Comic Book Physics

[Trebuchet]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

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?

Our game is four-color, so that kind of thing gets by as long as it doesn't initiate a plot device.

 

Zl'f, my super-gymnast/MA, has thigh-length hair. In any real world that would be as problematical as a cape for a gymnast. But in a supers world, where a pair of glasses and a change of clothing makes an impenetrable disguise, I see no reason to worry about it. It never happens to long haired heroines in the comics. I can't recall ever seeing a character in the comics getting tripped by their cape or tangled up in their long hair. If nothing else, I'd assume that if anyone could pull off acrobatics with thigh-length hair it would be someone with DEX 43. (Her ultralong hair is, in fact, pretty much a deliberate goad to other gymnasts: "Can't touch this!")

[Vondy]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

This is a genre question. If I were running an ordinary supers game then "plausible rubber science" would be in play. There would be some basic reality checks (if you picked up a building you damaged it, sorry), but what you see in most comics would pass without a blink. In my Freedom Patrol campaign the physics were much more realistic (not completely), but with a few caveats, such as Oddhat's "you don't kill yourself with your own powers" rule. Then again, in that game, people who ran around in tights were considered a bit "touched."

[PhaseKitty]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

You mean FLUBBER Science' date=' so bouncy that it gains energy as it goes.[/quote']

 

Hehehe. I LOVE flubber.

 

Hey, betcha could do a charie based on flubber-powers.

 

[Robyn]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

"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?

 

Superheroic physics: you've stumbled across something that works, but you only think you know how it works. If you're wise, you realize you have no idea how it works - it just does. In any case, experimentation can be dangerous or even fatal, and it is likely that anything you think would be possible (as a corollary to what already is) will fail for reasons you don't know about.

[Kristopher]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

In my settings, the powers themselves are pretty wide open, and pretty benign, at least for the user, unless the point of that character is that his powers are dangerous to him, or untrollable, or whatever.*

 

The rest of the world, however, follows fairly strict real-world or hard-SF physics -- try to pick up a battleship, and it will snap in half because it's not designed to take all its weight on an area the size of two hands. Try to hit someone with a building, and you'll get a couple handfulls of masonry, steel, glass, etc, and possible a collapsing building based on what you tore out.

 

 

* Such as the NPC Carnage (so dubbed by the press) who has as is only inate attack power 15d6 EB, AoE Line, Double-Knockback, BEAM. He can control when it goes off, but it's always at full power. He can't really fight crime with it, since he causes so much property damage, so he just works his "mundane" job as a security consultant (he's hired to try to break in through fancy high-tech security systems, to test them to their limits). As someone said the last time I mentioned him on HGDB, he's the guy you track down when the aliens are invading, not when BubbleMan is robbing the First National...

[Funksaw]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Keep in mind; alot of the comic-book physics we take for granted consists entirely upon the idea that your typical audience member does not know about physics. The superheroes of the golden and silver ages could pick up buildings - by a corner - and put them back undamaged because they didn't know physics, archetecture, or even pluming. They were 10 year olds. They weren't even the -smart- 10 year olds... or so the logic goes.

 

The DCAU, on the other hand, has a bit more plausibility - mostly because it's not just kids watching it. It also has to be entertaining for adults as well... and while superman will still pick up a supertanker in the middle and not have the hull split in half (because there's only one point, you see) it doesn't really matter, because even most adults aren't going to remember PSI rules. The entire Mecha walking battle tank-genre doesn't work because of the square cube (?) rule, but no one cares.

 

Put another way, superheroic physics can - and are - dead wrong. But they shouldn't be obviously wrong.

 

Keep in mind, also, that the more sophistication your audience has, the further the length you must go to in order to justify it - and the earlier the character made his debut, the less people -knew.-

 

For example, the Flash got his power when lightning struck "Hard Water" and went through to him. That's good enough when people don't know what "Hard Water" is - essentially, water with a high mineral content, i.e., tap water.

 

Now, HEAVY Water is H2O with the Deuterium isotope of hydrogen rather than the regular ol' hydrogen atom. (Essentially, it's H20 with an added neutron in the hydrogen atom - an important distinction in nuclear physics - and it's called heavy because it's atomic weight is higher, and therefore, so is it's density. And while it's technically potable, it could lead to cytotoxic poisioning, so Don't Do what Donny Don't Does.)

 

 

Anyway - I just wanted to use that image...

[Lemurion]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Keep in mind; alot of the comic-book physics we take for granted consists entirely upon the idea that your typical audience member does not know about physics. The superheroes of the golden and silver ages could pick up buildings - by a corner - and put them back undamaged because they didn't know physics, archetecture, or even pluming. They were 10 year olds. They weren't even the -smart- 10 year olds... or so the logic goes.

 

The DCAU, on the other hand, has a bit more plausibility - mostly because it's not just kids watching it. It also has to be entertaining for adults as well... and while superman will still pick up a supertanker in the middle and not have the hull split in half (because there's only one point, you see) it doesn't really matter, because even most adults aren't going to remember PSI rules. The entire Mecha walking battle tank-genre doesn't work because of the square cube (?) rule, but no one cares.

 

Put another way, superheroic physics can - and are - dead wrong. But they shouldn't be obviously wrong.

 

Keep in mind, also, that the more sophistication your audience has, the further the length you must go to in order to justify it - and the earlier the character made his debut, the less people -knew.-

 

For example, the Flash got his power when lightning struck "Hard Water" and went through to him. That's good enough when people don't know what "Hard Water" is - essentially, water with a high mineral content, i.e., tap water.

 

Now, HEAVY Water is H2O with the Deuterium isotope of hydrogen rather than the regular ol' hydrogen atom. (Essentially, it's H20 with an added neutron in the hydrogen atom - an important distinction in nuclear physics - and it's called heavy because it's atomic weight is higher, and therefore, so is it's density. And while it's technically potable, it could lead to cytotoxic poisioning, so Don't Do what Donny Don't Does.)

 

 

Anyway - I just wanted to use that image...

 

This is why I set my supers game in 1938. I get to rely on Pulp-Era super assumptions. Much more fun.

[PhaseKitty]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Superheroic physics: you've stumbled across something that works' date=' but you only [i']think[/i] you know how it works. If you're wise, you realize you have no idea how it works - it just does. In any case, experimentation can be dangerous or even fatal, and it is likely that anything you think would be possible (as a corollary to what already is) will fail for reasons you don't know about.

 

Or you stumble cross something that works, and you know you don't understand all of how it works, but you know enuf to get by and you're experimenting with your powers all the time. Good idea to experiment away from people.

[jkwleisemann]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Science is... variable in my campaigns. Occasionally you run across a character who involves questionable quantum physics. Occasionally (more often) you involve characters who make Newton and Einstein do the lambada in their respective graves. :-P

 

Personally, most of the time, I'm not much for enforcing physics. The invariable laws of physics suck - they make people go splat when they jump off buildings, instead of fly around and look cool.

 

Though, thinking about it, it could be interesting to design a character who enforces the laws of physics on folks. Not entirely sure how I'd build it (probably a massive VPP or Transform to simulate it), but it could be interesting to see how the heroes would deal with no longer having rubber science at their disposal.

[Kristopher]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Science is... variable in my campaigns. Occasionally you run across a character who involves questionable quantum physics. Occasionally (more often) you involve characters who make Newton and Einstein do the lambada in their respective graves. :-P

 

Personally, most of the time, I'm not much for enforcing physics. The invariable laws of physics suck - they make people go splat when they jump off buildings, instead of fly around and look cool.

 

Though, thinking about it, it could be interesting to design a character who enforces the laws of physics on folks. Not entirely sure how I'd build it (probably a massive VPP or Transform to simulate it), but it could be interesting to see how the heroes would deal with no longer having rubber science at their disposal.

 

Sounds like an AoE Suppress.

[Kenn]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Over the years I've been gaming I've often been plagued by players who understand enough about physics that they've sometimes resisted the "rubber science" nature of the universe.

 

Also, it makes role-playing a scientist hard. The character buys his SS: Physics, but much of what the player knows is well, wrong.

 

Another odd problem I have is I know a player of mine, who's playing a gravity manipulator, is a firm believer in the dark matter theory. I, on the other hand, find the dark matter theory very convoluted, and think the idea that maybe we don't understand gravitaional acceleration quite as well as we thought is more likely, so I prefer the MOND/TeVeS approach. Sooner or later, this might be an issue.

 

What happens when real physics is uncertain, and people don't agree as to which way the universe "really is?" (I'm the GM, I'll pull rank.

[Vestnik]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Sounds like an AoE Suppress.

 

AoE Suppress: 20d6 Genre Conventions, All Genre Conventions Simultaneously (+2)

[Lemurion]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

What happens when real physics is uncertain, and people don't agree as to which way the universe "really is?" (I'm the GM, I'll pull rank.

 

Exactly, it's your world, you're the one who sets the genre conventions.

[PhaseKitty]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

What happens when real physics is uncertain' date=' and people don't agree as to which way the universe "really is?" (I'm the GM, I'll pull rank.[/quote']

 

Yeah, that's one method.

 

[Kristopher]

Re: Comic Book Physics

 

Exactly' date=' it's your world, you're the one who sets the genre conventions.[/quote']

 

Too true.