Secret IDs: In or Out?

[Klytus]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

Secret ID's are a staple of the super-heroic genre. The question, to my mind, is not, "Is it reasonable, considering modern information technology, to use them in my Champions campaign?" but rather "How can I make Secret ID's reasonable to have in game in spite of modern information technology?"

 

In my game world, the U.S. government does have a genuine interest in tracking all metahumans - I mean, these people are dangerous! So they are willing to work with metas who work with them. If John Smith registers with the Bureau of Metahuman Affairs as "Captain Napalm", he will then be able to pursue the life of a costumed hero with relative ease. After all, if he starts to cross the line, the govt. can find him. As an added bonus, he will be able to go to court and give testimony in costume *as* Captain Napalm under the same legal logic that allows under-cover cops to give testimony without compromising their identity. The government has the "real" identity of Captain Napalm on record, and they are able to verify that the dude in the costume IS John Smith, and that is what counts. The govt. will also work to actively help maintain that "Agent's" cover. Much like the way things were shown in The Incredibles

 

Any other costumed metahumans who are not registered have to be more careful. Of course, with powers like Invisibility, shape shifting, teleportation, and what-have-you readily available, it isn't as hard as most people might think. Plus, a number of villains in my games use full-face helmets with tinted visors as masks, which makes it tough to find them using facial-recognition technology.

 

There is also a metahuman-friendly corporation run by a super-heroic metahuman in my game world (founded by one of the players, actually). They not only make super-tech available to metas (including the ever-popular "Invisibility to Mutant-Scanners Gizmo") but will issue credit cards and checking accounts to meta's under their code name, all they need is a way to verify ID in a way that is NOT able to be cross-referenced with anything the govt would have in a database. In other words, fingerprints and DNA are out, but retina scans, brainwave scans, and thermal-images work. This company makes its money by selling cutting-0edge high tech. They also sell metahuman insurance. Not only does it cover the costs of metahuman collateral damage, but metahumans with the insurance are covered against lawsuits without placing their IDs at risk.

[Enforcer84]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

I'm not really convinced that having DNPCs drop like flies without a secret ID is realistic.

Why not? They're a lot easier to knock off than superheroes.

[Enforcer84]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

My secret identity is that of a newt.

[Klytus]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

My secret identity is that of a newt.

 

I take it you got better?

[Weldun]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

Hmm. Several times a key term appears. "Suspension of Disbelief." We play these games to have fun and tell a good story. If we wanted absolute realism, we wouldn't play these games, we simply reside only in the real world. So, in this context, at what point do we say that a secret identity is too unrealistic? That it stretches our ability to suspend our disbelief to breaking point?

 

In my games, I tend to cut the PC a little slack, and so long as they pay a little more than lip service to it's maintenance, only bring it up as a crisis point in a spotlight scenario. I actually don't know what age I set my games in, as I don't really use the terms. I should probably read up on them, I guess. Personally, I just get on with the game and make sure that eveyone's having fun.

[Enforcer84]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

I take it you got better?

Periodically

[Klytus]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

That said I never got Superman's "cover". Dude' date=' Clark Kent is Superman....w/ glasses. Even if you dont figure it out ( I mean they are seemingly different in personality) you would think Lois would go "hey Clark, has anyone ever told you that you look a little like Superman." [/quote']

 

Remember the scene in Superman the Movie when Clark is in Lois' appartment having just taken her flying as Superman? He doesn't just pull off the glassess, but he changes his posture, the tone and timbre of his voice, and his entire deameanor. Right before your eyes, he transformed from Clark to Superman. The difference was astounding, and it made me believe that it could be done. Yes, even Lois Lane, ace reporter, blinded as she was with Superman-sized-stars in her eyes, could be fooled for several years.

 

I wish I could find the cite, but I remember someone did a psych-experiment at some point to test the "Clark Kent" effect. People were shown one set of pictures, and then a second and were asked to identify any the recognized from the first set. Something like 75% of the people did not recognize pictures they had just seen where the only difference between the photos was a pair of glasses.

 

The logic of it Post-Crisis is that because Superman does not wear gloves or a mask, everyone assumes that he is "on call" as Superman 24/7, and that he doesn't even have a Secret Identity. If no one is looking for it, no one will ever find it. Plus, thanks to some cooperative shapechangers, Clark Kent and Superman have been seen and photographed side-by-side enough times that while some people have noticed they may look alike, it would never even occur to them to think that they are the same man.

[Mike W]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

Er...why? No' date=' seriously. Some people have gotten into the habit of thinking that it would be "realistic" for criminals to track down a superhero's spouse or girlfriend and stuff her into a refrigerator, but it isn't. Why would someone want to provoke an opponent with superpowers into killing them? What's the benefit to them? Just the thrill of being eeeeevil? I think Green Goblins and Jokers should be few and far between. And I think your PCs should be able to lock them up with a reasonable expectation that they will usually stay locked up for extended periods of time. And on the rare occasions when when the freaking loons do manage to get back out on the street for a while, they go back to doing what their mental problem tells them they have to do. If that's killing blonde-haired college student, Gwen Stacy may be in particular danger, but my heros are going to know that and are going take appropriate precautions to protect her. Which is, incidentally, far easier if Gwen knows just who the heck her boyfriend is and why she might be in danger from that serial killer he slung into the poorly secured hoosegow. Most of my villains, though, want wealth, or power, or fame or service to an ideological or religious cause. They don't want to die. They want to win. If someone wants their DNPC to end up in constant danger, it's going to be because that DNPC has a Lois Lane-like fondness for putting herself there, and it won't matter whether their superheroic friend has secret, no, or public ID.[/quote']

 

The problem is that most superheroes have several villains who will kill without a thought. And many of them also have personal grudges against the hero. Put the two together and Gwen is going to be in constant danger because the villain KNOWS that most heroes won't stoop to killing. And if they did, the hero's career would be over in a hurry. Remember, a lot of heroes have long lists of enemies that slowly grew to hate them over time and this made the fights much more personal and much nastier as the rivalry grew. Plus, comics have gotten edgier. So more and more villains have traded in bank robbing for world domination and slowly used more and more violent methods to achieve their ends.

 

Put the two together, and you end up with a lot of heroes who have long lists of enemies willing to step up to the plate and kill or kidnap the loved ones of the hero who keeps thwarting them. Spiderman, for example, has a LONG list of enemies who would try to kill or kidnap Mary Jane to get to Spidey or who would consider such a ploy as part of a larger plan. Not to mention a couple who would do it just for fun. Off hand: Green Goblin, Hobgoblin, Carnage, Kingpin, Vulture, Carlos Lobo, Hammerhead, Jackal(if they decide he is still alive), Silvermane, and Scorpion/Venom II(Mac Gargan). I'm sure I'm missing a few but it's late I'm doing this off the top of my head.

 

Several other heroes have similarly long lists. You mentioned Joker, but really half of Batman's enemies(at least) are psychopathic killers who would go after his friends in a heartbeat if they knew who he was: Joker, Scarecrow, Killer Croc, Black Mask, Two Face - again the list is long.

[Balabanto]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out? (Off Topic)

 

You should take The Joker off your list.

 

The Joker is obsessed with Batman. He is NOT interested in Bruce Wayne or anything having to do with him. He has, in fact, killed people before FOR trying to take Batman's mask OFF.

 

It really depends on the psychology of the psychopath. And the problem is that many supervillains are psychopathic. The problem is, the psychopath focuses on the hero and his iconic persona rather than the person under it. If the psychopath tries to find out who the hero REALLY is, then he's not a psychopath anymore, really.

[David Johnston]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

The problem is that most superheroes have several villains who will kill without a thought. And many of them also have personal grudges against the hero. Put the two together and Gwen is going to be in constant danger because the villain KNOWS that most heroes won't stoop to killing.

 

 

Does he really? In a "realistic" context he knows nothing of the kind. He doesn't know he's a comic book character and his opponent has a comics code influenced writer restraining the super-hero from reacting like a human being. And, in a "realistic" context, you don't see the same characters slipping the bonds of justice regularly and rapidly and then invariably ending up fighting the exact same hero again as if he owns them. And yes, Batman's villains are almost all crazy enough to make him look like a paragon of sanity in comparison and comic books have become "edgier".

 

So edgy in fact that I think they've once again lost contact with emotional believability for me. It's like television. These days, the only crimes on television outside of Veronica Mars seem to be murder and child molestation, because nothing short of that is spicy enough for the jaded palate of an innured audience. If they even want to have their characters investigate some lesser crime, they have to arbitrarily stick a murder in, vide the episode of L&O: CI, where the only thing that makes emptying a bank vault worthy of note is that the criminals happened to leave one of their members behind as a corpse.

[Balabanto]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

That's why my Paul Revere High Teen Champions setting (in my Legacies world) is highly influenced by Veronica Mars in addition to other sources. I'm working on the project now, though it's significantly long and has like fifteen character sheets. (Ow)

[Mike W]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out? (Off Topic)

 

You should take The Joker off your list.

 

The Joker is obsessed with Batman. He is NOT interested in Bruce Wayne or anything having to do with him. He has, in fact, killed people before FOR trying to take Batman's mask OFF.

 

It really depends on the psychology of the psychopath. And the problem is that many supervillains are psychopathic. The problem is, the psychopath focuses on the hero and his iconic persona rather than the person under it. If the psychopath tries to find out who the hero REALLY is, then he's not a psychopath anymore, really.

 

Not necessarily. Joker is obsessed with Batman. He doesn't care who is under the mask, but if he found out, he'd probably use it against Batman. Even if you take Joker off the list, you still have a LONG line of candidates willing to do evil things to anyone they think Batman cares about - in either identity.

[Mike W]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

Does he really? In a "realistic" context he knows nothing of the kind. He doesn't know he's a comic book character and his opponent has a comics code influenced writer restraining the super-hero from reacting like a human being. And, in a "realistic" context, you don't see the same characters slipping the bonds of justice regularly and rapidly and then invariably ending up fighting the exact same hero again as if he owns them. And yes, Batman's villains are almost all crazy enough to make him look like a paragon of sanity in comparison and comic books have become "edgier".

 

So edgy in fact that I think they've once again lost contact with emotional believability for me. It's like television. These days, the only crimes on television outside of Veronica Mars seem to be murder and child molestation, because nothing short of that is spicy enough for the jaded palate of an innured audience. If they even want to have their characters investigate some lesser crime, they have to arbitrarily stick a murder in, vide the episode of L&O: CI, where the only thing that makes emptying a bank vault worthy of note is that the criminals happened to leave one of their members behind as a corpse.

 

Well, the villain can be pretty sure. This is especially the case with well known heroes who have established personalities/psych profiles. No crook believes Capt. America will kill him because Cap has made it clear through his actions that it just won't happen. But the same villain wouldn't take any odds on Wolverine. You can also liken it to the superheroes being "police" of a sort. No matter what you do, the cop is only allowed to shoot you in certain circumstances. And given the natural resiliency of most supervillains, they might get a nasty beating, but far more often than not, the hero would have to commit deliberate murder to kill the person rather than incapacitate them.

 

I agree that comics have gotten too edgy and have lost touch with a lot of things(most importantly what made them an effective story telling medium in the first place). Above all, the current empshasis on "realism" is ruining them simply because they were never meant to be "realistic" in the first place. They had their own rules and if you were willing to accept those rules, everything worked just fine. At their core, they are fantasy and science fiction. I mean, most comic book science is somewhere between shaky and patently absurd. There are only a handful of characters in all of comics who are remotely possible in a "real world" scenario. Sticking to the "Big Two" I see, depending on how much credit you give to the stories of martial arts masters: Batman(somewhat, but not the JLA Batgod), Daredevil, Electra, Punisher, Robin - and the list is already getting thin. And Electra was resurrected once. Even Capt. America clearly has superhuman agility and strength(at least as a combination. He's got the strength of one of those World's Strongest Men competitors and the agility of an Olympic Gold Medalist and it seems highly unlikely you can have both given what each demands).

[FenrisUlf]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

I agree that comics have gotten too edgy and have lost touch with a lot of things(most importantly what made them an effective story telling medium in the first place). Above all' date=' the current empshasis on "realism" is ruining them simply because they were never meant to be "realistic" in the first place. [/quote']

 

Warning, OT, but I think one of the things helping to ruin comics is what seems like an ever-increasing sense of contempt by the writers and other creators towards the fans. I recently read a Marvel comic where they bluntly stated that "Kids don't read comics any more, only fat guys in their 30s who live in their mother's basement." I looked through several other comics and graphic novels there, all of them from DC or Marvel, and found much the same attitude of sneering disgust for both the genre and its fans throughout them. I wonder - if these people hate superhero comics and their readers so much, then why don't they find another job?

[Mike W]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

Warning' date=' OT, but I think one of the things helping to ruin comics is what seems like an ever-increasing sense of contempt by the writers and other creators towards the fans. I recently read a Marvel comic where they bluntly stated that "Kids don't read comics any more, only fat guys in their 30s who live in their mother's basement." I looked through several other comics and graphic novels there, all of them from DC or Marvel, and found much the same attitude of sneering disgust for both the genre and its fans throughout them. I wonder - if these people hate superhero comics and their readers so much, then why don't they find another job?[/quote']

 

"Warning, OT?" I don't understand.

 

I do agree that there seems to be a fair amount of people writing them that have no respect for the characters or the fans. But part of that I think is because they, especially Marvel, see the characters as intellectual properties to make money off of(i.e. things to turn into TV and Movies where we can rewrite them at will and get away with it). But also, I think you have a lot of people who are not very good writers, who make mistakes that are so basic it is clear they don't know what they are doing(like starting plot lines they haven't thought through and then not being able to find a good way out of them), and who then get resentful when the fans either criticize them or don't buy the book. Granted, many of the people who THINK they could do better probably couldn't, but then again, many of them probably aren't much different than the people doing the writing and probably wouldn't do much worse either.

[Weldun]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

OT=Off Topic.

[FenrisUlf]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

"Warning' date=' OT?" I don't understand.[/quote']

 

Like Weldun said.

 

I do agree that there seems to be a fair amount of people writing them that have no respect for the characters or the fans. But part of that I think is because they' date=' especially Marvel, see the characters as intellectual properties to make money off of(i.e. things to turn into TV and Movies where we can rewrite them at will and get away with it). But also, I think you have a lot of people who are not very good writers, who make mistakes that are so basic it is clear they don't know what they are doing(like starting plot lines they haven't thought through and then not being able to find a good way out of them), and who then get resentful when the fans either criticize them or don't buy the book. [/quote']

 

I do think there's a big difference between when it was folks like Stan or Roy Thomas or their fellows doing it. To them, Spidey and the FF and all the rest were just geekish fantasies that other folks liked reading about, and they were fortunate enough to get paid for writing about them. Now, it's all about the bottom line -- first, last, and always. Mind, making a profit was important back in the old days too, but they cared about their work as something more than a paycheck.

 

Granted' date=' many of the people who THINK they could do better probably couldn't, but then again, many of them probably aren't much different than the people doing the writing and probably wouldn't do much worse either.[/quote']

 

I know I wouldn't do any better than the guys writing now, but I like to think I wouldn't proceed on the attitude that "all the guys who read this stuff are worthless @$$holes, and I'll **ck over the characters just to show them what I think of this junk." Not everyone is like that, of course, but as several other folks have pointed out here, some major comics writers do have a serious hate-on for anything superhero related.

[David Johnston]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

Well' date=' the villain can be pretty sure. This is especially the case with well known heroes who have established personalities/psych profiles. No crook believes Capt. America will kill him because Cap has made it clear through his actions that it just won't happen. [/quote']

 

Well, no he hasn't. Cap doesn't kill as many people as he did in the Golden Age. He no longer considers himself a soldier. He clearly considers killing to be a last resort for what he is now, a kind of law enforcement officer. But how many villains have tested that by killing his girlfriends? Note that Cap in fact has no secret identity. Anyone who cares to has known who Steve Rogers is for, oh must be decades now. He made an abortive attempt to set up a new secret identity for himself but apparently he (or his writer) concluded it was too much trouble. It's a comic book cliche now for the grief-stricken hero to come within a hairs-breadth of killing the villain but at the last moment to prove he's "better" by not taking that finishing blow, but of course he couldn't do that if the villain was just a hairs-breadth less tough so the previous blow ended up being not quite enough to kill him.

 

So no, a villain can't count on Captain Public Awareness not killing him if he pushes CPA farther than CPA has ever been pushed before. Take my public ID character, Riptide. He once had an encounter with the villain who killed his mother (and no, that had nothing to do with his public ID. He inherited powers from his superheroine mother and became a superhero after she was murdered). Now at no other point during his career did he come off as anything other than a boastful fun loving thrill-seeker who treated fighting crime as a game at least as far as his opponents and the media were concerned. In fact he was on record as not minding if supervillains escaped custody because that just meant he got to have the fun of catching them again before they could do anything.

 

But you know, I played him a bit differently on that particular occasion. The opponent survived because I let Riptide's teammates stop him, but if they hadn't been there, I would have been in a bind since I would have had to have Bob kill him. And if the character had been a crunchy, that first killing attack _would_ have killed him.

[Mike W]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

Well, no he hasn't. Cap doesn't kill as many people as he did in the Golden Age. He no longer considers himself a soldier. He clearly considers killing to be a last resort for what he is now, a kind of law enforcement officer. But how many villains have tested that by killing his girlfriends? Note that Cap in fact has no secret identity. Anyone who cares to has known who Steve Rogers is for, oh must be decades now. He made an abortive attempt to set up a new secret identity for himself but apparently he (or his writer) concluded it was too much trouble. It's a comic book cliche now for the grief-stricken hero to come within a hairs-breadth of killing the villain but at the last moment to prove he's "better" by not taking that finishing blow, but of course he couldn't do that if the villain was just a hairs-breadth less tough so the previous blow ended up being not quite enough to kill him.

 

So no, a villain can't count on Captain Public Awareness not killing him if he pushes CPA farther than CPA has ever been pushed before. Take my public ID character, Riptide. He once had an encounter with the villain who killed his mother (and no, that had nothing to do with his public ID. He inherited powers from his superheroine mother and became a superhero after she was murdered). Now at no other point during his career did he come off as anything other than a boastful fun loving thrill-seeker who treated fighting crime as a game at least as far as his opponents and the media were concerned. In fact he was on record as not minding if supervillains escaped custody because that just meant he got to have the fun of catching them again before they could do anything.

 

But you know, I played him a bit differently on that particular occasion. The opponent survived because I let Riptide's teammates stop him, but if they hadn't been there, I would have been in a bind since I would have had to have Bob kill him. And if the character had been a crunchy, that first killing attack _would_ have killed him.

 

I would disagree that Cap hasn't been pushed far enough to test that. After the Masters of Evil broke into the mansion, destroyed all of his keepsakes and tortured Jarvis in front of Cap - he didn't kill a single one of them next time he saw them. He played rougher, no doubt, but at no point did he attempt to do anything that might have killed them (and yes, I'm counting tossing Hyde off the mountain; Cap knew very well Hyde would live through that, which Hyde did without any lasting injuries). And there have been other times too. But that's part of the difference between Cap and other characters. Cap won't be pushed into deliberately killing someone.

 

As for your personal character, it's not a fair comparison because 1. Every character has a breaking point. Only you can determine the break point for your character. and 2. Given your views, it's pretty circular reasoning. "I'm right because that's how my character would do things," doesn't exactly fly for the general argument. If you want to play him that way, hey he's your character go for it, but I don't think he applies to the general discussion.

[Constantine]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out? (Off Topic)

 

You should take The Joker off your list.

 

The Joker is obsessed with Batman. He is NOT interested in Bruce Wayne or anything having to do with him. He has, in fact, killed people before FOR trying to take Batman's mask OFF.

 

It really depends on the psychology of the psychopath. And the problem is that many supervillains are psychopathic. The problem is, the psychopath focuses on the hero and his iconic persona rather than the person under it. If the psychopath tries to find out who the hero REALLY is, then he's not a psychopath anymore, really.

 

How can you take Joker off the list? Look what happened to Barbara Gordon in the Killing Joke, that was only kind of associated with Batman, as far as anyone knew. Then there is what happened to Robin...

[Balabanto]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

I can because the Killing Joke is part of the slippery slope of fan contempt. The Joker, PROPERLY written, shouldn't be doing things like that.

 

Somewhere along the line, people forgot that comics don't have to be great bildungsroman art in every issue.

 

Yes, I am writing an adventure called Mind Over Matter that deals with these very issues of "Grimmer Heroes" and their behavior, the idea of hero worship, and "where have all the kid sidekicks gone." (Shameless plug, but when you see it and the 30+ character sheets that go into it, I'm hoping you'll give me a great hug and say "Thanks, Michael. You changed my whole world.")

 

Yes, I think comics have moved too far towards realism, and I think a lot of my players don't understand that realism isn't real either.

 

Suspend your disbelief. Go along for the ride. And be a hero.

[David Johnston]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

 

As for your personal character, it's not a fair comparison because 1. Every character has a breaking point. Only you can determine the break point for your character.

 

But isn't that really my point? The villain doesn't know the hero's breakpoint. So why try so hard to reach it?

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

As to Secret Identities in general, maybe (or probably) they're unrealistic in the modern age. But then again, I don't write comics or have superpowers, so I really don't care much about "Secret Identities in general."

 

As far as in my game, Secret IDs will remain a staple because they enhance game play and player enjoyment. (Plus, it give me another way to mess with the PCs. ) A character who can lift buildings, juggle cars, and bounce anti-tank shells off his chest may not be challenged by much. But it's a new kind of challenge to sneak out of a dinner date because he saw a known supervillain breaking into the building across the street.

 

I don't pursue the realism of Secret Identities, because once you insist upon realism in one aspect, you almost have to bring realism to all the rest. I was in a game where a hero was running at superspeed, and tripped over a fence. One person used real-world physics to argue that the hero should have face-planted the ground at 200 mph. Another said, "Your character shoots wind out of a stick. Care to explain the physics of that?"

 

It may or may not be genre, it may or may not be realistic. But secret identities do add to the fun, so they are free to stay in my game.

[Klytus]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

I can because the Killing Joke is part of the slippery slope of fan contempt. The Joker, PROPERLY written, shouldn't be doing things like that.

 

Somewhere along the line, people forgot that comics don't have to be great bildungsroman art in every issue.

 

Yes, I am writing an adventure called Mind Over Matter that deals with these very issues of "Grimmer Heroes" and their behavior, the idea of hero worship, and "where have all the kid sidekicks gone." (Shameless plug, but when you see it and the 30+ character sheets that go into it, I'm hoping you'll give me a great hug and say "Thanks, Michael. You changed my whole world.")

 

Yes, I think comics have moved too far towards realism, and I think a lot of my players don't understand that realism isn't real either.

 

Suspend your disbelief. Go along for the ride. And be a hero.

Well said.

[Mike W]

Re: Secret IDs: In or Out?

 

But isn't that really my point? The villain doesn't know the hero's breakpoint. So why try so hard to reach it?

 

AGain, I would argue that it depends on the character. Some characters who have been around a long time, the break point is fairly clear.