the old pre-crises Superman property of being exceptionally vulnerable to magic. . .

Anyway here's a few other thoughts:

In the Shadowrun universe pretty much anybody with more than a million Nuyen to their name instantly becomes evil so all the Megacorps are probably run by villains. Doom might own Renraku, Kingpin runs Ares, etc. Somebody who's evil shtick is summoning bad things should run Aztechnology but I'm not sure who offhand fits that description. This actually wouldn't affect things too much, although assassinating a boss probably just got tougher.

The Great Ghost Dance never made perfect sense as a successful military tactic, and with as many superheros as the USA can throw at the AmerInds they'll never pull it off. Apache Chief and Ripclaw just aren't enough to make up for the Avengers, the JLA, and the X-Men at the same time. You'll need to invent a number of Amerind superheros and villains to maintain the balance there or else come up with a good reason why all the heros vanished for a while.

Verjigorm = Darkseid
You know it makes sense.

Most superpowers could be simulated through spells and adept powers. Get the Adept Handybook, there's a lot powers superheroes could use.

I'd say Batman is just a mundane, but he has lots of skills and gadgets that he can use.

For Spiderman, I remember there being a write up of him in some past issue of TSS.

Oh yeah, here's something you might want to look at.

If you want to get one idea of what sort of effect even a handful of superbeings could have on the world at large check out the comic MiracleMan by Alan Moore (and later Neil Gaiman) that ran in the late 1980s.

As far as I know only pre-crises Superman was weak to magic. I know it's annoying but there's at least 4 incarnations of Superman to consider just in the comics:

Pre-crises: Gives a new meaning to the word munchkin. He was so overpowered they did the whole crises on infinite Earth's just to tone him down. Literally every villain had to either have a dumptruck of kryptonite or magic just to scratch him. How strong was he? When he sneezed he accidentally destroyed an entire solar system. . .

Post-Crises: A very toned down Superman, post-crises is relatively weak, meaning he actually has trouble shifting the moon in it's orbit. Still would have 3-digit physical attributes but at least, unlike pre-crises supes, he's not also 3-digit intelligence (Able to decipher any language on the fly, etc.)

Superman Prime: Imagine Pre-crises Superman spending something like 300 years in the core of the Sun growing exponentially every day. Now imagine that he also has a Green-Lanern ring giving him the power to basically create anything he can imagine (Keep that 3-digit intelligence and willpower in mind when you consider what he can imagine).

Superman 1 Million: Remember when we said Pre-Crises Superman was a munchkin? We lied. Compared to 1M Pre-Crises is a little ball of lint. Basically this one has every single imaginable superpower. Not only is he immune to magic, he's a magic user. He's got powers from a 5-D imp ancestor that gives him the power to warp space. He once altered time simply by throwing a punch so hard it tore the space-time continuum. He has so many danged powers he actually cannot keep track of them all.

I imagine the X-men would wind up allied with the Metahumanity rights groups, probably mutant and metahuman rights would wind up melting together in people's minds.

Superman't tough, but I'd love to see the SR stats for Three-Willie Seth.

The only good superhero is Lobo. Make stats for Lobo.

Yep, and then do Lobo vs a pack of redneck trees...

Not sure it's what you wat, but why not try to create all these heroes using more or less standard SR rules?

Add a specific type of Mana spike which awakens hidden magic potential - use standard magic rating, and maybe 1D6(or 2D6, or a set number) of extra magic points.

Let them innately develop certain 'metamagics' and take the Movement metamagic precedent to include more critter powers as needed.

Use adept powers, spells, metamafics/critter powers and technology to recreate the heroes. Don't go for the same identities; just similar ones. Maybe these people where influenced by superhero comics in their view of magic.

I like the idea of Hestaby as Professor X (and professor is a perfectly valid term for a woman too)

Doom is hard to incorporate in european politics without a serious change to the world - maybe 'replace' him with Lofwyr? Or make him a 'puppet' of Lofwyr's...

Iron Man would be a Rigger in a rigged Military Armor (combine cyberlimb enhancements with drone rules to create one) - or if you want to stick to the rules, an anthroform drone with room for a passenger (can be tweaked into existence, I think)

Spidey - a magic student who draws the attention of Spider and becomes an adept; maybe the spider who bit him carried a rare strain of HMHVV - Increased Attributes, an additional initiative die, Essence drain, Essence loss - and now he feeds on the criminals he fights?

Batman - mundane, with alot of tech and edges, and some of the best cyberware/bioware money can buy to push his attributes up and allow for some of the things he does. Why not make him an ork with exceptional intelligence who lost his (rich) parents in the Night of rage?

Fantastic Four - they were on the first Ares Mission to mars, but the rocket malfunctioned and they crashed into a magical power site (the destruction of which awakened their powers). These would probably be best dealt with using critter powers, I think... Johnny - Flame Aura, various fire Innate Spells, Ben - Hardened Armor, Enhanced Body and Strength, Invulnerabilities, Sue - Innate Spell(Invisibility)/Innate Spell(Barrier), Reed - tough one...maybe change him? give him Mist Form, Noxious 'Breath', Engulf or something?

Wolverine - shapeshifter locked into human form by a specially implanted, dikoted titanium bone lacing with attached retractable dikoted spurs. Make him an adept to account for all the increased senses and stuff.

Superman - well...he IS an alien...maybe make him a powerful, unique spirit? I think I'd stick with the more 'low-key'¨heroes though.

Avengers - make them a corporation, or employees of a corporation - Ares, maybe? Or for some interesting powershifts, ex-Fuchi? That would give you reason for several groups - (like the east coast, west coast - and maybe european, asian, and north coast(replacing whatever the canadian team was called - can't remember right now)

Punisher - rogue street sam, natch.

Personally, I'd stick with basic SR rules and abilities as much as possible - with some additions - and incorporate them as 'the best of the best' when it comes to mages, adepts and enhanced humans. And I'd keep alot of, if not all, major SR players.

Char Gen... 250-500BPs depending on power-level?

Cyclops - Adept with knack power of Laser. Info on Knack can be found here.

Wolverine - Adept with lots of Improved Senses, Improved Cyber-Implant Combat, Rapid Healing, Symbiotes and Fast Healer edge. And of course dual dikoted spurs.

Gambit - Adept, Charge Object(can be found in the Adept Handybook, get it. NOW!), maybe Traceless Walk and other "thiefy" abilities. Give him a telescoping staff and a long coat.

Psylocke - A psionic, for more info, MiTS page 27. Give him some Kung-fu or some other martial art skill to boot.

Storm - A tough one. Maybe aspected sorcerer of shamanic or maybe even Houngan. Give her the Spirit power of Storm for some extra kick.

Neon Tiger:

Um, no offense meant, but--

I've been collecting comic books (specifically MARVEL titles, as you can probably tell from part of my sig.) on and off for most of the past 20 years (since about 1986) and, the last time I checked, Psylocke was most definitely NOT a "him".

Her name was Elizabeth "Betsy" Braddock, and she was the fraternal twin sister of Brian Braddock, a/k/a "Captain Britain".

EDIT: Oops, toturi beat me to it...

--Foreigner

toturi:

I was discussing the Hulk with a chummer of mine on AOL IM last night, and we came up with the idea of making him an Ogre (I read somewhere that that's a green-skinned subtype of the Ork metatype, more common in Europe than in America), fitted with some form of experimental strength-enhancing cyber- or bioware implants which are tied into the rage/pain centers of his brain.

End result: whenever he's enraged or in severe pain, he gets stronger.

I suppose he could use a quickened spell (talisman, maybe?) to pass for Human, and have the spell keyed to drop when his powers activated.

How does that work for you?

--Foreigner

hmm, hulk, maybe a strange accident involving the detonation of a experemental nuke on a powersite. basicly the imposible have happend and a spirit have been bonded to a human host. the spirit is feral and only able to gain control over "banner" when banner is offbalance mentaly (angry you know).

what are we looking at here, imunity to normal weapons, movement (he is damn fast for being so big) and his base atributes are handeld mutch like when a ally spirit inhabits a animal only that the spirits force grows as banner gets angry. as for the green skin, the radiation from the bomb makes the spirit trigger surge when it manifests but for some reason the surge isnt permanent.

the hook here is the radiation, we all know about the chicago blast right? magic and nuclear weapons have funny sideeffects

one take on spiderman:
adept. pure and simple.
to explain the wallcrawling there is the gecko crawl spell, maybe make it a unique adept power mutch like the inate spell critter power.
and the webshoothers are experemental version of the stealth grapple line. instead of a reel its keept as a high pressure liquid in a airfree enviroment, the moment it comes in contact with air it becomes solid.

As I remember, Spiderman had made his shooters. So just have them be machines. Ties into his science-student aspect, as well.

Give the Hulk both the Pacifist and Combat Monster flaws. That would reasonably portray his dislike of violence as Banner combined with his desire to smash everything as the Hulk.

Hmm, I did a bit of thinking on Superman. My suggestion of 3-digit body seems very low when I think about it.

Even the weakest version of Superman can typically survive a multi-megaton nuclear blast. Consider the Damage code for such a blast.

3D per kilo of plastic. 1000 kilos to a ton (Note we're doing Metric tons to make the math easy), 1000 tons to the kiloton. 1000 kilotons to the megaton.

Surviving a single megaton explosion will require Superman to make a soak roll against 3,000,000,000D damage. Think about that a minute. Superman has to roll 500,000 sixes in a row to get a success on that test. What's more, he has to do it twice. What's worse, he normally isn't Seriously damage. At best he's lightly stunned which means he staged it down to L at least, requiring that he pull of a dice roll of 500,000,000 sixes in a row at least six times, maybe 8.

If you use the optional explosive rules an average 1 megaton nuke will roll 1,500,000,000 dice for itself and net aprox 750,000,000 successes against a TN of 4, which results in that same number of boxes of deadly overdamage. This means if you use optional explosive rules superman has to be able to roll an equal number of successes, which is to say he can get 750,000,008 successes against a TN of 3,000,000,000. . .

Tomorrow I'll work out what his quickness would have to be for some of his feats of speed. . .

Immunity to Normal Weapons. Regeneration and a specialised Karma twist to make force a reroll of the D6.

Just for shits and giggles what about Doomsday? I mean, he beat the tar out of Superman at least once that I remember and I think they had to send him to the end of the universe to finally get rid of him. By that arguement Superman in not the lamest, Doomsday is. Oh, and while we are in the realm of pure fantasy how about Doomsday vs. Galactus? Which begs the question, what about the Silver Surfer? Sigh... it just goes on and on...

A Noob

Hmmm, well... there are a few problems with that Superman example I think.

For a start, Str 6 is double Str 3. You can lift double as much, etc. However, a punch from someone with Str 6 is 4 times as hard to resist (without armour) as a punch by someone with Str 3. Applying this logic to the nuke damage scaling that is normally used should generate some more sensible numbers... the explosives rules are only designed to simulate limited ammounts of small explosives, not nuclear blasts and billions of tons of TNT!!!

I'd give a nuke a damage code of around 35-80DN damage depending on megatonnage, etc. Plus all the radiation damage and the like. This makes some sense when you consider that the Cermak blast was partially contained by a huge mystic barrier (enough stacked barrier spells would reduce the effects of a small blast considerably, not to survivable levels really, but to a level where it wouldn't decimate a vast area.)

Given this, we can probably give Superman a hull rating and the like, then have him operate on Naval damage scale. He probably has Immunity to Normal weapons with Essence 8 or so (ties in with vulnerability to the mystic)... then he'll have non-hardened armour at a fairly high level. This allows smaller rockets/missiles on the naval scale to affect him when he's low on combat pool, but means that he can still survive nukes.

Anyway, enough Supes... I was thinking about Spidey!!!

Body 12 (much tougher than normal, mainly as a result of his strength)
Strength 24 (ignore the weight rules for now, this 'feels' about right)
Quickness 20 (total speed master, loves it ten times! x8 multiplier for swinging)
Charisma 5 (Peter Parker is a pretty good looking guy!)
Intelligence 7 (One of the smartest guys around!)
Willpower 7 (Similarly, one of the most willful guys in the Marvel Universe)

Reaction 19
Init: 4d9 + 19 (Really fast reactions, always a Spidey staple)

Web shooters - make them organic, like Spidey 2099 or the film... use the net gun/stealth grapple/spray foam rules but have the nets/foam get tougher after a combat turn as the web 'sets'.

Climbing, as Gecko Crawl, give him the rooting ability too... add in retractable climbing claws for the 2099 version!!!

Skills of note - Brawling 8, Athletics 10, Stealth 8, Photography 5, Chemistry 6, etc.

and noone comments my take on big green wrecking machine (ok so i made him on a flip but still, you got to give me + for effort right?)

hmm, i kinda liked the calculation for a nuke, to bad they had to introuce the navval scale

ah so it was directed to my variant, didnt spot that...

and your right, he most likley should have those but i dont use flaws that often...

I totally forgot about the Infinity War. You know, that's one of the few Marvel story threads that I haven't seen recycled. 'Course I don't get to the comic store like I used to either.

No one has talked about Spawn yet. I'm suprised. Seems like he would be a natural fit for the Shadowrun setting. Then again, there is still a lot of negative backlash from the frankly terrible movie and the total whoring out of the franchise that ensued. The HBO animated series was excellent though, as was the Batman/Spawn cross-over comics.

Spawn is so flexible in what his powers can do it'd be a nightmare trying to define them.

I know they are not really "mainstream" heroes, but I think you should include Doom Patrol. Crazy Jane might be pretty difficult to do, but Robotman is pretty much all cyberware (either Delta Grade or some form of advanced Cybermancy).

John Constantine would fit well in the Shadowrun Universe. I could see him constantly running into bug spirits, toxic spirits and shamans, twisted way adapts, etc.

Etrigan the Demon/Jason Blood would be another character that might be fun to introduce. Another example of a free spirit trapped in a mortal's body.

Swamp Thing could probably be done up as a free great nature spirit with a very high force and with the abilities of possession and plant control.

Spawn would be wearing a powerful free spirit with the Innate Spell(shapechange; practicly anything) linked through Telepathic Lik to what he was thinking of at the moment ... or something.

Well, if you really want to have Superman, just make him an Animus or a Guardian type free spirit with something like Force 10 + Spirit Energy 10. That'll make him powerful enough for SR.

Spiderman would be an adept with lots of quickness, great leap, freefall, adhesion(see Adept Handybook), combat sense(spider-sense) and lots of improved senses. His web shooters would probably be some kind of grapple gun that shoots both stealth line for webslinging and freeze foam at close quarters to "bind" his opponents.

That's a good idea. Anyway, on to Superman's strength.

Superman once held the moon up from crashing into the Earth for Aprox. 12 hours. He was suffering from Kryptonite poisoning and generally was weak at the time but this is still the best way I know to define his strength from an observed feat.

The moon masses 7.35e22 kilograms (For those who don't speak scientific notation that's a 735 followed by 20 zeros). Since he did this for several hours he can't have been particularly encumbered, so we can just divide this number by 5 to get his strength.

73500000000000000000000/5=14700000000000000000000

Thus we can have superman's physical attributes as follows:

Body: (much much) > 750000008

Quickness: 112500000
Strength: 14700000000000000000000

I don't have any reasonable way in mind to judge his mental attributes.

what is this adept handybook that people are talking about?

never botherd to search, more reliable to ask

I think one of the things to consider here that no one's touched yet is the aspect of why these heroes are heroes. There wouldn't be quite the same reasons for them to be heroic or to want to save the world. And many of these heroes (Hulk, Spiderman, Wolverine) had heroism thrust upon them. Most of the ways discussed to make them require time and training. If you create them in that manner, they lose half of their appeal as heroes--and their likelyhood of being heroes in the first place. I think that half of these superheros would have a rough time staying heroes--especially when they need to figure out who's right. Is it the evil nasty megacorp?--or the Shadowrunners breaking into said megacorp?

There's also the problem with how everyone deals with mega-powered superheroes. There aren't too many non-ancient characters with loads of power (I'm not talking about corp executives. Think of the elves and dragons). If I myself were really powerful and long-lived and a bunch of new superbeings sprang into existnace, I'd probably kill them before they got a chance to learn about their superhero abilities. Its a matter of survival--whether you're a good guy or not. I think it would change the sociology of the place altogether.

I'd love to see Lonestar working with every Shadowrun team they can find to take out the vigilante who calls himself Superman. . . .

Those two cents are good ones, but that's just two superheroes out of what, two dozen? I'm not saying it can't be done. . .just that it's an aspect to consider that I personally think is more important than whether or not the character can be created--or how. The how and whether or not aren't as important as why.

If you really modify most heros to fit the SR universe they won't much resemble the originals. Superman, well he fights for Truth, Justice, and the American Way so he's going to be in real trouble once North America Breaks up. . .

I can see the whole "Heroism forced on me" happening to Heros in Shadowrun as well. I mean, is it that unlikely that in Shadowrun Uncle Ben would get killed by a Mugger and thus put Peter Parker on the path of heroism? Of course not. If anything Shadowrun's world is far more likely to cause such things. It's simply that, being a gritty cyberpunk world, SR has few native heros so nobody tends to react that way (Except perhaps Dunkelzahn).