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| Captain America No Damned "Hail Hydra" Here! |
Today we cover one of the characters who deviates in biography from the mainstream version of the character, but build-wise remains fairly true to his roots: Captain America.
Everyone knows his origins: a 95 lb. asthmatic from Brooklyn who wanted to do the right thing for his country was selected for an experiment in creating a "super-soldier", gaining a shield and wearing a suit based on the American flag. From the beginning in Captain America Comics #1, published in March of 1941 (long before the United States joined World War II; I need to edit the entry with the correct date), Cap has stood for the best of American values. Not to turn this into a political rant, one of the things that worries me is that the writers are unable to recognize what those values are. (Personally, I feel it best to make Cap a more moderate or centrist character than pulling him to one extreme or the other, admittedly an unwelcome viewpoint in today's highly polarized political climate.)
Captain America underwent a personality shift in the 1950s, becoming more jingoistic. This is perhaps why in Avengers v1 #4 (cover date March 1964), Marvel decided to retcon Cap's post-war appearances altogether into being others who had taken on the identity in his honor, having Cap revive from being frozen in ice since 1941. Due to the sliding time scale, Cap's gone from being frozen in ice 19 years ('45 to '64) to currently 57 years ('45 to 2002, "fifteen years ago"). Of course, once every other decade or so someone at Marvel decides to remove the super-soldier serum from his body, causing it to break down and age to his "true" age; one of these days they'll realize he should be dead next time they pull that (but even then I don't doubt he'll "get better"; he's died once already, after all, and came back).
In the Reboot, perhaps the one thing that's confused people a lot is why I have Captain America not frozen in ice. It seems like a trivial thing, right? Let's just say that I saw storytelling potential with a Captain who instead of skipping past the last 70 years had lived through it all, aging very slowly compared to everyone else, and was living in relative obscurity as a high school history teacher (ironically at the same school Spider-Man and his classmates attended). Since he lived the time, did he marry Peggy? (I decided "yes".) Did they have kids? (I figured they had a son, named after Bucky.) Where were Peggy and the kid(s) now? Did Cap outlive them? (I decided to have Peggy die and the son MIA during 'Nam.)
Most importantly, what was Cap's current mental state? Steve's oldest still-active friend - Namor, King of Atlantis - probably has little time for reminiscing, having a nation to run, and most of his other wartime friends are probably getting on in age, if they're still around. ("I'm ninety years old; I'm not dead." - Captain America: The Winter Soldier) Cap's wife has been dead for decades, and his son missing in action and presumed dead almost as long. Most of his old war enemies are no longer around to harass him, though I decided that their grandkids are holding onto those grudges, which provides the impetus to pull a somewhat disconnected Cap back into action.
This also lets me play with one of my "original" characters, a version of Bucky unrelated to any of the others who have held the name: Rikki Buchanan, a Hispanic girl from his class who takes it upon herself to be his sidekick in order to get him out into the world. (I based Rikki partially on the Heroes Reborn Rikki Barnes, Bucky Barnes' granddaughter from the alternate timeline created by Franklin Richards, but other than the similarity in names she's an original.)
Defining "Peak Human" Abilities
In the Reboot, I have it set up so that DX, IQ, and HT cap at 15 for characters who are not considered "superhuman" in those regards; ST caps a little higher, at 23 (for a two-handed lift of 800 lbs, which the Marvel Handbooks have traditionally defined as "peak human strength", shared by Captain America and Black Panther, among others). Steve isn't exactly superhuman, so I figured his DX and HT should cap at 15 due to the effects of the serum, and then I increased his DX to 16 due to experience and muscle memory. I put his IQ at 12 not because he's of above-average intelligence, but because his experience makes many IQ-based rolls easier for him. (A good comparison would be Kup from the animated Transformers: The Movie: pretty much everything reminds him of something else.)
Cap's other serum-based abilities are Double-Jointed, Extended Lifespan 3 (x8), and Rapid Healing. Nearly everything else on his sheet is a result of training.
The Shield
As far as being a thrown weapon, Cap's shield is designed as an oversized discus, stats for which appear in GURPS Martial Arts and GURPS Low-Tech, and adjusted for a discus designed for an SM +2 creature using the scaling rules in GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2: Weapons and Warriors. After that, I looked to determine which material modifiers to give it: Cap's shield has been described as being made of Vibranium or an indestructible Vibranium-steel or Adamantium-Vibranium alloy. For my purposes, I had to define a number of common technologies in the Reboot Universe, noting that Adamantium and Vibranium are normally mutually exclusive modifiers. In this case, I ignored that (self-imposed) rule and hit it with both, as it possesses the properties of both materials: practical invulnerability and the ability to absorb vibrations including impacts.
I could have defined the shield as a series of advantages with Gadget modifiers, but I really really really dislike statting up equipment usable by anyone as a set of advantages.
