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Forums > Home› Champions Pen and Paper RPG

Narcola Lore?

dialamxdialamx Posts: 931 Arc User
in Champions Pen and Paper RPG
Just curious if there's any actual lore behind Narcola. Is it owned by a secret, possibly evil, corporation? Does it exist in the P&P or is it made specifically for Online? Is it just a spoof of sodas in general and nothing more, or is there some significance to it's existence.

Curious because I have an idea for a new character, and I want to see if I can tie Narcola into his origin story.

Comments

  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    Nar-Cola (as it's rendered in the Champions Universe source book) predates the Cryptic IP purchase, but is just a stand-in for Coca-Cola, without the copyright problem. (If you know the history of Coke you'll understand the appropriateness of the alternate name.) ;) It was put in as one example of how superheroes and corporate America interact. For instance, Nar-Cola sponsors an annual charity softball tournament every February in southern California, between teams of Major League Baseball players and superheroes. So far as has been revealed to date, there's nothing more malevolent about it than there is about the real Coca-Cola corporation. Make of that what you will. ;)

    Now, if you do want a food company with a secret tie-in to villainy, the Ace Burger fast-food chain is a subsidiary of Advanced Concepts Industries (ACI), the mega-corporation owned by the CU's Lex Luthor analogue, Franklin Stone (Champions Villains Volume One: Master Villains).
  • dialamxdialamx Posts: 931 Arc User
    edited September 2019
    Thanks for the info. I like the ACI idea. My back-up concept to replace Nar-Cola was originally going to be using a company front for ARGENT, but wasn't sure if ARGENT used any fronts since they seem to be pretty open with their criminal activities.. At least in Online. But the ACI one seem much more appropriate.

    So my next question is, has ACI done any work in genetic experiments?
  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    edited September 2019
    ACI is a very diverse corporation, with its fingers in every pie Franklin Stone thinks he can wrest a profit from. That definitely includes scientific and technological research. "Attempts to genetically engineer superhumans" is among the illegal projects that ACI has been involved in, according to Stone's write-up in CV 3; so the precedent is certainly there.

    But since you brought up ARGENT, I'd like to add a few words about that. ARGENT being a legal, high-profile corporation, yet being "pretty open with their criminal activities," would make no sense in any version of America at all like the real one... but the emphasis in Champions Online is on identifiable bad guys for the PC heroes to punch. :/ In the PnP CU ARGENT was revealed to have engaged in serious illegal activities decades ago; but continues to operate through front companies, hidden labs, and the like, or openly in countries with much looser ethical constraints. It would make sense for even CO ARGENT to divert their most reprehensible research to such channels, to hide the parent company from prosecution.

    Using that and a couple of other reasonable assumptions, it's possible to bridge the gap between the two versions of ARGENT, and thus utilize nearly all the very extensive PnP resources for it. I myself applied that premise to provide CO players with role-playing info on the corporation, on this thread: The Full Scope of ARGENT. What might make that of interest and use to you, is that experiments to create superhumans have been among ARGENT's most frequent and diverse projects, with many failures but a number of successes (although most of those were partial at best). That thread describes those projects, as well as ARGENT's officially-established fronts, its resources and activities, and much more.
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Posts: 4,915 Arc User
    edited September 2019
    My general take with Argent in CO is that the organization isn't considered criminal as a whole. It strains credulity heavily, but there are multiple HQ buildings for what are "supervillain" organizations. Argent, PSI, Purple Gang, Red Dragons, but unlike Telios's tower they're not treated as overtly criminal.

    My conclusion is that us as player know things the NPCs don't. For example, the cops don't know Hi-Pan tried to use the temple he built on top of their HQ building to summon the Death Dragon. The cops suspect Argent has nefarious reasons for using bodyguards that are wearing power armor capable of destroying tanks, but don't have PROOF. Purple Gang actually do a lot of legit business work. It's WHY their HQ has all those trucks in front of it. PSI is even more interesting because in-universe it is the player character who figures out that they are actually supervillains and not a self-help organization. (sort of, part of this was actually using shell organizations such as Mind Inc.)
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  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    That is a reasonable rationalization, given the circumstances we encounter in CO. Mind you, considering how blatant the activities of these groups are often shown to be, the police and NPC heroes would have to be oblivious fools to not have realized this stuff, and literally picked the proof off the street. But we know from dealing with them that here they are oblivious fools. :p

    Of course on the other side of the coin, many PCs run around this game apparently killing, or at least seriously injuring, any number of people, and causing massive property damage, without legal consequences. I find it less stressful to think of some aspects of Champions Online's world as "Bizarro Champions," and just try to roll with it.
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Posts: 4,915 Arc User
    Well, those groups don't actually make a habit of attacking random civilians. So there's that.
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  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    Good observation. It's at least a nod to avoiding explicit criminal activity that can be tied directly to the organization. But there's also this point you made:
    markhawkman wrote: »
    PSI is even more interesting because in-universe it is the player character who figures out that they are actually supervillains and not a self-help organization. (sort of, part of this was actually using shell organizations such as Mind Inc.)

    When Mind Inc. was introduced in the Millennium City source book, PSI itself had already been outed as engaging in criminal activities. So MI is a perfect example of known criminals using a seemingly-legitimate front to cover nefarious doings. And it was set up that way with the expectation that PC heroes playing in MC would be the ones to uncover the truth. But as I mentioned upthread when describing ARGENT, such fronts can also work the opposite way, as scapegoats to preserve the reputation of and deflect legal liability from the parent group.

    Franklin Stone is a master of the latter approach. As Stone's write-up in CV1 makes clear, he conforms to the Lex Luthor playbook of surrounding himself with many layers of plausible deniability and an army of lawyers between himself and any illicit activities. He also treats his employees very well, and lavishly rewards service above and beyond the call of duty, so their trust and loyalty toward him are high. (Mind you, he also harshly punishes those who fail him.) He also has contacts in very high places, and controls media outlets, all of which means he can bring a lot of financial, legal and social pressure to bear on anyone who crosses him, the kind that can't be defeated with brute force. If worse comes to worst he'll hire super mercenaries to deal with troublemakers, through channels that can't be traced back to him.

    The Nighthawk adventure in CO did end with Stone being indicted, but indicting Franklin Stone and convicting Franklin Stone are very different things.

  • dialamxdialamx Posts: 931 Arc User
    So I went with ACI as the backstory, and made two superheroes from the one idea. Though the ARGENT stuff intrigues me, and I'm now going to edit one of my other characters since their backstory fits well with ARGENT.

    As for Franklin Stone, if he is like Lex Luthor, even the blatant criminal activity he does at the end of the Nighthawk Adventure wouldn't be enough to keep him down. He'd have a way to come back into the graces of the public, and the general populace will forget he;s a criminal. Lex does that all the time.
  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    Yup. See my post above. ;)

    But CO's focus on identifiable enemies for PCs to directly confront, means these villains often act more blatantly and, to be frank, stupidly, than their PnP descriptions would lead one to expect.
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Posts: 4,915 Arc User
    Yeah that's sort of how the story with PSI and Mind Inc goes. PSI is more or less publicly known as villains, but they use Mind Inc. as a front to act publicly without being identified.
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  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    Addendum and correction: In perusing the Millennium City source book, I discovered a note on pp. 45-46 that states Franklin Stone has acquired a controlling interest in Nar-Cola. No suggestion that he plans to do anything nefarious with it, but if you need him to it shouldn't be too hard to justify.

    My apologies for not having noticed that earlier. :s
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