Plot Ideas from the Comics

[FenrisUlf]

... or more specifically, just which if any writers would you folks suggest as the ones NOT to use as inspiration?

 

I.e., who are the worst comic book writers?

 

Thanks,

 

FenrisUlf

[Hermit]

Some plots work well in the comics, but are not so great in TT. For example, I enjoyed the old comics where a group of super heroes would get caught and split up in Arcade's Muderworld. I'm not going to run it though. It can be a real pain to ask the other players to twiddle their thumbs while I focus on one PC, even if I try to shift over quickly.

 

 

As for who are the worst writers? I tend to judge more by the works than the writers. I've seen some great writers slip and produce stuff that had me cringe, and some medicore or even bad writers put out some amazing stuff out of the blue. The former had me going "Oh #$#$, you're so much better than this" the latter had me going "Whatever you're smoking, keep puffing! This is great #$$#!"

 

Others here are more versed in who's who in comic writing and can probably name names better than I could anyways.

[Tech]

Originally posted by Hermit

Some plots work well in the comics, but are not so great in TT. For example, I enjoyed the old comics where a group of super heroes would get caught and split up in Arcade's Muderworld. I'm not going to run it though. It can be a real pain to ask the other players to twiddle their thumbs while I focus on one PC, even if I try to shift over quickly.

 

Depends on how you run Arcade's Murderworld. My brother ran us threw one and nobody had any problems waiting for someone for a couple reasons:

a) waiting was relatively short

GM kept switching rotating characters keeping interest up

players were interested in what was happening to other characters to see what might happen to theirs.

 

As for my opinion, sorry but I don't buy comics much anymore. Real life is more important money-wise than buying comics.

[Supreme Serpent]

Is there any particular goal in mind, or do you just want a discussion about "I like Frank Miller more than Roger Stern due to X" ?

 

Do you want inspiration for a campaign? If so, tell us something about the campaign, world, likely characters and such and maybe we can focus the answers more.

[John Desmarais]

Re: Plot Ideas from the Comics

 

Originally posted by FenrisUlf

[b

I.e., who are the worst comic book writers?

 

FenrisUlf [/b]

 

It doesn't always work that way. There are many good writers who write stories that simply do not translate well into an rpg. Most of the folks writing team books like to break the teams up into small, more easily managed groups (sometimes individuals). In a comic this works just fine - as a way run an rpg it stinks (creates additional work for the GM and invariably some characters/players don't get enough "screen time").

 

 

John D.

[Hermit]

Originally posted by Tech

Depends on how you run Arcade's Murderworld. My brother ran us threw one and nobody had any problems waiting for someone for a couple reasons:

a) waiting was relatively short

GM kept switching rotating characters keeping interest up

 

 

That's what i meant by "shift quickly" .

[zornwil]

Originally posted by Tech

Depends on how you run Arcade's Murderworld. My brother ran us threw one and nobody had any problems waiting for someone for a couple reasons:

a) waiting was relatively short

GM kept switching rotating characters keeping interest up

players were interested in what was happening to other characters to see what might happen to theirs.

 

As for my opinion, sorry but I don't buy comics much anymore. Real life is more important money-wise than buying comics.

 

I've done this on that grand scale one time. THe PCs were facing a monolithic threat and trying to get to the bottom by examining many leads, so they split up. I handled it via an all-day extensive event. We had a party of sorts, Significant Others over, and while I would play with a couple players at a time, the others would just socialize in the other room. Basically we had 1 set of 3 players 1 set of 2, and 1 player who went on his own. The trio examined the docks around New York and fought a super-villain team; the duo went to Israel, tangling with the Israeli security forces' super-heroes; and the solo player went into Chinatown (again, NY), infiltrating the Tong and getting into a brutal showdown with many skilled members of a rival gang called the Technicians (who were a big part of the threat).

 

They then got together for the finale of this "double issue" (the story arc itself went on quite some time).

 

Otherwise I've done the "rapid" (not always but attempted) switching.

[zornwil]

Back to the topic at hand, I don't read enough super-hero comics but get several supernatural ideas from the horror comics, and mainly get more "flavor" ideas.

 

I wouldn't recommend anything though - except for whatever you enjoy. That should inspire you, whether it's great writing or simply something that appeals to you.

 

I probably draw more ideas from the news, the World Weekly News, and the recent super-hero movies than comics.

[Theron]

Certain things, in my experience, don't translate well from the comics to gaming.

 

Secret ID's for instance. They're fine for stories focusing on a single character and his problems, but in most team situations, things like that get shunted off into the corner compared to the team's needs or else causes a basic trust issue among the other members. And yeah, it's possible to play the "well the team knows who he is, because they need to" card, but that gets a little old, in my book.

 

By the same token, mind control/doppelganger/evil twin stories are hard to pull off. If the GM is running the suddenly bad PC, it's a dead giveaway. If the player does it, well, you've got to be careful lest the player give it away too soon. As Daffy Duck said, it's a trick you can only do once.

 

Others mentioned the splitting up the team thing. This is an issue, but can be mitigated a wee bit if the GM keeps things entertaining for the folks whose characters aren't in the spotlight.

 

One problem with a lot of the classic comic book bits is that players, especially Genre Fiends, are likely to know them inside-out. While a good player will keep his knowledge and the PCs knowledge separate, it's hard sometimes to keep preconceived notions out of the equation. For instance, in our ongoing campaign, it was very obvious to our entire crew that Montgomery Midas, the richest and most-loved man in Fair City was being set up to be our Lex Luthor style nemesis. As a result, even though our characters only knew of him as a wealthy industrialist with a heart of gold, the players had a very difficult time seeing him in that light.

 

Within weeks of the campaign's start, we all spoke of him out of character like one would speak of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons. As a result, by the time his true colors were finally revealed, it was sort of anti-climactic.

 

The final danger is that the classic comic plots work because you've got one vision controlling them. Unless you're running your campaign on greased rails, players have a tendency to throw a boot in the works from time to time. Which actually lends some spice to the matter, IMHO.

[Chuckg]

Re: Midas -- well, the classic DM solution to that is to bait-and-switch. Have Midas turn out to be utterly innocent... just being possessed by a demonic spirit, or kidnapped halfway through the campaign and secretly locked in the basement while Masquerade was busy having fun at his (and the city's) expense, or Midas being utterly ignorant of what was really going on while his loyal chief of staff actually was the local VIPER Nest Leader, or somesuch.

[FenrisUlf]

Originally posted by Supreme Serpent

Is there any particular goal in mind, or do you just want a discussion about "I like Frank Miller more than Roger Stern due to X" ?

 

Oops, sorry about that. Perhaps what I should have said is 'what writers do you feel did a good job with 'Silver/Bronze Age?' stories, as that's the way my campaigns tend to go.

 

Do you want inspiration for a campaign? If so, tell us something about the campaign, world, likely characters and such and maybe we can focus the answers more.

 

As far as my campaign, I'm *trying* to do something along the lines of the current JSA (i.e., new heroes trying to live up to their predecessor's legacy). Not every hero is the seond/third version of whoever, but several are.

 

I'm setting it in Pensylvania, mainly centered around Philadelphia, and intend to wind up using Istvatha V'Han as one of, if not the, main villain. (In my personal slant on CU, an earlier version of the 1943 Philadelphia Experiment is what made superpowers possible. There's now a conspiracy trying to use the tech to explore/conquer alternate dimensions; unfortunately for them, the Experiment is also what alerted Istvatha to our Earth's existence.)

 

There will be new villains, but several will be either older villains or their kids/clones/whatever out for revenge for what happened to gramps, or just looking to prove themselves superior to the old failure.

 

Hope that's some help.

 

Thanks,

 

FenrisUlf

[zornwil]

Originally posted by Chuckg

Re: Midas -- well, the classic DM solution to that is to bait-and-switch. Have Midas turn out to be utterly innocent... just being possessed by a demonic spirit, or kidnapped halfway through the campaign and secretly locked in the basement while Masquerade was busy having fun at his (and the city's) expense, or Midas being utterly ignorant of what was really going on while his loyal chief of staff actually was the local VIPER Nest Leader, or somesuch.

 

Heck, for that matter let him and his company be totally innocent, i.e., he doesn't even do anything nor do they. Instead, it's that guy who has been bankrolling the superhero team or another contact or DNPC that you only rarely touch on.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by Theron

Certain things, in my experience, don't translate well from the comics to gaming.

 

Secret ID's for instance. They're fine for stories focusing on a single character and his problems, but in most team situations, things like that get shunted off into the corner compared to the team's needs or else causes a basic trust issue among the other members. And yeah, it's possible to play the "well the team knows who he is, because they need to" card, but that gets a little old, in my book.

 

By the same token, mind control/doppelganger/evil twin stories are hard to pull off. If the GM is running the suddenly bad PC, it's a dead giveaway. If the player does it, well, you've got to be careful lest the player give it away too soon. As Daffy Duck said, it's a trick you can only do once.

 

(other stuff snipped)

 

I dunno, lately the comics I've read have had a lot of the good guys knowing each others' identities. The disad part is of course regarding bad guys knowing or otherwise it getting out.

 

We had a sort of mind control adventure, but along the mild variety - well kinda. One character (actually lemming's) was possessed by multiple spirits who would take over or influence her mind in turns. We set it up by discussing it beforehand, and he played it pretty subtly, changing the character's behavior enough to eventually (but not immediately) rouse suspicion but interestingly enough in such a way that the PCs weren't so sure what they should do, if anything. She was just not acting herself in a mounting way.

 

At first it was little stuff - when she met up with one of the other superheroes at a probable crime scene she was possessed by a spirit who deferred to men. So she simply said to the other superhero (I should note that it was a robot, not a man exactly), "Well, we should really wait for Laughton [one of the other superheroes of course, in that session he was the only one who was a human male] to get here before doing anything." During all this her drinking was escalating as well (it was a problem she started having prior to the possession), so when she met up during the 9/11 crisis in New York with lots of other supers and she was possessed by a hard-partying woman, the other characters just thought it was her drinking problem when she ran off to party with a way-younger guy (a 17 or therabouts year old Wolverine) instead of the character she was developing a romantic relationship with (he didn't want to just go and party like that of course).

 

Eventually though it became pretty obvious something was wrong with her. As the two team masterminds (massive INT heroes) debated the merits of sticking an NPCs brain into a dog (story already covered on these boards, won't get into background), she was possessed by the man-hating spirit. The NPC being a womanizing male to begin with, she simply agreed that they should do the transfer. As she's always been the moral compass of the group, it was obvious. But since she supported the self-interest of both masterminds, they shrugged and went for it, and her agreement essentially squared it with the other 2 morally naive characters.

 

She overcame the possession with the help of Willow (Buffy/the Scoobies are in our game), about the same time the other characters were discussing what they should do. All in all it was a pretty fun story arc.

[Theron]

Originally posted by zornwil

I dunno, lately the comics I've read have had a lot of the good guys knowing each others' identities. The disad part is of course regarding bad guys knowing or otherwise it getting out.

 

Lemme clarify.

 

(All of what follows should be prefaced with IME/IMNSHO/YMMV )

 

Remember that we're talking genre-emulation here; specifically, things that the comics do well that gaming can't.

 

In a team situation, everyone knowing everyone else's secret identity makes sense from a trust standpoint. And true, I can think of a few times where a villainous threat exploited the secret identity thing to good effect ("The Judas Contract" back in the glory days of New Teen Titans, for instance). However, in most cases with the comics, a secret identity crisis tends to affect a single member of the team, or more often arises in a solo book (see the issues leading up to Daredevil #50, or virtually any Superman comic published between 1945 and 1984 .

 

In the comics, you can pull off a single character focused story in the context of a team book (see, "Who is Donna Troy", from Titans again, which really only features Wonder Girl and Robin, neither doing anything superheroic), because the reader is the sole audience and a passive participant. In a gaming situation, if you turn the spotlight on one character long enough to do their crisis justice, you turn the other players into passive audience members. A big no-no in my book. On the other hand, if you're playing the crisis with one player and have the heroes doing something else (cutting back and forth), you dilute the impact of the individual storyline (and to me, Disads are, to a large extent, a request to the GM for specific storylines -- to take Secret ID is to say that you WANT to have you character deal with the complications inherent in the Disad).

 

But that's just my take. On the surface, Secret IDs are sort of goofy to begin with, IMHO, though I use them because it's a genre thing.

 

IME, IMNSHO, YMMV

[zornwil]

Originally posted by Theron

Lemme clarify.

 

(All of what follows should be prefaced with IME/IMNSHO/YMMV )

(snipped for space)

 

Entirely fair, I didn't mean to be dismissive of your point. It does seem like contemporary non-kids comics seem to be taking some interesting new choices with supers and how they interact, so I was just reacting more to that. I think the genre conventions are changing, for better and for worse (I don't read much super stuff, but some of the horror stuff I've read lately has REALLY gone downhill in terms of shock value and so-called "adult" (really meaning childishly violent and boorish) themes; I hear the same re supers).

[Lightray]

Two comments to make here:

 

1. The obvious set-up (e.g., Lex Luthor, Theron's Midas).

 

I've had the same problem with players reacting to the tropes they know from comics, rather than from what actually occurs in the adventures. So I accepted that I'd have to work with that, and got subtle.

 

Last time we gamed, they were talking and realized that their supposed nemesis -- Daniel Blacke, the Black Magus -- had never actually done anything to them. They knew he'd been up to some unsavory stuff, but he's also been quite helpful in the past. They're leaning toward neutrality to him, neither trust nor mistrust. Now either way I decide to go with him, the genre baggage will make things more interesting.

 

2. Solo adventures / Team split-up / etc.

 

Because we don't game very often, I've had trouble showcasing individual characters -- particularly since everyone has multiple characters to play. So occasionally, I run "all-solo" adventures.

 

Each player has one character, and each character is off doing his/her own thing. I synch the action up somewhat so that when Dreamwalker is trying to decide what to do next I can cut to Shadowstalker and tell him what's going on. With brief enough scenes and cuts at moments of high tension or impending action, it does not bore the others.

 

And then, when combat begins, I run everyone down the SPD chart together, just like it was all happening together. Occasionally, I hand out the opponents to other players, and don't have to do anything myself.

 

This has worked quite well for us, so far, allowing me an opportunity to further define individual characters and introduce NPCs and plotlines for that character that would bog down or get lost in regular (team) adventures.

[zornwil]

I find when giving players solo attention in the group's presence that many people either entertain themselves satisfactorily (as long as it doesn't go too long) or, at least as often, they participate in the solo thread as "color commentators" which is fun.