Cape and Cowl

"Welcome to the City, Hero." —The Porter's greeting.

Superheroes? In MY roleplay? It's more likely than you think. It's set in a metropolis known only as 'The City' which had its entire police force disappear in fall of 2008 (when the game began). Their replacements are characters pulled from other worlds by an advanced machine known as the Porter to serve as 'heroes', with previously-unpowered characters gaining superhuman abilities in the process. Known for being very fast-paced. Found here.

Tropes used in Cape and Cowl include:

• Action Girl: Most of the female heroes and villains, including Shego and Echo.
• Action Mom: Sarah Connor.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: First Iron Suit, then the Porter itself.
  • The Red Queen.
  • Skynet, apparently.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Relations between the PCs or ' Imports ' and ' native ' NPCs tend to be... strained at best. Justified by the amount of chaos the characters' presence has caused in the City. However, Imports have since gained much more acceptance along with legal citizenship in their new home, since they helped save thousands of civilians from the HIVE.
• And I Must Scream: Nightmare plot.
• Alternate History: The Cityverse's history deviates from our own in many ways besides the Porter.
• Anyone Can Die: Thanks to the Porter's tendency to bring people back. Unfortunately, this means when people do die, it's usually in the most painful way possible. For maximum resurrection trauma.
• Arms Dealer: An early source of income for the Coalition was selling advanced battle mechs to North Korea. Jack 'Weasel' Hammer fulfilled this function on a smaller level in the City.
• A Storm Is Coming: Sarah Connor's visions.
• Attack of the Killer Whatever: The City can be threatened by pretty much anything. It was once attacked by pigeons.
• Back from the Dead: Pretty much guaranteed.
• Badass Crew: Most of the superhero teams, as well as the police force, which had John McClane as its Chief.
• Big Applesauce: The City is basically a nameless alternate universe counterpart to New York.
• Badass Adorable: Cameron Phillips. Abby Boylen.
• Bad Future: The CNC2020 spinoff, set in a future where ImPorts are persecuted by the government.
  • Future Badass: Characters who weren't already badass sometimes become these in 2020.
• Battle Couple: Batgirl and Darkdevil
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: The larger plots can get truly epic.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: An early plot had a swarm of these released on the City by a mad scientist.
• Blank Slate: Whiskey. Usually.
• Brainwashed: A supervillain plot used Dollhouse technology for this.
• Break the Cutie: Dr Zoidberg
• Breaking Out the Boss: Done by the Nazis at one point.
• Cardboard Prison / The Alcatraz: The facility for imprisoning captured supervillains, nicknamed Superjail, is an impregnable high-tech fortress... which bad guys still regularly worm their way out of.
• Car Meets House: Two of the X-men went for a drive that did not end as planned.
• Celebrity Paradox: Dealt with in-game. The instant a fictional character is Ported in, all media materials (films, books, games, etc.) related to them are erased from reality. They can be recreated if the character leaves, though.
• Chewing the Scenery: Twoey.
• City of Adventure: The City
• City of Weirdos: Ditto.
• Civilian Villain: Many supervillains have managed to forge successful and lucrative 'legitimate' careers through their 'reformations.'
• Clean Up the Town: Initially.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: This happens. A lot.
• Come with Me If You Want to Live: Pretty much guaranteed to come up at some point. Right?
• The Commissioner Gordon: Standard policy for the understaffed police force, which has little choice but to cooperate with vigilantes in order to keep the City safe.
• Cosmic Retcon: The 'Running the Gauntlet' plot saw the reality of the Cityverse rewritten to introduce new elements like ghosts, aliens, and fictional countries.
• Cryptic Conversation: It is notoriously difficult to get a straight answer out of NPCs like Grinbitch and the Kashira Players, on the few occasions that it is even possible to communicate with them.
• Deadpan Snarker: Cameron Phillips, Shego.
• Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: The Porter resurrects most killed characters.
• Deus Est Machina: The Porter's powers seem to be almost limitless- at least when it comes to player characters.
• Deface of the Moon: To the point where it's almost a Running Gag.
• Designated Victim: Jessica Wakefield manages to suffer more than Waspinator.
• Die Hard on an X: One plot had Superjail held hostage by Nazis and supervillains, while John McClane and Aldo Raine were loose inside. Hilarity Ensued.
• Differently-Powered Individual: Most player characters are referred to as 'Imports' or 'metahumans.' And now artificially-created native superhumans are called 'Metamen.'
• Discount Lesbians: A Running Gag with Zatanna and Wonder Woman.
• Dysfunction Junction: Where to start.
• Elite Mooks: Villains have tried a variety of ways to make their minions a match for the heroes, such as turning them into vampires or outfitting them with body armor and rocket launchers. It rarely helps.
• Emotionless Girl: Subverted with Cameron Phillips.
• Empty Quiver: One plot revolved around the theft of a nuclear warhead by supervillains, and an attempt to use it on Washington D.C.
• Explosive Breeder: An attempt at allowing characters to return home instead caused a plague of Tribbles.
• Failure Is the Only Option: When it comes to finding a way home or a way to shut down/take control of the Porter.
• Fake American: The Master, while pretending to be Adon Tierney.
• Fake Memories: The Brainwash Plot.
• Fan Nickname: ' Grinbitch ' for the Porter AI, which has since started popping up in-character.
• Faux Affably Evil: Alpha, The Master.
• Fictional Country: five of them, thanks to the Infinity Gauntlet
• Fight Clubbing: courtesy of the characters from Fight Club.
• Fish Out of Water
• Flight, Strength, Heart: Due to bizarre Porter-granted powers. One character combined infinite ammunition with deductive tap dancing.
• Fountain of Youth: when most of the City was turned into children by a magic spell
• Future Badass: John Connor.
• Government Conspiracy: Vulcanus, which seeks to mass produce superhumans.
• Hate Plague: Cylon-Nazi nerve gas that slowly drove people into conflict with each other.
• Holding Out for a Hero: The initial premise of the game was that the player characters were the only hope of restoring law and order in the City after the police force vanished. Since the government declared the place a disaster area and failed to act, it was up to them to fight crime and rebuild the justice system.
• If It's You It's Okay
• Involuntary Transformation: In a Fisher Kingdom style, the Porter assigns all non-humanoid characters (like Transformers and Talking Animals) a human form, sometimes with Transformation Trauma in the meantime. There have also been plots where characters were unexpectedly transformed into animals and robots.
• Kid Hero: Awesome Force and the Teen Titans.
• Killer Robot: Partially averted, since most robots are turned mostly human when brought into the City.
• Legion of Doom: The Coalition, a loose grouping of the City's villainous characters.
• Leno Device: Sometimes news posts will appear, offering a native's-eye view of how the presence of the player characters is affecting the world.
• Like Reality Unless Noted: The game's setting is almost exactly like the real world, except for details like having Superior Purchase instead of Best Buy and a different President. And of course all the superhumans.
• Living Shadow: The Kashira Players. Possibly.
• Love Is in the Air: Affecting Trowa Barton of all people. A specialty of Aphrodite.
• Mage in Manhattan
• Magnetic Plot Device: The Porter. Between the AI's twisted sense of humour and plain old malfunctions, as long as it's running the City's bound to be an exciting place.
• Manchurian Agent: See Brainwashed.
• Mega Crossover
• Mook: Ordinary criminals don't stand much of a chance against most player characters.
• Musical Episode: Courtesy of a character from High School Musical, who used his powers to make everyone sing and dance.
• Muggle Power: Vulcanus' ideology appears to be Type One: stealing powers from Imports for the sake of giving them to 'the people.'
• Mundane Fantastic: Aside from the occasional superhuman brawls, the people of the City try to carry on as usual. The City's culture has adapted to the situation so much that there are even superhero-themed strip clubs.
• Mythology Gag: The President in this superhero-themed game looks an awful lot like Stan Lee.
• Nebulous Evil Organization / The Syndicate: The HIVE, the City's sinister West Coast counterpart.
• NGO Superpower: The HIVE tried to act like one of these when it defied the US government. It ended poorly.
• No FEMA Response: New York City has lost its police force? Don't expect the federal government to do anything about it! Possibly justified by the fear that anyone they sent in would just disappear as well.
• Not Himself: The Polymorph and timeswitch plots.
• Odd Friendship: As customary for a panfandom game, CNC has produced some epic ones.
• Playing with Syringes: Standard procedure for the City's thriving mad scientist community. Vulcanus has gotten in on the action as well to copy characters' superpowers.
• Platonic Life Partners: Rory Williams and Zatanna Zatara were this.
• Power Nullifier: At one point, depowering guns appeared that could temporarily disable superhuman abilities.
• Quirky Household: MANY.
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old: The Doctor, Rory Williams, Soldier Blue, and others.
• Red Shirt / Redshirt Army: Ordinary cops, soldiers and civilians stand almost no chance against most Import supervillains.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Averted. The presence of so many super-geniuses and advanced technology users Ported in has already begun to have impacts on health, technology, and international politics.
• The Reveal: Several: Iron Man is actually a sentient suit of Tony Stark's armour. Los Angeles is run by a massive criminal conspiracy. The President is Stan Lee. And an international conspiracy is seeking to mass-produce superhumans.
• Running Gag: Many, in and out of character: bueno, Norman's computer, eating glass, the Major's weight...
• Show Within a Show: Iron Man: The Musical.
• Soap Within a Show: A Single Potato, complete with Explaining the Soap. With the Decepticons.
• Stage Magician: Zatanna Zatara.
• Status Quo Is God: To a certain extent. The City will always have enough crime to keep the heroes busy, but will never be wrecked too badly to recover, and the Porter will always continue bringing in new characters.
• Stock Super Powers: Along with several not-so-stock ones.
• Storming the Castle: At one point a large number of characters launched a massive attack on the HIVE. It succeeded, but the HIVE remained a threat for a while longer. Two years later, a Vulcanus base in Greenland was assaulted in order to prevent the creation of a superhuman army.
• Superhero
• Super-Hero School: The X-Men have set up their own Xavier Institute in the City for Imported students. Now being run by Remus Lupin.
• Superhero Tropes
• Superpower Lottery: Many of the powers granted by the Porter are bizarre, such as generating teacups at will, making it rain baseballs and extremely good apple pie, and extreme sandwich-making skills.
• Superpowered Mooks: At one point the HIVE attacked the City with an army of superpowered mutants.
• Super Registration Act: A common worry of Imports, especially the X-men. Superhero activity is currently permitted and loosely regulated by the authorities- basically, the main rule is "don't be The Punisher."
• The Snark Knight: John Connor.
• They Fight Crime: Basically the premise of the entire game, although many characters do not become superheroes.
• They Walk Among Us: "They" in this case being metahumans.
• Trash the Set: Godzilla's final assault leveled most of the financial district, although most of it has since been rebuilt.
• True Companions: Many.
• Vague Age: It's kind of unclear how old some of the under-twenties are.
• Vice City: The HIVE, and the City on a bad day.
• War Arc: Three rounds with the HIVE, and then the War of Four Walls.
• Washington, D.C. Invasion: A supervillain attempt to nuke the National Mall.
• Wham! Episode: The revelation of Iron Suit, the introduction of the HIVE and their subsequent assault on the City, the disposal of the Iron Suit by the Porter, and the entry of Vulcanus were big game-changers.
• Wretched Hive: The HIVE.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Many characters, particularly during the Renaissance Faire.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Unless Deported without warning, leaving your Cityverse friends to wonder whether they'll ever see you again.
• You Do NOT Want to Know: This often comes up.
• Your Worst Nightmare: When half the City fell asleep and was trapped in their nightmares.
• Zeppelins from Another World: The HIVE and supervillains have used them. A zeppelin nightclub was actually operated by characters for a time.
• Zombie Apocalypse: More than one.