Solo Tabletop RPG – Worldbuilding: Becoming the Villain

You can purchase Becoming the Villain here.

Check our last session with Microscope here.

Becoming the Villain is a solo tabletop RPG that uses Tarot cards and prompts to fashion a villain’s origins. It can be a stand-alone bit of fun or used as part of a campaign’s worldbuilding. For our purposes, we’ll construct the main villain’s backstory in our solo superhero campaign. You’ll create elements that define your character, but those will change a lot through play, and by the end, what you started with will likely be completely different. 

My character is Aiden Bell, aka Captain Quantum, a take on the Captain Marvel/Shazam/Miracleman archetype. I also drew some inspiration from a non-comic book source, Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter. Bell was a thirteen-year-old runaway in 1966 living in the Pacific Northwest. He’s just outside Bellingham, Washington, camping in the woods when an object falls out of the sky. It’s a tube with holes and reminds Bell of a whistle. Upon blowing into the device, Bell’s body switches places with Captain Quantum.

Quantum is an amnesiac alien humanoid who was trapped inside the Quantum Zone. He shares Bell’s memories & feelings, and fragments from his past life. At some point, Quantum was in the middle of a massive galactic war that killed many people. The two develop a strange friendship, constantly at a distance. Captain Quantum even joins the Victory Force, a team of the world’s greatest heroes. 

To create a character, they need a one-word Ambition and a Motivation that explains that Ambition. For Quantum, it is as follows:

Ambition: Order

Motivation: I saw an empire fall due to disorder from within and without

This leads to a Goal and Modus Operandi:

Goal: I wish to guide this planet’s superhumans into a new golden age.

Modus Operandi: I will be violent, but I won’t kill.

Then we establish Skills and Resources, the elements most likely to change a lot during play.

Skills: superhuman strength, superhuman durability, superhuman speed

Resources: quantum whistle, headquarters in an abandoned bunker, memories of a past life

The final part of character creation is establishing one Ally, one Neutral person, and one Rival:

Ally – Katie Quantum/Kathryn Bates – co-bearer of the Quantum Power

Neutral – Gerard Moran, the federal agent assigned to track Captain Quantum’s movements & actions

Rival – Xook, the alien antagonist who knows Quantum from his forgotten past and wields a nearly identical power

Gameplay consists of drawing a card from the Tarot deck and finding and responding to the associated prompt. A character will have three Arcs, and the game recommends drawing three cards per Arc. Rule variants advise doing one card per Arc for a short game and five cards per Arc for a long game. We’ll be playing the standard three-card per Arc game. 

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Arc One – “Hivewar”

Act 1 – (5 of Wands) 

Your activities have brought you into conflict with another character; you both compete for the same goal.
Who are they? Explain how your purposes are in conflict. How do you plan to overcome them?

• Add a rival character.

Sovereign of the Hive – Nahakk, the ruler of a distant alien insectoid hive species named the Kla’tos. They have memories of fighting Captain Quantum in his previous life, though, for him, this is his first memory of them. Nahakk seeks to bring Earth’s insects under this thrall and use them to conquer the planet. Captain Quantum is determined to drive Nahaak back by getting help from Shortstack to shrink down and join an insect resistance against his old foe.

Act 2 – (The Magician)

Through chance, discovery, or sheer force of will, you have gained new and unnatural powers. What is this new power? How did you come to possess it? How do you use it to remove those who oppose you?

• To reflect this newfound power:
  Add a new, exceptional skill to your character. (You do not need to check this skill at this point.)

Captain Quantum is taken by Ka’lan, the Ant Queen, to a hidden place inside the Earth, the Gaian Core, a breach between the material world and the fae realm. Quantum was bombarded by fae magic, which gave him telepathy, the ability to read the minds of any living being and subtly redirect them. Quantum can push back against Nahaak’s growing control with this new ability.

Act 3 – (The Sun)

Your hard work has led you to great success and you have achieved your goal at last! You bathe in the glory of your triumph. Your wanton eye scans the horizon; seeking your next victory.

In the aftermath of your triumph:
* You may remove rival characters from play as applicable.

With his newly acquired telepathic powers, Quantum uses them to turn Nahaak’s insectoid forces against him. A battle takes place across Forge City’s Triumph Park, missed by most. It culminates with Quantum & Nahaak battling to the top of the oak tree Exemplar planted there just before World War II broke out. 

Quantum unleashes his telepathy without any attempt to control it and completely disintegrates Nahaak out of existence. He also unlocks more memories from his own fragmented past. He was a great warrior standing on a field bathed in the blood of his enemies. Something slips inside him. No, he holds onto it. Pushed to the extreme of human consciousness, Quantum collapses to the ground and is brought to Shortstack by the ant queen’s forces to be restored to his standard size. Quantum hungers for more…

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Arc Two – “The Fallen”

Act 1 – Ten of Swords

So close to achieving your aims. Only to be stabbed in the back by the person you trusted most. Your ally has betrayed you, leaving you utterly defeated. Who betrayed you and how? How do you deal with this defeat? What will you do next?

• Change an ally character into a rival (if you do not have an ally character, create one now). Also, lose a resource or a skill.
• If appropriate, you may alter your goal or modus operandi to reflect this change of situation.

Aiden Bell has shared his life with Captain Quantum for several years now. He was thirteen when he first discovered the quantum whistle. During that time, he found a way to share that power with Kathryn Bates, another runaway he met while hitchhiking across the States. Katie Quantum was always there with the Captain. And that’s how it was for fifteen years.

Since the Hivewar, Katie has become increasingly uneasy with Quantum’s telepathic powers. He’s becoming colder, more distant. Quantum promised he would never, but one day, he listens in on Katie while she’s away and learns the truth. His “sister” has been talking about him to The Family Forge and The Victory Force. They are plotting to steal his power. Just then, Quantum realizes they have taken it as the voices go silent. The psychic reverberations send him into a spiral. 

Act 2 – Ace of Swords

Your journey has led you to acquire great new powers. How did you gain them?

• Gain a new exceptional skill.

When Aiden Bell is restored, he finds Quantum has made a mess of their lives. He also discovers some of that quantum power has transferred to him. He can manipulate matter and create solid objects. Aiden uses the power to construct a massive fortress, bracing himself for Katie and the other heroes coming to punish him. Aiden searches for how he gained these powers and discovers a breach in the quantum zone and the material realm. Could the boy and the hero one day meet?

Act 3 – Five of Coins

A bad bet, tough times. Your wealth is gone.

Explain how you lost everything. How do you survive with such limited resources?

• Lose all resources to represent this economic catastrophe.

The fortress is laid to ruin. Quantum’s memories are lost again to the void of time. The whistle itself is buried somewhere beneath the rubble. Aiden Bell lives, and any trace of Quantum seems to be gone. Katie and the heroes move Aiden to a private facility outside Forge City. Franklin Forge puts him under observation, helping the young man regain his identity and bearings in the world. 

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Arc Three – “Back From Beyond”

Act 1 – The Tower

Disaster. Events have conspired to bring you low, and all you have built has been laid to waste. It takes all your resources and skills to barely escape the situation.
What is the catastrophe that befalls you? Is it by your own hand or by others? How do you survive? How are you changed by these events?

To show the effects of this catastrophe and the change it has caused in you:

• Lose all allied characters (either convert them to rivals or neutral characters, or remove them from play).

• Lose all resources and skills.

• Change your ambition, goal and modus operandi

The Forever Cataclysm incursion of 1996 ripped through Forge City and its outskirts, striking the Willow Glen facility where Aiden Bell was being held. In that rift in space-time, the missing quantum whistle was plucked from the ruins of Bell’s fortress in the past. The energy vortex destroys the facility around Bell, and he blows the whistle, finding himself coming face-to-face with Captain Quantum, an event made possible because of these strange circumstances. The Family Forge had rushed to Willow Glen and witnessed Bell and Quantum join hands and merge into a being of pure energy, and…only one remains. Aiden Bell’s hair is as white as a ghost’s, and he is seemingly cured. However, he’s seemingly powerless.

Bell returns to Forge City but goes into seclusion, drawing massive speculation about what he’ll do next.

Act 2 – Wheel of Fortune

A forward-thinking approach to your situation has presented you with an opportunity. You suddenly see a way forward by embracing modernity. What new technology, knowledge or approach do you use to achieve your goals?

To reflect the modernity in your approaches:

• Gain a new skill or a new resource

• Add a new, additional goal that relates to the new technology or knowledge you adopt.

• Update your modus operandi to incorporate your new forward thinking approach.

The public is shocked to see Aiden Bell grant a television interview to Caroline Collins, Forge City’s premier reporter. Everyone watches closely, especially Gerard Moran, the now-retired federal agent who had followed Quantum’s exploits with much interest for decades. Bell sells himself as a changed man and explains that he and Quantum are now one. He puts on a display of his new power—energy manipulation.

Bell explains that his exposure to the chronal energy of the Forever Cataclysm incursion gave him this new ability, and he plans to use it to develop free, renewable, clean energy for the public. In secret, Bell sells this energy to quickly amass a fortune. The people are too dim-witted to know what is good for them. Bell is the only one who can shape them and prepare them for the glory that is to come.

Act 3 – Nine of Swords

What is it that you fear the most? What is your worst nightmare? You are gripped by anxiety as it appears your worst nightmares may come true. Gripped by terror and hopelessness, you search desperately to stop these nightmarish events coming to pass. Desperate measures, however, sometimes have dire consequences.

What is it that you fear will happen? What desperate act do you perform to avert the nightmare? What are the grave consequences of these actions?

• Lose either a skill, resource or character.

Aiden Bell wakes up with a start one night. Gerard Moran sits in his bedroom, lighting a cigarette. He tells Bell he’s been reviewing security footage from Willow Glen and the wealth Bell is funneling through the Cayman Islands. Moran is convinced Bell is dead and that Captain Quantum remains. Bell decides to come clean. 

He reveals his actual name: Kwan-tum, a warlord king from a now-ruined empire long ago and far away in the universe. He slaughtered billions across space and was finally captured and trapped inside a pocket dimension. A few acolytes remained devoted to him, and they managed to forge a vibration device that would use sound to swap their form with his in this prison. However, the Space Rangers became aware of this plan and hunted down the acolytes who held this whistle. Their ship was shot down in Earth orbit back during the Silver Generation. The whistle that fell out of the sky before Aiden Bell came from the wreckage. 

Moran says he must contact the Victory Force and have Kwan-tum taken in. The being manipulates the oxygen around Moran, transforming it into flame with the light of his cigarette, filling the old man’s lungs with fire and burning him alive from the inside. Kwan-tum then transforms the body into an odorless gas, dispersing the evidence. He has more important things to attend to now. Due to recommendations from the mayor, chief of police, and other city leaders, Aiden Bell has been named the new headmaster of the Victory Academy.

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Here’s what Aiden Bell, aka Captain Quantum, looks like at the end of these three Arcs:

Ambition: Control

Motivation: I saw an empire fall due to disorder from within and without. I will ensure the same does not happen to this world.

Goal: I wish to convince the public I’m on their side.

Modus Operandi: Deceit to achieve my goals is all that matters

Skills: energy manipulation

Rivals – Xook, the alien antagonist who knows Quantum from his forgotten past

– Kathryn Bates – former co-bearer of the quantum power

Next time: finishing touches before the campaign begins