Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

[Opale]

Aloha.

 

 

I recently read again an article in the Silver Ages Sentinel book, about impersonating a hero. And by extension a superhero.

I think it captures the essence of what made the comics book a special genre to me and inspired my choices.

 

I have to admit that cult of the hero is a thing largely laughed at in France for tons of cultural reasons, which maybe explain why the Superhero subgenre is few played in here.

 

So my question is purely rhetorical, but are you having hard times making your players understand what kind of character a super-powered game like champions is supposed to propel ?

Responsibilites, Doing the hardest thing, Humility, Hope... are those concept still vivid in your actual gaming tables ?

 

How do your players react to frustration, failure or against a world that want them to fall down like drugged sport or movie stars ?

For mundane people it's always easier to promote someone fall than to improve one self, so...

 

Multicultural Opale.

[Greywind]

Re: Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

 

Garibaldi: Why is it that we always break up our history by the wars, not the years in peace? The Hundred Years war, the war of 1812, the first three world wars, the Dilgar war, the war of the Shining Star, the Minbari war, the Shadow war. Why the war but not the peace? Because it's exciting. And because on some level people like to see something big fall apart and explode from the inside out. And right now, John, we're that something.

[Opale]

Re: Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

 

long time I didn't watch Babylon 5

 

Opale.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

 

Well, I don't really like the 'superheroes save your butt, but everybody hates you anyway' thing, so that's not an issue in my games. If you actually act respectfully and 'appropriately', people don't get mad at you because they realize, yeah, you tore up a city block stopping Grond, but he would have levelled the city if you weren't here, so you did what you could.

 

I do have a player who really isn't into the genre; he tends to prefer darker stuff with more morally-questionable characters.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

 

For most of my characters, the motivation was to just be someone who was there to provide help when needed, be it escape from a burning building, rescue or protection from supervillain activity, Kaiju attacks, or natural disasters, or sometimes just helping someone get a hold of social services for help my Super isn't qualified to do himself.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

 

I sometimes have a tough time with new players who come at superhero gaming with no experience of the genre outside of some movies or television series; or whose experience of gaming is exclusively in fantasy, pseudo-gothic horror, or worse, fantasy MMOs based on those.

 

Aside from merely wanting to recreate their past characters in a new setting (don't get me started on how many rangers, elves, vampires, and half-demons I've been presented with), many such players are far more concerned with looking "cool" and "badass," and killing anyone who gets in their way (even in government or law enforcement), than in roleplaying heroes who stand for something and want to make the world a better place. If your whole game group wants the former, that's fine; but my love of supers is very much based in the latter, so I find that attitude frustrating to deal with.

[psyber624]

Re: Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

 

Amen Lord Liaden. I had that issue the one time I tried running a supers game with people i didn't know. It was a total nightmare with half the players running vigilante characters who were more than willing to stab each other in the back as well, and the other half trying to play your standard supers... what a total nightmare (and something I will NEVER attempt again.)

[Greywind]

Re: Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

 

That's when you have the discussion before the game of what your expectations are, the tone of the game you plan on running and what the players want/expect.

 

The worst I ever had to deal with was when one player built for a DC game when everyone else built for 4 color. It took a little time, but we were able to adjust the one player's character enough.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

 

Garibaldi: Why is it that we always break up our history by the wars' date=' not the years in peace? The Hundred Years war, the war of 1812, the first three world wars, the Dilgar war, the war of the Shining Star, the Minbari war, the Shadow war. Why the war but not the peace? Because it's exciting. And because on some level people like to see something big fall apart and explode from the inside out. And right now, John, we're that something.[/i']

 

Oddly enough, I thought of this in SF terms as well, mainly because that's what I'm running right now. Actually it's not that odd, because I almost always run SF; I'm not that good at running superhero games.

 

Anyway, Opale's point definitely applies to my current campaign. It's not a typical "merchants and mercenaries" SF RPG about a bunch of guys wandering around randomly looking for trouble. It's about something: an idealistic struggle of freedom vs. tyranny, and survival vs. extinction. Fortunately I only had one player who didn't "get it" and he's gone now. Even the "anti hero" PCs have chosen their side and dedicated themselves to supporting their cause at any cost.

 

From one of the earlier episodes in the campaign, Terracide: Salvaging Hope.

 

Dr. Leelavathi Rabindra addresses the citizens of Omicron Colony after the player characters forcibly removed Agents of the Colonial Reserve Fleet from her office....

 

Rabindra stood in front of an artificial waterfall, under a canopy of shade trees, through which daylight shone down from solar mirrors and skylights undimmed by years of grime and smog. This was once a beautiful place, she seemed to say, but the lush scenery paled next to her own presence as she began to speak.

 

“My friends... I come to you in the aftermath of recent events to call on everyone here... it is time for us to find our way again. Our purpose here has become far more important than we knew... no longer a matter of company policies and labor disputes. Nor is it merely a matter of life and death: it is simply a matter of life; of living with each other, living with the decisions and the future we make for ourselves.

 

It begins here. Our numbers are few, our way forward unclear, and our assets meager... thus do great endeavors always begin. We all made a leap of faith when we came to Omicron... now fate calls on us to make another, much greater leap into an uncertain future. It is our duty to renew this colony, not for our corporate masters, but for the people who have come to depend on this place to survive... and for those who will come later, who have no place else to go.

 

They will come in greater numbers in the weeks and months ahead, looking for refuge, and it falls upon us to ensure that they find it here. We will be the saviours of this colony as it renews itself, as the children of Terra come back here, looking for a place where they can be safe. I have spoken with an outside security firm... they have defended Omicron before, and will return to defend it again, if we ask them to. You have my word that we will not be alone here in our hour of need.

 

For those who still wish to leave Omicron, you have my blessing, and when our ship departs, you may have my seat on it as well. I will not be leaving this place. I swear to everyone here, I shall remain until the end. In time, my children will begin work on a new Omicron Colony, larger and even more beautiful than the last... while their cousins, our brothers and sisters, continue their own great works, on the new worlds of Tierra Nueva, Stella Magna, and the War Garden in TGO space.

 

Our great-grandchildren will go to live there someday, when humanity's new worlds are ready. They will once again live under open skies, look toward distant horizons, and feel the gravity of solid ground beneath their feet. And when the time comes, their descendents will undertake the greatest work of all, to reclaim what was lost. They will return to Terra, and take back their true homeworld.

 

All of this will come to pass, in time, but it must begin here. I came back to Omicron to tell you all, that this is not the end of humanity, not the death of our species. This is the beginning of our rebirth. And this place is where it begins. Right here, right now, with all of us.”

 

Battle lines have been drawn. They've got a hundred-year old space colony that's falling apart around them and getting more crowded with refugees by the week, a "fleet" of mercenaries, corsairs and converted super-liners, and their troop contingent is a company of Colonial Reserve deserters and volunteers from the colony. Their nearest allies are two months away. They're taking on a military junta from the Core Colonies with the biggest surviving war fleet in Terran Space.

 

They may not be "super" but they're big damn heroes alright.

[Opale]

Re: Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

 

Interesting to see everyone point of view.

in my experience, I HAVE to listen intently to whatever the players say or do, and I tend to assist to any exchange they have, because I think it's my responsibility to be sure the characters my players act DON'T SAY or DO something their character won't !!

 

Yes it's a bit invasive but that way I'm sure noone step away too far or too long from the orginal goal of the campaign : for everyone to have fun in a specified setting.

 

After, well it's everyone choice to stick to a genre or not. Danger is when players accaparate the game too much and don't understand when you say them "no".

 

Still hoping for more exchange, Opale.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

 

Aside from merely wanting to recreate their past characters in a new setting (don't get me started on how many rangers, elves, vampires, and half-demons I've been presented with),

 

Strangely, that doesn't bother me very much. If you're running a wide-open Marvel-DC kind of kitchen-sink supers game, all of those are found in the genre. Green Arrow could be considered a ranger (and you can't tell me Wolverine doesn't have rangery-type woodsy skills), Thor comics featured elves and at one point Aurora and Northstar were elves (though since retconned), Marvel has had books featuring vampires and half-demons as main characters. The main thing is adjusting those characters for a superhero game, instead of just transplanting the 'fantasy attitude' directly into the modern world, especially if they're used to MMO-style shoot-and-loot gaming.

[Balabanto]

Re: Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

 

Interesting to see everyone point of view.

in my experience, I HAVE to listen intently to whatever the players say or do, and I tend to assist to any exchange they have, because I think it's my responsibility to be sure the characters my players act DON'T SAY or DO something their character won't !!

 

Yes it's a bit invasive but that way I'm sure noone step away too far or too long from the orginal goal of the campaign : for everyone to have fun in a specified setting.

 

After, well it's everyone choice to stick to a genre or not. Danger is when players accaparate the game too much and don't understand when you say them "no".

 

Still hoping for more exchange, Opale.

 

One of the ways you can do this is to show people what happens to dark vigilantes and the like. Most people like this just get arrested, and/or put in jail. Though there is an adventure that I'm developing called Opposite Numbers, where the heroes square off against a deadly group of adversaries who are super-powered vigilantes and see nothing wrong with killing people to fight crime. Something like that may be your best bet. Feel free to privately message me about that.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

 

Strangely' date=' that doesn't bother me very much. If you're running a wide-open Marvel-DC kind of kitchen-sink supers game, all of those are found in the genre. Green Arrow could be considered a ranger (and you can't tell me Wolverine doesn't have rangery-type woodsy skills), Thor comics featured elves and at one point Aurora and Northstar were elves (though since retconned), Marvel has had books featuring vampires and half-demons as main characters. The main thing is adjusting those characters for a superhero game, instead of just transplanting the 'fantasy attitude' directly into the modern world, especially if they're used to MMO-style shoot-and-loot gaming.[/quote']

 

I absolutely concur. I find it's much more the "fantasy attitude" you mention that becomes problematic. That said, another aggravation about some gamers presenting these character concepts is that they seem unable or unwilling to think in any other terms. These are the only concepts they can come up with, at least at first, due to ignorance of or disinterest in the differences between the broad parameters of fantasy worlds and a modern-day supers world.

[psyber624]

Re: Role-Playing the Mantle of Heroism

 

This discussion reminds me of one of the best roleplaying experiences I ever had as a GM. I was running a DnD Module with a new group while I finished fleshing out my own campaign that the group would be running in. It was this interesting little idea where the players come across a town that is split down the middle over a feud over a strange clay tablet that was found, with both the baker and the blacksmith each claiming they owned it and it had disappeared. Through investigation it is discovered that this was actually a shopping list left behind by an Astral Dragon (weird supplement but it was quick and fun.) The real fun began, however, when one entrepreneurial rogue asked the dragon if he had any other "shopping lists" lying around. He takes two of them and gives one to each person to collect the rewards both of them had promised for successfully returning the tablet.

 

So I have the ENTIRE mob chase the party as they are leaving town, catch them, and hold the rogue for trial for trying to con the two business men... It was a great roleplaying scene, with the Minotaur Paladin (don't ask) ensuring that the rest of the party didn't just break the rogue out of jail and head for the hills.

 

The moral of the story is that actions have consequences.... and a clever GM can get across a message this way and have fun doing it