The Laws of Physics are for other people.
Summary: The Archetype of the Mad Scientist is a fairly recent archetype, younger than many of the best known, such as the Fool or the True King, but older than more “modern” ideals such as the Flying Woman. The original archetype was the Eccentric Inventor, a largely European concept, from the time when science was often a hobby of the aristocracy and well-to-do.
This changed with the advent of electricity and its myraid properties. Whereas the moving parts of mechanical innovations, such as elaborate music boxes or crude automata (and some which were not so crude) were merely refinements to principles used for thousands of years and wagons and weapons, electricity was terrifying. In the minds of many, it was the ultimate expression of mankind’s hubris, taking the sacred lightning from the gods and chaining it to do mundane tasks such as lighting and cooking.
It didn’t help that electrical equipment could be used to make freshly dead bodies grimace, twitch, or spasm.
When Mary Shelley’s novel was turned into a movie, Frankenstein finally added enough pressure to the collective unconscious to replace the benevolent (if scatter-brained) aristocrat with the man with ambitions arguably beyond his station. Instead of being born to wealth or title or knowledge, he sought to take it from the world by force.
The archetype’s power has grown exponentially as more and more uses for science to destroy or ruin life have been found. Nuclear warheads, nerve gas, germ warfare, and so on seem to cement the Mad Scientist’s place in the Clergy, but that could soon change; more and more of science’s ills are being heaped onto irresponsible businessmen greedy for profit, leaving the playing field potentially open for a return to a more positive incarnation, such as The Man Too Clever For His Own Good, or perhaps The Inventive Slacker. In the meantime, mad scientists can choose to use their knowledge and skill to benefit themselves or others; regardless of intentions, someone will probably get hurt.
Symbols: White lab coat, eyeglasses or goggles, and unkempt hair are all associated with the Mad Scientist. Physical deformity or crippling injuries are potent, as are scars, but even more so when coupled with technology made to replace whatever normal abilities the avatar has lost, such as the voice machine used by Dr. Phibes in “The Abominable Dr. Phibes”. Self-experimentation is very common. Egomania, while not strictly a symbol, helps, as does maniacal laughter.
Masks: Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus), Nikolai Tesla and John W. Keely (American), Dr. Josef Mengele (Germany/Neo Nazi), Dr. Anton Phibes (The Abominable Dr. Phibes, the Curse of Dr. Phibes, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, et al), Rotwang (Metropolis).
Taboo: Mad Scientists are at the front of the crest of scientific and technical innovation, so far ahead of the rest of the world that they make no sense whatsoever, and they must embody that. At least once a week, the avatar must put forth some effort to either improve upon something already existing, or develop something entirely new. This can be something abstract, like a theory of molecular structure, or something concrete, like a toaster. Even failure and frustration will sustain the connection to the archetype; what counts is the amount of effort being invested. A Mad Scientist not looking for something new and better is more like a Scholar; in fact, many disturbed Scholar avatars are mistaken for Mad Scientists.
Channels
1 – 50%: Shield of Hubris. When confronted by his own guilt or instability, the mad scientist can suppress it and ignore any implications it might raise. It’s all just petty words from people with smaller brains, afraid of what they can’t possibly understand. In other words, the Mad Scientist can flip-flop any stress check against Self if the result would be under his Avatar: Mad Scientist skill.
51 – 70%: Innovation. With a succesful avatar roll, a mad scientist can make a device that shouldn’t operate according to the known laws of physics. It takes as many days as the sum of the avatar roll to build, and depending on GM fiat, my not work as advertised. If the task is particularly daunting, say for building a time machine, it may take as many days as the actual roll. The GM also has final say on what can be built — other than that, anything goes. (This is almost like writing the GM a blank check, but mad scientists are known for standing up on mountains during thunderstorms and daring the gods to strike them down, so it’s in character.)
71 – 90%: The Return of Doctor Whatsisname. If you’ve just been shot in the gut, had a building collapse around you, or got choked by your own creation, you can make an avatar check. If you succeed, you survive by the skin of your teeth, no matter how contrived the circumstances. You may be paralyzed from the neck down or be missing a few organs, but it won’t take long for the average mad scientist to think of and impliment a solution…
91+%: The Revenge of Doctor Whatserface. Almost a natural compliment to the third channel, this allows the avatar to make near-miraculous recovery from any injury, no matter how life-threatening or permanent. The roll for the skill check is the number of days it takes the avatar to get back on her feet, provided she still has them. And even if she does, there’s the possibility of a limp. While a faster recovery might be better, it carries a price: No channels can be used for a number of days equal to the avatars skill minus the result of the roll, starting once they are fully healed.
I’m terribly uncertain about the Innovation channel, is it magick or isn’t it and damn it seems to be pretty powerful for that level too.
Also perhaps the 71-90 channel could be fleshed out a bit more. Maybe the Avatar survives but suffers reductions in his stats or loses a number of points off his skill from surviving or something because the combination of the last two channels seem like Mad Scientist are nearly impossible to kill, more so than Masterless Men or Dark Stalkers or some of the more combat capable avatars.
Maybe instead they could expand on the whole able to create weird machines. Perhaps at first they can glimpse underlying structure of the universe better alowing for improvements to efficiency or something to there devices, maybe they can subsitute elaborate seeming building materials into their devices to achive amazing results letting them cobble things together quickly, and combine wildly divergent technologies then a further channel would let them bend laws of physics (make computers that process at much speeds or something) or maybe with a matched or critical success actually break the laws of physics.
I really like your idea about combining divergent technology, and yeah, the avatar does seem too resilient. I was operating on the steretypes of movies and media more than the actual science and madness.
I’ll see if I can cobble together a revised version after final exams are done.
How about this for the 2nd Channel (it comes from a mad-inventor type Avatar from a game I’m running):
Once per day, you may make an Avatar roll to create an object or objects equivalent to the Mechanomancer Adept ability. You produce a number of Minor charges equal to the sum of the die roll; a matched success or Critical provides the equivalent of one Significant charge. This requires tools, time, and raw materials; unlike Mechanomancy, there is no limitation on the technology level that may be incorporated into the device.
If you are already a Mechanomancer, you may use this channel to provide charges for a device you are already working on (though, in this case, there is still the technology limit).
Oh man, I’ve been waiting for The Mad Scientist for so long!
I agree with Unfinishedbusinessman that it would be nice if it could combine technology, or at least be more inventive.
I don’t think mixing them with Mechanomancers are a good idea, as a mad scientist’s motive is very unlike clockworkers. I imagine them as being rivals – the modern (destructive) concept of The Mad Scientist against the age-old (constructive-well, sort of)
Mechanomancer both seeking to be “the king of technology”.
This is a movie Avatar, and not a real one. If you are playing a Hollywood-type UA campaign, ok, sure, but… Oh, what is so annoying is that only a non-scienteist would actually sit down and write something like this. It’s similar to “the Superhero” that surfaced a while ago, which was also bad because like Mad Scientists they don’t actually, you know, exist…
Now, if you would call it “the Excentric Scientist” or something like that (because, believe me, there are plenty of exccentric people sitting in insitutions for theoretical physics around the world), scale the unnaturallness WAY down, remove every reference to Frankenstein.
Oh, and scientists rarely actually build anything, engineers do that.
One of the ways you can spot an archetype that doesn’t work is when you can’t think of a single person who might actually channel it at a high level, and behold, there are no examples of “suspected avatars in history” in this writeup.
No, don’t like it.
I was distracted when I wrote this up, so the suspected avatars ended up under Masks instead. Specifically, they’re Keely, Tesla, and Mengele. Tesla is the best known.
Whether the avatar is more real than others is a debate for people with degrees in existentialist philosophy.
I will concede that normal scientists rarely build anything… most of their time is spent jockeying for grants and tenure and suchlike. If you can’t get people to back your work, you have to build your own hardware yourself. Speaking from personal experience here now.
If anyone has ascended as the Mad Scientist, or Eccentric Scientist, it’s got to be Tesla. Tesla was a Scientist first and foremost though, all the really crazy UFO stuff that people usually connect with Tesla had nothing to do with him.
In defense of both the Superhero and the Mad Scientist, Mattias, NOTHING in UA really exists.
I wrote the Superhero archetype after a rather enjoyable UA game in which the PCs actually started to take on super-heroic personas based on their in-game abilities. I figured later that if a group like this, or perhaps even Team Salvation, managed to do something spectacular, like save the world on TV or something, then a Superhero Archetype might arrise. There were obviously no REAL suspected avatars in history since the archetype’s envisioning, refinement, and final embodiment all occured between Action Comics #1 and in-game history that I made up. In this world, no, there aren’t any superheroes and I don’t think there will ever be. In UA, though, super powers ARE possible, and thus so are superheroes, and thus so is a Superhero Archetype.
The same principle applies to the Mad Scientist. Since we have a make-belive world, why not put something in the Rumors section on this very site saying that Dr. Frankenstein existed, and that Mary Shelley’s work was embellished history rather than a work of complete fiction? After all, we already have Lancelot running around as a demon obsessed with finding the grail and a man who can use his children as proxies because their names are anagrams of his. Who’s to say that, in the UA universe, there weren’t eccentric noblemen delving too deeply into the strange world of science?
(to be continued …)
(… right here.)
It’s make-believe to begin with. Anything goes. With things as outlandish as Carnals, Tenembrae, and the Ritual of the Prowess of Bruce lee, should the line really be drawn at superheroes and mad scientists? You’re right- superheroes don’t exist in the real world, and neither do mad scientists. But we’re not playing in the real world. We’re not even playing in a realistic world. We’re playing in one where certain people ARE more powerful than locomotives, and clockworks make sandwiches for today’s over-worked mechanomancers; in other words, a world in which superheroes and mad scientists are well withing the realm of possibility. In fact, given what I’ve read and played through, I would say that these two would be among the more believable additions to an Unknown Armies game.
When powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men are possible, who’s to say that there were never those who put on masks and capes and captured the public eye with their daring do? Who’s to say that others, inspired by works like Shelley’s, captivated by the invention of electricity, and driven by the evidence of the Occult Underground, did not seek the unknown to the point of insanity?
Apparently, you would, Mattias. I would remind you we’re playing in a big game of “let’s pretend,” and I say that, in a world like the one we’re dealing with, both would be very possible.
–The Detective–
Aw, Crap.
*Bruce Lee.
Sorry Bruce.
–The Detective–
I have no problem with powered masked avengers (spandex optional) and Tesla-based magic. None! I’m personally not much for superheroes (I’d like to try playing a supers game someday to see what the fuss is about, so that particular opinion might change any time), but glowing tubes and sparking machinery will find it’s way into MUAC really soon now.
What I DO have problems with is trying to shoehorn them into avatars. They are so obviously adepts! Just the fact that every superhero has a DIFFERENT set of powers settles that for me. If they were avatars they would be much more alike…
Most of my complaints on this site are about avatars that should be adepts and adepts that should be avatars, I’ve written a long, not very well thought-through ramble about it somwhere in the dustier corners of the site.
Ah, therein lies the problem. Find a superhero game and read the flavor-text, and you’ll find there’s more linking superheroes than costumes- common themes of heroism and sacrifice you’ll find with any masked crimefighter. Or don’t find a super-game; if superheroes aren’t your cup of tea then whatever. But take it from an expert who DOES like them; they are alike enough to be lumped together as superheroes, and they’re alike enough to be recognized as such by the IC.
After all, Warriors come in all shapes and sizes, with different means and methods, some of them not even violent. It’s the same story with MVPs; some of them (such as the suggested Lancelot) don’t even play sports. But they use their talents in similar fashions. They get their figurehead, don’t they? In the same way, the fact that superheroes have different powers and/or skills means nothing, really, since they all use those powers and skills in the same way: fighting for justice from behind a mask.
As for having different powers, the third channel of the Superhero was very open-ended just for that purpose: you basically get a GM approved superpower. I left some examples like superstrength and invisibility for scaling purposes. The other channels are not superpowers. They’re subtle but helpfull abilities based on the themes of determined, dramatic heroism that link all superheroes.
As for the Mad Scientist, I didn’t write it so I’m not sure how to defend it further.
–The Detective–
Which is where I come in.
I’ll admit that the first version was too movie-like. Using ideas from the others who have commented thus far, I’m working on Avatar: Mad Scientist version 2.0 right now. However, it’s been slow going. First there was final exam time, then Christmas-related chaos, and now the new year. But it is getting done, fragment by fragment.
I spent part of the season reading Paranoia. They have taken the UA approach of street-global-universal a step… not exactly further, but sideways, perhaps? They have made three different flavours, three different ways the world works. In Paranoina it’s Zap (stoopid lethal), Classic (fun and deadly) and Straight (dark satire). In UA that would translate to: what?
I suggest:
Realistic (skilled cops that give a damn force the occult underground underground)
Cranked (lot’s of wierd things happening, some of the stuff we see in weekly world news today actually makes headlines in “real” magazines)
HHH (Whole-Hog-Hollywood)
Thoughts?