Why does no one want to GM superheroes?

[phydaux]

So if I understand the Urban Dictionary definition correctly, "murder hobos" are what you get when you combine PCs that lack meaningful background stories and meaningful connections to the game world with a GM unable or unwilling to give the PCs motivations (and justifications) for their actions beyond the simplistic meta-goals of gaining XP and in-game wealth.

 

Is that really a problem for many Champions groups? It's not something I ran into very often myself.

 

See, that's the thing.  Unless the campaign is a Supers Academy / Hero High School type of campaign then the PCs have no motivation to hang out together out of costume.  And that REALLY cuts down on the opportunities to role play.  So the campaign devolves into "You're all paroling the city, separately, and you all happen to notice..."

 

Seriously, it's WORK to manage a supers campaign.  Each character has (or SHOULD HAVE) at least one Hunter By and at least one Hunter Of.  

 

"OK, GM.  He's Hunted By Viper, and Hunter Of Viper."

 

"Great.  Why?"

 

"What?"

 

"Not what. Why?"

 

"Why What?"

 

"Why is your PC Hunter by Viper and a Hunter Of Viper?"

 

"Um, because you said I had to have one Hunted By and one Hunter Of...."

 

If a player puts as much thought put into his character's background as was put into the character's Multipower, a player should not only be able to hand the GM a character sheet for the PC, but ALSO charracter sheet for his Hunted By & Hunter Of NPCs.  

 

Here's an example - One of my favorite PCs from ages ago was one of two best friends that entered the Primus Super Soldier program together.  Both had adverse reactions to the modifications.  Both became withdrawn and slightly paranoid.  One, the PC, became a street level vigilante called Lone Wolf.  The other became a mercenary and assassin called The Savage.  

 

This was cool, because the GM know my character would drop EVERYTHING to track down The Savage, even to the point of bailing on my team mates mid-fight to chase a possible clue.  It was a permanent plot hook for the Gm to tug when he wanted to advance the campaign. 

 

Now if the player DOESN'T put that level of thought into the character, then it's up to the GM to do it.  And if the GM DOES put in that amount of work, and then he tugs on that plot hook, there's no guarantee that the player will react the way his character sheet says the character should react.

[TheQuestionMan]

I'm will to GM a superhero game if you want to play. I've been looking for a superhero game to play in but if no one is willing to run I will do it. SO let me know if you want to play.

 

 

I would love to play!

 

What, when, and How (Format - Face to Face, Online, or PBeM?

[Greywind]

See, that's the thing.  Unless the campaign is a Supers Academy / Hero High School type of campaign then the PCs have no motivation to hang out together out of costume.  And that REALLY cuts down on the opportunities to role play.  So the campaign devolves into "You're all paroling the city, separately, and you all happen to notice..."

 

I don't wanna parole the whole city.

 

The players need to come up with a reason why they might hang together out of suit. That isn't on the GM. The players have an obligation to contribute.

[TheQuestionMan]

Patrol vs Parole an entire city? I would hate to be the Parole Officer!

[zslane]

In my experience, a brand new supers campaign is typically built by players who collaborate with the GM and each other to work out how and why their characters end up as a team, and then play that out in the first few sessions. No PC should be lacking a background story, origin story, and an explanation for how and why they fit into the campaign's superteam. And since the goal of every superhero is to save innocent lives and bring supervillains to justice (not the grave), I never saw Champions as having the equivalent to "kill everyone and take their stuff" as a play style. It simply isn't in genre.

 

But that's my experience because I have always played four-color supers (mostly in a Silver Age mold) with other like-minded players. We had the occasional player who just didn't get it, but they were the exception, and they either changed their style to fit the campaign or they didn't stay in the game long.

[starblaze]

The worse kind of player in a superhero game, or any game for that matter, is the Captain Apathy player.  The guy that has powers but cannot be motivated to do anything with them.

[zslane]

In my view, the best campaigns are those where the GM and the players work together to create compelling characters and scenarios that are worth talking about long after the game sessions have ended.

 

The worst are those where the players don't engage with the campaign and don't actively participate in the storytelling, or where the GM does nothing to motivate the players and compel them to action. Players on both sides of the GM screen must do their part.

 

The second worst are those where (certain) players refuse to acknowledge the genre they are playing in. We've all known players like Sheldon (from Big Bang Theory) who could only be convinced to attend a Rennaissance Fair if allowed to dress as Mr. Spock and pretend he was studying an alien culture.

[massey]

I find it hard to run any kind of game lately.  Work and real life conspire to keep all my attention.  I don't have the time anymore to sit and dream up an adventure every week.  It's all I can do to just show up to a weekly game, and then struggle to stay awake when it passes my 10pm bedtime.

 

Superheroes is a different genre than fantasy, and it isn't as popular.  I think most people playing an RPG have tried D&D or some variant thereof.  Many of them haven't tried a supers game.  I think that makes people less likely to want to run one.  Also, the standard D&D campaign doesn't work with supers very well.  You don't have a dungeon crawl you can plop the players into that will eat up a half dozen sessions.  Every broken ability that GMs don't want D&D characters to get (teleportation, mind reading, flight, invisibility, etc) are things that a normal supers character can start with.  D&D style linear game structure doesn't work nearly as well.  So people get frustrated and give up trying to run.

[phydaux]

I would love to play!

 

What, when, and How (Format - Face to Face, Online, or PBeM?

Me too, btw

[Tech]

The thing that helps me as a GM is that all players are strongly encouraged to have a history write-up for their character (if they don't want me asking them time and again). I make them aware that a history gives them a starting point for future skills and powers, and gives me adventure ideas I can do with their character. Everyone likes having their character shine and this encourages them to do this. Having a history also helps them decide what Psych Limit, Hunted, etc their character might have.

 

Having said that, this helps me get heroes together. As a group, we try to make supergroups. If a character is deemed to be an "independent", then the hero typically ends up helping a particular hero or group of heroes. That gives a reason for the hero to get involved with an episode. I have one superheroine who's history is closely tied in to another superheroine's, so those two are a team - easy way to get involved.

 

I don't deny that it can be a challenge being a supers GM but fortunately, there's more than one GM in the campaign.

[Greywind]

The last major group of players that I had, only one person had anything remotely like a background for me to work with. All the players that couldn't be bothered blamed everything on the the player that had.

 

"He's a criminal genius? This is all your fault! Why couldn't you have said he was a criminal imbecile?"

[massey]

Well, too much background can be a problem too, especially if it doesn't fit in well with the campaign world.  Now some players come in and don't even have a name for their character picked out, but others come in with an incredibly detailed backstory that is often more trouble than it is worth.  Most comic book characters start with an origin, and the rest of their background gets filled in later.  I'm fine with that.

[TheQuestionMan]

Classic Champions Setting 1st to 3rd edition.

[zslane]

Well, too much background can be a problem too, especially if it doesn't fit in well with the campaign world.  Now some players come in and don't even have a name for their character picked out, but others come in with an incredibly detailed backstory that is often more trouble than it is worth.  Most comic book characters start with an origin, and the rest of their background gets filled in later.  I'm fine with that.

Sure, there are numerous ways for prospective players to be...difficult. Collaborating with the GM (and the other players) to make sure their characters are fully fleshed out and fit smoothly into the campaign is a choice. Allowing people unwilling to do so to play anyway is also a choice.

[Tasha]

So if I understand the Urban Dictionary definition correctly, "murder hobos" are what you get when you combine PCs that lack meaningful background stories and meaningful connections to the game world with a GM unable or unwilling to give the PCs motivations (and justifications) for their actions beyond the simplistic meta-goals of gaining XP and in-game wealth.

 

Is that really a problem for many Champions groups? It's not something I ran into very often myself.

 

It's more of an issue that the playerpool is full of players who only know the MurderHobo game style. It can be hard to draw the roleplayer out of such players.

[zslane]

Probably made all the more challenging given the ever-shrinking player pool in general, and the miniscule size of the Champions-familiar player pool in particular.

[phydaux]

All us PnP RPG'ers are anachronisms.  We should have seen the writing on the wall back when Everquest first rolled out.

[TheQuestionMan]

EverCrack!

[Tasha]

All us PnP RPG'ers are anachronisms.  We should have seen the writing on the wall back when Everquest first rolled out.

 

There's a ton of PnP gamers at my local FLGS. They are just all Pathfinder/D&D players. Most of them are also in their 20's. IMHO it's a matter of time before the limitations of D&D/D20 systems start to annoy them and they start looking for new systems that are much more customizable.

[zslane]

There's a ton of PnP gamers at my local FLGS. They are just all Pathfinder/D&D players. Most of them are also in their 20's. IMHO it's a matter of time before the limitations of D&D/D20 systems start to annoy them and they start looking for new systems that are much more customizable.

 

It's hard for me to dispute this. After all, it describes my journey exactly. I started with AD&D in high school, and then discovered Champions a couple of years later. Once I saw the elegance of Champions, there was simply no going back to D&D.

 

Moreover, the morality expected of superhero characters in the local Champions campaigns I joined profoundly shaped my own. Gone was the notion that it was perfectly acceptable to hack and slash and take all the stuff. In its place was the notion that saving innocent bystanders and bringing the bad guys to justice (without killing them, and without resorting to underhanded tactics) was not just genre-appropriate, it was a philosophical template for being a good human being in the real world.

 

I'd like to think that learning the Hero System and embracing the Champions game (i.e., the superhero genre) would simultaneously exorcise the love of limited systems (like D&D and Pathfinder), and the "murder hobo" ethic that seems to go with them. But I am probably just being hopelessly hopeful.

[phydaux]

Just like no one wants to play a Paladin in D&D, or if they DO then they somehow think that Lawful Good actually means Lawful Stupid.  

[BoloOfEarth]

Regarding PC backstory, I've found a formula that works pretty well for me.  I had the players draw up 400 point characters, and said they could have +5 free points if they provided a backstory (didn't have to be extensive; 1-2 paragraphs would be fine).  I also gave them +5 points if they provided 5 NPCs (note: not DNPCs - I promised not to use them as targets but rather just to flesh out that character's world), and +5 points spendable only on a single non-organization Contact.

 

(Since I control points on NPCs, I can make the villains at 415 points as easily as I can 400 points.)

 

The backstories I got were:  1x 2 paragraphs; 2x 1 page; 1x 2 pages; 1x 3 pages; 1x 5 pages; 1x 8 pages.  The more extensive ones even provided addresses for home and work, what kind of car they own, etc.

 

The NPCs work great for moving along a plot.  ("Your sister Sarah calls you all freaked out because her boyfriend was at the mall when it was attacked by the Sinful Seven..."  "Your model friend Clarissa tells you that a local fashion designer had a stroke of some sort, but the way she describes it is just like Dr. Morten after that unknown mentalist took his memories..."). 

 

And since the GM controls the NPCs, I can interweave them if I wish ("By the way, Pops, your bartender friend is a huge fan of Nexus' band") to help link PCs.  I try not to do that too much, but it can help if a player is slow to join in.

[BoloOfEarth]

RE: Murder-hobos, it can occasionally creep into Champions games.  For instance, I've mentioned elsewhere about a PC in my game capturing VIPER robots and rewiring them for her own use - without paying points for them. 

 

I've allowed it, because I then feel fully justified in using the robots to mess with the PC (and her teammates, who allow and occasionally encourage such actions).  See the thread on Teleport Redirect for details.

 

Trophies are one thing.  One PC in my game likes to collect hats, helmets, and other headgear from defeated villains.  But he doesn't go around wearing them regularly and trying to get free use of their powers, so I don't penalize him for that.  It's simply a running gag.

 

But if a player thinks he/she can carry around and use Ninjato's mystic katana after throwing the villain into Stronghold -- guess what, your character has just acquired Hunted by DEMON as long as they know your PC has the katana.  Maybe even Hunted by PRIMUS for taking evidence from a crime scene.  And/or Ninjato's teammate the Seer can now easily scry the PC's location, even when he's not in costume, since the katana is nearby.

[bluesguy]

So has anyone else run into this problem?  What kind of excuses do you get from GM's who don't want to run your favorite genre?

 

Since I got hooked on the Hero system (decades ago) I have only played a few sessions using any other system.  I am a Hero gaming snob.  I admit it.  I won't play anything if the system they use isn't Hero.  If that means I don't play and all I do is GM - so be it.

 

As for playing Champions... Well right now we have 2 1/2 GMs in our group, myself, my son (he is in college and only runs/plays in the summer), and another GM.  We only use Hero.  All three GMs have three different fantasy campaigns.  I am the only one who runs a Champions game.

 

Ironically the other GM would be very good running a Champions game but the group wanted to play in another fantasy campaign instead. 

 

My Champions campaign is a 'thin veneer/mix' between Marvel/Champions/Our universes mashed together.  I run very episodic sessions when it comes to Champions.  In fact I am running the longest story line ever for Champions - probably a four session story.

[bigdamnhero]

1. GMing is a lot of work. GMing superheroes is even more work: higher power level, juggling multiple character identities/lives, etc. GMing Hero System is even more work on top of that (or at least it can be). So yeah, that's a big ask for people with jobs, lives, relationships, etc. I enjoy it myself, but I can understand why others may not be able to to throw themselves on it.

 

2. Most RPGers are most familiar with fantasy gaming, and the fantasy tropes they're most familiar with don't translate well into the superhero genre. Plus in my experience a lot of fantasy GMs really like to punish their players for being good guys, which makes those players understandably reluctant to play in a game where the whole point is to be good guys. Or they don't want to GM, because they don't understand how to reward players for being moral. (Which is really kindof sad when you put it like that...)

 

3. For players/GMs who really enjoy roleplaying, there's sometimes the perception that superhero games are just one big combat after another. Ironically, for those who just want to dungeon crawl, I've heard the complaint that superhero games have too much roleplaying and focus on Secret Identities and so forth. [shrug]

 

4. I've heard some players say they don't want to play superheroes because comics are too grim & gritty and no fun now. Simultaneously, they feel 4-color games are old fashioned kid stuff. Or they don't want the focus on "realism" of Iron Age games, but find Silver/Bronze Age games unrealistic. So that can be a tough needle to thread.

 

Prior to my last 4-color Champions game, I sat down with all my prospective players and we talked through what comics tropes they likes and which ones they hated. The one that topped the most-hated list was something I hadn't thought of: the futility of catching supervillains and sending them to Arkham or wherever, knowing they'll have escaped by next Tuesday. Once I swore not to do that - or at least not often - everyone got a lot more interested.