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Superheroes Meet Fairy Tales - Avengers Grimm, anyone? (Interest Check)

Mathim

Star
Joined
Nov 10, 2019

That title probably sounds pretty strange, but believe it or not, it's totally a thing. Also probably as unbelievable, this idea was produced by the mockbuster factory The Asylum. But like a broken clock being right twice a day, this particular production of theirs wasn't half bad, and while it would have been far, far superior as a series rather than a single film, it did give me oodles of ideas and also makes for quite a damn good concept to do a group game around.

To give some context, the characters in the story each have an ability or talent inspired by the story they're from. The evil Rumplestiltskin has great power through the act of making deals with people and when they inevitably can't hold up their end of the bargain, they become his thralls. Snow White, as her first name implies, has the ability to generate and manipulate ice, creating and wielding ice daggers as weapons. Sleeping Beauty can shoot clouds of sleeping dust from her palms. Rapunzel's hair is tied to a heavy ball so she has a flail weapon everywhere she goes. Red Riding Hood is an experienced survivor and hunter from the wilds. You get the idea by this point, I'm sure.

While the film takes place in the 'real' world, where the characters chase Rumplestiltskin through a mirror as he's attempting to conquer more worlds, I think this would be best taking place in a united fairy tale universe where characters from all worldwide myths are welcome, like Sun Wukong the Monkey King, Anansi the Spider, Urashima Taro, and others who aren't just of European origin and its associated popularity. I'd like to try and draw the line at characters that are celestial gods (the Greek and Norse pantheon, for instance) since they're just that powerful, but others, if we limit them in reasonable ways, should be just fine.

So, that being said, the most interesting part of this would likely be coming up with a power set to liven up existing characters who may not have any, and how it changes their backstory, even their alignment, since what fun would this be if a good character in a story had to stay good, or a bad one stay bad? Swapping out sex, gender identity and orientation is also welcomed and encouraged just to keep things interesting, as well as relationships that they may have with characters from other stories; two characters from the same story who are supposed to meet might never have, if players choose the two of them to play, for example.

The overarching plot I would put forward is that Rumplestiltskin, the archvillain of the story, has begun consolidating his power and Snow White gathers a council of powerful warriors to prepare to defend their lands from evil using the magic mirror to open other mirrors as gateways to travel to her sanctuary if they are deemed worthy of joining the fight.

If anyone is interested in this insanity, I'll put up character profile sample submission sheets and maybe we can get something started? I had a hard time being successful with this on Elliquiy so it might turn out not so lucky here either but I wanted to give it a try since it's been almost a year since I last attempted it.
 
Well, my thinking was that the reason RPs rarely get off the ground is because everyone waits for everyone else to submit character sheets before making their own. The easiest way to deal with that is to just start doing it. ;)

I kept her power origin vague - I wasn't sure how in depth you wanted to go, or how magic in your world actually works. But she is the daughter of a vizier in the common version of One Thousand and One Nights, and in Arabia vizier sometimes means "magician", so summoning a fairy to bless her could work.
 
That makes sense, I figure there aren't really many possibilities, you either get an enchantment from a god or other magical being (at birth or later) or they come into possession of some kind of magical artifact, or their very nature is that they're part of something superhuman, or they fall victim to some kind of curse and turn it into a blessing with how they use it.

I didn't want to break it down quite so simply but the powers/abilities of superheroes, at least in this context, could be limited to three categories: Transfiguration, Enchantment and Conjuring. Transfiguration is for things like werewolf style transformations, size changes, or merging with a familiar; it does tend to change some of their properties but not to the degree of enchantment. Enchantment is basically giving something that doesn't have a certain characteristic or ability that characteristic or ability, like levitation or something not normally possessed by things, living or inanimate (this would include necromancy). Conjuration is for things like summoning, or creating things out of thin air (like for pyromancers creating fire), or even teleportation. There is probably some overlap but those seem like the major overarching categories. But I didn't want anyone to feel limited by that simplification.
 
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