Epic fight

I played this game from White Wolf called Aberrant.  The idea was that this horrible accident happened, a satellite with a strange radiation exploded in the sky and almost immediately, people under great stress, usually death like stress, changed and became powerful; they became Super Heroes.  You could create any power that they had listed in the game and modify it in multiple ways, but it had to be with a motif and the motif made it unique.  Power Bolt was a power, you shot something and it damaged things, was it a psychic punch, a rock or puff of high velocity air? Fire, water, earth, wood, lightning or anything, but it is the same power and did the same thing, but looked differently.

It was a cool game because you got to be a Super Hero, and who would not want to do that?  The story line had the Super people changing the world for the better and it had greedy Supers who fought against them.  There were Super smart people inventing stuff and turning deserts into paradises and there were Supers turning farmland into wastelands.

I was reading Brandon Sanderson's new book Steelheart and it took place in a world like this, except whenever a Super Hero used their powers, they became mean and greedy and heartless; the power turned them bad.  The story is of one person who in the early days sees one of the most powerful Super bleed.  Every Super has at least one weakness, one thing that will make them fragile even if they are invincible.  

I don't want to give away the plot, but the story takes place in Newcago, Steelheart has remade Chicago, turned the city to steel, and the lower part of Lake Michigan as well.  Ten years has passed since David had seen his father killed, before his eyes, he saw the Super Villain bleed.  He is seeking, the only people who have ever been able to stand up to these Super Villains and kill them, The Reckoners.  He has to join them and persuade them that Steelheart can be killed, so he can avenge his father and save his city.  How Epic eh, no it is not, because that is what the Supers are known as, Epics.  How Super of them to fight the Epics.

Brandon Sanderson has done it again, and there is a sequel, Firefight, coming out later this year.