This hero and villain pairing were a direct result of filling in the background of another hero character I used in a one-shot last month. They're an interesting non-couple but man, did he have some issues.
Go-Go Girl
Go-Go Girl was a Silver Age speedster hero active in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Her powers were the result of exposure to radiation from US nuclear testing, with both her parents having been contaminated by fallout in separate tests and the whole family catching another dose shortly after her birth. Rather than contracting cancer like her relatives eventually did, she was imbued with fantastic speed, agility and reaction times as well as an "atomic metabolism" that granted phenomenal endurance and the ability to heal rapidly from injuries. Her career was a fairly brief one, spanning only seven years before dying heroically in 1974 while while rescuing an entire town from a disastrous dam collapse. Go-Go Girl's civilian identity was never publicly revealed, although the US government is believed to have access to that information in the Top Secret files of the FBI's Superhuman Affairs section.
She generally worked as a solo hero with a focus on crimes and violence targeting members of the so-called "hippie" counterculture, as well as actively supporting the civil rights, women's rights, and anti-war movements of her day. This earned Go-Go Girl considerable disapproval from some older, more established heroes but made her very popular with her younger peers who were starting to emerge from the Baby Boom in ever-greater numbers. She also clashed with a number of peer supervillains, many of whom shared some of her beliefs but not her overall altruism and optimism. The most notable of these was the techno-villainous heister known as the Groovy Gadget-Man, who would go on to create an artificial duplicate of her in later years as an homage to his favorite enemy from his youth.
Description: A slender, athletic young woman who looks more than a bit like Anne Francis. She favors a snug silver body suit with knee-high boots for active hero work and various "flower child" fashions otherwise, often accessorizing with peace symbol jewelry in either role - which double as a calling card left behind on baddies she's defeated. She has a mezzo-soprano voice and can carry a tune almost as well as she dances.
Gender: Female Age: 18 Height: 5'3" Eyes: Deep Blue
Hair: Honey Blonde Skin: Tanned Caucasian Build: Svelte
Background: Performer Power Source: Radiation Archetype: Speedster
Personality: Cheerful Health (G/Y/R): 28/21/10
Powers: Agility d10, Speed d10, Momentum d8, Vitality d8
Qualities: Acrobatics d10, Creativity d8, Flower Child Superhero d8, Alertness d6, Finesse d6
Status: Green (28-22) - d10 / Yellow (21-11) - d8 / Red (10-1) - d6
Abilities:
Green
Good Karma (I) Whenever you roll a one on one or more dice, you may reroll those dice. You must accept the results of the reroll.
Groovy Moves (A) Attack multiple targets using Acrobatics. Use your Min die. Hinder each target using your Mid die.
Principle of Speed (I) When you successfully Overcome, you may end up anywhere in the current environment. You and your allies each gain a Hero Point. Minor twist: What physical drawbacks do you suffer from going too fast? Major twist: What critical detail did you speed past earlier that is now coming back to haunt you? RP: You're fast and don't like to waste time. You like to keep moving.
Principle of Youth (A) Overcome in a situation where your age or size is an asset. Use your Max die. You and your allies gain each gain a Hero Point. Minor twist: Who has been put off by your overconfidence? Major twist: What person that you would hate to let down is now very disappointed in you? RP: Innocent and cheerful, you can slip into many situations that adults would have trouble with.
Put On A Show (A) Boost or Hinder using Agility. Use your Max die. If you roll doubles, Attack using your Mid die.
Yellow
Practiced Routine (R) After rolling during your turn, you may take one irreducible damage to reroll your entire pool.
Ram-O-Rama (A) Attack multiple targets using Momentum. Use your Max die against one target and your Mid die against each other target. If you roll doubles, take irreducible damage equal to your Mid die.
Take A Quick Breather (A) You may remove a penalty on yourself. Then, Boost yourself using Agility. If you didn't remove a penalty, Recover using your Min die.
Red
Atomic Metabolism (A) Hinder yourself using Vitality. Use your Min die. Recover Health equal to your Max + Mid dice.
Step Up The Pace (I) You have no limit to the number of Reactions you can take. For each Reaction after the first you use in a round, take one irreducible damage or a minor twist.
Timely Heroics (R) When an opponent Attacks, you may become the target of that Attack and Defend yourself by rolling your single Acrobatics die.
Out
Watch Out! (A) Boost an ally by rolling your single Agility die.
Tactics
Go-Go Girl is a fairly basic speedster with the usual high mobility, some strong multi-target abilities and solid dice-fixing tricks, backed up by strong defensive and healing options in a crisis. In Green she has access to a strong and versatile mod generator with Put On A Show, an offensive multi-target ability in Groovy Moves and die rerolls from Good Karma. Principle of Speed makes her very mobile when taking Overcome actions as well as potentially earning two hero points at a time if she can also use her somewhat narrow Principle of Youth.
Yellow sees her add another dice fixing trick with her Practiced Routine Reaction. Her Ram-O-Rama ability is her primary offensive move for dealing raw damage, and her dice manipulation reduces the risk of rolling doubles to harm herself. Take A Quick Breather gives her a modest Boost option combined with good penalty removal or minor self-healing.
In Red Go-Go Robo she gains a very strong group defensive Reaction with Timely Heroics, which is made even better with Step Up The Pace. This helps her stay in action until she can use her Atomic Metabolism to do a big Recovery and hopefully get back in the Yellow where she's more comfortable.
When Out, her appropriately-named Watch Out! ability lets her provide a continuing source of bonuses to her team.
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The Groovy Gadget-Man
Roger Thomas Markson (aka the Groovy Gadget-Man) was a Silver Age villain mostly active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, dropping out of the supercrime scene to serve almost half a century of prison time starting in late 1973. He was a child prodigy with a natural talent for miniaturized technology using light and sound to manipulate human senses and mental states. He took to a life of crime after rejecting government attempts to recruit him as a weapons designer in his teens, cutting ties with his parents (who were insistent he take the offer) at the same time. While active he specialized in heist jobs, robbing banks, payrolls, large chain stores and the occasional millionaire's mansion. He was scrupulous about using non-lethal weaponry and gadgets, leaving his victims temporarily unconscious or in an altered mental state but physically unharmed.
As his supranym suggests, Markson was deeply involved with Sixties counterculture, with workshops hidden in communes across the country. He was often accompanied by large numbers of his so-called "hippy heisters" during his thefts, most of whom held to his "no killing" code with a few ugly exceptions. While it was never proven, the authorities suspect a large fraction of his total take was secretly donated to various progressive social movements of the day. Even so, it would be a mistake to think he was some kind of Robin Hood character, and he never undertook a job unless there was money in the offing and plenty of it.
Markson crossed paths with several superheroes during his career, but his recurring nemesis was the speedster Go-Go Girl. The two had a complicated relationship in many senses which ended when she died in the spring of 1974, just a few months after capturing the Groovy Gadget-Man for the last time. He was just starting a lengthy prison sentence at the time and to everyone's surprise, chose to serve it quietly for almost 50 years before eventually being released in the early 2020s. A few years later he resurfaced one last time, staging a classic bank heist that was quickly foiled by a new superhero - Go-Go Robo, a gynoid automaton that he'd built himself and equipped with the memories of his old foe. Markson died peacefully of cancer while in custody awaiting trial, but his homage to an old frenemy is still carrying on her legacy in 2024.
Description: A thin young man with a deep tan, dressed in sandals, tan bell-bottoms and a wild paisley vest without a shirt. Always wears oversized glasses whose lenses are marked with dollar signs that glow and/or shift to a hypno-spiral when he's using his powers. He's festooned in New Age and hippie jewelry that conceal his numerous gadgets. Often has one or two brightly-colored plastic energy pistols worn on a cowboy-style gun belt - examples of his non-lethal "love gun" technology. His strong baritone has a slight Californian accent and he tends to mix Sixties slang with abstruse technical terms.
Gender: Male Age: 23 Height: 5'8" Eyes: Brown
Hair: Light Brown, Worn Long Skin: Suntanned Caucasian Build: Slender
Approach: Dampening Archetype: Inventor
Health: 35 + (5 x H)
Powers: Inventions d10, Presence d8, Remote Viewing d8
Qualities: Science d10, Creativity d8, Silver-Tongued Super-Crook d8, Technology d8
Status: ( # of inventions & mods) 4+ - d12 / 2-3 - d10 / 1 - d8 / 0 - d6
Abilities:
Groovy Gadgets (A) Boost using Inventions. Hinder using your Max die. Attack using your Min die.
Jive Talk (A) Attack one target using Silver-Tongued Super-Crook. Use your Max die. Hinder each opponent that can see or hear your target using your Min die.
Negative Waves (R) When a nearby hero that you can see invokes a twist, roll your single Inventions die to Hinder them.
Positive Waves (R) Discard one of your bonuses and use its value to Defend against all Attacks against you until the start of your next turn.
Upgrades & Masteries (optional):
Brainwashing Zone (I) +10 Health. While the scene is in the green zone, all heroes' qualities of d8 or higher are reduced by one die size. In the Yellow zone all of the heroes' qualities of d10 or higher are reduced by one additional step (two die sizes total). In the Red zone, all heroes' quality dice are treated as d4. Heroes can remove this upgrade with three overcome successes. If a hero takes a minor twist while taking these Overcomes, they lose access to a quality entirely until this upgrade is removed. If a hero is knocked out while this ability is active, create a new friendly minion with a die size equal to the hero's largest power die to represent the brainwashed hero.
Master of Profitability (I) If you have access to great wealth and other resources, automatically succeed at an Overcome to leverage those resources to get even richer, no matter who pays the price.
Tactics
The Groovy Gadget-Man is in it for the cash and prefers to avoid violence, using non-lethal inventions that leave targets confused, confounded or just plain tripping out rather than physically harmed. Against crowds his go-to maneuver is to use Jive Talk to single out the biggest threat and send them reeling with psycho-sonics and hypno-shades while spreading some soothing vibes across their allies. He also has a wide variety of other Groovy Gadgets with versatile effects that he can use as needed, usually Boosting himself to fuel his defensive Positive Waves reaction. If he sees an opening to use Negative Waves he's quick to take it, and you bet he takes advantage of his Remote Viewing to do so.
His upgrade seeds the area with aerosol "recreational" chemicals and hypno-projectors, leaving people half out of it to start with. His mastery reflects his monetary motivations.
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The Groovy Gadget-Man occasionally works with other like-minded supervillains but prefers to rely on a mob of his relatively good-natured minions for support.
Hippie Heisters d8 minion
Description: They look like flower children, they act like crooks. Most rely on non-lethal "love guns" provided by the Gadget-Man, leaving their victims peacefully blissed-out while they make off with the boodle. A few know some kung fu. Once in a while their ranks will include some cycle gang members who've crashed the scene with less painless weaponry and much worse intentions, which is a real bummer but what can you do?
Pick one or two abilities from the selection below for each minion group. Only one ability can be used per turn.
Cheerleader: You gain a +2 bonus to Boost actions. If you Boost the Groovy Gadget-Man, that bonus increases to +3 instead.
Hell's Angel: You gain a +2 bonus to Attack actions but can never take a Boost or Defend action.
Kung Fu Fighting: If you Attack or Hinder a close target, you gain a +2 bonus.
Love Gun, Baby: When you Attack a target, also Hinder them using the same roll. When using this ability your Attacks never inflict physical harm and are strictly non-lethal.
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