{"id":2065,"date":"2013-10-15T05:00:06","date_gmt":"2013-10-15T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/?p=2065"},"modified":"2015-01-13T15:02:35","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T21:02:35","slug":"progenitor-the-alternative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/2013\/10\/progenitor-the-alternative\/","title":{"rendered":"PROGENITOR: The Alternative"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"progenitor-cover\"<\/a>“The Alternative” is an NPC for <\/em>Progenitor<\/a>, the Ennie Award-nominated setting for the Wild Talents roleplaying game.<\/em><\/p>\n

Written by Greg Stolze, \u00a9 2013<\/em><\/p>\n

Monica Spielman is a typical American girl in 1984.\u00a0 She\u2019s fifteen years old.\u00a0 Both her parents are dead.\u00a0 She\u2019s losing teeth due to malnutrition.\u00a0 She\u2019s missed her last two periods and she desperately hopes it\u2019s another effect of her poor diet, because her sexual encounters have been exclusively non-consensual.\u00a0 She\u2019s in post-apocalypse Dallas when a mob sets upon a suspected metahuman.\u00a0 It\u2019s at Fair Park, which turned into a scrap-metal bazaar after the bombs fell and eventually grew a ring of food- and gas-traders around it.\u00a0 Monica\u2019s just trying to slink away\u2014she\u2019s seen too many people get lynched like this\u2014when she feels a horrid icy wind blast out from the epicenter of the disturbance and sees a man rising up on a pillar of air.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t want to hurt you!\u201d he shouts in a voice choking with rage before bullets ring out from the dealers\u2019 security thugs, knocking him from the sky and leaving his corpse to be torn apart by the howling crowd.\u00a0 Monica sees all this and weeps, wishing it could all be different.<\/p>\n

She wishes, and then miraculously it is.<\/p>\n

Who Is \u2018The Alternative\u2019?<\/h2>\n

Monica was born in 1969, the very year the Progenitor first began acting on the international stage.\u00a0 Everything in her life has been in Amanda Sykes\u2019 shadow, though this is by no means uncommon.\u00a0 Her father got a job in Dallas working on a ZRI glass factory line.\u00a0 Her mother sent money to Meta-Victims Advocacy and Support.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not until the Metapocalypse that Monica really blames<\/i> her problems on dark energy and its users.<\/p>\n

When she becomes infected, she does not pause to consider any ironies inherent in expressing her anger towards dark energy through the use of dark energy powers.\u00a0 When you\u2019ve been raped, hungry for months, and really wish you didn\u2019t have to witness mob violence, your grasp of irony gets pretty weak.\u00a0 Monica thinks the world would be a better place without Sykes and her ilk, so her power tries to make it so.<\/p>\n

Monica\u2019s abilities give her temporary access to a world where Amanda never got infected, and neither did anyone else.\u00a0 Whatever spatial or dimensional intersection embedded the power in the Progenitor missed Earth entirely in Monica\u2019s realm.\u00a0 No Amanda in Vietnam meant no Progressive Harmony.\u00a0 No Bich Thi Nguyen upholding the USSR.\u00a0 No Atlantis.\u00a0 No Johnson re-election.\u00a0 No Metapocalypse.<\/p>\n

In fact, the world Monica can access would be utterly familiar to you reading this article, and to me writing it.\u00a0 It is, after all, ours.<\/p>\n

\"The-Alternative-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Other Monica<\/h2>\n

Monica from the otherverse has nothing more on her mind than a breakup with an early boyfriend, a romantic collapse so painful it\u2019s thrown everything else off-kilter.\u00a0 All the insipid music and big-hair nonsense of \u201cher childhood\u201d (meaning, last year) gives way to torn stockings under baggy shorts, Doc Martens, the Big Boys, bleached denim, heavy mascara and R.E.M.\u00a0 She even goes to a Butthole Surfers show.<\/p>\n

Other Monica (who takes the name \u201cPaisley\u201d<\/strong> and is referred to as such from here on to avoid confusion) is healthier and happier than the Progenitorverse Monica, but otherwise unexceptional.\u00a0 Monica can, at will, change into Paisley indefinitely.\u00a0 They can\u2019t meet, though each has a grasp of the other\u2019s memories and experiences\u2014it\u2019s like Bruce Banner\u2019s experience, if the Hulk was a H\u00fcsker D\u00fc fan.\u00a0 Both Paisley and Monica can access Monica\u2019s metahuman powers while in the Progenitorverse, but Paisley can\u2019t use them in her native cosmos.<\/p>\n

Visions<\/h2>\n

In addition to transforming into her non-apocalypse alternate, Monica gives other people visions of their lives in the otherverse.\u00a0 This is not something she can control and she isn\u2019t aware of it when it happens.\u00a0 More random still, it\u2019s temporally unfixed, meaning, it might go off and take effect two days earlier<\/i>.\u00a0 It\u2019s an effect that can precede its cause, though it almost never targets anyone who hasn\u2019t met Monica or who doesn\u2019t meet her sooner or later.<\/p>\n

These visions are quite vivid, though brief.\u00a0 People who experience them know who they\u2019d be (or not be) if there had never been a superpowered Amanda Sykes.\u00a0 They\u2019re brief, rarely more than a half-hour or forty-five minutes of experiential time, and they take only a few seconds of objective time.\u00a0 (To clarify: You have a vision that seems to last almost an hour, only to snap out of it and discover that mere moments have passed.)<\/p>\n

Alternate Hysterics<\/h2>\n

Giving people jarring random visions is one thing.\u00a0 Deliberately turning them into their other selves is something else altogether, and Monica can do that too.\u00a0 In fact, she can do it on purpose.\u00a0 She points at you and you transform into what you\u2019d be absent the influence of the Progenitor.\u00a0 Transformed people retain memories of their Progenitorverse lives, but their immediate and personal memories are of their lives in the otherverse.\u00a0 Their personalities are often drastically different<\/i>, even if their bodies hardly change at all.<\/p>\n

Metahumans under the influence of this ability lose their powers until it wears off (which it usually does after a number of hours), but that\u2019s not the most extreme change people experience.\u00a0 Some die.\u00a0 Some never exist.<\/i><\/p>\n

Think about it: Abe Sykes alone saves hundreds of lives in the early 1970s, even without factoring in ID\/EA.\u00a0 Soldiers get sent home by Ngoc Vo instead via body bag and in our world, the death toll for the Ancash quake eventually reached 47,000.\u00a0 Lots of people in the world of Progenitor live because of dark energy, one way or another.\u00a0 Those people, when hit by Monica\u2019s \u201cAlternate Other\u201d power, change into corpses.\u00a0 Then, when the power wears off, they come back remembering what it was like to die.<\/p>\n

If you think that\u2019s a painful experience (and don\u2019t get me wrong, it is) that\u2019s nothing next to people younger than Monica, who were conceived after Amanda started fighting in Vietnam.\u00a0 Her presence there changed the course of the war and the course of the presidential election.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t take much prurient imagination to see how that could interfere with a conception here or there.\u00a0 Some young people in Amanda\u2019s home cosmos never get born in Paisley\u2019s.\u00a0 When hit by Monica\u2019s power, they simply disappear.\u00a0 When they return, they have no sensation that time has passed at all.\u00a0 No cool alternate history memories for them, just the knowledge that Monica can erase them from existence.<\/p>\n

Note that these instant-kills and vanishings are rarely permanent and never<\/i> retroactive.\u00a0 For example: Suppose your conception took place when Johnson was re-elected.\u00a0 When Monica replaces you with the void that exists where \u201cyou\u201d aren\u2019t in the otherverse, your friends don\u2019t forget you while the void is in place.\u00a0 From their perspective, you vanish and they wonder where you are until you return.<\/p>\n

Bits and Bobs<\/h2>\n

Monica\u2019s final power is a bit odd.\u00a0 In addition to exchanging human beings with their otherverse selves, she can do the same with inanimate objects.\u00a0 That smashed Yamaha moped moldering in the ditch?\u00a0 She might be able to restore it.\u00a0 Or she might be able to transform it into whatever the metal was used for in the otherverse.\u00a0 It\u2019s a confusing and unpredictable power for loose junk, but for things like trees and buildings and (of course) things predating Amanda Sykes it\u2019s far more reliable.\u00a0 Unfortunately for the billions of dollars of antiques destroyed in Moscow, Chicago, London, Paris, Washington and New York, it\u2019s not a permanent change.<\/p>\n

Monica Spielman, \u201cThe Alternative\u201d<\/h2>\n

Tier:<\/strong> Nine<\/p>\n

Career:<\/strong> Layabout<\/p>\n

History:<\/strong> See above.<\/p>\n

Lineage:<\/strong> Amanda Sykes – Abe Sykes – Jarvis West – Trent Brownback – Maria Escondo – Otis Crowsky – Elijah Burge<\/p>\n

Personality:<\/strong> Monica is jumpy, easily angered, vindictive and self-centered.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty much what you expect from someone who\u2019s had everything taken away from her in a horrible and violent fashion.\u00a0 If things calm down and she has a chance to recover\u2014meaning, if someone can take care of her and not let her down for a year or two\u2014she could come out of it strong, level-headed and imminently practical.<\/p>\n

Paisley is curious, amazed by dark-energy, appalled at the seemingly-bottomless suffering in Monica\u2019s world, exhilarated by the secret of access to another cosmos<\/i>, and she see-saws wildly between courage and caution.<\/p>\n

\n

Info Only Goes One Way<\/h3>\n

Something to understand about the way Monica makes alternates is that information can only flow from the otherverse into the Progenitorverse.\u00a0 When she turns someone into their otherworld alternate, it\u2019s like she\u2019s taking a snapshot of the alternate and photocopying it over the Progenitorverse edition, cut and paste style.\u00a0 But she can\u2019t paste anything into the otherverse.\u00a0 So every time she switches to Paislely, the Paisley she becomes experiences things for the first time.\u00a0 She has Monica\u2019s memories, including the memories of being other Paisleys, and that usually fools her into thinking it\u2019s a steady thing.\u00a0 But when she returns to the otherverse, she carries no recollection of being away, because she never really left.<\/p>\n

This has a physical aspect, as well.\u00a0 When Monica turns into Paisley, she turns into an uninjured Paisley.\u00a0 This means she could turn into Paisley, get her arm blown off, turn back into Monica (who would be as injured, or uninjured, as she was when she first changed) then turn into a fresh, unhurt Paisley with two arms.<\/p>\n

(These factors could lead Paisley to conclude that her world is real in a way that Monica\u2019s isn\u2019t, or that she herself is trapped in some kind of solipsistic delusion.\u00a0 But she\u2019d have to stay in the Progenitorverse for months on end before she reached that point.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Loyalties:<\/strong> (Monica) Protecting younger and more fragile refugees (1), (Paisley) Her family (3)<\/p>\n

Passions:<\/strong> (Monica) Personal survival and risk reduction (2), Revenge on dark energy abusers (1), (Paisley) Indie rock (1)<\/p>\n

Power Suite<\/h3>\n

Provide Visions of Alternates 8d (16 Points): <\/i><\/b>As described above, under \u201cVisions.\u201d\u00a0 This can affect anyone within 310 miles of her when it goes off (or anyone who will be <\/i>within 310 miles of her at some time within the next few months).<\/p>\n

Being the target of this weird extra-temporal episode is baffling when the vision ends, giving the target a dice pool penalty equal to Width after he snaps out of it (as per the \u2018Daze\u2019 extra).<\/p>\n

Useful (+2), Daze (+2), Range Boost (+2), Temporally Unfixed (+0), Full Power Only (-1), Uncontrollable (-2)<\/p>\n

Transform Other Into Alternate 7d (49 Points): <\/i><\/b>She can turn people into the otherverse versions of themselves, as revealed in visions.\u00a0 This lasts a number of hours equal to the Width of her roll times its Height.<\/p>\n

If she uses this on someone who\u2019s dead in the otherverse, that person is replaced with a corpse for the power\u2019s duration.<\/p>\n

If used on someone who was never born in the otherverse, the person just disappears until the power wears off, with no recollection of the gap.<\/p>\n

If used on someone who\u2019s alive but injured or sick in the other world, a Scattered Damage attack handles it pretty well.<\/p>\n

Attacks (target is alive and damaged) (+2), Endless (+3), If\/Then (stops working after WxH hours) (-1), Scattered Damage (-1), Uncontrollable (-2)<\/p>\n

Useful (target is alive and damaged) (+2), Endless (+3), If\/Then (stops working after WxH hours) (-1), Uncontrollable (-2)<\/p>\n

Useful (target is dead or never born) (+2), Endless (+3), If\/Then (stops working after WxH hours) (-1), Uncontrollable (-2)<\/p>\n

Useful (target is alive and fine) (+2), Endless (+3), If\/Then (stops working after WxH hours) (-1), Uncontrollable (-2)<\/p>\n

Permanently Change Other Into Alternate 2HD (4 Points): <\/i><\/b>She can permanently change someone into their otherworld alternate, but with a couple of big, big<\/i> restrictions.\u00a0 The first is, it has to be voluntary, either on the part of the person being obliterated (or \u2018transformed\u2019) or on the part of the alternate who\u2019s going to replace the Progenitorverse native.\u00a0 Moreover, either she, the person being changed, or the alternate coming into existence, has to pay a point of Base Will to seal the deal.<\/p>\n

Useful (+2), Permanent (+4), Attached (Transform Other Into Alternate) (-2), Base Will (from either her or target) (-2), If\/Then (either target or target\u2019s alternate has to be willing) (-1)<\/p>\n

Change Between Paisley and Monica 2HD (4 Points): <\/i><\/b>Once per scene, she can make the switch.\u00a0 If she\u2019s Monica, she can change into Paisley.\u00a0 If she\u2019s Paisley, she can change into Monica.\u00a0 The change lasts until she makes another switch and is temporarily disorienting (that\u2019s the Loopy flaw).\u00a0 Note that if she turns into Paisley, she instantly regenerates any damage.<\/p>\n

Useful (+2), Endless (+3), Exhausted (-3), Loopy (-1)<\/p>\n

Change Objects Into Alternates 4d (8 Points): <\/i><\/b>As described above, under \u201cBits and Bobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Useful (+2), Duration (+2), Uncontrollable (-2)<\/p>\n

Conditional Regeneration 9HD (18 Points): <\/i><\/b>Every time she changes into Paisley, it\u2019s a \u2018fresh copy\u2019 of Paisley\u2019s body, with any wounds she\u2019s taken in the Progenitorverse copied over.<\/p>\n

Useful (+2), Engulf (+2), Permanent (+4), Attached (Change Between Paisley and Monica) (-2), Automatic (-1), If\/Then (only when changing into Paisley) (-1), Self Only (-3)<\/p>\n

Conditional Hyperbody 1d (1 Point): <\/i><\/b>Objectively, Paisley is in far better shape than Monica, since she missed out on all the stress and extended sleep deprivation and malnutrition and violence.\u00a0 On the other hand, she doesn\u2019t know, in her bones, how far she can push her body.\u00a0 Monica does.\u00a0 To look at it another way, Paisley\u2019s never had to run for her life.\u00a0 Monica has, more times than she can count.\u00a0 So Monica is constantly pushing a sicker body, while Paisley loafs along pampering a healthy body.\u00a0 Until shit gets real.\u00a0 Then Paisley can call on hysterical reserves of strength that are, for Monica, just daily life.<\/p>\n

In practical terms, Paisley gets +1 Body when she\u2019s absolutely terrified.<\/p>\n

Hyperstat (+4), Attached (Change Between Paisley and Monica) (-2), If\/Then (only when Paisley is terrified) (-1)<\/p>\n

What Do You Do With Paisley?<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ll let you in on a little secret: Paisley\/Monica\/The Alternative exists solely to make certain things easier for the GM.\u00a0 She\u2019s not a Big Bad who takes down the unstoppable PC (although being removed from reality for no less than two hours can change up a battle if it\u2019s aimed at the big damage dealer, or at the one invulnerable guy in an otherwise fragile party).\u00a0 She\u2019s a simple, one-girl pretext for stuff that might otherwise be hard to engineer, and I don\u2019t just mean a simple excuse for why a character vanishes when his player can\u2019t get a sitter on game night.<\/p>\n

Character Development<\/h2>\n

Why does is her power of bestowing otherverse visions have to be unfixed in time and random?\u00a0 Because it allows foreshadowing.\u00a0 If you\u2019re going to run a game where a player\u2019s usual character is replaced, leaving him controlling an alternate universe version without powers, it\u2019s not much fun to toss him headfirst into that pool with no warning.\u00a0 The bad way to handle Monica is to spring her on the PCs\u2014surprise, you\u2019re powerless and uncool!<\/p>\n

The good way is to have them experience these weird hallucinations as you\u2019re wrapping up (or in the middle of) another plot.\u00a0 Since Monica\u2019s active in 1984 and on, PCs looking for trouble are spoiled for choice.\u00a0 Right in the middle of dealing with post-apocalypse superpower insanity, a PC gets snapped into another America.\u00a0 You run this little sideline for a bit, until the other players are getting bored (assuming, of course, that the PCs\u2019 otherverse selves aren\u2019t working together too) and you give the PC a chance to explore what his character could have been.\u00a0 It\u2019s a little vacation from the angst and responsibility of being a metahuman in the thick of the metapocalypse.\u00a0 It also lets you figure out what kinds of Stats his alternate might have.\u00a0 On top of that, you can ask the other players about what their characters would be in a world without the Progenitor.<\/p>\n

The Cure for Buyer\u2019s Remorse<\/h2>\n

Sometimes a player gets tired of a character.\u00a0 There\u2019s no shame in it, sometimes people just grow apart from their imaginary superheroes.\u00a0 Maybe the tragedies in the character\u2019s past have stacked up to a point where the player\u2019s no longer having fun.\u00a0 Or maybe the character has gone in a direction that the other PCs can\u2019t, won\u2019t, or don\u2019t want to follow.<\/p>\n

For whatever reason, the time has come to retire that character gracefully and provide a trustworthy replacement.\u00a0 With Monica, you can let the player take over a character who\u2019s very similar (and who was, indeed, the same person right up to 1968) but who has, at the same time, been spared the heartache and craziness of metahumanity.\u00a0 The alternate can be brought in and made permanent.\u00a0 Then all that remains is to expose him to a strong dark energy carrier and see what powers his alternate-universe psychology manifests.<\/p>\n

The Soft Alternative<\/h2>\n

Some enemies you can kick into a caldera of seething explosive magma and then, later, reminisce about it over cold beers.\u00a0 (\u201cOooh, I shoulda said \u2018All you need is LAVA\u2019 when I threw him in!\u201d)\u00a0 They\u2019re horribly evil and need to be destroyed.<\/p>\n

But sometimes it isn\u2019t that simple.\u00a0 Some antagonists are crazy, misled, well-intentioned, or just too young to know right from wrong.\u00a0 With Progenitor in particular, there\u2019s a high likelihood that PCs are confronting people who gained powers from them, or gave powers to them, people who can\u2019t simply be dismissed without social and emotional repercussions.<\/p>\n

Or sometimes, even without personal entanglements, a character isn\u2019t so simple.\u00a0 It may have nothing to do with the villain and everything to do with a hero\u2019s unwillingness to mete out so final a punishment.\u00a0 What\u2019s the point of having all the power in the world if you have to fall back on the barbarity of murder as a punishment?<\/p>\n

Monica, if persuaded, can serve as a permanent fix without bloodying anyone\u2019s hands.\u00a0 A hyperintelligent but emotionally immature toddler supervillain can be traded in for a perfectly normal child.\u00a0 The same second chance can be used on anyone with emotional baggage<\/p>\n

Raising the Dead<\/h2>\n

Best for last, though again, this has its limits and restrictions.\u00a0 But if a PC dies from a case of cold dice, Monica can look over the corpse and sweep in its alternate-reality, unpowered self.\u00a0 Then all that remains is to lose the Base Will for permanence and dark energy exposure to repower the tweaked version.\u00a0 This only works, of course, if it hasn\u2019t been established that the alternate version is also dead, or nonexistent, or a tremendous jerk.\u00a0 It only works once.<\/p>\n

But it could bring back an alternate edition of a dead villain, too.<\/p>\n

Order Progenitor in paperback and get the PDF free.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The Alternative” is an NPC for Progenitor, the Ennie Award-nominated setting for the Wild Talents roleplaying game. Written by Greg Stolze, \u00a9<\/p>\n

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