4 Color Genre Rules Edited by Rage Contributors: Barbarian Thomas Barnes Stan Berry James Buckingham CmdrSam Dataweaver Eric Bob Huss" Anthony Jackson "James Jandebeur" Scott Kane [email withheld] Lizard Mel the Redcap Rage Revenant Dan Sugalski "sponk" tbone Voidhawk John Wood Remember, these rules may be silly compared to the real world, but they are matters of life and death in the four color world. Rules may be repeated in additional sections if germane to the topic. ============= 4CGR v1.0 APRIL 8, 1998 ============= GENERAL G1 If it looks cool but is realistically impossible, it still probably works. G2 Powers used in unison are more effective than powers used singly. G3 Bigger is better for most purposes. A computer the size of a building is better than a computer the size of a room. Likewise, a hero's base of operations is better if it is bigger. THE WORLD W1 Super Tech, Ultra Tech, Hyper Tech, Future Tech, and Magic Tech have little or no impact on society. W2 Supers seldom appreciably alter the course of world history, such as getting involved in wars, political crises, economic conflicts, human rights abuses; thus, the Allies win WWII, the Cold War still happens, the US still gets pushed out of Viet Nam, the Oil Crisis still happens etc. W2.1 At most, supers seem to have a moderate impact on their surrounding area, their "turf". Often, heroes (i.e., the ones who would have their own titles) all claim some city as their base of operations, and become protectors of that city. W2.1.1 If supers do not select a base of operations city, then tend to congregate in Manhattan. W2.2 There are thousands of parallel worlds where everything is almost like the campaign universe, except that what people know is different or what people (esp. supers) believe is different. ("Oh, no! I'm in Parallax Land, here Spiffy Man is Evil!") W2.2.1 Time-travel works. Paradoxes happen, and are almost always either repairable or they split off alternate timelines. W3 Magic Works. Mages produce big splashy effects, make things, or mind control people. They don't generally do handy, useful sorts of magic. W3.1 Costumed heroes and police will ignore perfectly sensible advice about magic or demons from non-costumed mystics ... even if they know they are facing supernatural powers. W4 Psionics Work. They generally have visible pside effects. W4.1 Telepathy is very rarely turned to assist public mental health initiatives or determination of guilt in the legal system. W5 Certain religions are still listed as 'mythology' in the world ... despite the fact that major figures from that religion are interviewed on the evening news. W5.1 The gods of those religions (be they actual deities, space aliens, whatever) don't seem particularly concerned with the impact or effects worship of them incurs upon the world. W6 There is Absolute Good and Absolute Evil. Please do not confuse them. W6.1 Shades of gray can be polarized down to one or the other after suitable angst and mayhem. W6.2 Heroes don't kill. They always try to knock them out and incarcerate them (after a fair trial). W6.2.1 Heroes will make every attempt to save the life of anyone and everyone, including their arch-villains. W6.3 Good tends to be beautiful and Evil tends to be ugly, but that's not a truism. W7 Some people in the world may insist supers are "a hoax". W7.1 Despite the fact that everyone knows supers exist, civilians often mistake super-activity for a bunch of Hollywood guys filming a movie. W8 When two previously unintroduced heroes (or hero teams) meet, they inevitably fight until they realize that they're on the same side. W9 All surfaces have handholds and projections which can be used by supers with climbing or swinging powers. All buildings in a city are sufficiently tall enough that swinging from building to building is a viable means of transport. W9.1 Buildings are made of a material that is hard enough to stop bullets, but soft enough that a hero's arrows / boomerangs / grappling hooks/etc. will dig into the surface. W10 Tricky hi tech gadgets are likely to be easily taken out by well-placed fist, power blast, or judo-thrown thug, or the judicious use of a water hose, fire extinguisher, or fireman's ax. W11 Crises are covered by news crews so that a hero, wherever he may be in the city, is given fair warning even though he may be miles away. Said crisis will still be in force when the hero arrives and all heroes arrive at the scene at the same time, even if Quickman was only a block away and Ponder the Stone guy had to take a bus from Queens. W12 A part of your origins story, you can gain incredible combat skill with just a few months of training. W12.1 You can gain skill over time by training, especially if you have fancy training facilities. W13 Exposure to radiation, toxic chemicals, cosmic rays, super-technology, or similar hazards does not poison you or give you terminal cancer. Instead, you might gain new super powers! W14 Control of (or manifestation of) inherent superpowers always comes at or after puberty. There are no pre-adolescent supers. Super-powered space aliens raised as human or mutants with super powers were, apparently perfectly normal (or mostly normal) children without any special powers. W14.1 Super genes, once 'enabled', express themselves immediately, regardless of what sort of morphological change it might cause. W14.2 In cases where heroes (and offer villains) suffer loss of powers, they go out and find new ones or find some other way to fight crime. W15 Unless it suits the purposes of the writers to do so, super-heroes never age beyond the peak of their physical ability. W16 Underage supers are completely unhampered by parents, school, truant officers, etc. They are always model students who cause no "normal" discipline problems for their parents/guardians. ("Sparrow, you took the Ratmobile without my permission! Next weekend, you're grounded!") W17 Unless it suits the needs of the writers, underage supers never age beyond 16 years old and they never graduate from high school, in spite of being model students. Nobody ever seems to notice this. W18 If you don't see a body, they're not dead. W18.1 Even when you see a body, there's a good chance the super is not 'permanently" dead. W19 Heroes never sell out and cover their spandex with endorsements. "Captain Sputnik, brought to you from McDonald's". W20 America has a disproportionate number of supers. There aren't the masses of supers you'd expect in India and China. You get as many supers out of one major American city than you do out of entire other countries, or even continents! W20.1 Those rare non-American heroes will have quaint "ethnic" or "national" themes. Kaptain Kenya from Kilimanjaro with his tribal ancestor powers and spear of zebra summoning, and all that. They'll live in quaint, anachronistic, Hollywood versions of their home societies, in which they enjoy status as "the national hero". W20.2 Asian heroes -- or villains, or normals, probably cats and dogs -- will know martial arts 95% of the time and have motives related to "my father's honor" yada yada. W20.3 There are a few European heroes, but they tend to spend all their time in America. W21 There is a soul, or a spark, or a spirit, or what- have-you. Consciousness is NOT a purely biochemical function. Thus, being turned into a man of stone, or shrunk to the size of a mouse, or even transformed into a plant or living glass statue or any other form which simply *does* *not* have a single neuron anywhere within it does not alter your consciousness. People of 'living sand' or 'sentient metal' or 'solid sound' are still self-aware beings. PHYSICS, SCIENCE, & TECHNOLOGY P1 Forget all the physics you ever learned and think back to the way you thought that matter and force worked when you were a kid. If you get too hung up in thinking about mass, density, ground pressure, etc., you start to lose the comic book feeling. P2 A larger super (unless specifically described as being super-light) will tend to be stronger than a smaller character. However, they will tend to be slower. P2.1 Big objects hit harder than small objects, in spite of their actual mass. P2.2 Weight and size are directly related. A boulder the size of a car is just as easy to pick up as a car, because it looks roughly equally impressive on a page. The fact that the boulder probably weighs 5x as much is ignored. P3 Things can be lifted using super-strength do not necessarily crumble under their own weight. P3.1 Any flat surface can support any amount of weight -- thus, Superguy can pick up a tank and carry it along a normal paved road without being driven into the ground. P3.2 Super-heroes can ignore leverage, unless it is to their advantage. Super-villains can ignore leverage unless it is to their disadvantage. P4 Momentum in not conserved. You can stop on a dime or corner on a dime even if you're running at the speed of light. P4.1 Supers traveling at high speed ignore the effects of friction. P4.2 The speed of light is a guideline, not a law. P4.3 If you can exceed the speed of light you can go back in time. P4.4 Only the speed of objects relative to a rest state matters, not the speed relative to you. (So punching a wall at lightspeed doesn't hurt, and you can still breath when running at 12,999 kps) P4.5 Fast objects hit harder than slower objects, in spite of their actual force. P4.5.1 Applying strength while moving is more effective than having firm footing and leverage. P4.6 If a falling person is caught from any height and at any speed neither party takes any damage. P6 Solid objects can be "vibrated" through. P6.1 Solid objects can be bashed through without necessarily harming the basher. P7 Technology works better if it's big and impressive. P8 Any thing or class of things can be considered a form of energy. Cold, darkness, speed, animal qualities, etc. are just a few examples. P9 Any energy expenditure needed for a superpower doesn't need to come from metabolic sources. Supers running at lightspeed don't need to eat any more frequently than normal humans. P10 No matter how much energy you might expend in the course of your super-hero / villain actions, you never lose any fat mass or gain muscle mass or endurance. P11 Research into the hows and whys of super-power generally come to naught. And even if they did come to something, recall Rule W1. COMBAT & DAMAGE C1 Life is resilient: you can take a lot of damage before crippling or dying; little non-powered guys can take a punch from big brick guys without being splattered across the walls. C1.1 The member of the team who is artificial - be it robot, cyborg, golem, artificial construct, etc. - will always be the one to have limbs blown off and otherwise get mangled, because this way the writer/GM gets to have gratuitous dismemberment without true "gore", plus the artificial character can easily be repaired, and so the damage isn't permanent. C1.2 Recovery from life-threatening damage or crippling can be fairly quick. C1.2.1 Regenerating supers' personalities may remain intact after massive brain trauma, up to and including the near-destruction of all brain tissue. C1.3 Guns, fire, weapons and explosions aren't nearly as lethal as they are in real life. C1.4 Unconscious people are never at any serious risk of dying as long as they're not threatened by some other factor (like being in water, in a burning building, etc.) Unless it's important to the plot, they always wake up a few hours later with bruises and a bad headache. C2 Supers nearly always close to melee if they are at all capable of doing so. C2.1 Even supers with ranged powers are no exception to this; they stand off at range and use their powers for awhile, but are always swept up into the hand- to-hand. (Crouching behind a rock and sniping from a quarter mile away isn't very heroic.) C2.2 Guns tend to be used at short range. C2.3 After a weapon is empty of charges, the enemy often throws the weapon at the super. Just in case, I guess. C3 A super can gain incredible combat skill with just a few months of training. C4 Applying strength while moving is more effective than having firm footing and leverage. C5 Collateral damage from a fight can destroy a city block but incur no casualties. C5.1 Buildings are made of a material that is hard enough to stop bullets, but soft enough that a hero's arrows / boomerangs / grappling hooks/etc. will dig into the surface. C5.2 No one cares at all about any sort of property damage. C5.2.1 ...unless the writer/GM wants to make the characters' lives miserable by having them sued for the cost of all the repairs... C5.2.2 Supers might be covered by a blanket insurance policy that limits their liability for any injuries or damage to property caused by their actions. C5.3 Innocent bystanders always disappear or escape if both sides in a super battle wish it to be that way. C6 Cars never explode unless they are crashed at speed. COSTUMES, HEADQUARTERS, & SECRET IDENTITIES S1 People with super powers almost always design a costume and adopt a "code-name", rather than use their powers to get ahead in the real world. S1.1 Often, said costume is not negatively affected by the super's powers. S1.2 Supers are more attractive and impressive when in costume. S1.2.1 Even if the super has appearance "defects" (overweight, skinny, plain-looking), the costume makes it all better, even if the costume doesn't lift, tuck, or hide the "defect." S1.3 Domino masks and the like give the hero glowing, white eyes. S1.4 Heroes never sell out and cover their spandex with endorsements. "Captain Sputnik, brought to you from McDonald's". S1.5 No one ever tries to make bullet-proof spandex. S2 Nobody recognizes you in your Super Identity, unless you wish it; otherwise, they have to see you change into your costume, or they see you at close range in super combat. S2.1 Generally, each super only has one individual seeking their secret identity, and these searchers are usually easily distracted. S2.3 In general, knowing a super's secret identity is a death sentence: the holder of such information tends to die rather quickly if not an ally of the super in question. S4 Supers are usually engaged in employment that allows flexible working hours, allowing the hero to slip out for five minutes at 9:46 in order to deal with a super crisis. Failing that, crises only occur during lunch or after normal business hours on weekdays S4.1 Underage supers are completely unhampered by parents, school, truant officers, etc. They are always model students who cause no "normal" discipline problems for their parents/guardians. ("Sparrow, you took the Ratmobile without my permission! Next weekend, you're grounded!") S5 A super's base always has a distinctive, unusual decor which is in keeping with the super's powers and costume. Alternately, poorer supers hide out in low-rent apartments. S5.1 No self-respecting super will run his operations out of a suburban split-level ranch house. S5.2 A super's base of operations is better if it is bigger. S5.2.1 The more cool stuff (equipment, trophies, vehicles, etc.) in your base, the better. S5.2.2 Heroes tend to have one, large, permanent base, which may be either secret of public. Villains tend to have many, scattered, smaller, secret bases. In some four color universes, you can't walk 2 blocks in Manhattan without passing a dozen. S5.3 If you have fancy training facilities, you can gain highly-complex skills in a short period of time. S5.4 Cops, security guards, rental agents, social workers, etc. never bother to check up on suspicious activity originating from the locations of hidden sanctums. THE LAW & LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS L1 Super-vigilantism is accepted, in some cases encouraged. L1.1 Many universes have no particular sets of laws to deal with super-powers and super-powered individuals. Most mundane laws are stretched to provide coverage. L2 Despite the prevalence of super-powered criminals, the police in the big city are seldom better equipped than those in the real world, i.e. pistols and truncheons. L2.1 Police departments may field a "super squad" which uses ultra-tech weapons, but even then normal humans armed with super tech can't take out the average super. L3 Supers are almost never get called into court. No matter how much damage they do, no matter how many people they beat up, or how crucial they are to a prosecutions case, they are never named as witnesses or defendants in a case. L3.1 If they are named as such, they are allowed to testify without revealing their secret identity. L3.2 Supers never have to worry about civil suits for their actions. L3.3 Supers never have to worry about actually collecting evidence that a crime was committed, even if they're sworn police officers. Tying up the thugs and leaving them unconscious at the "scene of the crime" for normal police officers to find later is sufficient. L4 Escape proof prisons never are. VILLAINS V1 Villains are often mentally deranged. No matter how desperately they need it, they never receive the necessary pharmaceuticals and therapy to cure their madness. Super heroes with mind control or healing powers never think to use their powers to permanently cure mild-mannered Dr. Myron Cilia of the delusion that he is actually the Slime Mold, terror of Saprophyte City! V1.1 However, villains don't need psychological motivations to be evil, sometimes they're just mean, nasty, or greedy. V1.2 Most villains are in the villain-racket not just to be evil, but to make money fast, to match wits against a worthy opponent, fight for a cause outside the law, or to show off. V2 People with super powers almost always design a costume and adopt a "code-name", rather than use their powers to get ahead in the real world. V2.1 Villains often pick green, black, and purple for their costumes. V2.2 Villainesses always reveal more leg, and more cleavage, than heroines. They also have sillier headdresses. V3 Villains hide out in low-rent apartments or dens of ill-repute in the seedy part of town, secret high-tech bases, or abandoned buildings. V3.1 There always seems to be an abandoned building (or building complex) that perfectly suits the villain's motif and motives in the area. It's always ready for immediate occupancy, and, if necessary, can be tooled up for immediate production of whatever fiendish device the villain had in mind to make. V3.1.1 Real estate agents, businesses, etc. never seem overly concerned about things like credit history, past criminal record, contracts, bondability, etc. of the leasee. ("I'm sorry Punster, but we checked your records and they show that you're been unemployed for over 15 years. Furthermore, you have an extensive criminal record, including several sentences for Fraud, and several periods of incarceration in a hospital for the criminally insane. We think that you're a bad risk for sole ownership of "Fun World". Frankly, we were hoping for a corporate client with a solid management team.") V3.2 Cops, security guards, rental agents, social workers, etc. never bother to check up on suspicious activity originating from these locations. V4 Villains will not kill a hero. They will Lock him in an "escape-proof" prisons and/or deathtraps, which the hero may routinely escape via some flaw in the villain's schematics (because criminal geniuses usually employ stupid henchmen to build their machinery) or through spectacular ingenuity. V4.1 Villains of the appropriate sex often form a romantic attachment to the hero. V4.2 The *real* reason for the villain to capture the hero is to give the villain the opportunity to share the details of his "master plan" or justify his actions before the hero. V5 If captured by the heroes, villains may repent their evil ways, at least temporarily. V5.1 No matter how heinous their crimes, super villains are never sentenced to death by the courts. V5.2 Criminal trials for super-villains are so speedy as to be non-existent. Either that, or they beat the rap entirely and are back on the street the next day. V6 Escape proof prisons never are. V7 If you don't see a body, they're not dead. V7.1 Even when you see a body, there's a good chance the villain is not 'permanently" dead. V7.2 When the dead villain - whose remains were never found, or able to be properly identified - does return, he's always better than his last incarnation. He has always spent his time licking his wounds, reviewing his gadgets, improving his powers, updating his strategies, etc.. He always comes back better. not better enough, mind you, to actually defeat the heroes, but better than he used to be. -- Rage http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/5751/index.html "Hold your breath. Make a wish. Count to three."