Ludwig Wittgenstein? Cool. Does he have the conventional super soldier abilities (enhanced speed, strength, and durability), or something more exotic?
This sounds curiously reminiscent of Ken Hite’s “Madness Dossier” setting for GURPS, and Wittgenstein’s interest in language and symbolism would fit right into that . . .
It’s the Mega-Juicer archetype from Rifts.
Super strong, super fast, can take a round from a tank, at some point in the near future will begin to glow and then explode like a blockbuster bomb.
Only if he’s so careless as to live that long. 
I’ve never more than glanced at Rifts, so the explanation is helpful. Wow, what a crap deal.
This being Rifts and the point being madness, we of course will need a mid-season climax when he goes out in a blaze of glory and is replaced for the final half by circa 1948 Wittgenstein so Russell prime can observe how old wise Wittgenstein reacts to the situation as opposed to young angry Wittgenstein.
This is what happens when Rifts is run/played by someone other than the adolescent boys for whom (I’ve always assumed) it was written.
I met Rifts around age 14 and only ran twice during undergrad. Each time a different group. Each time starting off hauling a load of Jeremiah’s Mighty Fine Wine™️ from one settlement to another.
Rifts is a place where anytime I have an idea so groan-worthy or niche I toss it in there and let it stew. It’s a place where great wrongs can be righted. It’s a place where a giant robot piloted by a fellow named for a Rancid song can get air support from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Sometimes it’s fun to just pretend that every idea I’ve ever run into is an action figure that can be banged together.
In some ways what you’ve said about finding salvageable ideas from bad TV shows is the ethos. The bar for tone is literally on the floor.
Ah. That’s totally alien to my style, which is probably why I’ve never taken a serious look at Rifts. I know that there are people who can find delight in the badness of things that are bad, but I’m not one of them.
More like starting from such an absurd place that when genuine drama appears it’s less forced and is just that iota more of a surprise for the participants. Except my crew has managed it many times so it’s not surprising to me that it happens. It’s just a surprise when it happens.
Like the classic “PCs get invested in irrelevant set dressing and bit part NPCs” trope but being aware of it and trying to throw up so much noise around it that it’s surprising when the signal pops out.
I suppose, but on the other hand I won’t have watched the bad TV shows in the first place.
Addendum: I’ve been thinking about a possible sixth offering:
_____ House Style . Realistic fiction/soap opera. Big Eyes Small Mouth. Source material: North and South , by Elizabeth Gaskell; “The ‘Mary Gloster,’” by Rudyard Kipling; Murder Must Advertise , by Dorothy Sayers; Original Sin , by P.D. James; Possession by A.S. Byatt.
In an industry increasingly dominated by a few huge firms, Pandora Press has kept its independence and its reputation for quality—but not always easily. Its senior managers compete for resources and for influence over policy, and sometimes clash over more personal issues. With new challenges facing it, the potential for conflict will intensity, and so will threats to the Press’s survival. This campaign will emphasize social skills, personal relationships, professional skills, and intrigue; physical combat will be extremely rare.
You may enjoy this campaign if you enjoy drama as much as action; you’re willing to play in a campaign without fantastic elements; you want to play in a contemporary setting; you can enjoy playing a character whose main focus is work and career goals.
The idea of a villainous/insane Betrand Russell is so brilliant I wish I’d thought of it. Having been driven insane by Kurt Godel’s demonstration that his life-long ambition was impossible, Russll suffers a breakdown that becomes an illumination allowing him to see the whole cosmos at once. He immediately sets off on a campaign to… do what? Cross the Sword Bridge and become a Grandmaster of the Cabal? Something like that I think.
If you’d like to borrow Emmy Noether from my Cabal campaign, you’re welcome. She reached the level beyond Grand Master, which turns out to be the demiurge who actually runs the universe. She does so rather more politely than the ancient Egyptian sorcerer who used to have the job.
That will help actually. I’d planned on circa 1930 Lise Meitner showing up as a techno-magical equipment source. Noether can fit in along that chain with a more benevolent approach to dimensional sorcery.
She would also be giving it more elegant symmetries, I expect. But if she’s been promoted to demiourge, her character sheet must have an incredible number of points.
I have not attempted to rebuild her as her new self. Her old character sheet is a reasonable guide to her personality, which is what one needs for beings at this kind of power level.
I think I’ve come up with another option for my list of campaigns.
Back in 2014, I offered my players the following, based on one of my four example cities in GURPS City Stats:
___ Fronteira. Naturalist science fiction. Run in GURPS.
In the mid-23rd century, humanity has colonized and begun terraforming Mars. Player characters will be residents of one of Mars’s largest cities, at the base of the orbital elevator on Pavonis Mons, built and operated by a Brazilian megacorporation. All characters will be human colonists with no more than minor genetic or cybernetic upgrades; the setting will be somewhat conservative technologically, with no prospect of a Singularity. Play will not be scenario-based but will make up one continuing storyline, exploring the physical and cultural setting and the relationships among the characters as they work to survive, prosper, and cope with emergencies in a sometimes lethally hostile environment.
However, I was hesitant to propose it, as the backstory I had worked out involved Brazil, China, and Russia becoming the world’s dominant powers after Europe and North America became Muslim-majority societies through a combination of immigration, differential reproductive rates, and conversion; I didn’t think my players would go for that particular future history.
Today, though, I was looking through GURPS Alternate Earths, and thinking about the Shikaku-Mon timeline, the most interestingly quirky alternate history in that volume. It has a world where Japan was converted to Catholicism under the shoguns, and where the four great powers are a near-anarchic Brazil, a royalist France, a world-spanning Japanese empire, and a totalitarian Sweden; Great Britain’s cities were destroyed by Swedish atomic bombs, leading to a British diaspora. That’s an interestingly different world, so I was puzzling over what would be a good campaign premise and locale. And it struck me that Fronteira has several features that would fit right in: government by a Brazilian megacorporation under modest legal supervision by an imperial judiciary, and with a significant immigrant population that includes people of English ancestry. And it would emerge from a parallel history that goes back to the Renissance. That seems to offer a neat option for canon welding.
I’m now in the process of recruiting local gamers for a face to face campaign in eastern Kansas. I’ve gotten one questionnaire back and anticipate two more. I’m not sure about the fourth; I may have to look at another possible player or two.
For this player population, I’m going more for classic gaming, more for an emphasis on action and less on drama, and less for weird and exotic concepts, as these aren’t my San Diego coterie who are accustomed to my weird ideas. So here’s the list:
_____ DC Realtime. Four-color supers. Villains and Vigilantes. Source material: DC Comics (especially published 1938–1986).
After the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the DC universe was left with a single timeline, and remained that way—but not the timeline that DC actually published. The characters acquired from Charlton Comics, Fawcett Comics, Quality Comics, and other publishers no longer existed, and the actual DC characters began their careers in the years when they were first published and aged year for year after that. Now, in 2021, a new generation of superheroes are starting to appear and carry on the old traditions. Heroes will largely follow the conventions of the Silver Age, but within a consistent continuity; death will be rare, but the dead will stay dead. Characters can either be designed or randomly generated, at the player’s preference.
You may enjoy this campaign if you have fond memories of the Silver Age of Comics; you want to create new superheroes without being overshadowed by the established characters.
_____ Dragon Pass. Low fantasy. RuneQuest. Source material: the Odyssey ; Icelandic sagas; The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. This will continue a campaign I have been running earlier this year.
In the sparsely populated borderlands between the Lunar Empire and Sartar, opportunities await those with quick wits or strong arms. Young adventurers have the chance to risk their lives seeking lost treasures, defeating enemies, and gaining fame. Any character may learn both combat skills and spells. Characters may have to deal with war parties, monsters, or haunted ruins; combat will be realistic and risky. Play will be episodic, but with an underlying theme of increasing competence.
You may enjoy this campaign if you like adventure and physical danger; you’re comfortable with having your character at risk; you enjoy classic fantasy settings.
_____ Satanic Mills. Horror. Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG. Source material: Buffy the Vampire Slayer ; Angel ; North and South , by Elizabeth Gaskell; Dracula , by Bram Stoker.
Into every generation a Slayer is born: one girl in all the world . . . in Manchester, the world’s greatest industrial city in the 1830s, where vampires and demons hide in the smoke-filled air. The game offers the option of one player taking the role of the Slayer, but this isn’t mandatory; some or all players will be white hats, and possibly belong to the Watchers. Adventures will largely involve supernatural threats but may fall into any of the emerging fantastic genres of the era.
You may enjoy this campaign if you’re a fan of the Buffyverse; you like the Age of Steam as a setting; you enjoy rules-light game systems.
_____ Spindrift . Adventure/science fiction/alternate history. Champions. Source material: the Rick Brant novels, by John Blaine; Rocket Ship Galileo , by Robert Heinlein; Jonny Quest .
An island off the coast of New Jersey is the home of a world-famous scientific research foundation, which among other things sent the first rocket to the moon in 1946. Now headed by the son of the founder, it continues to produce new discoveries and inventions—and send expeditions all over the free world, sometimes accompanied by teenage children of its researchers. Players will take the roles of young adventurers involved in danger and intrigue.
You may enjoy this campaign if you have fond memories of young adult fiction; you like your marvels and wonders to have a scientific basis.
_____ Water Margin . Alternative history/swashbuckling/martial arts. GURPS. Source material: Water Margin , by Shi Nai’an; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and other wuxia films; “The Man Who Would Be King,” by Rudyard Kipling.
Centuries ago, Zheng He’s fleets opened the way to a Chinese Empire spanning much of the world. Now, in the protectorate of Tsinghau (the British Isles), native troops and officials and Imperial advisors work to maintain order in a time of troubles, as Imperial authority weakens. Action will be cinematic, and characters will be larger than life, with access to exotic European martial arts such as capa y espada and bare-knuckle boxing, but not to overt magic or supernatural elements.
You may enjoy this campaign if you enjoy alternate history settings; you can play under exotic cultural assumptions; you want combat, danger, and intrigue; you like swashbuckling or wuxia.
Addendum: I talked last night with one of my prospective players, and it seems that what he’s still thinking about isn’t the campaign premises, but how he feels about the different rules systems. Which is perfectly fair, but it’s not something most of my players in the past have seemed to think about . . .
Somewhat to my surprise, I’ve now heard from a quorum of my invited players, and the runaway favorite is Satanic Mills, which one of the three had been saying he hoped would not win. Seemingly he changed his mind. The only other campaign that was really viable was Dragon Pass, which every player rated at 2 points. No player gave more than 2 points to any campaign except Satanic Mills, which is more unanimity than I expect.
I’ve offered this as a mini-campaign, with the option of extended it if the first half year goes well.
