[Setting Riff] Genetic Supermen

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angelfromanotherpin
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[Setting Riff] Genetic Supermen

Post by angelfromanotherpin »

A long time ago, I had a conversation with a friend about the old Wild Cards novels, and how the series bought itself so much suspension of disbelief by having only one superpower origin (maybe technically two) instead of the superhero standard of a hundred different million-to-one lab accidents, multiple secret magic conspiracies, exactly one of each alien spaceship crashing on earth, and a werewolf astronaut king from another dimension to make the rest look sensible*. Anyway, what came up was how much suspension of disbelief was taken up by having DNA-based superpowers manifest as things like weather control, and there was a brief sidebar on what superpowers could legitimately be DNA-based.

This conversation lay dormant for years until I saw a couple of Because Science vids** on related topics and it set my brain itching, possibly because I've learned about a lot more cool animal things in the interim, and my perception of the possibility space of DNA-powers has expanded, while still keeping a lot of the gonzo stuff off the table.

So I've begun thinking about this as an actual setting concept, and I wanted to get other people's thoughts on the topic: cool power ideas, social consequences, and other secondary effects.

Some of my own musings:
• Is it possible to have a single person be a Magneto-style global threat based on DNA powers? Enhanced genius or walking bioterror lab, maybe?
• There's no telepathy, but you could maybe fake it with electroreception and some factor (pheromones? brain spores?) that induces suggestibility.
• Classic Superman-style flight, is it even theoretically possible based solely on cell acids? Even if it is, it's kind of boring, look into weird alternative means of getting around.
• What even is the actual origin of genetic superpowers? That's going to have huge setting implications. Whatever it is, I approve of the Wild Cards element where the super-factor both gets scattered over the world and can lie dormant until activated by stress (like herpes), creating pseudo-lab accident stories where it can seem like you get your powers from being irradiated or whatever.
• Heritability?


*I once started writing a CYOA called Transdimensional Astronaut Werewolf King, where you picked two of those traits to define your character at the beginning and acquired the others through play. Any two of those define a perfectly distinct concept.
** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txVaF4-Xt1M, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi_42ScKowY
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Post by Stahlseele »

1.) Yes, of course it is. If you are a carrier immune to the most lethal sickness ever discovered, that basically makes you an end of world scenario on legs, depending on how advanced travel is . .
I mean, seriously, have him go to hong kong, peking, tokyo, kyoto, new york, mexico city and whatever else several million plus inhabitants cities you can come up with by plane in a few days and you will, on the airports and planes alone, infect potentially thousandy of people who will spread that all over the world, depending on how fast the sickness works and shows symptoms.

2.) There's funghi doing that, so yes, totally reasonable on the suggestions angle.

3.) CLASSIC SUPERMAN did not fly, he just was able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. So, depending on your definition of flight . . Otherwise, no, you need major MAJOR physical changes to make something the rough shape of a humanoid body able to fly.

4.) What is the origin of genetic superpowers . . Mutation most likely. As, you know, most stuff with actual "super powers" like animals with build in sonar, infra red vision, literal chameleon camouflage, super speed, strength etc. all are caused.
Evolution is a try as much strange shit as possible and see what sticks concept.
In our own genetic code there are probably several dozends if not hundreds or thousands of possible combinations of genetic markers that could cause all kinds of things. See albinism. Atavism. The Innuit with an actual kinda sorta subcutaneous layer of blubber making them mostly immune to the cold.
Yes, mutation can be caused by radiation, which is why the mutants in the X-Men Universe were and sometimes still are called the children of the atom . .

5.) If it is genetic and does not make you sterile then yes, odds are good on stuff being passed down the line to offspring . . wether you want to see what happens when a fetus developes bone spurs and starts thrashing around in the womb is another question entirely . .
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TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Dean »

Is it threadshitting to ask if you're committed to the DNA based power's only premise? The benefit of having a single (or very few) explanation for all superpowers is huge, I completely acknowledge that it makes for a better use of conceptual space to make a single cause for 100 heroes and then focus on their own internal stories without revolving all of it around how they got their phlebotonium. That said things like "alien nanotech" could do a lot more things and still be a single explanation. You could even establish a sort of Ur-superhero who was all nanoteched to fuck with flight and laser eyes and fire projection and all that shit who, upon their nanotech coming into earth hands, is basically just being recombined or imperfectly replicated or accidentally "infecting" people or whatever. Breaking up and playing with, say, Supermans powers could get you almost anyone.

Cyclops is someone who can only do the lasers, Pyro can only do the fire blasts, The Thing only has the strength/diamond skin upgrades but it went kinda fucked up, Nightcrawler would be someone who can do the supersonic speed but only in short bursts and also has that skin disorder that makes you look like a reptile, etc.

I'd honestly say you could satisfactorily cover 99% of superhuman canon with 3 sources only: alien nanotech, human/animal dna slicing, and psychic powers. While that might seem like a lot up front I think a setting that is slightly far future enough to have lab developments on animal splicing, had an alien encounter, and had even a single human being develop some small scale psychic ability which was now in the breeding pool would not be that gonzo a setting. That's like Batman's Gotham level of suspension of disbelief.
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Post by Dogbert »

Help us visualize.

Ok, you already said you don't want psychics for reasons. What do you want then? Give us your goals in terms of positives, not negatives.

Give us five superheroes we should be able to play in your setting... also, forget about realizarms. "Should Superman fly" is a BS question in a fantasy setting. Don't be that guy. Set your goals first, you can come up wjth whatever technobabble to justify it later (which will boil down to phlebotinum anyway, same as the metagene, the aberrant tumor, etc).
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Post by deaddmwalking »

If Superman is resistant to having his legs burned off, he can actually use a jetpack like the Rocketeer.
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Post by Iduno »

Dean wrote:Breaking up and playing with, say, Supermans powers could get you almost anyone.
Most of what you said is reasonable, but now replace Superman with Dracula, and see if that is something you've heard before. It's probably too limiting to have a patient zero of superpowers.
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Post by Wulfbanes »

There's the Worm webfiction that does a pretty neat job of superpowered society and a universal cause, and some classification schemes. It has whole wikis to read through.
As far as word count goes, it goes about a third of the Wheel of Time series, but there's also a full on free audiobook version made.

Edit: It didn't like the brackets from the wikipedia link.
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Re: [Setting Riff] Genetic Supermen

Post by hyzmarca »

angelfromanotherpin wrote:

*I once started writing a CYOA called Transdimensional Astronaut Werewolf King, where you picked two of those traits to define your character at the beginning and acquired the others through play. Any two of those define a perfectly distinct concept.
That's litterally James Jameson, from Marvel. He's the son of newspaper mogul J. Jonah Jameson, a NASA Astronaut,and also the werewolf god-klng of a parallel dimension.

Anyway, DNA based superpowers are never going to be realistic for one reason, intermediate forms. Sure, you can evolve hands with opposable thumbs on a geologic timescale, but getting there is actually a very complex process with a number of intermediate steps. Because of the number of mutations required, and the fact that mutations are essentially random, it's not going to happen all at once. That's close to statistically impossible. Basically, to create something complex requires many intermediate steps, and those intermediate steps can't kill you quickly or make it much more difficult to reproduce. To spread they have to be mostly benign or slightly beneficial. Evolution happens when mostly benign or slightly beneficial mutations stack up to form something new and complex. But most mutations are small modifications to cellular functions, not complex structures, for this reason. Complex structures are complex, and building the through random chance takes a very long time.

Complex DNA powers only make sense if you have an intelligent engineer with a vastly superior understanding of DNA than we do. And even then, the laws of physics still apply. There will be tradeoffs.

But once you start throwing around Magnetos, you're basically doing magic and so you need to just grab the audience's SoD and run with it. In this way, trying to make your powers scientifically grounded makes things worse, since it makes the SOD easier to break.
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Post by Foxwarrior »

Hyzmarca wrote:Anyway, DNA based superpowers are never going to be realistic for one reason, intermediate forms.
It's a very simple mutation: It just flips the debug switch labeled "Thoughts Impose Effects on Reality" and suddenly they're a psychic. Get this guy to a sperm/egg bank, pronto.
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Post by erik »

I mean, if you are wanting to know what we know DNA manipulation can realistically do, look to nature. If a creature can do it, then that's what you can do.

Most deadly would be something like Stahlseele mentioned, a super virus carrier. Now rather than a virus per se it could be an infectious parasite that hijacks the host and grows wasps inside of people that propagate by stinging to infect and create more brood. Or something otherwise fucked up and scary.

There's regeneration (not as fast as wolverine, but still).
Color changing and shape changing like various cephalopods.
Glowing like fireflies.
Possess deadly venom.
Mature to enormous size.
Much stronger muscles, especially if specialized like a mantis shrimp's claw.
Generate a strong electrical discharge, which presumably could be turned into a magnetic field with the right anatomical changes. Not magneto level but could be neat.
Grow a clone from your severed limb.
Create super strong silk threads.

Now a lot of physiological changes will also come with changes in appearance. I assume you can't make noise as loud as a blue whale without really large organs for that task. And sprinting as fast as a cheetah has a lot to do with their shape. Ditto for climbing walls like a gecko. Grippy hands only gets you so far (but would still be an improvement).

(edit)
As for the how people get these genetic alterations...
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Post by Dogbert »

Fantasy applications of Recapitulation Theory.

I hope that falls within the kind of stuff you're looking for.
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

Dean wrote:Is it threadshitting to ask if you're committed to the DNA based power's only premise?
If I didn't want my premises challenged, I wouldn't post on the Den. That said, I am pretty committed to the thought experiment.
Dogbert wrote:Ok, you already said you don't want psychics for reasons. What do you want then? Give us your goals in terms of positives, not negatives.

Give us five superheroes we should be able to play in your setting.
How about five kinds?

1) Human-plus: Boring but practical expansions of human ability a la Captain America. Enhance the brain function as well and get your Batman on.
2) Animal-person: Grab some abilities inspired by animal biology. Trichobothria for a spider-sense. Echolocation for Daredevil's 'radar.' Active camouflage. Vand-der-waals wall-crawling. Hagfish slime. Mantis shrimp plasma punch.
3) Theoretical biology: I've seen a pretty good stab at explaining Superman's biology, but it involved radically-different cell composition to have the resilience to support the strength to power the speed, and it only got to lower-end versions of Supes, but still. If regular spider-silk isn't good enough, yours could incorporate nanotubes. The point is that we aren't limited to only observed biology, but there are still chemical limits.
4) Biotech: Things that are unlikely to evolve but might be engineered, like a wireless connection for your brain or a... micro-drone factory in your torso. (Those are pretty lame, I'll have to try harder.)
5) Mix'n'match.
Wulfbanes wrote:There's the Worm webfiction that does a pretty neat job of superpowered society and a universal cause, and some classification schemes.
I'll have a look, but that's a lot.
hyzmarca wrote:That's litterally James Jameson, from Marvel.
Yes, that's the reference.
hyzmarca wrote:Anyway, DNA based superpowers are never going to be realistic for one reason, intermediate forms.
Well, actual realism isn't the goal, just modestly more realism. So that when Our Hero has his genes altered, the expression doesn't involve interdimensional portals or lifting aircraft carriers with his thoughts, but things that actual biology could possibly provide. That said, you don't need intermediate forms to get to e.g. Captain America. That guy is literally just a modestly more effective expression of traits that humans already have.
hyzmarca wrote:In this way, trying to make your powers scientifically grounded makes things worse, since it makes the SOD easier to break.
It's true that people will factually watch The Avengers and be put off by how strong Captain America seems to be while simultaneously having no problem with the Hulk octupling in mass. There's a real argument to be made that the best tack to take with superheroes is explicitly 100% magic, where all the arbitrary effects and interactions and rules are shorn of pretense. People complain about the physics of Superman lifting an airplane, but nobody complains about the physics of Herakles holding up the sky. I would not have a problem with such a setting, but it's not what I'm interested in right now.
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Post by Blade »

A good way to have "scientifically grounded" super powers is to consider that the human body has an enormous raw power but it often limits itself to avoid damage and/or an overconsumption of resources. When you see videos of people getting thrown across the room when getting electrocuted, this is something the body can actually do on its own, but cannot do voluntarily.

You won't be able to justify flight or laser eyes this way, but it can help explain some more basic superpowers.
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Post by Username17 »

Quasi-real pseudo-scientific explanations for super powers is certainly an esthetic you might want to cultivate. You could have topaz claws that can cut through glass and spider silk fibers in the skin that could stop bullets and shit. But the esthetics of your technobabble are a pretty minor portion of your superhero story. Indeed, it's a pretty minor portion of the esthetics of your superhero story.

I think it's much more important to your super hero story whether and what kind of weaponry your supers are functionally immune to than what the technobabble is about why. If people who want to fight superheroes need to carry big guns or really big guns, that matters a lot more than some rant about collagen tensile strength that will probably go over the heads of most of your audience in any case.

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Post by phlapjackage »

angelfromanotherpin wrote:3) Theoretical biology: I've seen a pretty good stab at explaining Superman's biology
The only explanation that makes any "sense" is if he's an extremely powerful telekinetic who doesn't know he's a telekinetic (is this from miracleman? I forget)
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Post by erik »

I’ve seen it posited that his flight and strength are due to being able to change inertia.

http://www.qwantz.com/fanart/superman.pdf
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Post by Stahlseele »

phlapjackage wrote:
angelfromanotherpin wrote:3) Theoretical biology: I've seen a pretty good stab at explaining Superman's biology
The only explanation that makes any "sense" is if he's an extremely powerful telekinetic who doesn't know he's a telekinetic (is this from miracleman? I forget)
Superboy basically works like this if i remember correctly.
CONTACT-"Telekinetic".
To him, stuff is just LIGHT. He is not that much stronger than most body builders and strong men, he just radically lowers or entirely negates weight of stuff he touches . . i think is flight is similar in function, but that does not explain why he does not tumble around like a balloon . .
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Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Stahlseele »

Most of Marvels Mutants should be pretty doable, if they do not blatantly break physics by flying, energy projection or transforming stuff.
So Wolverine is an easy yes for example.
Banshee / Black Canary with their screamo throats . .
Namor when he is not superman levels strong.
Most Tough and Strong Shtick characters up to a certain level could work.
Killer Croc from Batman, easy. Batman is not even that smart, he just thinks long and hard and plans for eventualities. See also Sherlock Holmes, who is just good at noticing details and combining facts to come up with surprisingly good guesses . .
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Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Stahlseele »

The main Thing that I hate about Super Physics is the stupid standing still while being hit with tons of weight.
Even if you are super durable and strong and tough and what not, your two feet still provide insufficient drag co-efficient to not make you move bitch!
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Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by JigokuBosatsu »

One book I read that was trying to explain Superman's powers scientifically (they mention Hulk in this context as well IIRC) came to the conclusion that Supes and Hulk are functionally godlike energy beings constrained only by their self-image as humanoids, thus explaining the variability in powers as well.

This of course is basically the plot of Irredeemable and it plays out as well as you'd expect.
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Post by Grek »

Stahlseele wrote:Superboy basically works like this if i remember correctly.
CONTACT-"Telekinetic".
To him, stuff is just LIGHT. He is not that much stronger than most body builders and strong men, he just radically lowers or entirely negates weight of stuff he touches . . i think is flight is similar in function, but that does not explain why he does not tumble around like a balloon . .
The deal with 'contact telekinesis' is that it lets Superboy exert lots of telekinetic force on anything he comes into contact with, but with no restriction on which angle the force has to come from relative to the angle at which he touches it. For example, he can grab a car by the bumper and use the contact telekinesis to lift it from the bottom so that it doesn't just snap the bumper off. He can also do this to himself (since he is always in contact with his own body) and use that telekinetic place to hold himself in place or move himself through the air.
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Post by Foxwarrior »

When I played a character with touch range telekinesis in Mutants & Masterminds, I did things like stomp floorboards to fling them at people above me, and explode windows towards myself so I could get into rooms without showering everyone with glass.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Honestly, nothing shreds my suspension of disbelief faster than someone trying to convince me their take on superpowers is scientifically plausible. It's totally not, and I didn't care until you put the spotlight on a bad explanation and invited me to have opinions on it, but now I can't stop thinking about it.

Making a superhero story feel realistic and vaguely gritty is usually more about just not writing over-the-top gonzo stuff. If the dude who shoots lightning out of his hands is immune to bullets because he reflexively induces magnetism in projectiles fired at him or some shit, you're writing over-the-top gonzo stuff. If the dude who shoots lightning out of his hands panics and drops to the ground when he hears gunfire because he'll fucking die, you're probably writing a story that feels realistic and vaguely gritty. Even though realistically it is almost completely implausible to have someone who can direct lightning from their body to an arbitrary point because that is not how electricity works.
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Post by Username17 »

I think grittiness has more to do with how the character interacts with the world than what their powers actually do. Compare Shazam and Spiderman: Homecoming. Aside from the fact that Shazam is really good and Spiderman Homecoming is just OK, I would say that Shazam is the much grittier movie.

It's not just that Shazam has a perpetually overcast sky while Homecoming is brightly lit. It's that in Shazam we deal with child protective services and busking on the street to get money for chicken wings from strip clubs. Children get neglected in Shazam. Not just threatened by terrorists or monsters, but straight up not taken care of by their parents.

Now obviously in Shazam the main character has explicitly magical powers and he can shoot magic lightning and bounce bullets off his chest for no reason. While Spiderman is simply very tough and strong enough to lift a block of reinforced concrete that's bigger than a man. But the fantastic nature of the powers doesn't take away from the grittiness of the world or the severity of the movie's message. And the lower power more "real robot" style powers of Spiderman don't make the world or message of Homecoming any less bubblegum.

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Post by Whipstitch »

Grit ultimately comes down to letting the story linger on some themes more escapist works would immediately "fix" or never bring up at all. So-called "street level" power sets are associated with grittiness primarily because a smaller toolbox feels less disruptive to the status quo and that's handy if you are doing the Marvel/DC continuity gimmick where shit mostly resets between episodes and Spidey is always broke and the Punisher just can never kill all the criminals. If you're not at risk of getting spanked by your editor for mucking up the continuity you can totally have guys with crazy powers around since the answer to "why hasn't X changed?" can just be "Give it 5 minutes and it will."
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