Comic Book Physics

[CrosshairCollie]

Something that occured to me during the Capes? thread ...

 

Many of the anti-cape responses revolved around impracticality and/or side effects of having them, like speedster having drag or nimble martial artists getting tangled in them. While these are certainly realistic, they don't tend to happen in the comics themselves.

 

Besides the blatant violations of thermodynamics and action/reaction that powers themselves generate, how comic-booky does the physics get in your games?

[Spidey88]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Basically, my games stay pretty comic-booky physics-wise. We always err on the side of "cool" or "fun", as long as it doesn't feel completely wrong for the style of game we're playing (usually pretty four-color anyway). If anything, I have to watch myself sometimes to make sure that players can't get away with too much when the game rules are less forgiving than what I think makes sense (ie. you have to pay for that with points - no freebies if you're going to be doing this fairly often, even though your abilities would cover that in real life)!

 

just touching on the capes thing in particular - if a character in a game I ran was a speedster with a cape, I certainly wouldn't want to stomp on his fun. Just because it seems kind of strange based on my tastes is no reason to give him a hard time (especially over something that's generally just an esthetic concern anyway).

[Arkham]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Utterly and completely. Including but not limited to the stronger bricks picking up skyscrapers, hitting villains with them, and then _PUTTING THEM BACK UNDAMAGED_.

 

Make Mine Silver Age!

[TheRavenIs]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

I do as much as needed or not as required for playability and fun.

[keithcurtis]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

If it can be explained, it can be done.

 

"I charge my body with negative gravity particles to give myself the power of flight."

How those hokey explanations interact with the real world is a little more controlled. Why can't NGP man create a negative gravity particle engine for industry? What are the limits of NGP production?

 

Keith "Science!" Curtis

[Lemurion]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

I'm running pulp supers right now, and the physics are definitely based on the pulp world, rather than the real world.

 

You can lift ANYTHING with a Zeppelin, you just need one that's big enough. (as a corollary to that, for all practical purposes there is no upper limit on Zeppelin size).

 

Other pulp truisms abound, but that's one of my favorite ones.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Utterly and completely. Including but not limited to the stronger bricks picking up skyscrapers, hitting villains with them, and then _PUTTING THEM BACK UNDAMAGED_.

 

Make Mine Silver Age!

 

This, in fact, was the PRECISE kind of example I was looking for.

 

Can your hero weld the base of the building back into place with his eyebeams, and all the utilities still work?

[JackValhalla]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Where powers, power stunts, costumes, and such are concerned, I run a very fast-and-loose campaign. One PC is a martial artist with a cape (cloak, rather), another is a chameleon-type who adventures in the buff but doesn't catch cold. Not a lot of spandex in the setting, most people prefer costumes with a degree of protection to them. Supertypes are assumed to have well-proportioned bodies with just enough body fat to grease a cake pan, but the exceptions are numerous. If someone with the "Brick Tricks" Power skill tries to bonk somebody down into the ground, provided they make the skill roll it works as planned, and the brick does not actually launch himself up into the air as an opposite reaction. We do not question that Captain Thews can lift a building, and it will maintain structural integrity instead of ripping apart under the strain. We do not question that Captain Thews does not plunge himself into the ground trying to lift something huge and balance it on the 1/2 square feet of surface area his boots provide. Some powers cannot be replicated by science, such as Doctor Fenris's cold-fusion jetpack, which was dismantled on the doctor's death and found to contain little more than clockwork, tubes that didn't go anywhere, and other useless bits that could not explain how it worked. Other powers can be reproduced, such as Kevlite's hexacarbon body armor, which was successfully "cloned" back in the 80s.

Physics be damned. I know enough about physics IRL. I don't need it interfering with my superheroes.

Other genres, on the other hand, get treated entirely differently. I'm a stickler then.

[lynnlefey]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Yes, in my world, you can indeed pick up a bus by its front bumper.

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

While running my Defenders of Lakeport campaign, here are just a few of things that happened to demonstrate the comic-book physics:

 

1) While battling a mystic monster from the depths of Lake Michigan, the group's brick (Red Bear) picked up and threw a fully-loaded gasoline truck with one hand even though it out-massed him by a factor of fifty.

 

2) Just before the arrival of the supervillain Timemaster, Lake Michigan behaved strangely -- liquid waves of water seemed to slow down and were actually solid enough to stand upon (provided you didn't stand in the same place for more than a few seconds). In fact, the team's martial artist (White Lotus) ran across the surface of the lake to assist one of the other team members with an out-of-control ore freighter caught in the effect.

 

3) While battling the villain Devastator (who was beefed up to take on the whole team), Red Bear and the villain exchanged blows so mighty that windows in the surrounding buildings were shattering from the concussions of the blows, though the characters' hearing was never affected.

 

So yeah, if the four-color gloves are off, things get pretty wild in my games. But I'm rarely in the mood these days to number-crunch those sorts of characters or throw that many dice...

 

Matt "Havin'-fun" Frisbee

[JackValhalla]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Oh, temporal disturbance? That's a whole other subject. The comic book superhero genre is fairly specific on that point.

If you move fast enough, anything is possible.

Running on water? Hfil, the Flash was known to run on air. Phase through solid objects, travel dimensions, even travel through time... just move fast enough. Golden Age Superman had the powers of Gawd Himself, all he had to do was kick in the superspeed, and then say something that includes the worlds "molecules", "vibrating", and ends with "-should allow me to (fillinludicrouspowerstunthere)".

 

I don't think I've ever had windows shattering out of nearby buildings, though. Unless there was a specifically sound-based or area-effect attack of sufficient power. Just punching back and forth? Ripping up the concrete beneath their feet, I've done that... But I usually don't bring out that scale of collateral damage unless someone is throwing stuff or breaking the sound barrier in the city.

[Zed-F]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Personally, I prefer games that are based in a setting closer to the real world.

 

In the game I am currently GMing, unless it's explicitly the result of the events that caused supers to appear in the game world in the first place, stuff behaves exactly as it would in real life (or at least, as how I imagine they would behave in real life.) Yes, this means it's a pretty darn lethal setting. That's why I billed it as Dark Champions, rather than as Champions.

[Arkham]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

This, in fact, was the PRECISE kind of example I was looking for.

 

Can your hero weld the base of the building back into place with his eyebeams, and all the utilities still work?

 

I'm actually the GM. The hero doesn't have heat vision, but if he picked up the building instead of the villain breaking it, then we don't even worry about welding it on. Just put it back where it was and everything is just fine... Even the people still inside that office building you just clocked Landshark with.

[Spectrum]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

If it can be explained, it can be done.

 

"I charge my body with negative gravity particles to give myself the power of flight."

How those hokey explanations interact with the real world is a little more controlled. Why can't NGP man create a negative gravity particle engine for industry? What are the limits of NGP production?

 

Keith "Science!" Curtis

 

That's similar to my take on comic book physics. If you can make it sound plausible then it works.

[wrestlinggeek]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

With me, it varies. But in most of my games it's around the same level of reality as the Justice League animated series. Yeah, you can pick up a building (if you're strong enough), and hit the bad guy with it, but you'd better hurry and get that shot in before the building crumbles. Characters exchanging punches with 60+ strength will probably shatter nearby windows. You can run across water if you're fast enough. A guy with normal-human maximum strength can throw or knock over a bad guy who outmasses him by a ton or so, if he catches the baddie by surprise and uses the right technique. It's not incredibly realistic, but it's fun.

[OddHat]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

I do actually pay some attention to real world physics, but I'll still let Superpowers function, and more or less as they do in the comics. Rule one is that you don't kill yourself directly by using your powers, despite the many, many situations where that really should be the case.

[Dr. Hercules]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

My character, Tomorrow Boy,is a walking billboard for "Rubber Science":D

 

But every gadget he comes up with has some explanation, in my mind anyway, that might make it plausible.

Now, does any of it do with "real hard science"? Hardly, but I can make it sound cool!

Ex: Blitz Device: a teleportation device that uses "folded space" to teleport

 

At least it works for our campaign.

[Dr. Hercules]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Another example:

a Temporal Amplified Dimensional Alternator (TA DA) pack.

I haven't come up what it actual does...yet. But it sure sounds cool:thumbup:

[transmetahuman]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

That's similar to my take on comic book physics. If you can make it sound plausible then it works.

The big problem with this, is players having different ideas about what sounds plausible. I thought I could totally get into a silver-age game if I set my mind to it, got into the spirit of it. Then I started (re-)reading some of the source material from the public library, and even my buttressed-and-reinforced suspension of disbelief plummeted screeching to the ground. I loved Barry Allen as a kid; now I literally couldn't get through a hardcover collection of it.

 

Simply the fact that I'm the kind of geek who thinks too much about powers is going to cause some clashes with more casual, non-fannish players, I think (which could go either way - the fan accepting more goofiness, or less, than the non-fan). And I think plausibility might depend a lot on which era of comics the other fannish players are most familiar with, too.

 

My big question is, how do a group of players + GM get to a consensus about these things before conflicts arise, without having played together for years? How do you communicate this stuff?

[OddHat]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

My big question is, how do a group of players + GM get to a consensus about these things before conflicts arise, without having played together for years? How do you communicate this stuff?

 

That's a really good question. I've been in groups that have had serious conflict over the answer. What makes it worse is that the answer varies both by subject and individual. A GM or player might take a completely Silver Age approach to physics, but insist that police procedure follow exact real world standards.

 

Personally, I've written a detailed time line and articles to help players get a handle on how my world works. It seems to help.

[input.jack]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

When my game group introduced a new Player to superheroes "done right" by showing her the Bruce Timm DCAU series (Batman, JLA, JLU, etc), we sort of arrived at the consensus for how physics worked based on that. Like a previous poster, things in my supers game work alot like in the DCAU; physics apply, but with room made for superheroics. You cant just set a building back down and expect the utilities to work, and if people were inside it when you slammed Dr. Bad with it, theyll be at least rattled and most likkely hurt (especially when the building shatters when you hit Dr. Bad with it). But the "rubber science" explanations apply to how Powers work.

[zaras]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

I usually go by the rule that if it gets in the way of being fun then scrap it. That said i do insist all comic book rubber science has a well thought out rationale behind it- even if its totally fictious it gives me somehting to play aropund with.

 

I did run 'real world physics' in a champions one-off once. It turned into a spoof campaign with remarkable speed with players taunting villanous bricks with "Bet you cant pick up that laden gas truck" then watching as they sunk into the ground. The teams speedster went superspeed with disastrous results- friction being the least of his problems, even a grain of dust can disembowl you at speed.

[Armitage]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

The big problem with this' date=' is players having different ideas about what sounds plausible. I thought I could totally get into a silver-age game if I set my mind to it, got into the spirit of it. Then I started (re-)reading some of the source material from the public library, and even my buttressed-and-reinforced suspension of disbelief plummeted screeching to the ground. [/quote']

 

Bad comic book science, mostly Silver Age.

http://www.superdickery.com/science/1.html

[PhaseKitty]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Another example:

a Temporal Amplified Dimensional Alternator (TA DA) pack.

I haven't come up what it actual does...yet. But it sure sounds cool:thumbup:

 

Oooo! I want one.

 

I don't care what it does: with that name it's got to be da bomb.

 

OT, but that's another thing I love to see——really cool acronyms.

 

OnT, I love science so rubbery it bounces off the ceiling and boing-boing-boings around the room.

 

[TheRavenIs]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Oooo! I want one.

 

I don't care what it does: with that name it's got to be da bomb.

 

OT, but that's another thing I love to see——really cool acronyms.

 

OnT, I love science so rubbery it bounces off the ceiling and boing-boing-boings around the room.

 

You mean FLUBBER Science, so bouncy that it gains energy as it goes.