This week’s hypothetical

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As a followup to last week’s hypothetical, it is 25 years since the discovery that could grant superpowers to ten year olds at a high price. The world has changed, mostly for the better but not entirely. There have been problems with rich teenagers who thought their powers put them above the law: some went to jail, some did serious harm, some killed unpowered people.

But most didn’t. They’re celebrities now, and they use their powers in non-violent ways to improve the world–generate power, end droughts, that sort of thing. They are also very powerful people, culturally and politically, and even more rich than their parents.

You are an average person in this world, one of billions living their lives peacefully, doing what you do. You also have a ten year old who will turn eleven at the end of next week and pass beyond the age that he can become empowered. Like every kid, he wants superpowers, and asks you to buy a lottery ticket in the hopes that he can get one. You do buy one, and it comes up a winner.

With your new-found wealth, you could live he easy life for the rest of your life and pass on a comfy inheritance, or you could spend the whole thing in one go to give your kid powers. He’s excited and already starting to have power fantasies. You believe he’s a good kid (you’ve raised him well) but most kids are a handful in their teenage years.

Would you buy superpowers for him? If so, what would they be?

5 thoughts on “This week’s hypothetical

  1. LabRat001

    If I bought it cause he asked me to so he could get powers I suppose I’d get him powers. I wouldn’t have told him I’d won it if I hadn’t already decided he could have them.

    What superpower? With the world changed by it already study what works, look for something that’s missing etc

  2. Samuel

    When people design superpowers for comics and games, they design them to be balanced, but when you can buy them, you have no such impetus. You have to give a rules structure for the superpowers to exist in, otherwise I could just suggest all the powers of a god.
    or The ability to turn anything into anything else, or The ability to grant superpowers to other people.

    If you’re looking for a rules structure, I suggest Mutants and Masterminds 2e.

  3. Damn right, I’d buy a set of superpowers for the Monster: perfect (to the idiomatic and cultural subtext level) understanding and fluent eloquence in every language.

    I wouldn’t care if he could then swear at me in Sabaean or C#, he’d at least be employable when his dad and I got old and decrepit.

  4. With 25 years of culture,that changes the global perspective somewhat. Still conflicted whether I’d allow my child to do it for the reasons I said in a comment to the last hypothetical.

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