Does Setback know he's Karma powered?

General GTG Sentinel Comics Lore
1

When I first played Setback, I thought he had a cool deck, but his powers seemed so vague, and I didn't really understand his story all that well, and so didn't like his backstory. But now, I think I understand him a little better. I'll say what I think I get about him, and please, help me figure him out, because I really want to like him more. So, he basically has enhanced speed and strength, right? But most of all, the universe seems determined to balance out the good and the bad that happens to him. So whenever anything bad happens, something good happens to him later, and whenever something good happens, something bad will soon follow.

We know he's worked at casinos, at least 3 of them so far. Maybe some force or power noticed him, surrounded by all these games of chance, and decided to experiment. Maybe Wager Master was in on it? or some of these cosmic forces hinted at on Deadline's information. Equity seems like he could be concerned with balancing out the good and the bad.

His normal card art and power seem to highlight his ignorance. He also seems to be kinda stupid. Kinda slow on the uptake, which is a boon for him, because it helps get him into trouble so good can happen later. But his Promo card art and power change him a lot. He seems to have come to a realization that his current bad luck = good luck later, and he can use that to mitigate the difficulties others experience, actively expending his karma, if you will.

Thoughts?

2

I think Setback is more over-eager than stupid.  He really wants to do what he can to help out, but doesn't always think things through before acting.  After becoming a more experienced hero, however, I think he gained a new perspective on his luck problems.  He realized his bad luck makes him a magnet for all the trouble in a fight, allowing him to protect civilians and his teammates, while said teammates take down the bad guys.  This is best seen in the flavor text for his card "Uncharmed Life":

"You know, this isn't great.  But better me than someone else!"  -Setback, Freedom Five #592

It can be seen again in his profile for the Broken City set for Tactics:

Setback has always been the heart of the team. Passionate, upbeat, and eager to help, Peter Riske's bad luck is balanced by his indomitable spirit. His favorite place to be is between his friends and danger, working to prevent any harm from befalling those he cares for. Knowing that what he does makes a difference, even given his propensity for disaster, is the best heroic motivation that he could imagine.

What you see on his Dark Watch card is Setback catching a piece of collapsing building (he knew that if he was in the building then the first part of the ceiling to fall would be the section above him instead of anywhere else) and holding out his hand for someone to take hold of.

As for how much he knows about his powers, I'm not sure he even realizes his luck is a superpower.  None of the flavor text on any of his cards has him directly reference his luck; they only show him apologizing for the bad and being suprised by the good.  In fact, from the comments on his cards from other characters, I would go so far as to say that NO ONE realizes this.  

Also, as a side note, Setbacks lists the sources of his powers as genetic and experimentation, so we know that he got his luck powers from either Baron Blades experiment, as a power he was born with (likely, since his luck was mentioned before the medical test), or a combination of the two (he was born with it but the experiment made it better/worse).  So Wager Master and the Cosmic Entity were definitely not involved.

P.S. Setback is the best hero ever.

3

I don't know, I still think the Cosmic Entity, or Wager Master could be involved.  He's only been alive for 20 something years, and even though we only recently knew about them, they're thousands, or billions of years older than him. Just because he doesn't know about it, doesn't mean nobody else had a hand.

I just looked at all of his Incapacitated art, and NONE of them show Setback being seriously physically hurt. It's either Expat wounded, or him walking away from the Hero life. Even Expat's incap art references Setback, but he's never the one physically hurt. I wonder if his luck powers make him invincible, in a way.

It reminds me of a Larry Niven book, Ringworld, where the humans realized that another race had manipulated them to selectively breed for luck. People whose parents had been selected for luck for at least 6 generations were generally really lucky and had life handed to them on a silver platter. It played out differently there, and they were definitely not invincible.

4

The sources for the characters' powers that are listed on the bio pages are not based on what the character knows.  Even if Setback didn't know about his powers coming from Wager Master or the Cosmic Entity, his bio would still list "Cosmic" as one of the sources.  As an example, see Citizen Dawn's bio, which lists "Cosmic" as the source for her powers but her backstory mentions nothing about a cosmic source for her powers and gives the impression that Dawn is unaware of where her powers come from.

5

I completely missed that! Thanks for the heads up. Even though his power source isn't cosmic, there's definitely something up though. He had bad luck/good luck before Blade's experimentation, and I don't see how that experimentation can manipulate the universe to balance out his fortune like this. It could have somethinng to do with the environment in the casinos, and something or some person took notice. Or as you said, something he was born with, like Kismet has had all her life.

This universe does seem to have a little of the Eldritch in it, with Nightmist and Gloomweaver. I could see something like that experimenting with him, or a luck based deity.

Anyone think he might be physically invincible? Not that he can't get hurt, but the universe just won't let him get killed?

6

Incidentally, I find it completely facinating that Dawn's powers are cosmic, but nobody seems interested in speculating about it with me whenever I bring it up.

7

I'm pretty sure there is a thread or two from Foote about Dawn's power source being cosmic. 

8

In regards to Setback I think of him having the "Parker luck" but that's never listed as a power for Spider-man specifically.  Baron Blade's serum just gave him strength to be a super hero. 

9

I think his luck "powers" always existed, to the same degree that people in our world can be luck magnets. But the experiements conducted by Blade to enhance Strength etc worked on him because he was lucky, and enhanced all his natural talents, including his luck.

I think he thinks he is a superhero because he has enhanced strength etc and that his good and bad luck is just something that happens around him, not a power.

10

Another theory regarding his incapped sides not having him physically hurt:

It could be because his optimism is such a huge part of his character and personality, that destroying his optimism is the real incapacitation. Self sacrifice is just something he does, and so getting hurt isn't what actually takes him out of the fight. Incapacitated by indecision, by losing his optimism and finally giving into despair and hanging up his suit for good. Also, what could be worse for him than by seeing the love of his life get horribly maimed/murdered?

11

I've always considered him a unique blending of Spider-Man and Longshot.

12

What if his luck isn't a power? After all, get enough people together to try at once, and *someone* is going to flip a coin tails 8 times in a row. Maybe his strange "luck" is just because someone had to be at the far end of the probability curve, and he's it?

13

Nuh-uh; that is so not how probability works. There are, what, seven billion people in the world? Say we give everyone in the world a coin, and tell each one to toss it until they get a head. What is the largest number of tails that at least one person will get, probabilistically speaking?

Thirty-three. And that's with me rounding up.

Statistical flukes regress to the mean, and they do it fast enough that you cannot build a character on such flukes, especially when the things that happen to Setback are way less likely than tossing a head. His luck power could be cosmic or genetic, or the result of Baron Blade's experiments, but it is not just a quire of probability.

14

There are things that defy all rational or irrational explanations. Setback's luck is like that- to the point where Wager Master asked him an impossible question, and he got it right.

Really think about that for a second. A being that manipulates reality, who torments people with might-have-beens, never-weres, and who routinely rewrites re-writes the rules so that he can't lose, bet against Setback and lost. 

Things just happen. With setback, they'll happen in ways that are impossible to predict, counter, prepare for, or adapt to. 

The best he can do is go with the flow. He'll never figure it out, we'll never figure it out, no one will ever figure it out, because there is nothing TO figure out. Things just happen, and trying to figure it out would just lead to accidents and heartbreak as the universe gleefully stomps on assumptions. 

In the end, when it all counts on him, Setback will surprise all of us. 

Or, maybe, he won't. 

15

Another possibility is that Setback's luck is the result of his optimism. People who are upbeat tend to make their own luck. They persevere. They form positive relationships. They see the upside in things.

16

Optimism can only get you so far though, we're talking about a guy who just happened to have the exact genetic structure to benefit from Baron Blade's evolution serum which had killed every other test subject, decided to leave on the day someone forgot to lock the doors an set the alarms, and Bunker just happened to be flying overhead when Baron Blade attempted to capture him for study.  And that's just in one week, hell the second two were at most a few hours apart.

Setbacks luck varies between the two extreme ends of a bell curve, if he actually understood how it worked he'd probably give up being a hero and make a living buying lottery tickets.

17

He's from discworld, and subconsciously lines up one in a million odds a lot.

18

They work out in your favor 9 times out of 10.  But it has to be exactly a million to one.

19

That's a good way to put it, the bell curve analogy gives the concept a better shape in my head.

When I roleplay base setback, I have to pretend his unlucky pool doesn't exist, because he isn't aware of it. I still think it might be appropriate to give him a dim awareness of his karma on his Dark Watch promo. Because if he just walked into a burning building because he knows on some level that the first place it will collapse will be on him (and not some other poor bystander) -then he knows something is going on by now. Maybe he never tells anybody, and despite experimentation still can't pin anything down, but I think he's wisened up. Especially since he got a girlfriend. (And significant others tend to mellow their partners and increase tolerance/wisdom, even it's just because you have to live with somebody else with their own quirks and annoyances)

It doesn't change my actual play mind you, just the roleplay.

Base Setback with Friendly Fire in play: "Ow! that hurt man!" moves to the other side of the hero

Promo Setback with Friendly Fire in play: "Ow! whoops." stays right where he is

20

Actually, satstically speaking, that's only the most likely result for the highest number of tails in a row. Seeing thirty three tails (or heads) in a row would be no surprise if we did it like that. Granted, it wouldn't be much of a surprise if we didn't get such, but you're vastly oversimplifying things. If we saw 34 or even 36 in a row with seven billion trials, that wouldn't be outside the norm.

 

That being said, considering we're discussing a universe where the gods of Catholicism, ancient Egypt, and ancient Greece all exist simulatneously despite each of their religions having a very different creation story (not to mention there's also Gloomweaver, who seems clearly stated to be a deity, likely Elderitch in nature), I think you're reading a little too deeply into this. If multiple coexisting and conflicting deities can exist, then there's no reason "Lady Luck" can't be amongst them.