SPOILER: Taking an Active Role
The role of the superhero always has been to protect the community from menaces, both super-powered and normal. In most cases, this is accomplished by having an individual hero or a team run patrols around a city. This way they can respond to emergencies quickly and directly. Although this method allows heroes to be the first ones on the scene, there is another way for heroes to take action — have the hero PCs take an active role in the community.
Many superhero RPGs give experience points for heroic PCs who participate in events besides stopping crimes such as doing acts of charity. These acts include everything from donating money to making personal appearances. Unfortunately, most heroes don’t go out of their way to earn this type of experience. Instead a hero will go through her job, life, and superheroic patrols and hope that something will occur. In real life, some professions and some lifestyles have access to the dangers of society; most do not. In real life, a person can volunteer her time and become involved with society. Why should this be different with a hero? If anything, a hero can offer more than an average citizen. What normal citizen can support a brick wall, or give first aid at super-speed? This article presents six different categories of activities that heroes can volunteer for, and the real-life organizations that are involved in them. This article concludes with Pandora’s Box, a National Superhero Organization that survives by community participation. Please note that the inclusion of real-world problems and issues in this article by no means is meant to trivialize these important concerns. This article merely attempts to add to the role-playing possibilities of a four-color superhero campaign by incorporating modern-day issues.
There are six categories a hero can volunteer for: Health, Crime, Law, Environment, Disasters, and Miscellaneous.
Contents
Health[edit]
Within this category, there are a number of subsections including helping the elderly, assisting those with physical and mental disabilities, helping those recovering from addiction, and participating in research groups. Some ways to help the elderly include driving them to and from the doctor, grocery store, relatives, etc., or delivering medicines or groceries to them as needed. Many local organizations of this type exist across the country. An adventure could occur when a hero PC is delivering Mrs. Bagley to the hospital for an examination, and discovers that the pharmacy has been robbed, all medicines taken, and all the pharmacy’s employees are unconscious.
The next section in Health is assisting those physical and mental disabilities. Ways to assist include reading for the blind, volunteering to help those with depression (a psychology talent or skill is a must), and helping build walkways and ramps for businesses to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Heroes with medical training or healing powers could find careers in curing some individuals. Organizations include the United Cerebral Palsy Association, Recording for The Blind, and the American Psychological Association. An adventure could begin when the PCs are working with a building group (to weld metal railings for ramps) when a villain mentally controls the building group to fire the PCs and cancel the project’s funding for no apparent reason.
There are many possibilities for heroes to help fight addiction. How do you help a teenager stay off drugs, or a businessman not drink? Again, heroes with healing powers could provide assistance. Organizations include Al-Anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, and DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). An adventure could begin when a villain starts selling an illegal drug that makes people more susceptible to his mind control, and the heroes hear about it through a child at a DARE program.
The final Health section is participating in disease-research organizations. If a hero is a scientist or engineer, he could be vital in researching new theories and building new equipment to combat illness. Research organizations include the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the American Cancer Society, and National Institutes of Health AIDS research. Campaigns could start with a hero character making public appearances for the American Cancer Society when his grandfather contracts lung cancer.
Crime[edit]
Crime includes not only pursuing and apprehending villains, but also areas such as domestic violence, corrections, and victims’ assistance. Fighting crime today is more than beating up the bad guy, and requires a caring hero to deal with the complex issues that arise.
The crime of child neglect has many organizations determined to put an end to this outrage. Organizations include Big National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse and Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Heroes can help by becoming a Big Brother or Big Sister or by helping kids heal from child abuse both mentally and physically. The campaign’s PCs could be involved when one hero becomes a foster parent and the biological parent decides to hire a super-powered thug to gain illegal custody of the child.
A hero may have to deal with criminals she brought to justice in the corrections system. A hero might volunteer to work at the local Halfway House, or teach classes in prison. Organizations include the local jails and prisons. An adventure might begin when a PC is teaching math at a super-powered prison and a riot breaks out in another part of the prison.
The last section is victims’ assistance. Victims’ assistance makes it possible for the hero to see the results of a supervillain’s evil up close. Many people feel powerless in the face of crime, and it could be the hero‘s job to make a person feel like he has control again. PCs with mental powers could read the villain’s mind to help recover victims’ stolen goods, etc. Telepaths may serve as “juries” to determine accused parties’ innocence or guilt.
Law[edit]
A category related to Crime is Law. Law includes civil rights, consumer groups, housing, and labor unions. Law is where heroes with Legal or Law Enforcement talents are most useful.
The biggest section of Law is civil rights. Ways to help include having a lawyer hero volunteer his time to try a case or do research on one. Organizations include the NAACP, Indian Rights Association, National Gay Task Force, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). An adventure could begin when a lawyer hero is called into court by the ACLU to help (as a lawyer) in the defense of a recently defeated supervillain because the villain’s civil rights were violated by the same hero at some point during the villain’s capture.
The next section is consumer groups. Some ways a hero could participate include getting people to register to vote, or investigating a sleazy telemarketing business. Organizations include political parties, The League of Women Voters of the United States, and the Better Business Bureau. An adventure might arise when the heroic PCs’ are portrayed in the media as violent people with no regard for civil rights, and any cause (charity, etc.) the heroes support suffers backlash.
Law also includes housing. Housing might mean making sure a housing unit is safe to live in or investigating alleged discrimination against minorities seeking housing. Organizations include the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing. A campaign could begin when the landlord of one of the PC’s relatives refuses to take care of pest control, dangerous wiring, unsafe or dark stairwells, etc., and the PC’s relative is injured due to the landlords negligence.
The last section of Law is labor unions. Labor unions include the United Auto Workers (UAW), the AFL-CIO, and teachers’ unions. The biggest way for heroes to help is to arbitrate between a union and the company its members work for, but a hero also could be called in to stop violence during a strike. A campaign could begin when the hero team is asked to help arbitrate a labor strike and one of the factions hires supervillains to interfere with the negotiations.
Environment[edit]
The fourth category is the Environment. The Environment includes stopping illegal waste dumping, promoting recycling programs, or protesting illegal deforestation. Organizations include Greenpeace, The World Wildlife Fund, The National Geographic Society, and state Public Information Research Groups (PIRGS). A campaign could be built when a super villain team is created from an accident at the local power plant because the plant managers refused to repair environmental hazards.
Disasters[edit]
Disasters range from a simple power outage, to an earthquake or a hurricane. Ways to help include restoring power, rebuilding homes, and providing temporary law enforcement for an area. One organization that heroes could work with is the American Red Cross. Numerous adventures (stopping looting, flooding, car accidents, etc.) could result from an earthquake in the campaign’s home city, and could take months to return the city to normal.
Miscellaneous[edit]
The last category is a mixture of all those other organizations that went unnamed above. These include the Veterans’ Administration, Amnesty International, the United Way, etc. In addition, heroes can volunteer for local libraries, historical foundations, and museums. Ways to help can be a mixture from ways mentioned above to helping diagnose a new disease genetically engineered by a supervillain.
Besides dealing with problems nationally, heroes also can have an effect on the international scene. The area where heroes can best be used is international relief. On a local level, heroes can collect food and supplies to be sent to a country that is suffering from shortages due to war, drought, famine, etc. If a hero is involved in the International Red Cross, the Red Crescent, CARE, UNICEF, or a multitude of branches of the United Nations she could be sent to a country to help distribute aid, as well as protect those administrating it.
Heroes assigned to these missions would be at more risk than those working with programs at home. Heroes could be attacked by super-powered people in the country’s government who resent foreign “interference.” They also could be attacked by various political or military factions. Being an international hero gets the character (and the player) involved directly with the situation, and all the participants in it. An adventure could be created when the U.N. sends the PCs to a war-ravaged area to help distribute food and they are attacked by supervillains hired by one of the military factions or by the military itself.
Pandora’s Box[edit]
Now that you know some of the ways heroes can help in the community and the world, meet Pandora’s Box, a National hero Organization whose sole purpose is to help the community before a disastrous event can occur.
Pandora’s Box is the name of a nationwide hero franchise specializing in training hero teams to help the community. Pandora’s Box is designed to be a safe haven for heroes (especially persecuted mutants) who work directly with community and police leaders. “Afterthought,” the Director of Pandora’s Box and a mutant (with precognition and mutant-detection powers), convinced a number of small businesses that funding a hero group would be in their interest. Fifteen businesses agreed and funded the current headquarters (including a danger room) and vehicles (vans) of the first Pandora’s Box team. In return for their funding, the heroes agreed to take a direct role in the communities where the businesses operate. They would work with police, social services, public works, etc., to see that the communities were improved. Within a year, the six-member Pandora’s Box team, had reduced crime by over 40% and been instrumental in building and maintaining a public recreation house and the park around it.
This dramatic success made Pandora’s Box a national phenomenon. Multi-national businesses nationwide asked how they could become involved, and heroes in other states asked how they could begin.“Afterthought” responded by setting up criteria for how a franchise group could be created. Her criteria are as follows:
1. All members of a Pandora’s Box team must be from the area of the businesses supporting them.
2. No more than one large business can invest in a Pandora‘s Box team, but an unlimited number of community businesses can invest.
3. Any profits generated by Pandora’s Box immediately go to a fund in the community’s name.
4. All Pandora’s Box members are responsible to their respective communities. If they use their status in Pandora’s Box for personal gain, or against the best wishes of the community, they will be thrown out of the franchise.
To date, Pandora’s Box has six teams nationwide: one in Albany, N.Y., one in Newark, N.J., two in New York City, one in Los Angeles, and one in Dallas. Cities that have expressed interest in teams are Miami, Boston, Milwaukee, and Denver. Pandora’s Box is funded entirely by community businesses and large business grants. In its seven years of existence, Pandora‘s Box has trained well over 120 heroes. The original team now acts as recruiters, promoters, and trainers for all the teams. In return for having access to the best equipment and technology for transportation and training, Pandora’s Box spends 98% of its time helping the community. All trainee members are required to work in homeless shelters, detox centers, and hospitals for their first nine months as members of Pandora’s Box. In return they are provided training free of charge and a place to stay.
During times of natural disasters, all the teams works together to ensure that normality can be returned as soon as possible. After two years, the trainees are made full members and encouraged to go to other cities and start a franchise.
Conclusion[edit]
The role of a hero, whether superpowered or not, is to help those around him. This can’t be done by taking a passive role. A heroic person must make an effort to act with the community. Not only does this bring the heroic person closer to the community and vice-versa, it also gives the heroic person a chance to gain experiences and meet people that a passive role would never allow.
I recommend the article, “Super Jobs for Super Talents: The United Nations Special Talents Agency” by Marcus L. Rowland in DRAGON® issue #160. The setting of Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS SUPERS* and SUPERS I.S.T* books also includes strongly proactive superheroes.
