Number of superhumans in your worlds

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Harnos
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Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by Harnos »

I would like to know the size of superhuman populations in your game worlds. And why did you choose those numbers ?

There is a question in my mind; how would the size of superhuman population effect the world?


One superhuman in a million people seems suitable for a classic superhero setting, where they are rare and mighty. 1 out of 50k being a low powered superhuman seems proper for a x-men like setting where metahumans are downtrodden.


I would appreciate your ideas on population issue.
Shock
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by Shock »

1 out of a million ends up with around 8000 superhumans. To me, even that is a lot.
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Ares
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by Ares »

I guess it depends on how superpowers manifest, and what kind of powers.

If there are no 'lame' superpowers the way there are in something like My Hero Academia, where every superhuman has the potential to be a superhero, then yeah, 8000 superhumans could be a lot, depending on the setting. From what I remember, the Aberrant setting had something around that number for their superhuman population, but it was also divided between several factions.

Now, if there's a superhuman offshoot like mutants, then having thousands of them isn't an issue because not all of them will be superhero level, and a good chunk of them would be happy not engaging in superhero shenanigans.

8000 superhumans also might not be a lot if you consider the larger world stage. In Marvel and DC, the United States tends to get the lion's share of superhumans, with possibly several hundred heroes and several hundred or so more villains. If your setting had the USA not be unique in that regard, then you could see that kind of superhuman population in every major nation on Earth, which could rack up a high number.

There's also the factor that not all superheroes would be superpowered. You'd figure at least 1/3rd of the superhero population is made up of trained normals, martial artists, power armor types, magic users, gadget users and similar folks.

Now, if superpowers are largely the result of accidents, experiments and the like rather than a mutant gene, you've got more of an excuse to keep the superhero population small.
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Harnos
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by Harnos »

Ares wrote: Tue Mar 31, 2020 3:31 am I guess it depends on how superpowers manifest, and what kind of powers.

If there are no 'lame' superpowers the way there are in something like My Hero Academia, where every superhuman has the potential to be a superhero, then yeah, 8000 superhumans could be a lot, depending on the setting. From what I remember, the Aberrant setting had something around that number for their superhuman population, but it was also divided between several factions.

8000 superhumans also might not be a lot if you consider the larger world stage. In Marvel and DC, the United States tends to get the lion's share of superhumans, with possibly several hundred heroes and several hundred or so more villains. If your setting had the USA not be unique in that regard, then you could see that kind of superhuman population in every major nation on Earth, which could rack up a high number.

There's also the factor that not all superheroes would be superpowered. You'd figure at least 1/3rd of the superhero population is made up of trained normals, martial artists, power armor types, magic users, gadget users and similar folks.

Now, if superpowers are largely the result of accidents, experiments and the like rather than a mutant gene, you've got more of an excuse to keep the superhero population small.

Yeah, Aberrant had the 1 in 1m ratio. And most novas were praised celebrities.

My setting will not be USA-centric. Metahumans are divided between countries equally, with respect to their populations. I think %80 of the metahumans have low level powers, like strongman types having 7-9 strength with low attack bonuses, PL 6-7, not standart superhero level. Only %20 will have real power, kinda like Pareto effect.

I will GM a Paragons style campaign and thinking about 4 meta per 1 m population. I want metahumans to be special but common enough that superhuman fights are not rare for PCs .
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by FuzzyBoots »

Semi-parallel to this, it is worth considering what effect distribution will have, which can be heavily influenced by what drives super-powers. If it's strictly a matter of percentage per populace, you'd expect China and India to be sporting the largest numbers of supers, followed by the United States (using the "one in a million", you're looking at 1,439 supers in China, 1,380 in India, and 331 in the United States. Indonesia, Pakistan, and Brazil would be trailing at 273, 220, and 212 respectively). If it's being caused by something like toxic waste... you might actually see some huge booms in "third world" countries which are being used for industrial run-off. If it's caused by adversity, you might be seeing some massive upheavals due to oppressed populations being more likely to develop superpowers.

One of the things I found interesting in Marion G. Harmon's Capes series is that superpowers have created some massive upheavals because they're fairly evenly distributed. Among other changes, China has fractured into many smaller city-states because a lot of its population is not in the cities where the government is concentrated, and India is becoming a major power.
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by Harnos »

FuzzyBoots wrote: Tue Mar 31, 2020 1:31 pm Semi-parallel to this, it is worth considering what effect distribution will have, which can be heavily influenced by what drives super-powers. If it's strictly a matter of percentage per populace, you'd expect China and India to be sporting the largest numbers of supers, followed by the United States (using the "one in a million", you're looking at 1,439 supers in China, 1,380 in India, and 331 in the United States. Indonesia, Pakistan, and Brazil would be trailing at 273, 220, and 212 respectively). If it's being caused by something like toxic waste... you might actually see some huge booms in "third world" countries which are being used for industrial run-off. If it's caused by adversity, you might be seeing some massive upheavals due to oppressed populations being more likely to develop superpowers.

One of the things I found interesting in Marion G. Harmon's Capes series is that superpowers have created some massive upheavals because they're fairly evenly distributed. Among other changes, China has fractured into many smaller city-states because a lot of its population is not in the cities where the government is concentrated, and India is becoming a major power.
I will use that idea. My old Paragons setting set in 2028 had a similar situation. China was in a civil war state with it's metas and India was world's 3rd economy.

I will just use equal distribution between populations. I don't like the "trauma creates\awakens supers" idea. Also populations troubled with war and strife already tend to have high birthrates and younger people. I do not want to widen the gap between western countries and rest of the world. I want the world changed because of superhumans but not totally upside down.

I can't decide between 2 superhumans per 1 million people or 4 superhumans. The metahumans in the setting have appeared first in 2008.
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by Prince Charon »

This is something that I've been thinking about for various settings, including the recently-posted Paragons of a Golden Age. My current thinking is that there are a lot of people, probably tens of thousands, who have low-level super powers, but the number of people participating in WWII who can comfortably solo a tank and attendant infantry (like the scenario there used to be on Atomic Think Tank that I can't link to any longer - unless someone has it archived) is rather more limited, possibly as many as 2,300 (close to the 'one in a million' figure suggested above, given 1940s population levels).
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Ken
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by Ken »

Lord... I don't know if I have any idea how many true superhumans there are in my campaign world. To work out that kind of number, I'd have to subtract out the well-trained normals, the power armour types, but also the extra-terrestrials, extra-dimensionals, extra-temporals, and artificial intellegences. I'd also have to take into account their ages, because a 1600 year old sorcerer, for example, would he count towards the frequency of super humans. Oh, and the transformed into monsters types: vampire and ... werewolf. ("There wolf... there castle").

It would also entail figuring out how large the population of the world is. I mean, yeah, I can say "7 billion" and generally be correct. But since there are cities and countries on my campaign world that are not in the real world, it stands to reason either, that the U.S. and Canada have either slightly less dense cities because there are at least 7 or 8 more Major population centers that have to be filled, or they have higher populations because there are at least seven or eight major population centers. And that's before dealing with countries like Winanstan and Sala'aq.

Of course, I'm talking about a campaign world that has been actively gamed on long enough that it could run for president in 2024 (meaning it'll turn 35 in 2022).
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by theVoidWatches »

I've got a setting where about 15% of the population has superpowers (this is, obviously, a setting where the vast majority of those powered people don't have useful powers - for example, a minor character mentioned as representative of that 15% has hair and eyes which act like a mood ring, changing colors depending on her emotions). From there, maybe 1% have powers that would lend themselves to heroism, and 2.5% actually have the desire to be heroes (a rough guesstimate based on population figures for bodyguards, firefighters, and other put-your-body-on-the-line-for-others type jobs). This means that in a decent-sized city (300k people, say) there are about 10ish heroes (and my guesstimate based on crime rates suggests a similar number of supervillains), enough for a hero team or two, and a similar number of villains. New York has over 300 of each - small towns might only have 1 hero and 1 villain.

Because lets be honest - most people probably wouldn't want to be superheroes even if you had powers that would allow it. Being a superhero is hard, dangerous work, and most settings don't offer compensation for it (my setting does have government-funded hero teams, but the pay isn't going to hit 6 figures unless you sell a ton of merchandise). Much easier to use your super-strength easily and safely in construction, or your teleportation to be a highly-paid courier, or your weather control powers to guarantee good weather for events, and so on.
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Davies
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by Davies »

The 1:1M number was, to the best of my knowledge, first floated in a Dragon article by Roger Moore in 1986, or thereabouts. It's worth noting that when that was written, there were three billion fewer people on Earth.

It might be useful to treat that as the world average -- in some nations there are much fewer, like maybe 1 in 20 million. But for that to work, you'd need nations where there are many more.

This is what I came up with while considering that. Meet Doctor Notdoom. He's, well, you know. Sole ruler of a microstate, scientific genius, would-be ruler of the world, et cetera. And the ~35,000 people* who live in his domain are one and all superhumans. They enjoy Immunity (disease, poison) and Regeneration 5 or so. Healthiest population in the world. And every single one of them, at their sovereign's command, transforms into a super-powered warrior whose actions are completely under his control. (A closely guarded secret is that he can only do this to about 16 at any given time, which is why he hasn't yet conquered all his neighbors.)

* This is less than the population of Liechtenstein or Monaco.
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slade the sniper
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by slade the sniper »

tl;dr 1.5 million of all types

Here is a random excerpt out my setting:
SUPER NATURAL BEING (SNB) and SUPERPOWERED BEING (SPB) POPULATION ESTIMATES CIRCA 2020 (est.)
Earth’s Population using the figure 8 Billion (circa 2000 est.) as total world population. This only includes beings who are part of human society or once were part of human society.
Supernaturals and people aware of supernaturals account for .025% of the World Population or 1,500,000 individuals
41% or 615,000 Individuals of these are Aware. Or individuals who have encountered and know the truth about supernaturals. IE like Kinfolk or Hunters
21% or 330,000 Individuals are Mages Technocracy, Nephandi, Tradition or Otherwise
20% or 315,000 Individuals are Twilights or normal humans possessed of supernatural powers. Such as psychics, mediums, sorcerors, fomori or even ghouls
12% or 180,000 Individuals are Shapeshifters. Such as Garou, Bastet, Corax, Gurahl, or otherwise.
5% or 75,000 Individuals are Vampires. Eastern or Western.
1% or 15,000 Individuals are Other. Mummies, Dragons, powerful unnamed creatures, Other.
These “guess-timates” were arrived at by using 1 vampire per 100,000 population of a city. There is no real intelligence on numbers, we don’t conduct a census, so therefore it is the recommendation that these estimates be used only as a basis for theoretical modeling and not for actual operational information.
As you can see, the supernatural crowd is not that large. What is large is the population of the Earth, the solar system, then the local group, then the quadrant, and then it is truly a mind boggling experience to try and understand just how large 38 trillion beings really is.
One of the more interesting things about this world is why, with all of our technology and occult skills, are there not more SPB’s or SNB’s. The reason is actually quite simple…economics. It takes a lot of time, resources and money to become or create one of these beings. Think about it…how much money time and resources would it take to create a super soldier? Well, you have to have the research, which is several years and several million dollars. Then the scientists have to be paid, and they don’t come cheap. The facility is expensive, as are the cover stories and red herrings. Then you have to have volunteers…and using criminals or unwitting subjects is NOT a good idea.
So now that you have a few super soldiers, what can they do? Not a lot unless they are trained and equipped, and that takes more money. So now that you have these super soldiers all gen-ed up and decked out, you send them on a mission. Some of them will die…and what has come as a very hard lesson to the governments and organizations that have conducted these projects, they really aren’t worth it. In order to gain any appreciable advantage, you have to spend an inordinate amount of money, which, really, can be better spent on buying more standard agents or better tech for the agents you already have. Augmentation (bio or cyber) is far preferable to building a super soldier from the ground up.
Somewhat on this subject is that most of these projects are military, and that the typical rank of these individuals is usually junior officers, Captains and Majors mostly, although they lack the command experience and are typically used in small teams or independently with a security team attached to them.
That takes care of the “created” projects, but what about those who are self taught? Typically you are talking about SNB’s and the rare accidental SPB. Well, in order to be somebody like this, you have to spend…decades learning the Craft and the Art. It does not come easy, for obvious reasons. Loyalty and determination are the major factors for becoming an Acolyte in anything remotely similar to these groups.
The accidents, well, they typically don’t matter. Even with fantastic abilities, there is still something missing, and that is mindset. A highly trained soldier is told to go on missions and given a reason (loyalty), and support. A project is told to go on a mission and given a reason (threats, brainwashing, etc.) and support. A mage or member of any SNB group is told to go out on a mission and given a reason (threats, more knowledge, power, etc.) and given support. An accident…is just that. An accident. They simply live their lives as best they can, try not to get noticed and hope that nothing happens like that again.
Accidents are typically termed fomori by several SNB’s types. Why? Apparently because of their specific belief systems and several historic encounters between these groups. I have seen far too many paradoxes to worry about it, so we simply refer to them as accidents.
The UN RDF calls them Alpha ones and Alpha twos. An Alpha one is an accident that was caused by something and it has a definite effect…and that effect is large enough to make their life…less than livable. Their skin falls off, they turn into a cannibal, their eyes grow out on stalks…stuff like that. An Alpha two is an accident that causes some change, but it is able to be concealed, such as suffering a random mutation when exposed to a genetically engineered spider, or other such improbable cause. Alpha twos are also sometimes referred to, incorrectly, as mutants.

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Hoid
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by Hoid »

In the Forever Tree, the superhuman population of each parallel-Earth tends to be rather high---the low millions, for most parallel-Earths---but a lot of superhumans have weak powers that don't lend themselves well to adventuring. Adventuring superhumans are much rarer, drastically so.
Harnos
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by Harnos »

Thanks for answers everyone. I guess I will use 1 (or 2 at most) superhuman per 1 million ratio. Most of them will not have the standart super-hero level might, but they won't generally have lame powers either. "Governments and hate groups hunting mutants" scenario is not appealing right now.

I kind of like the idea of low-level supers being harvested for their paranormal energies, but I am not sure if I will use it right now either.
Post-Human Resources
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by Post-Human Resources »

Well, for a start, my human/post-human population are the minority in the setting. They are the majority in the relatively limited part of the setting that resembles the real world, in the modern day. But the rest of the setting is full of other planets, filled with non-human species, other planes of existence full of other kinds of life-form (demons, spirits, mystical species of various types, etc), and machine intelligences, etc.

On Earth, in the plane of existence that we tend to stick to, the humans, and post-humans, and so on, make-up the majority of the populace. There a few local populations of people from other planets, or alternate planes of reality, or machine intelligences, etc. But about 75% of them are theoretically at least part human. Of those, the ones who are purely, totally human, with absolutely no magical influence on them, or any magical talent of their own, or any mutations/genetic enhancements/non-human genetics, or any cybernetic implants, constitute only about 20% of the populace.

Therefore, even if you focus entirely on Earth, only in the modern day (to avoid any future stuff about forming Star Trek's Federation, or whatever, or anything in the past about some sort of ancient Gods and monsters being prevalent), and only on the plane of existence that mostly resembles our own, and usually serves as the standard setting, then the totally non-mutant, non-alien, non-cyborg, non-magic, purely training based at best (and even then, no training in magic), humans are only about 15% of the total population.

That said...

Remember, that's only if you rule out everybody with any cybernetics, any magical talent, any magic affecting them, any mutated genes (dormant or not), any genetic changes from lab accidents, any non-human dna, *anything*. There are probably plenty of people out there who have a fraction of a finger that is a cybernetic prosthesis, because they cut half of a finger off in a DIY accident and Dr Fabulous happened to do one of her donation drives in the city that they live in. Plenty of people who only know that one 'spell', that they don't even realise is magical, because all it does is make cookies taste amazing, and it got passed down as "the family recipe" instead of as a spell. Derek, who doesn't even realise he's a dormant mutant until he tries to join the anti-mutant league and they do a deep-scan of his dna and reject his application, forcing him to rethink his whole philosophy and rethink why he hates his mutant neighbour, George, who gradually turned blue during puberty and has no other mutation. Cassie is a local politician whose great-grandfather moved here from Betelgeuse 7, and she has two mouths and a very egg-like torso, but she looks mostly human and the greatest scandal in her political career actually came when people thought that she'd posed nude for a website (only to discover that it was actually a shapeshifter using her likeness illegally).
Hoid
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Re: Number of superhumans in your worlds

Post by Hoid »

In the Forever Tree, MOST superbeings have EXTREMELY minor powers:
The ability to levitate 3” off the ground.
The ability to read a book by touching its cover, but still reading at the same rate as the old-fashioned method.
Being able to unerringly shoot a basketball into the hoop each time, without fail.
The ability to hold you breath forever, but only when submerged in arctic saltwater.


And so on.
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