Imagine a fantasy/modern superhero setting wherein a tiny percentage of the world has magical/psychic superpowers...

Imagine a fantasy/modern superhero setting wherein a tiny percentage of the world has magical/psychic superpowers, but all of them manifest on the most inappropriate or otherwise ironic people possible.

>a doctor receives the power to kill with a touch
>a totally deaf person can manipulate sound and music
>a pyrophobic person gets to conjure and shape flame
>a law-abiding judge becomes a supernaturally masterful burglar and overall thief
>an extremely religious and goody-good person instantly masters the art of demon-summoning
>a cat-hater becomes an anime catgirl

How would this work out? What kind of characters or NPCs would you make in such a setting? Has this setting appeared before in published media?

It wouldn't work out.

Forcing players to play concepts unsuitable to the characters created isn't interesting.

As the premise of a short story or novel, however, it might be interesting. No I take that back it would be dumb.

>Forcing players to play concepts unsuitable to the characters created isn't interesting.

I think it could be interesting.
Not gratifying, but interesting.

>a suicidal person gets immortality

People whose lives aren't adversely affected by their powers would just not use them.
People whose lives ARE adversely affected by their powers would suffer enormously and probably either barely survive as homeless people or kill themselves.

And then you'd have a whole bunch of accidental suicides/homicides, and probably a few petty criminals who would wreak a small amount of havoc and then be promptly shot by the police.

I'd play it. Could be interesting to play a character that changes their outlook to fit their new skills, or someone who tries to force their powers to suit them

Faggots like the OP gain impenetrable assholes and perfect gag reflexes.

>Keep seeing this cat around...
>Wondering who it is...
>...Discover all the furfags have broken the Google search algorithms.

>People whose lives aren't adversely affected by their powers would just not use them.

Except that there are OTHER people running around with superpowers.

If the pyrophobic guy's life gets threatened, maybe he'll think to use his fire just this once?

But Citzen, thats exactly what you were looking for.

Sounds like a good Don't Rest Your Head idea actually. But it shouldn't be something the PC can't totally use (manipulationg sounds for a deaf guy).

How would the deaf person or the judge or the religious person even figure out they had powers

I suppose the goodie-two-shoes demon summoner, bringing some powerful demon into new heights of torment, by forcing it to constantly do good deeds, is practically a trope waiting to be written.

Reminds me of when I searched for a russian porn model that was tied up with some blue duct tape...

...and Google gave me the brand of the duct tape.

The funny thing is, turned out it later even guessed the brand right.

The Google algorithms have grown so complex that no one really knows how they work anymore. I suspect they've achieved sapience and are just trolling us now.

They must be trolling us, because anytime I try to source a drawn porn pic it just recommends "Cartoon" and the "similar images" are just cartoons that happen to have similar colors to what I searched.

Unless I search for black&white drawn porn in which case it just suggests "Line art"

>an algorithm that loathes the 2D world he lives in but he's pretty good with the 3D world he will never reach

It actually sounds like a stoned GITS episode.

>Deaf person can shatter eardrums or silence a room
>the pyrophobe can shape the flame into being as far away from him as he can manage
>law-abiding judge uses that for party tricks and to entertain his kids/grandkids
a few of these can be useful, or at least entertaining.

Not furfags, friendsfags.
Possibly worse.

Yandex works a lot better for that I've found.

first thought is how these powers could be used to the users preference.
doctor learns to control powers enough to curb diseases
pyrophobe forces fire away or just puts it out
judge learns weak points in security and uses it constructively.

You're mistaken. That's just the function of image search, it uses both the image and the search term to narrow it down. Just searching for "Serval" doesn't bring the same results.

> Just searching for "Serval" doesn't bring the same results.
It does for me, just sans the similar image results.

It's really weird that it can detect the pattern of dots (and possibly the ears and tail), and figure that it's a cat, and a particular cat at that, and not instead work out the chinese cartoon character's name from the similar image results.

That'd be because the character's name is actually Serval.

Oh.

Well way to kill the mystery!

Well, I suppose a deaf person might know someone who can sign and tell him that he's making music... But how a law-abiding citizen discovers he's a supernaturally masterful burglar and thief... I think the powers would have to be a bit broader than that for him to ever discover it, lest he was put into some situation where he had to pilfer something "for the greater good" or some shit.

Might as well have a blind person who can change the color of objects, a sonic-speed runner who has no legs, or a Veeky Forums user who has sheer omnipotence when outside his mother's basement.

I have run games once or twice where things were randomly assigned.

Like an exalted game where everyone drew their Caste out of a bag.

And a monster mash Chronicles of Darkness where everyone had a favorable, least favorable, and minor fate.
So for example one player had Vampire, Demon, Ghoul all in separate envelopes and they drew one at random to discover their fate. The minor fates could be changed later for one of the major splats but sometimes with hold over consequences. Like Addicted conditions following them.

But I made sure that every fate that could befall them was something that they wouldn't rage quit over.

underrated

The phobia power thing could be fun for some sort of unknown armies type thing where the characters have to balance gradually going bananas against using their powers.

Meh, hate random character gen... Played a classic Traveller game where I made the mistake of picking out a character concept before I started rolling. I figured, since it lets you pick your careers, you'd at least get into the ballpark.

Had this image of an old Wilfred Brimley look alike who was an elderly engineer. Kept taking naval and engineering careers.

Ended up with all my engineering skills at 1, and the persuasion and charisma levels of a love god.

>Try to make old Scotty.
>End up with a cross between Kirk, Aphrodite, and the Dos Equis guy.

Twilightzone did it.

The character is Named Serval. From an anime that ended up WAY more popular than it should have been called Kemono friends. Most of the characters are animal girls and thus have the names of the animal they are. If you've seen that one picture of the japanese penguin staring at the anime girl cutout, that character's from the same show

This could be hilarious and really fun if done right
>the schizo gains the ability to read minds
>little girl gains superman tier strength
>hikkikomori gains the ability to induce euphoria through physical contact
>neckbeard gains the ability to transform into a normie
>teenager gains supreme fishing mastery
>happy go lucky high school cheerleader that can induce suicidal levels of despair
>someones pet dog gains savant level math skills and the ability to function like quanta
>still has the personality and speech of a normal dog
>pet snake gets the ability to teleport or travel through time by slithering through the 4th dimension
>cockatoo gains the ability to survive at any depth of the ocean, as well as the ability to swim as fast as a blue shark
>can speak in cockatoo or echolocation
>pet gecko gains the ability to slide frictionlessly across any surface, even vertically or upside down
>houseplant gains the ability to wiggle around and dance and get drunk and emit a giant solar laser that could destroy a planet when it blooms
>seagull gains the ability to vaporize fries and other tasty snack foods with its eyes on sight
>dumpster kitten gains the powers of a powerful lich
>can you stop it from killing everyone?

>teenager gains supreme fishing mastery
heh

Yeah, got that.

For a moment I thought Google was simultaneously being extremely smart and extremely retarded, but sadly, as usual, it was just me, and just the latter.

Now, see if you can explain this one.

I just looked at the first episode and it REEKS of "quality"

No, see that is not furry, this is furry.

They're both pretty furry, but one falls under anime conventions and is thus a different category of trash.

The deaf person is told by someone that they're making weird noises. They can still feel vibrations.
The judge wants to do something sneaky but not illegal, and pulls it off perfectly without any training

There's lot of information to be extracted from that at a glance. If I were to have a real look into it I'd find all places where it's been posted and see any threads and comments on whether someone asks for the source and whether someone provided it. If that fails I'd just start looking through japanese monster B-movies from 70's-80's.
I mean this much is obvious, it's just that I'm seriously doubting your google-fu powers here.

>teenager gains supreme fishing mastery

>RESPOOL THE LINE BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!

The show Misfits actually covers this idea pretty well. Base idea is magic lightning hits some city in the UK (I think it was London), and as a result a lot of people are developing super powers. The main characters are in community service and get ironic powers.

>guy who fucked up his athletic career has limited time travel powers
>girl who liked to slut it up now has Rogue's lethal skin without the fun power copying
>guy who is awkward and doesn't talk to people can go invisible
>girl who hates everyone talking behind her back gains mind reading
>guy who doesn't really give a fuck about his life can self resurrect

Yeah, the animation isn't great by any means, but the character designs and animal trivia seem to it for most people. For me I find the setting very interesting once things got rolling.

It's pretty much as close to a CATastrophe anime as we'll ever get

It's from Kamen Rider Stronger.

Actually, I'm not interested in what it's from.

I'm just impressed that Google comes up with, "rule 34 asura's wrath".