Super Registration Act: Difference between revisions

* The ''[[Champions]] 5th Edition'' [[Tabletop Games]] has a Superhuman Registration Act in its game universe [[Backstory]]. It uses it in an uncommonly sensible fashion—widespread public protests were unable to get it formally repealed, but it's now a law that the government virtually never tries to enforce, let alone use as an excuse for metahuman conscription. Several of the most prominent superhero teams of the Champions Universe have officially registered and sanctioned themselves, but many superheroes have chosen not to, with little official interference in their lives. It still remains on the books, but it's normally used only as the legal authority to demand (and record, and distribute) the true identity of any metahuman already being arrested on another criminal charge. However, the lives of registered metahumans are made easier in several ways as compared to unregistered ones—they can testify in court without having to reveal their secret identities publically (as those identities have already been revealed to the government and are thus available to the court, if not the public), they are offered opportunities for basic law enforcement training and certification as deputies, etc. They do need to follow certain guidelines - not killing opponents except within standard law enforcement rules of engagement (modified to account for the fact that a bulletproof hero's life is not actually in danger from a thug with a gun, and suchlike), making good-faith efforts to avoid collateral damage, etc.

** Technically, those that are not registered are considered to be vigilanties and, as such, criminals. This is rarely enforced except in extreme cases; Vigilantes who kill opponents are considered criminals and are hunted by the law.

* In ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'', the Imperium of Man makes a point to hunt down psykers, humans with psychic powers. The majority are killed, while the remnants are 'sanctioned' after much conditioning to serve the Imperium in various fashions, or used to [[Powered by a Forsaken Child|power their giant space beacon]]. ([[Justified Trope|Justified]] in that untrained psykers minds are open to the Warp, which [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|can make them dangerous]]).

* The Moore Act in the "[[Dark Age|Iron Age]]" setting of ''[[Mutants and Masterminds]]'' made superheroes illegal in Freedom City. Named after Mayor Franklin Moore (who, in turn, was named after [[Alan Moore]], creator of the Keene Act in ''[[Watchmen]]'').

* White Wolf's ''Aberrant'' had a rather underhanded variety. While there is no official law requiring Novas to register, their powers tend to be hard to control without specialized training and medical care. Both are available only from Project Utopia, so most of them end up there, policing their "unenlightened" brethren. In the process they're also {{spoiler|'''''unknowingly sterilized'''''. It should be no surprise that the setting concludes with every Nova on Earth discovering this fact and going on a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]] that pretty much [[The End of the World as We Know It|wrecks the entire world]] - after which the authorities destroy all records of their crimes and claim that [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|all Novas inevitably go insane]], and systematically kill them from that point on.}}

** on a lighter note in the world of Aberrant there also exists image firms like Appellate Lexington, that will register a super identity and make up a costume for you {{spoiler|of course the next page has an anonymous Op Net user declaring the firms as a Utopia net to catch (identify/keep tabs) those Novas that evade Project Utopia's Rashoud Facilities}}

** Practically speaking, the main reason that the major world governments did not press for a super registration law was twofold: a) voluntary compliance would 'out' most novas anyway, as there were a myriad of perfectly legal ways to make a ridiculous amount of money using nova powers and b) between their freely wiretapping everything to a degree that would make the NSA weep in envy and their own nova investigators, the multi-national intelligence agency known as the Directive could pretty much break any secret ID short of Divis Mal's in about a week -- and routinely did.

== [[Video Games]] ==