Alignment Is the Superpower

Heroes Unlimited still has the best alignment system in superhero gaming, and most tables treat it like a box they check to get to the power catalog. I keep doing that myself until the first scene that will not resolve on a blast radius.

The powers are the fun part. The code is why the night goes anywhere. You find that out in a place the power list cannot finish.

Late news. A high school gym after a game that should have been nothing. The scoreboard is still on. Somebody in the bleachers filmed a kid stop a collapsing bank of lights with his hands. The clip is already circulating. The principal wants the gym cleared and the story to die. A parent wants a name. A coach wants the kid off his roster before morning. The kid is still in the locker room because he does not know which door is safer.

Same power. Different night, depending on what they wrote down.

Principled walks out and owns it before the clip hardens into a rumor. Scrupulous walks out and then spends the week trying to keep the parent from turning the kid into a mascot. Unprincipled cuts a deal with the principal and tells himself he bought the kid time. Anarchist leaks a second clip so nobody owns the narrative. Aberrant protects the kid and hurts whoever put a camera on him. Miscreant finds the phone and makes sure there is no clip. Diabolic decides that whoever shared the clip is a problem that ends tonight.

The lasers do not pick any of that. The player already did, when they put an alignment on the sheet. That is the ruling about what they will not do once the clip is out.

Kit-first superhero games sand it off. You get a loadout and a tragic paragraph, and then the city is a dungeon with better lighting. These are not Marvel or DC characters. Nobody already wrote the next twelve issues. No future writer is waiting to retcon the gym if it all goes wrong. What happened under that scoreboard is what happened.

When I plan a session, I do not start with power categories. I start with a scene that is already out and a locker room that still has a scared mutant in it. The powers will take care of themselves.