Superpowered Population and Demographics

On 14 Jul 2005 21:56:50 -0700, lewis DeleteThis @lwb.org wrote:

>All,
>
>I'm wondering what kinds of superpowered demographics you use in your
>campaigns? Has anyone broken down their world into percentages just to
>give them ideas on what they feel is reasonable? What about known comic
>book worlds? What would you say the percentages are in the DC universe?
>Marvel? The "Powers" universe? Etc?
>
>I'm about to start a new campaign with a couple of friends, and I'm
>trying to decide about the "Feel" of the world. Do we want 10 super
>beings of some kind in New York? 100? What percentage of beings with
>some level of power actually become criminals or heroes, and what
>percentage use their powers for unusual employment opportunities?
>
>I'm just curious about any thoughts you might have on any aspect of
>this subject.
>

Well one thought that occurs to me is that at least in the case of
villains, there's a significant chance that the choice to become a
criminal came first and the visit to the Toyman or the Body Shop
came second. Superheroes are more likely to be created by
happenstance. They happen to be a mutant, or be the victim of some
bizarre accident involving radioactive rattlesnakes or canoes on top
of their heads and then have to decide how to apply their freakishness
and decide for some inexplicable reason, not to be jerks. Some go
ahead and be jerks of course, but as for the people who actually go
out and lay out some bucks for that microcircuitry laden costume, or
to cut off perfectly good body parts for replacement with tinkertoys,
or just to get zapped with a Russian Roulette Ray, the guys who really
want the power for it's own sake, odds are good that they don't want
it because they have some burning desire to put their lives on the
line in the interests of law and order without even getting
paid...unless some happenstance has caused them to lose their entire
family in some horribly criminal way.

Villains are probably more common than heros. Apart from the fact
that the people who deliberately go out and get their powers are
generally more likely to not want them for nice reasons, there's also
quite a few people who couldn't be trusted not to abuse an edge and
just as many people who'd treat their powers as a toy but not a reason
to go out and risk their lives or freedom. Then there's a nice big
chunk of people who are just plain driven bughouse by the nature of
their powers.

One thing I do think would be more common than in comic books are
super-powered government agents and soldiers. The selflessness that
drives people to do the job but not collect the pay is not terribly
plausible, but the adolescents who make up so many comic book readers
are naturally biased in favour of fantasies of not having to answer to
authorities.
 >> Stay informed about: Superpowered Population and Demographics 

On 14 Jul 2005 21:56:50 -0700, lewis.TakeThisOut@lwb.org carved upon a tablet of
ether:

> All,
>
> I'm wondering what kinds of superpowered demographics you use in your
> campaigns? Has anyone broken down their world into percentages just to
> give them ideas on what they feel is reasonable? What about known comic
> book worlds? What would you say the percentages are in the DC universe?
> Marvel? The "Powers" universe? Etc?
>
> I'm about to start a new campaign with a couple of friends, and I'm
> trying to decide about the "Feel" of the world. Do we want 10 super
> beings of some kind in New York? 100? What percentage of beings with
> some level of power actually become criminals or heroes, and what
> percentage use their powers for unusual employment opportunities?
>
> I'm just curious about any thoughts you might have on any aspect of
> this subject.

Here's a link to what I think is an interesting way of working out
supers demographics, by William Stoddard:
<http://www.livejournal.com/users/whswhs/6899.html>


--
Rupert Boleyn <rboleyn.TakeThisOut@paradise.net.nz>
"Just because the truth will set you free doesn't mean the truth itself
should be free."
 >> Stay informed about: Superpowered Population and Demographics 

On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 11:58:52 +1200, Rupert Boleyn
<rboleyn.TakeThisOut@paradise.net.nz> wrote:

>On 14 Jul 2005 21:56:50 -0700, lewis.TakeThisOut@lwb.org carved upon a tablet of
>ether:
>
>> All,
>>
>> I'm wondering what kinds of superpowered demographics you use in your
>> campaigns? Has anyone broken down their world into percentages just to
>> give them ideas on what they feel is reasonable? What about known comic
>> book worlds? What would you say the percentages are in the DC universe?
>> Marvel? The "Powers" universe? Etc?
>>
>> I'm about to start a new campaign with a couple of friends, and I'm
>> trying to decide about the "Feel" of the world. Do we want 10 super
>> beings of some kind in New York? 100? What percentage of beings with
>> some level of power actually become criminals or heroes, and what
>> percentage use their powers for unusual employment opportunities?
>>
>> I'm just curious about any thoughts you might have on any aspect of
>> this subject.
>
>Here's a link to what I think is an interesting way of working out
>supers demographics, by William Stoddard:
><http://www.livejournal.com/users/whswhs/6899.html>

Yes, that's a thought that occured to me when I read the Dragon
article that richer, more advanced nations would likely have
proportionately more supers than poorer ones because they have more
dangerously cutting edge research and development and just plain more
money to find, build and buy power investing objects.

One thing I noticed though was that he specifically calculated the
number of "superheroes" separate from "supervillains", and I'm not
sure I see the point to that. It's a line that can be so very
blurry, after all.
 >> Stay informed about: Superpowered Population and Demographics 

On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 01:10:42 GMT, rgorman.RemoveThis@telusplanet.net (David
Johnston) carved upon a tablet of ether:

> Yes, that's a thought that occured to me when I read the Dragon
> article that richer, more advanced nations would likely have
> proportionately more supers than poorer ones because they have more
> dangerously cutting edge research and development and just plain more
> money to find, build and buy power investing objects.
>
> One thing I noticed though was that he specifically calculated the
> number of "superheroes" separate from "supervillains", and I'm not
> sure I see the point to that. It's a line that can be so very
> blurry, after all.

Not being Mr. Stoddard, I can't say why he did that. I'll hazard a
guess, though - the world he was designing seems to have had a fairly
clear-cut division, so perhaps he felt is was appropriate. Another
reason would be if he had wanted to base the villian population on
different variables (to make more of them come from poor countries,
for example).


--
Rupert Boleyn <rboleyn.RemoveThis@paradise.net.nz>
"Just because the truth will set you free doesn't mean the truth itself
should be free."
 >> Stay informed about: Superpowered Population and Demographics 

<lewis DeleteThis @lwb.org> wrote in message
news:1121403410.660499.126230@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>
> I'm about to start a new campaign with a couple of friends, and I'm
> trying to decide about the "Feel" of the world. Do we want 10 super
> beings of some kind in New York? 100? What percentage of beings with
> some level of power actually become criminals or heroes, and what
> percentage use their powers for unusual employment opportunities?

I never worked it out exactly, but I had stats for almost 400 supers and
undeveloped "slots" for two or three times that number again. Several of
them were based off-planet, so there may have been 1000 super-powered
individuals based Earth. Most of them were criminals, on the theory that
"power corrupts", though it would take me a while to check the exact
percentage. And I assumed that they congregated in big cities because the
pickings were richer there. New York had 10-15 heroes based there and enough
villains passing through to keep them busy.


--
David Meadows
"More than elite, they were unique. The first of a new
generation of superheroes." -- General Hammerstein's Memoirs,
Heroes #26 ( http://www.heroes.force9.co.uk/scripts )
 >> Stay informed about: Superpowered Population and Demographics 

On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 21:15:30 +0100, "David Meadows"
<david.TakeThisOut@no.spam.here.uk> wrote:

><lewis.TakeThisOut@lwb.org> wrote in message
>news:1121403410.660499.126230@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>>
>> I'm about to start a new campaign with a couple of friends, and I'm
>> trying to decide about the "Feel" of the world. Do we want 10 super
>> beings of some kind in New York? 100? What percentage of beings with
>> some level of power actually become criminals or heroes, and what
>> percentage use their powers for unusual employment opportunities?
>
>I never worked it out exactly, but I had stats for almost 400 supers and
>undeveloped "slots" for two or three times that number again. Several of
>them were based off-planet, so there may have been 1000 super-powered
>individuals based Earth.

Meanwhile my starting assumption was that there were several million
people on Earth who possessed some kind of innate super-power or
functional magic knowledge by the time of the campaign, although that
included a lot of spoonbenders, rubber faced men and talking cats
whose powers were combat inferior to a Saturday Night Special.
 >> Stay informed about: Superpowered Population and Demographics 

David Johnston wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 21:15:30 +0100, "David Meadows"
> <david.DeleteThis@no.spam.here.uk> wrote:
>
> ><lewis.DeleteThis@lwb.org> wrote in message
> >news:1121403410.660499.126230@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> >>
> >> I'm about to start a new campaign with a couple of friends, and I'm
> >> trying to decide about the "Feel" of the world. Do we want 10 super
> >> beings of some kind in New York? 100? What percentage of beings with
> >> some level of power actually become criminals or heroes, and what
> >> percentage use their powers for unusual employment opportunities?
> >
> >I never worked it out exactly, but I had stats for almost 400 supers and
> >undeveloped "slots" for two or three times that number again. Several of
> >them were based off-planet, so there may have been 1000 super-powered
> >individuals based Earth.
>
> Meanwhile my starting assumption was that there were several million
> people on Earth who possessed some kind of innate super-power or
> functional magic knowledge by the time of the campaign, although that
> included a lot of spoonbenders, rubber faced men and talking cats
> whose powers were combat inferior to a Saturday Night Special.

That's kind of how I figured it. However many supers there are in all,
I figure that if it's possible for people to get super powers, nine out
of ten would have minor powers (like the deuces in _Wild Cards_) such
as the ability to see through paper or the power to keep a drink cold -
you'd never risk being a hero or a villain based on such a minor
ability.

Eric Root
 >> Stay informed about: Superpowered Population and Demographics 

----- Original Message -----
From: <lewis RemoveThis @lwb.org>

> I'm wondering what kinds of superpowered demographics you use in your
> campaigns? Has anyone broken down their world into percentages just to
> give them ideas on what they feel is reasonable?

This is something that I was doing for the campaign that I am developing
right now. My first though was to just make it a percentage of the total
population. The problem with this is that if you set the percentage high
enough to get a "reasonable" number (if I can use that term in a discussion
like this!) of superheroes in the US (say 100), then you get awfully high
numbers of metahumans in overpopulated, third world countries (for example,
it would give you more superheroes in Nigeria that in whole the US). This
may or may not provide you with the demographics that you want.

Next, I decided to apply a "tech" modifier. I arbitrarily decided that half
of all superbeing have some sort of high-tech origins (exposure to gamma
rays, bioengineering, gadgets, etc.). In order to avoid having to
arbitrarily create a "tech level" for every country in the world, I chose to
generate this tech modifier by making the US's modifier a one (1) and use
each country's per capita income in relation to the US's as their modifier
(if the per capita income is 1/2 that of the us, their tech modifier is
0.5). Perhaps a bit sloppy and arbitrary, but it allowed me to just pull
numbers out of world census tables and plug them into my own charts. This
allowed me to cut back on the total number of superbeings world wide,
without severly limiting the number in my core campaing venue (the US).

Finally, I took these numbers and assumed that one third of them would be
heroes, and two thirds villians (since there always seems to be more of the
latter than the former in most superhero universes). I'm still fiddling
with the exact percentages and numbers as I am not sure if I am totally
satisfied with my results yet, but using an assumption of a base "1 in a
million" superbeings, and the above mentioned "tech modifier" I got the
following sorts of numbers (location - heroes/villians):

Worldwide - 1,253/2,506

US - 96/192
Canada - 9/19
Mexico - 21/43
Russia - 30/59
UK - 17/34
Japan - 38/76
China - 238/476
India - 184/374

I actually used these numbers to put together a comprehensive table of every
country in the world and the number of superheroes and supervillians from
each. Most of these numbers work for me, although this still gives areas
like China and India, with large populations *and* developing economies an
awfully large number of superbeings. I have not yet decided on what sort of
basis I would use for cutting them down any more, other than just doing so
arbitrarily, but it does give me a starting place.

Mike
 >> Stay informed about: Superpowered Population and Demographics 

On Mon, 5 Sep 2005 12:35:01 -0500, "Michael D'Auben"
<mdauben.TakeThisOut@charter.net> wrote:

>----- Original Message -----
>From: <lewis.TakeThisOut@lwb.org>
>
>> I'm wondering what kinds of superpowered demographics you use in your
>> campaigns? Has anyone broken down their world into percentages just to
>> give them ideas on what they feel is reasonable?
>
>This is something that I was doing for the campaign that I am developing
>right now. My first though was to just make it a percentage of the total
>population. The problem with this is that if you set the percentage high
>enough to get a "reasonable" number (if I can use that term in a discussion
>like this!) of superheroes in the US (say 100), then you get awfully high
>numbers of metahumans in overpopulated, third world countries (for example,
>it would give you more superheroes in Nigeria that in whole the US). This
>may or may not provide you with the demographics that you want.
>
>Next, I decided to apply a "tech" modifier. I arbitrarily decided that half
>of all superbeing have some sort of high-tech origins (exposure to gamma
>rays, bioengineering, gadgets, etc.). In order to avoid having to
>arbitrarily create a "tech level" for every country in the world, I chose to
>generate this tech modifier by making the US's modifier a one (1) and use
>each country's per capita income in relation to the US's as their modifier
>(if the per capita income is 1/2 that of the us, their tech modifier is
>0.5). Perhaps a bit sloppy and arbitrary, but it allowed me to just pull
>numbers out of world census tables and plug them into my own charts. This
>allowed me to cut back on the total number of superbeings world wide,
>without severly limiting the number in my core campaing venue (the US).
>
>Finally, I took these numbers and assumed that one third of them would be
>heroes, and two thirds villians (since there always seems to be more of the
>latter than the former in most superhero universes). I'm still fiddling
>with the exact percentages and numbers as I am not sure if I am totally
>satisfied with my results yet, but using an assumption of a base "1 in a
>million" superbeings, and the above mentioned "tech modifier" I got the
>following sorts of numbers (location - heroes/villians):
>
>Worldwide - 1,253/2,506
>
>US - 96/192
>Canada - 9/19
>Mexico - 21/43
>Russia - 30/59
>UK - 17/34
>Japan - 38/76
>China - 238/476
>India - 184/374
>
>I actually used these numbers to put together a comprehensive table of every
>country in the world and the number of superheroes and supervillians from
>each. Most of these numbers work for me, although this still gives areas
>like China and India, with large populations *and* developing economies an
>awfully large number of superbeings. I have not yet decided on what sort of
>basis I would use for cutting them down any more, other than just doing so
>arbitrarily, but it does give me a starting place.

China's not a serious problem. You could just stock them up with wu
xia super martial artists and you'd be set. China's not going to rule
the world with them. If any thing China will be lucky to survive
them. Now, India's a bit of a problem.

Frankly, I'm not fond of the whole "one in a million" estimate that
comes up so frequently when setting the numbers of paranormals.
Let's face it, one hidden city of telepathic super-gorillas or one
significant epidemic of vampirism and you've already blown your
budget. In Marvel and DC the United States alone has at least 6,000
superheros, supervillains, and guys who don't really qualify as either
but still have some downright funky powers.
It is probably also a mistake to set the same hero/villain ratio for
every part of the word. Let's face it, I'm not even sure what it
would mean to be a superhero in large chunks of Central Africa.
If you attack the Chinese government are you a hero or are you a
villain? Then there's the gadget user issue. Should they be counted
as part of the total? A single gadgeteer who offers his services to
anyone with the cash can flood a city with hundreds of stooges with a
costume, a name and a yen to make back the fifty grand they spent on
feeling special. Spiderman alone fought hundreds of one shot
supervillains trying to rob discos with hypnotic costumes or use giant
wheels with machine guns to kill blackmailers. And what about Shield
agents and Rocket Red Corps?
 >> Stay informed about: Superpowered Population and Demographics 

"David Johnston" <rgorman DeleteThis @block.net> wrote in message
news:431c3306.10271377@news.telusplanet.net...

> China's not a serious problem. You could just stock them up with wu
> xia super martial artists and you'd be set. China's not going to rule
> the world with them.

That's not a bad idea. I've always been partial to kung fu/ninja/samurai
type "super" heroes, myself.

I'll have to continue thinking about how to hold down the other countries,
though...

> Frankly, I'm not fond of the whole "one in a million" estimate that
> comes up so frequently when setting the numbers of paranormals.

It a matter of just how "super" you want your campaign to be, of course. As
much as I want to invoke the flavor of a four-color, silver age campaign
setting, I also need to satisfy my own sense of reality. I want a setting
that is recognizibly the present day, real world. I can suspend my
disbelief enough to accept 100 superheroes in the US, but I just can't get
my head around several *thousand* of them all in this country. At that size
the impact on society, technology, etc. would have (to my mind) to be so
great that we start to loose the "real world with some superheroes"
connection.

> It is probably also a mistake to set the same hero/villain ratio for
> every part of the word.

I guess its really just sort of a vague guidline. I just don't want to go
and set ratios for every single country. After all, its not like I am going
to create stats and a backstory for every one of them! I mean, the US will
probably be the most fleshed out as far as NPCs go, and I probably won't
start with more that a dozen or so "good" NPCs and twice that many "evil"
ones.

I am generally thinking of heroes as people who are using their powers or
skills for the benefit of others, and villians as people working for their
own benefit. As you point out it does get a bit fuzzy in places with
oppressive governments. In your example, I think that I can imagine
"heroes" working for *both* the government and the freedom fighters, as long
as they were both fighting for what they thought was right. On the other
hand, I can piciture villians working for both, too, as either mercinaries
interested only in the money, or schemers with their own secret agenda.

> A single gadgeteer who offers his services to anyone with
> the cash can flood a city with hundreds of stooges with a
> costume,

I think there has to be some mechanism in a campaign to control this sort of
"gadget proliferation." Perhaps all the really good gadgets requre some
sort of "unobtainium" to build, making most of them unique, superexpensive
or otherwise one-off items? Or perhaps gadget making needs to be almost a
superpower in itself, so that *only* Dr. Goodgadget can make that
antigravity harness. This goes back to the "realism" thing I discussed
above. If Dr. G can design his antigravity harness out of commonly
available items and hand the blueprints off to General Motors to start mass
producing it, pretty soon we should flying cars and the whole 101st Airborne
division will be jumping out of planes with them and someone will be trying
to organize an international antigravity soccer league and there goes the
real world connection again...

> And what about Shield
> agents and Rocket Red Corps?

For my own campaign setting, I am imagining that goverment supers will
probably be limited to solo operatives and small, elite special forces type
units. Perhaps a couple dozen all told scattered through the military, CIA,
and other gov't agencies.

I'm not really trying to design a set of rules that I can re-create the
Marvel Univeres with. After all, I think you have to admit that both Marvel
and DC universes are pretty cobbled together affairs. They just sort of
grew and grew under the efforts of dozens of writers and artists with no
real overall direction, until they are at the point where (much as I still
enjoy reading the comics) the level of suspension of disbelief necessary to
actuall *believe* them has gotten out of hand. There are just too many
superhumans, aliens, gods and monsters, too much magic, alien technology and
superscience for the world to be as like our real one as it is portrayed.
That is something I want to avoid in my own campaing.

Mike
 >> Stay informed about: Superpowered Population and Demographics 

On Fri, 9 Sep 2005 00:28:08 -0500, "Michael D'Auben"
<mdauben RemoveThis @charter.net> wrote:



>> A single gadgeteer who offers his services to anyone with
>> the cash can flood a city with hundreds of stooges with a
>> costume,
>
>I think there has to be some mechanism in a campaign to control this sort of
>"gadget proliferation." Perhaps all the really good gadgets requre some
>sort of "unobtainium" to build, making most of them unique, superexpensive
>or otherwise one-off items? Or perhaps gadget making needs to be almost a
>superpower in itself, so that *only* Dr. Goodgadget can make that
>antigravity harness.

Well, sure, you can't mass produce super-gadgets. That's an
invariable law of comic book reality (along with "Any theory, no
matter how stupid can produce one dangerous thing). But the old
Spiderman villain the Tinkerer could (and would) produce a villain
every couple of weeks.
 >> Stay informed about: Superpowered Population and Demographics 

Michael D'Auben wrote:
> "David Johnston" <rgorman RemoveThis @block.net> wrote in message
> news:431c3306.10271377@news.telusplanet.net...
>
> > China's not a serious problem. You could just stock them up with wu
> > xia super martial artists and you'd be set. China's not going to rule
> > the world with them.
>
> That's not a bad idea. I've always been partial to kung fu/ninja/samurai
> type "super" heroes, myself.
>
> I'll have to continue thinking about how to hold down the other countries,
> though...
>
> > Frankly, I'm not fond of the whole "one in a million" estimate that
> > comes up so frequently when setting the numbers of paranormals.
>
> It a matter of just how "super" you want your campaign to be, of course. As
> much as I want to invoke the flavor of a four-color, silver age campaign
> setting, I also need to satisfy my own sense of reality. I want a setting
> that is recognizibly the present day, real world. I can suspend my
> disbelief enough to accept 100 superheroes in the US, but I just can't get
> my head around several *thousand* of them all in this country. At that size
> the impact on society, technology, etc. would have (to my mind) to be so
> great that we start to loose the "real world with some superheroes"
> connection.
>
> > It is probably also a mistake to set the same hero/villain ratio for
> > every part of the word.
>
> I guess its really just sort of a vague guidline. I just don't want to go
> and set ratios for every single country. After all, its not like I am going
> to create stats and a backstory for every one of them! I mean, the US will
> probably be the most fleshed out as far as NPCs go, and I probably won't
> start with more that a dozen or so "good" NPCs and twice that many "evil"
> ones.
>
> I am generally thinking of heroes as people who are using their powers or
> skills for the benefit of others, and villians as people working for their
> own benefit. As you point out it does get a bit fuzzy in places with
> oppressive governments. In your example, I think that I can imagine
> "heroes" working for *both* the government and the freedom fighters, as long
> as they were both fighting for what they thought was right. On the other
> hand, I can piciture villians working for both, too, as either mercinaries
> interested only in the money, or schemers with their own secret agenda.
>
> > A single gadgeteer who offers his services to anyone with
> > the cash can flood a city with hundreds of stooges with a
> > costume,
>
> I think there has to be some mechanism in a campaign to control this sort of
> "gadget proliferation." Perhaps all the really good gadgets requre some
> sort of "unobtainium" to build, making most of them unique, superexpensive
> or otherwise one-off items? Or perhaps gadget making needs to be almost a
> superpower in itself, so that *only* Dr. Goodgadget can make that
> antigravity harness. This goes back to the "realism" thing I discussed
> above. If Dr. G can design his antigravity harness out of commonly
> available items and hand the blueprints off to General Motors to start mass
> producing it, pretty soon we should flying cars and the whole 101st Airborne
> division will be jumping out of planes with them and someone will be trying
> to organize an international antigravity soccer league and there goes the
> real world connection again...
>
> > And what about Shield
> > agents and Rocket Red Corps?
>
> For my own campaign setting, I am imagining that goverment supers will
> probably be limited to solo operatives and small, elite special forces type
> units. Perhaps a couple dozen all told scattered through the military, CIA,
> and other gov't agencies.
>
> I'm not really trying to design a set of rules that I can re-create the
> Marvel Univeres with. After all, I think you have to admit that both Marvel
> and DC universes are pretty cobbled together affairs. They just sort of
> grew and grew under the efforts of dozens of writers and artists with no
> real overall direction, until they are at the point where (much as I still
> enjoy reading the comics) the level of suspension of disbelief necessary to
> actuall *believe* them has gotten out of hand. There are just too many
> superhumans, aliens, gods and monsters, too much magic, alien technology and
> superscience for the world to be as like our real one as it is portrayed.
> That is something I want to avoid in my own campaing.
>
> Mike


You obviously are giving this a lot of thought. However, you might
want to add these considerations as well.

First. A person may have "super combat" grade powers, but have to real
interest in such combat. It takes a certain type of mentality to want
to patrol a city or take over the world and face off against people
with weird and unpredictable powers. Such a person is almost always
driven by something, usually tragedy, obligation, and/or greed. Others
may simply ignore their powers, or put them to use in their work. For
example, tunnelling would be useful to mining. Super strength and some
types of elemental powers would be great in construction, especially in
areas where machines are not available or cannot easily fit. Extra
swimming, immunity to high pressure and cold, and breathing underwater
would be good for any underwater work. Any number of powers would be
useful in emergency services, including the ones mentioned above.

Also, the possibility of jobs where the person can use their powers
would explain why they tend to gravitate towards the cities and
industrialized countries. (More opportunities.)

And in an oppressive government that did not require mandatory testing
for powers, people are more likely to hide their power, or if the
location is very rural and the power advantageous to the village, the
entire village may know and keep it a secret. (which would explain why
there are so few Chinese and Indian Supers, even though they have a
large percentage of the population.)



Second. Most people with powers would either not know it, or they
would be too minor to warrant even considering becoming a super. A
person that is immune to diseases and poisons is just known as someone
that never gets sick. A person with an extended lifespan may not even
suspect it until they start reaching middle age, and they still have
the body and stamina that they had at 20 or 25. A person with extra
senses might use them, but never mention it. (Think of a teen with the
ability to see though clothing. A person with low level empathy or
telepathy might just think that s/he knows how to read body language
better than most. These types of people would be far, far more common
than those with supers grade powers. In general, the greater the
power, the less common that level is.


Third, the unrealized potential for a power is likely to be greater
than those people that in whom powers have manifested, simply because
the power has not manifested spontaneously or the person has not been
put in the right situation for it to become obvious. (If you have seen
the movie "Sky High", think about how and when Will's powers
manifested. He started school at Sky High with no obvious powers.)
Most people would never know they had any such potential.


Think of each of these as contracting groups. Each one is included
within the group "above" it. You might come up with this chart to
explain the distributions.

Assuming a world population of 6.5 Billion:

Potential for super powers of any sort and any level:
1 in 1,000 => 6.5 million

Manifested powers at any level:
1 in 100 => 65,000 world wide

Manifested powers of Supers caliber:
1 in 10 => 6,500 world wide.

This includes mutants, mutates, gadgeteers, super martial artists,
magic training and artifacts, etc.

>From here you can fudge the numbers to represent how many heros you
want, how many villians, how many are just "work a day joes" with no
interest in combat even with their power levels (i.e. don't use their
powers except in extrme emergencies), and ones that use their powers in
military, government, or private sector jobs.

Does this help any? Opinions?

Mark Sebree
 >> Stay informed about: Superpowered Population and Demographics 

"Michael D'Auben" <mdauben.DeleteThis@charter.net> wrote:
> I also need to satisfy my own sense of reality. I want a setting
> that is recognizibly the present day, real world. I can suspend my
> disbelief enough to accept 100 superheroes in the US, but I just can't get
> my head around several *thousand* of them all in this country.

But you have to balance "realism" against what makes a workable game. How
many *villains* do you need to keep your players entertained?

Say your players encounter five villains in scenario. (On average -- some
weeks it will be one mega-villain, other weeks it will be an army of thugs,
but most often they probably face a similarly-sized group of equivalent
power levels.)

Assuming you let your players win most of their scenarios, that's five
villains off to jail every week.

Sure, some villains will escape to return another day. Prison breaks are
part of the genre. But if your prisons have too much of a "revolving-door
policy", players start to wonder why they're bothering.

Ten weeks into the campaign, you've got through 50 villains. For a year of
play, you'll need a couple of hundred. And that number needs to be bunched
in a geographical area that the PC heroes can reach. And are your PCs the
*only* heroes in your universe? If not, you can multiply the
villain-pool-depletion by the number of superhero teams out there. You end
up with a pretty massive number.


--
David Meadows
"Dear Grandfather, I know I haven't written for a while but
it's difficult when we are being chased by alien werewolf
soldiers." -- Chi-Yun, Heroes #27
http://www.heroes.force9.co.uk/scripts
 >> Stay informed about: Superpowered Population and Demographics