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PRE GAME PLANNING POST: TEAMS, ORGANISATIONS, ETC

This post is for discussing/establishing/working out details of specific teams, groups, organisations etc. with your fellow players. Use this post to -

clarify how long your character has been a part of an organisation and what rank they have or what role they play there,
suggest things about the way the group operates,
ask questions about specifics of mod run teams,
just generally throw out ideas!

You can suggest ideas and stuff for a group even if your character isn't involved in it.

We are going to make threads below for mod-created groups, but feel free to add your own for companies, teams, etc. that you think other people might like to be involved in.

Also, don't forget to check back on the CR MEME to check for new people to shove your character/s at!

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Alpha Force was founded in the 1960s and is currently the longest running active superhero team in the world. It usually has between four and seven active members at any given time, and although the amount of media attention the team gets varies they're typically in the spotlight, with new members often making the news. New Alpha Force members are generally determined by people already on the team, and it's typically only experienced and talented heroes that will be invited to join. (And ones whose public images aren't too controversial...)

Alpha Force operates out of a tower with their logo on it in downtown LA. Members have rooms there if they want them, and it has all the facilities you'd expect a team of superheroes to need. There's also room on the ground floor for event hosting where necessary.

Following the disappearance of Druid, Fissure and Zoom in November last year, Alpha Force will be seeking to re-fill those suddenly empty spots, either calling for past members to return or looking to recruit new ones, so if you want a character on Alpha Force they can either be a current member, one who joins at the start of the game, or one who used to be in it but has come back.

Alpha Force has been going for a long time and there are a lot of people who have been on the team in the past but have since gone solo, joined different teams, or retired. If you want your character to be ex Alpha Force that's absolutely fine – same if you want another figure in your character's backstory to have been an Alpha Force member.

Edited 2014-01-24 21:04 (UTC)

Celestia's probably the Alpha Force member who's been on the team the longest, although depending on who else apps she might have an equal on that front. She tends to gravitate to a leader position, although when there's someone else who'll step up to the plate she doesn't mind taking a back seat, as this allows her to devote more time to Equestria.

At the moment she lives at the Alpha Force tower – usually she goes back to Equestria every few weeks to check in on her kingdom, but with the recent upheaval she's been spending all her time at HQ instead.

Sun Wukong has been on people's radars for a while, so maybe they should try recruiting him? The previous attempt failed spectacularly, but now that there's a need to fill in the ranks, maybe Celestia wants to give him another chance (like how she wanted Fluttershy to make Discord good. Please send your Fluttershyiest person.)

CONDOR are this universe's SHIELD equivalent, basically. They do spy stuff and they handle superhuman and paranormal activity in a more official capacity than just punching it or shooting lasers at it or throwing it into the sun. They often team up with superheroes, though, and there are some superheroes who are more closely affiliated with them than others.

By its nature CONDOR's inner workings are fairly mysterious to the public. They have multiple bases, but what we can presume is their main one is in the region of LA, presumably because of the city's status as a centre for superhero and villain activity. They have a lot of cool gadgets. The chief of CONDOR is Colonel Carmen Catmurder, who is in her 50s and smokes a lot of cigars. Apart from that you are welcome to bring your own vision to CONDOR as regards your own characters in it.

Edited 2014-01-24 20:25 (UTC)

flora is pepper potts

i can see her having some sort of security clearance, like the lowest levels, & serving as a sort of liaison for the starkadders. obviously she didn't want to have to do this. she never INTENTIONALLY wanted to be a walking HR department. she doesn't enjoy it at all.

apropos of completely nothing for no reason can there be a SWORD equivalent also

can it be called EAGLE

experimental astronautical guardian league of earth

i'm into it.

mostly it's staffed by paranoid former SETI employees enticed by a better acronym and more funding

Starbuck works for CONDOR, not doing any spy stuff because she'd be shit at that, but more standard military-y shoot a thing with the thing stuff.

I sort of like to think she doesn't have very good clearance yet, since she's been around for only six months. Just enough authority where she has to do shit, but not enough that she can actually do anything ~~fun~~ ~~exciting~~ befitting her extraordinary talents. She's too weird of an asset to use as cannon fodder, but not trustworthy enough for Real Super Cool Fieldwork. Maybe that'll change as time goes on.

She probably flies people around a lot, and covets Flora's boyfriend's Sweet Ride.

How do you feel about being Nivata's not-parole officer? As in, "please drop in every so often and make sure she is not actually a serial killer and also not trying to make a transdimensional gate for the invasion of Earth."

I have robots. :D

...Also corpsepuppets!

A bunch, of losers. They've been around for the last 10 years or so and in that time have yet to appease their elemental spirit gods into fundamentally altering the planet's geography by stealing things from museums and banks and so on. I don't think we have any characters in these groups but if you have any questions about them go ahead.

Edited 2014-01-24 20:30 (UTC)

THE BOULDER has been enticed (read: probably brainwashed) by Team Magma's promises of more usable landmass for humanity!

A society of wizards. Anybody who is a significant magic user gets extended an Enclave invitation as soon as the Enclave's existing members get wind of their existing, unless they are openly evil. They have no official charter or base of operations, they just conjure everybody into a pocket dimension whenever they want to hold a meeting. Alternatively, there is an astral plane hang out that is always open that can be accessed through meditation.

Edited 2014-01-24 20:41 (UTC)

Jack the Plaid is the current King Wizard of the Enclave, despite being fairly young. He lives somewhere in LA thought he doesn't make the exact location public. Over all he's a pretty chill dude, easy to talk to, and spends his time mentoring other magic users and doing public magic shows for children.

He has a nice little spot carved out in the astral plane for wizards to hang out, and he can teach those interested how to get there via meditation. He also attempts to maintain a spell over the entire city that lets him know when and where the blood of a Enclave member is spilled, in the hopes of being able to provide back up to his people. It doesn't have a 100% success rate, though.

There was probably an interview between these two sometime or other. You know, the whole "soooooooo on a scale of one to human skulls how evil are you actually?" thing.

She may have also told him not to do the blood spilling thing with her, 'cause. Sometimes she does that. Usually for self-defense! Sometimes for science. Magic. Magic science.

Sun Wukong is...somewhat affiliated? Like he's the guy who receives all the newsletters but never shows up to the meetings or anything.

Also I'm not sure how the Enclave deals with gods/holy beings. I'm pretty sure Guanyin knows of the Enclave but remains neutral and doesn't interfere unless it's an explicit Deus ex Machina moment. I'm pretty sure other figures from Chinese heaven (mostly on the Dao side) would interact more frequently with the Enclave in terms of magical things happening.

Edited 2014-01-25 01:33 (UTC)

Ammy is probably one of their newer mysteries, since explaining yourself is for losers and there aren't a lot of records about wolfy sun spirits with flaming shields. It's pretty obvious that she's just as intelligent as a human, if not more so, and not puzzled at all by modern society.

Nobody here wants to listen to Nivata talk about her (literal) pet projects either.

She is vocally disappointed in you, Enclave.

This is more or less a joke, but if you do want your character to be involved in this, feel free to ask. Obviously, due to the nature of this universe, their operations are not quite as all encompassing in terms of the unexplained as the organisation they are based on, but they are just as secretive about the things they do secure and contain.

Edited 2014-01-24 20:32 (UTC)

In this game for the time being we're going to be dealing specifically with the West Coast Trailblazers, although there are other factions across North America. Characters can be transferred to the West Coast faction from other, similar groups. We have quite a lot on the Trailblazers so far because a lot of people have apped into it and we've had to answer a lot of questions and think about a lot of stuff, so here's some info you may find useful, and which will be going on the wiki presently:

As established, the Trailblazers is a youth organisation designed to help teenagers who want to be superheroes to find their footing in a stable, government supported (and monitored) environment, so that they can learn how to fight crime as part of a team without getting themselves into too much trouble. The age limit is technically 16-25, but older members of the team tend to be either long-time members, or college or just-out-of-college kids who are new to superheroics – someone age 23 who wanted to register as a superhero would not be required to join the Trailblazers unless they had no idea what they were doing.

Because they're mostly minors, they have to follow rules that other registered heroes don't: they're not allowed to go after a bad guy if they're not accompanied by at least one other member of the team, they're not allowed to engage anything with a threat level higher than B, and they're not allowed to enter an alternate dimension or travel through time without a chaperone. (There are probably more rules. Feel free to suggest some.) That's not to say these things never happen to them and that the rules never get bent – they do – but in an official capacity they aren't supposed to do those things if they have a choice in the matter, and should try to avoid getting into those situations where possible. They will get a stern talking-to from the CONDOR hero registration department officer who is tasked with keeping an eye on them if they flout these rules, and may be suspended or removed from the team if it happens too often.

At any one time the West Coast Trailblazers squad includes kids who are on active Trailblazer duty and kids who are in training – unless they have experience doing superhero stuff, new members usually spend a while in training before they become active members, doing combat training with and taking pointers from the more experienced members, and occasionally accompanying them on more basic everyday crime fighting stuff, although how long varies.

CONDOR is not responsible for the education of Trailblazers members, although it does provide living accommodations for those who would prefer not to have to commute to the base. The West Coast Trailblazers base has some single rooms and some double, with a few communal bathrooms, and a communal kitchen and recreation area. There are also training facilities, although nothing super technologically advanced. There is no specific amount of time a member is required to spend at the base. They do all get communicators.

The base itself is very high security, but on the outside it looks like a normal building and its location isn't made public, for the safety of Trailblazers members who live there or spend a lot of time there but are trying to maintain a civilian identity at the same time.

Personally I'm imagining the agent tasked with dropping in on the West Coast Trailblazers' base to make sure they haven't wrecked the place is Cobra Bubbles from Lilo & Stitch, but if somebody ends up wanting to app a character into that role he can always retire.

Edited 2014-01-24 22:16 (UTC)

Karkat lives full time at the WCT base because he has nowhere else to go. He's been there for a year, having been introduced to the base in early 2013 by CONDOR agents because they were politically obliged to see he was taken care of had nowhere else to put him and they figured teenagers would have better luck dealing with him than adults. However, he's still in-training because he didn't get cooperative enough to start using the training facilities or listening to the others until about six months ago (plus he doesn't have any powers and his existing fighting style, if one could call it a fighting style, was less 'incapacitate someone doing a crime without killing them' and more 'extricate yourself from a possibly lethal situation and murder your assailant if you can'). He has probably been on a few basic crime stoppin' excursions and patrols but nothing with an actual supervillain – the closest he's come to that kind of thing is that on about three separate occasions he has wound up getting kidnapped by generic bad guys who want to lure the rest of the Trailblazers into a trap because he's easy to spot and easy to capture.

Because Alternians aren't ultra popular with humans, and because of the kidnapping thing, Karkat spends a fair amount of time indoors at the base, training, watching sappy movies, and grossing up the place with his dubious culinary choices, like some kind of stocky, bad tempered Starfire. Everybody on the team is in some capacity his friend whether they like it or not.

Sollux isn't a Trailblazer in any way, but at game start he's going to be living in Karkat's room. He's basically like the troll's pet troll for the moment, and has all the manners of one. He speaks a little bit of English but not much.

He's super rude and also takes food from the fridge that isn't his, partially because he can't read English either.

His presence will be a very new development to the household.

Edited 2014-01-24 22:54 (UTC)

Metabee's been with the WCT full time for a couple months, after relocating from the Medabot Corporation's main research and testing facility. Most of the current line of medabots have begun showing some semblance of sentience, and as such have been put in situations where their interactions with humans can be monitored. Even though the KBT style medabots are probably better designed for a war zone than inner-city crime fighting, Metabee was placed with the Trailblazers due to displaying many traits similar to the average human teen.

Since he is technically a prototype weapons project, he isn't allowed outside the base unless on official business or supervised by a CONDOR agent, so he spends most of his free time hanging around the base, probably bugging Karkat. He received combat and weapons training during his development at the Medabot Corporation, so he has been approved for general missions but is still pretty new to working with a team.

If anyone wants to be Metabee's roommate or anything, let me know.

Edited 2014-01-25 03:35 (UTC)

Katniss arrived from the future about five months ago, and has been chilling with the Trailblazers since. While she didn't really have to, she's become a full member and goes on the patrols and all that business. She can be a bit of a lone wolf in how she conducts herself, but she reluctantly lets people tag along because of the rules.

She lives in the base full time because she's from a different time universe and is supposed to be staying protected. That doesn't stop her from being rash and reckless, though. She spends a lot of time in the training facilities, and tends to subtle avoid people, though over the months she's ended up getting to know some of the more persistent members despite herself.

Jon transferred from I guess the Chicago based unit to the LA unit a few weeks ago, because it is more prestigious and because he wanted to go to college away from home. unfortunately he didn't get in to/like any of the LA schools so he is commuting from the Bay Area, good job Jon. he has a room at the base and stays there on weekends for crime fighting, but it doesn't have much of his stuff in it. if anyone wants to decorate it, he won't stop them.

since Jon is 18 and well-trained he is on active duty, but since he lives so far away he doesn't get called in as much. he tries to patrol Berkeley and San Francisco when he can, but it is really boring (except for a minor zombie outbreak). when there isn't enough crime in LA on the weekends, he teaches the members in training how to fight with the weird archaic weapons superheroes use a lot.

he COULD MAYBE be convinced to leave his giant dog at base as a team pet, but this is a monumentally bad idea (so you should do it). he's p quiet but he will honestly do any dumb friendship activity if asked, and will def stick his neck out for anyone on the team, even if it is not necessarily a good idea in the long run. if there isn't someone actively in command he will try and take charge.... . . . he is p much the aloof big brother of the team. pls don't use his shampoo it's like the nicest thing he owns (weapons excluded)

also jon probably wouldn't have a roommate but you're welcome to have your characters store their stuff there or I guess hang out there and mess with his stuff (black clothes and hair products)

Edited 2014-01-25 11:18 (UTC)

Cynthia has been a member of the WCT for about two months. She lives at the base full time*, as her grandparents live a couple hours away from LA and that commute isn't particularly convenient. Her powers aren't very trained or developed, so she's still a trainee. She probably hasn't been on any real missions, and certainly not any difficult missions, but she hopes to be able to tag along soon.

She puts a lot of effort into her training, and can be found in the training facilities at a couple points every day. When she's not there, she often is just sort of hanging out around the base. She likes to go out and do teenager things with the other Trailblazers, and she also likes to watch romance movies whenever Karkat has them on. She REALLY likes getting people's opinions on her pegasus OCs.

*Perhaps with a roommate? Let me know if you're interested in having your character be her roommate! owo

oh oh katniss?? can katniss be roommate?

omg yes...now katniss will never escape. from friendship

Nessa lives on the WCT base pretty much full time, because she feels like she has to prove to the government that she's in full control of her powers and isn't going to go feral and on a killing rampage. She does go back to Oregon for the holidays to see her mother though. She lives in shared dorms (WHO WANTS TO BE HER ROOMATE) and has been on the WCT for a year--just a few days longer than Karkat. Before the WCTs, Nessa was in powers rehab for about a year, not by choice, as the government didn't trust letting her back out into society without some proof that she was in full control (she may have spent about six months as a feral tiger all up in the woods murdering animals and well, that's not something you want in a crowded LA street)

She spends her mornings training, keeping her martial art and quick shifting skills honed in case of peril, but she can be easily distracted from it by a friendly face. She mostly eats raw meat thanks to her powers, so if you're squeamish try not to sit next to her at dinnertime, because you bet your butt she gets blood pretty much everywhere.

As a member of the team, Nessa is pretty strong and has been on a lot of missions (usually leading ones to rescue Karkat from being kidnapped) She does get carried away with biting and scratching sometimes though, so needs to be told when enough is enough if you don't want her to kill the target. When she's in her sabre-toothed form also, she give people rides.

Edited 2014-01-28 18:08 (UTC)

Junpei's yet another newbie: he's been around for a bit over two months. Pretty much threw himself into things from day one... his powers are strong enough that he's just about on active duty, but he seriously needs experience to actually *be any good*.
Probably doesn't have any room-mates given who the other guy Trailblazers are but that's probably for the best (and for the other guys' sanity.)

Awful. The precise goals of its mysterious leader are uncertain, but basically amount to world domination. In pursuit of this nebulous but sinister goal, the organisation will take whatever it can get in terms of scientific and technological advances and it doesn't care whether those are scrupulously gotten, so it's a convenient source of funding and resources for people who want to do grossly illegal science research and don't care who it ends up benefiting. Of course you can't just stroll up to TRIDENT and offer them your support, because their actual bases are under the Pacific ocean and some of them may be ambulatory, but they have contacts all over the world and will often reach out to people whose methods they feel might be good to have on board.

Not every character who works for TRIDENT operates out of their secret underwater bases – some of them are just funded and supported by TRIDENT and may only have contact with other TRIDENT members remotely. Others actually live there, though, under the Pacific, because either they wanted to or TRIDENT had to spirit them away from their previous location in order to keep on using their skills without them getting arrested.

Sollux isn't a member of TRIDENT, but he was recently imprisoned there and experimented on for the last year and a bit. So if any TRIDENT members would like to have taken part in that, just hit me up!

So Baelheit used to work for TRIDENT (more in the supported & funded capacity), up until 12 years ago! So if your character was a part of TRIDENT in any way around that time period and might have known Baelheit, let me know. He did some awful cybernetics experiments on orphans and likely worked with some other TRIDENT members during that time.

GLaDOS's sudden reactivation is all TRIDENT's fault, and she's very happy to have a resource that doesn't care that her research basically amounts to seeing how many ways a human can walk into a pit of acid. In true Evil Science Partnership form, she only gives them most of her results (even though it's pretty much all "can bullets kill people? yes, but let's try again just to make sure").

She's also set up with a secondary server base somewhere around LA, to make things easier on her internet connection.

For stuff unrelated to any specific organisation that people might want to discuss or establish about the game universe! For example, I notice we have some Ace Attorney characters on the taken and reserves list, so if anybody has any thoughts about universe-specific superhero law, feel free to mention it. Or anything else you might want to throw out there!

... which is a very good topic. I've already been thinking on that one, and I figure that in a setting like this, superheroes are probably generally treated like deputy police officers - allowed to use force when the situation demands it, but excessive force would be highly frowned upon both by law and the public in general. (I bet insurance companies hate having to deal with hero-based damage.)

While I'm sure there'd be specific laws in place for heroes, if we're looking at IRL examples, taking in criminals is probably covered well enough by citizen's arrest law already (here's a brief outline of California's). Since a fair amount of US laws vary by the state you're in, that also makes it entirely possible that one state would be stricter on superheroes than another state might. I can't really see superhero laws ever being a federal issue, but idk it could've happened if heroes were ever a big issue in the past either socially or politically.

That's also to say nothing of the laws in other countries - I imagine that countries with things like stricter gun laws may also be stricter on heroes operating with powers that could easily kill people, for example.

I find this topic really interesting! do you any thoughts on legal treatment of supervillains? like the Actually Pretty Dangerous ones. I kind of have some thoughts on it floating around in my head but, again, I'm not playing anyone involved in the legal system or a supervillain (right now), so I'm not sure if I should just throw suggestions and thoughts out there.

No problem, the more the merrier for brainstorming! uwu oh god I'm sorry this got long:

It's been a while since I read any Marvel, but I dimly remember there being some sort of prison for people with powers. That sounds like something that would be CONDOR's jurisdiction, and is probably also a great source of income for advanced tech businesses and anyone else that can figure out how to make super-restraints or power dampeners.

California does have the death penalty... so I think the issue there regarding prisons might be whether or not the superpower-prisons reside in a state with the death penalty, and if they don't, do they still honor the laws that were broken in another state? (I doubt that there'd be one superpower-prison per state, unless someone in power was just totally okay with spending a lot of money to do that).

As far as actual law is concerned... it'd all be the same laws affecting heroes and villains, but of course villains are going to rack up impressive amounts of crime. A lot of what supervillains do would be the kind of thing we'd consider terrorism IRL, as loaded of a word as that is. I imagine that a supervillain getting killed while out committing a crime would basically be a case of the hero that did it acting in self-defense (which DOES include the defense of others, not only your own person!). Tl;dr on self defense laws is that you're only allowed to use deadly force if you're in danger of being seriously injured or killed yourself - but if you consider that heroes are treated like policemen, then they'd be allowed to use deadly force to keep other people from getting killed, and the presence or absence of 'stand your ground' laws wouldn't apply either. I'm guessing that judges and juries would tend to favor heroes should one ever get taken to court over what's done in the line of duty.

(Hurriedly edits to throw in an addendum: whether a superhero is allowed to use deadly force as opposed to self-defense is probably based on if the superhero is registered or not!)

One thing to note, though, is that a superhero that just randomly bursts in on a villain and hurts or kills them without said villain being a direct threat could very well get prosecuted for doing it. Citizen's Arrest laws might let you detain a villain to hand over to the police, but if a hero starts the fight, that hero obviously isn't acting in self-defense! (On the other hand, if this villain is a dangerous wanted criminal, instead of just being wanted for something that didn't majorly hurt anyone, killing them might be considered justified. I think the important thing to keep in mind is that if someone dies the police WILL investigate the circumstances no matter what.)

What might be a little complicated are alien characters that literally can't be deported back into outer space - I'm sure they'd still get the same punishments for breaking the law, but hopefully also get a judge that realizes they might've done it out of unfamiliarity with US law. They'd probably also get stuck in the superpower-prisons, too.

... I was also thinking that the police forces in bigger cities probably have a specialized department for dealing with superpowered crime that's too minor for CONDOR to investigate, like how Gotham has a Major Crimes Unit, but that's probably going overboard hhhh.

Edited 2014-01-25 06:10 (UTC)

Just gonna toss this on here in case anybody wants to be involved with this, Vanessa Goldpaw's company does a lot of science stuff but the fun, glossy gadgets end of innovation is where most of its money is made. Like Apple but with a paw print logo. Imagine. Smartphones with a pawprint on. Cute as hell. Wow.

Anyway, all kinds of people are probably employed in Goldpaw Tech for various stuff. It's a nice working environment. Pretty relaxed and spacious. They're based out of LA but no doubt have offices all over the place.

PROBABLY WORTH HAVING ON HERE...

Most things about trolls are covered on the relevant wiki page but if anybody has any thoughts or questions about that fire away. One thing worth mentioning is probs that it makes no real sense for "troll" to be like a respectable, direct translation of whatever the Alternian word for troll is, so I'm assuming that "troll" is kind of like a short, slangy, negative word for the other side in a war, like the equivalent of "hun" for Germans – not exactly a slur but also not what you'd call them to their face unless you were being rude, and if you were being polite you'd just say Alternian, probably!

It's still very much a work in progress which is why I haven't set up a page for it or anything (it doesn't even have a name okay they can work on it together) but if you have a teenager or young adult who is unregistered or otherwise doesn't want to be part of the Trailblazers for [x suspicious reason] then COME JOIN NAGISA (and possibly Jake English??)!

I don't have any concrete plans for it yet--as of game start Nagisa will only just be trying to get something going--but if you're interested in ridiculous possibly matching uniforms and super secret meetings on rooftops, hit me up!

Baelheit started a private R&D firm after he left TRIDENT to continue his cybernetics research, but he's expanded beyond just making people into cyborgs because unfortunately at this juncture that doesn't pay the bills. Mintaka Industries manufactures all kinds of neat gadgets, from shield generators to sonic pistols, ET CETERA. It isn't a HUGE firm, but big enough to employ plenty of researchers and such, so if your character needs someplace to work (or wants to work there) hit me up! Baelheit sells his tech to all types, villains and heroes alike; he's mostly in it to make the money to fund his research, as well as his upcoming political campaign.

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