Writers Guide To: Making more interesting Superpowers

First rule of power having: Don't be a Munchkin

For the uninitiated, the term "munchkin" refers to a type of roleplayer who treats the game like a competitive sport. Munchkins deliberately create their characters to be as powerful as they can possibly make them, enabling them to them to easily defeat their enemies and collect sweet, sweet loot 'n booty.

If you're trying to come up with powers based solely on how unstoppable, awesome, or badass they'll make your character, stop. You have completely missed the point of storytelling or roleplaying. Instead, these are the factors you should be looking at:

• Will it be interesting to watch the character use those powers?

• Will the powers facilitate the character being put into interesting, suspenseful, and dramatic scenarios?

• Will the character be able to use the powers to solve a problem in an interesting way?

• If your character's a member or addition to an ensemble, will the powers allow your character to contribute to the plot without completely overshadowing or upstaging one or more or of the other characters?

In fiction, characters who are so powerful that they can do pretty much whatever they want quickly grow boring. The Disney film Escape To Witch Mountain is a good example of this - the telekinetic and telepathic powers of the two main characters make it so easy for them to escape from whatever predicament they're in that there's no sense that the characters are ever in any real danger. At most, they're only temporarily inconvenienced. Whatever trouble they're in, there's no question of how or if - just how long it will take them to pwn whoever's inconveniencing them now. It's about as suspenseful as watching bread bake.

In a roleplay, if your character's powers allow xir to solve pretty much every problem that comes up, the other players will be left with almost nothing for their characters to do, which means there's no reason for them to keep roleplaying (especially with you). If your character's powers are so strong that xe can prevent, deflect, or nerf pretty much any action other characters try to take against yours, then other players will become frustrated and bored when they realize that they have little to no power to make change or progress to the plot where your character is concerned. (And the more important your character is to the plot/setup, the worse this will be.)

If you're worried that your character is overpowered, you can ask yourself:

• Are your character's powers capable of instantly resolving or preventing any and all suspenseful/dramatic scenarios or conflicts?

• Can your character's powers do so much, so easily, that it's difficult to write a scenario where there's any sense that your character is in real danger, or that your character might fail or sustain a loss of some kind?

• If your character is in a roleplaying game, can your character's powers easily limit the potential actions of other characters to the point where there's nothing they can really do to change or affect the course or outcome of any situation your character is involved in or responsible for?

If you answered "yes" to any of these, your character is most likely OP.