>>82656869
Because it's incredibly hard to manufacture requiring ingredients that can't be synthesised and are in limited supply. Simply isn't enough of it for everyone. This way only the people that are desperate for it end up with it. Those are the characters that make the most fun heroes and villains.

>>82656937
Makes sense, but what would be the ratio of success / horrible death that you were willing to accept?

>>82656869
Powerball lottery odds to be superman would still wipe out 20% of the population.

>>82656952
I say go for it. There are legions and legions of unhappy people just muddling through life who would an hero for a one in a million. Would make interesting superheroes and villains, they were just sad sack office drones and now they can make themselves into whatever they please. Sort of a lamp shading of the fantasy inherent in capeshit to begin with.

How would the world react to millions of people checking out for that shot at changing their life? What would a person who was willing to take those odds become if they got lucky?

>>82656941
Coinflip is as far as I go
Anything beyond that is just suicide

>>82656869
Some people would take the serum even if it was a one in a million chance of not dying. Most ordinary people would not go for it if they understood the risk and it was about two percent (they imagine themselves immune to one percent risks). Governments would ban it if it injured or killed more than one in ten thousand. They would try to control it regardless of lethality if superpowers are super enough to potentially change the balance of power between nations.

>>82656869
I wouldn't go for it even with a practically non existent risk but that's from the perspective of living in our current world. In a M&M's world were presumably there's a lot more danger and a lot of friends and relatives of people who have fallen victim to villainy then I can imagine even an 80% risk of death would still see a decent enough uptake to for teams of vigilantes but would be dangerous enough to keep most people away from it. Too many people with things to live for.

>>82656869
Serum rapidly becomes illegal and difficult to acquire, as it turns out its bad PR for the government to let people take a medication that has a stated-on-the-label 1/X chance of just fucking killing you. More over, powerful interests probably go after the serum manufacturers, as serum gives an enormous increase in chance that someone with a reason to oppose them gets the resources to do so. Even if one of these power interests chooses to use the serum on their own people, they either restrict its use to the most loyal members and kill off their loyalist base for a chance of winning the roulette, or they scattershot and take chances trying to exert authority over a bunch of people on a (super)power trip.

>>82657435
>Governments would ban it if it injured or killed more than one in ten thousand.
lol
They want to reduce the population

>>82657709
Which is of course why they put in place lock down orders to save lives from a dangerous pathogen.

>>82656869
It could be 1 to a million, and the line for people willing to take it would wrap around the city multiple times.

>>82657807
I think that line would thin rapidly as the corpses began piling up.

>>82657709
>They want to reduce the population
Idiot.

>>82657815
Those corpses were just NPCs. YOU on the other hand, are the destined protagonist of this story.

>>82657837
Sure I'll say that as I approach the super-serum tent. Then, as I smell the burning hair from the crematorium and see the row upon row of dead bodies, doubt creeps into my mind.

>>82656869
The serum is illegal. The government has a huge marketing campaign, mostly successful, in order to prevent people from risking their lives by taking it. Commercials everywhere, constant news stories, school programs. It's like a war on drugs but actually successful, mostly.

>>82658030
In any other context have you ever refered to a 1.5% chance of death as inconsequential?

>>82658044
not that guy, but we pretty much accept it with driving.

>>82657866
You say that, but the guy right in front of you in the line? He just ascended like a glorious golden comet and soared off into the horizon on wings of phoenix fire.
That could be you.
If you're lucky, THAT COULD BE YOU.

>>82658281
Are you sure about those numbers? I am pretty sure traffic is about a magnitude or two less lethal than covid.

>>82658373
It doesn't matter what the reward is if the gamble is with my life and nearly certain to kill me. My life as an ordinary person is not too bad. All the desperate suicidal people can have my place in the line.

Besides, although it makes no difference mathematically, I intuitively assume the chances of two people surviving in a row is low and turn down the dose if the guy before me makes it.

>>82658281
Remember that the odds of any individual person suffering a traffic fatality is low; it's only because of the absolutely jaw dropping and astonishing number of people that drive every single day that we have numbers of 'deaths per day' that sounds so scary.

That's why scarcity is important for this kind of setup. With a 1% survival rate but nearly infinite supply, you'd have hundreds of thousands if not millions of heroes and villains.

>>82656937
Still needs another limit, such as the death rate, or you just made Shadowrun but with superpowered CEOs, despots, and billionaires.

Which could be fun, but Super-Zuckerberg would be even more of a weirdo and Super-Musk's mass mind control/pheromones would be annoying.

>>82657709
No they don't, an ever-increasing labour/consumer force is essential to capital extraction.

You might see other policies in less-capitalist nations like Mao's China, a pre-global nation (war being a great way to reduce/distract your bored young male population), or a hypothetical green government, but no current globalised nation actually wants a diminishing birthrate let alone actual pop reduction.

>>82656869
How strong are the settings superpowers on average? I'm not fucking risking my life to become arms fall off lad.

>>82656869
>Let's say there's a serum that, upon injection, either grants you superpowers or just fucking kills you dead. What would be the ratio of death versus success before the majority of people decide not to take it? 50-50 odds? 60-40? 70-30? 9 in 10?
What superpowers exactly?

I see most people going for 50/50 if they got Superman package. But if we are talking about something minor like producing farts that smell of lavender, I wouldn't expect much enthusiasm.

>I'm trying to take of a reason (for an M&M campaign) why basically everyone isn't using the serum to get superpowers.
Because government suppresses unathorized production and distribution, obviously.
1) Any and all ingredients involved (and machinery, if applicable) are tightly controlled.
2) Any individuals who acquire superpowers in unauthorized manner are considered "shoot-on-sight" supervillains.
3) There are multiple (government-supported) unofficial distributors of superpower serum, except all they sell is just poison.
4) Massive propaganda campaign ensures that general public is provided with suitable excuses for all of those measures (not necessarily involving superpowers) and doesn't consider them unjust.

>>82656941
Any. Its a win win situation

>>82658600
Death rate is an implicit part of the scenario, did you not read the OP?

>>82658600
>the super-serum is intentionally prohibitively dangerous
>super-Bezos and his department of chemists and physicists (yes he actually has this and nobody is actually sure why) has been working on a safer serum that would permit Amazon to corner the market with super-powered delivery drivers and super-pmcs
>the party is a group of super soldiers tasked with eliminating the Supers department of Bezos's empire in clandestine "accidents"
>are you a bad enough dude to maintain government hegemony?

>>82656869
Personally it'd have to be pretty good odds UNLESS the powers involve improving your lifespan or even something like biological immortality. I'm not risking death to shoot lasers out of my eye. I will definitely risk death to guarantee a few additional centuries of life.

>>82656869
The odds don't matter. The only thing that matters is whether or not the media is in support or against it.

>>82656869
You can't break it up like that. Different population segments accepts different level of risk. Young men have the highest level of risk taking, and are also the group you'd least want having superpowers. They might go for 50/50, with a not insignificant amount going for worse odds like 40 or even 30. Elderly women are the most risk averse, and would probably not want superpowers in the first place. Middle aged men are the second most risk-taking group, and would likely settle for 70, if they want superpowers in the first place. A general trend is also that the lower your general education and financial stability, the more risks you're willing to take. Women are in general pretty risk averse, with young women being the most risk-taking among their gender. I can't see them accepting odds worse than 80. It declines with age, so middle aged women would only take 90 and above.
Again, I want to stress that many people wouldn't want superpower in the first place. It's fun to think about, but when it comes down to it most people just wants to live their lives in peace.
Also, a society where everyone theoretically has access to superpowers would be awful. The desperate souls with guns and knives are now flamethrowers or radioactive.

>>82660742
I was responding to a post that seemed to ignore death rate as a limit in favour of their idea of it merely being expensive.

>>82662441
I wrote the post. I wasn't ignoring it, it was just implicit in the OP.

>>82662161
>>The desperate souls with guns and knives are now flamethrowers or radioactive.
Which is why the serum would quickly produce a huge number of low-level villains and get banned. If the serum keeps turning mentally unstable social outcast into human flamethrowers it doesn't matter how many bright eyed super heroes it produces.

Interestingly enough, if super powers are primarily associated with low-status, financially insecure and mentally unstable people, they would quickly become stigmatized by society. Everybody just assumes you are homeless if you have a super power.

>>82662161
This is a self-correcting problem, men will no longer so desperate if demographically, they're twenty percent of the population to women's eighty and market value reacts accordingly.

>>82665754
That's not very likely to happen, though. It seems the roughly 50/50 split is very stable among humans.

>>82665935
it will if the men keep killing themselves to get superpowers

>>82664726
If you've got a superpower and those people with homes don't, why not just take theirs? What're they gonna do, they're powerless.

>>82656869
It'd need to be >99% chance of superpowers for me to consider it.
My life's pretty good and I'd be reluctant to risk that (and put my wife/family through that loss) just for a chance to fly around with my pants on the outside.

Of course, a world where 1/100 depressed NEETs suddenly gain world-changing superpowers might swiftly turn into the sort of hell where I'd need to reconsider said value judgement.

>>82656869
It could be a 1% chance or lower and there'll still be a decent number of people who try.

>>82669115
Thank you for making my point. That line of reasoning would be common among such super individuals. It leads them to becoming just one more item on the evening news: super-squatter evicted by the super-Man, two dead and fifteen injured.

>>82657795
You mean the lockdowns responsible for the largest transfer of wealth from the middle and lower class to the uber rich?

>>82672525
How has the lockdown changed the rate of wealth transfer?

>>82672704
Via the massive increase in money printing and government debt to pay for business grants and wage subsidies that have overwhelmingly benefited large corporations.

>>82656869
People are really terrible at understanding odds. This is disproportionately true for people on the lower end of IQ.
I would guess:
5-10% of the population would take it no matter the odds. These are the dregs of society whose only hope of being rich and successful with good looking women is a long shot. 1 in 200 million odds? They would still hope for that winning lottery ticket.
So being conservative, assuming the entire world has access to the serum, 5 billion *5% gives 250 mil willing to take it. if the odds are 1/500k then you might end up with 500 or so superheroes/supervillains.
Depending on their powers that is way more than enough to completely fuck everything up.

>>82672835
What does that have to do with lockdown? Does the money printer stop if people stop isolating themselves?

>>82673235
The lockdowns provide justification for the financial intervention.

>>82673581
That is not very convincing. This sort of intervention has happened all over the world in places that had strong lockdowns and in places without any meaningful lockdowns.

>>82656869
>implying that if the risk of death would be far greater, people won't just use it as a way to off themselves

>>82656941
With scarcity, you can make it an unknown quantity with a really low survival/success projected (guessed) from the existing data. Not only do you have to survive, you might not even get anything beneficial or significant. Also, side effects.
If you're the GM, NPCs can have plot armor of varying degrees when it suits you, so that's not a big deal.

>>82672704
Yes
https://www.newsweek.com/were-living-through-greatest-transfer-wealth-middle-class-elites-history-opinion-1641614

>>82675886
I don't think some Karen mad over closed hair salons is a reliable source on economic statistics.

>>82673700
There have been strict lockdowns in more than enough of the world's major economies to ensure that even those who took a more moderate approach would be poleaxed by the global fallout.

>>82672835
It's a mixed bag and a lot of moving parts but a lot of these motherfuckers with money have been at it for a long time and, as a result, have the resources and experience to take advantage of the system when the opportunity presents itself. Governments are bigass machines that people can tap at different levels and skim.

>>82676077
So you think the economic difficulties were caused by lockdowns and not the pandemic?

>>82656869
I'd say 10% working right, 30% working, but with major side effects, 30% mutating you into some horrible monster, and 30% getting murked

>>82656869
How diluted can it get before failing is a better question because someone is going to spike a city's water supply at least once.

>>82656869
The likelihood of gaining superpowers increases with purity and concentration of the serum, but so does cost per dose - and exponentially at that. On top of that, it's only the likelihood of gaining superpowers that increases, there is no guarantee of potency or usefulness of superpowers.

>>82656869
Even at 1 in 5000 I would take it. I'm tired of living and superpowers might make it worthwhile.

>>82676607
>So you think the economic difficulties were caused by lockdowns
Not the same guy but we know the lockdowns did more damage than the pandemic.