What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

[GoldenAge]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Modern-day Nazis. Not pathetic white supremacist gang types' date=' but genuine died-in-the-wool, jack-booting, fascistically organized, fanatical, aspiring world conquerors. Direct or spiritual descendants of the originals, perhaps with a broader philosophy, and a charismatic, ruthless, yet brilliant leader.[/quote']

Absolutely!!!

[GoldenAge]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Costumes. The lack of costumes in modern superhero fiction is a case of "too cool for school" mentality.

Heroes need to look the part!

[kahuna's bro]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

How about a bronzey compromise. personaly I dislike "people with powers settings " with a passion mainly becuase they tend to lose the larger than life quality. For Iron age though I reserve my true unbridled loathing so no iron age elements for me unless its to show them up as evil or nonsense.

 

For me also guns have to be pretty ineffective against supers or not having their use widepsread and lots of heroes shot to death doesn't jell very well.

 

 

looks to me like there are a few varying opinions on what what greatness to me. My idea is sort of cross between the animated Dc stuff and Doc Savage where pulp convention is natural law. For others I'm sure it would be horrible.

i'm with you on the compomise

[Cassandra]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

I think the lack of costumes, along with the non-linneral storyline, which made NBC's Heroes what it is today.

 

A cancelled television series.

[Cassandra]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

The new movie Iron Sky have Nazis from the Moon. As it's a foreign film it does seem to take their side, but it's an interesting idea for having them around.

 

It's like that idea in Dilbert that all the species that are thought to be exinct are still around. They're just hiding.

[phoenix240]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

I'm mostly staying out of this thread just because what makes a setting great is so varied that anything can be mentioned and have both supporters and detractors. I estimate 3/4 of the things mentioned so far make the setting less great to me' date=' and some go so far as to make it unplayable. Yet these same things are critical necessities for others to enjoy a game. A more useful discussion is what would make a great silver age, iron age, people with powers, etc. setting.[/quote']

 

I've lurked in this thread for much the same reason. Idea of what "great" means are going to vary highly. There's no one right answer so it does depend on exactly what sort of "superhero" setting you want to create. There are a wide variety of them but the term is some times used as if there's only one "proper" type of superhero game.

[phoenix240]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

I think the lack of costumes, along with the non-linneral storyline, which made NBC's Heroes what it is today.

 

A cancelled television series.

 

Well, its not like shows with costumes haven't been cancelled or "costumeless" shows haven't done well (Smallville, Louis and Clark, Alphas, etc). Inconsistent writing, vision and an overall lack of direction (including if they were going for a Superhero or People with Powers flavor) killed Heroes, IMO, more than the absence of costumes. Costumes are a genre convention and like all conventions some people love it others think is pretty silly. Personally, I can see both. It depends on how its presented in the overall story.

[The Main Man]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Consistent, coherent, open-ended, and balanced power sources. Your setting can have as many or as few as you want, but make them all viable options.

[phoenix240]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Consistent' date=' coherent, open-ended, and balanced power sources. Your setting can have as many or as few as you want, but make them all viable options.[/quote']

 

Well put

[Balabanto]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

A game world is different from a comic book world. Keep aliens to a minimum unless they're a part of a character's story. Part of the problem in tabletop roleplaying games is once the cosmic stuff is out of the bag, it's impossible to put it back in. Aliens and cosmic beings should be rare unless they're a part of a PC's story. That way, when they show up, you know that the dung has really hit the spinning, blunted blade. The ideal age for Champions is the true Marvel age of comics, from about 1966 to 1982. The power level is reasonable, but not so insane that the world breaks every time you tell a new story. This allows you to tell more human stories as well as big epics without ruining the feel of your world. Why Marvel got away from this, I don't know. By contrast, the DC Silver Age around the same time was terrible. They told some stories that were so awful and incomprehensible that it was a complete waste. When Crisis on Infinite Earths finally happened, I was flabbergasted. This was exactly what they needed to do. And then they stabbed themselves in the kidneys with George Perez's Wonder Woman. Remember that the more powerful the stuff you use, the more the PC's are going to want to be like THAT.

[Clonus]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Most of these suggestions are way too intangible.

 

A gadgeteer who provides would-be supervillains with the gear they need to live out their dreams. (The Tinkerer, The Silent Partner)

[sinanju]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

I think the lack of costumes, along with the non-linneral storyline, which made NBC's Heroes what it is today.

 

A cancelled television series.

 

I disagree. I think it was the aggressively, arrogantly, abysmally stupid writing that led (and not nearly soon enough) to the cancellation of Heroes.

 

The first season was actually pretty darn good. We got a slow reveal of characters with interesting powers, and some techno-babble backstory to justify it. We had a great villain in Sylar. There were bobbles, yes, but mostly it held up.

 

Then we got the climactic battle in New York City at the end of season one, where things went horribly wrong. They didn't kill Sylar. Zachary Quinto had become too popular with viewers, so they let him survive and become a tiresome, ongoing threat, and then flirt with redemption, and then become a threat again, and on and on and on and on. Peter Petrelli, who originally only could copy the powers of people who were actually present, was an interesting and limited variation of the X-Mens' Rogue. Then they changed it so he permanently copied the powers of anyone he met, which all too quickly turned him into Superman. And so they were forced to introduce his kryptonite--the inability to think his way out of a paper bag. If he had two brain cells to rub together, he'd have been invincible. So he didn't. Later they nerfed his power, so he could only hang onto the most recent power he'd duplicated, which was too little too late, because he was still an idiot.

 

Ditto with Hiro. His power set (teleportation and time travel, complete with "freezing time" ability) made HIM a virtually invincible character as well. So he got nerfed too. He spent a season dinking around in the past to no useful effect, then devolved from a plausibly-nerdy but intelligent guy into a moron.

 

And sadly, the idiocy was contagious, affecting nearly everyone sooner or later. Including the writers. (A worldwide solar eclipse? REALLY?)

 

I think that the underlying problem was that the creators probably had never really thought past the first season storyline. Then they had to scramble to keep it going when they found themselves with a big hit. Plus, Tim Kring, the creator, openly admitted that he wasn't a comics fan, so he was ignorant of a lot of the tropes (both good AND bad), and fell into a lot of writing problems he could have avoided with better understanding of the strength and weaknesses of superhero/people-with-powers stories.

 

But the basic concept of people with powers who didn't wear costumes or use code names, dealing with problem both mundane and superpowered? That was what attracted me to the show in the first place.

[Cassandra]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Why is it people who aren't comic book fans hired to make comic book movies/tv shows?

 

And yes, the Heroes characters powers were a complete rip off of the X-Men.

[Cassandra]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Alphas is more a Hero level show, with characters that would be 150 point total at best. Costumes would not be appropriate, although it would be a good super agents setting.

 

Lois and Clark is a good representation of Superman and Lois, given the romantic comedy format. A lack of other superheroes and villains caused it to lose focus (Tempus, and Lex Luthor in the first season were pretty good).

 

Smallville lost me when Lana married Lois but I came back for Supergirl. I didn't like it when she left for the future (Huge threat to humanity. No, Kara, Kal-El has to handle it by himself.)

[sinanju]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Why is it people who aren't comic book fans hired to make comic book movies/tv shows?

 

More importantly, why don't the people writing these shows ever seem to give a moment's thought to practicality? Yes, I understand that writing an entertaining story requires conflict, and easy fixes don't provide that. But characters who have to be written as morons so they don't take advantage of obvious, easy fixes ALSO destroy the story. A lot of shows would profit by emulating the "five year old child" rule from the Evil Overlord's list. Keep a five-year-old (or a group of fans, or even just a couple of writers who can take off their 'writer' hats and think like ordinary people) around and ask them, "In this situation, if you were Character X, what would YOU do?"

 

If the answer shreds your plot, you have a choice.

1. Keep the idiot ball in play and hope your viewers won't notice or care.

2a. Establish some convincing reason earlier in the story why the character can't or won't do that, and hang a lantern on it (i.e., communicate to the viewers that, yes, the character considered that option but it was unworkable). That will buy you a LOT of suspension of disbelief.

2b. Have the character try the obvious answer, and find that it doesn't work for some (convincing) reason. Then at least, the character doesn't look like a moron.

3. Rewrite the story so that option isn't even a possibility.

 

But options 2 and 3 require more work, and more time, and thus we often get option 1 instead.

 

And yes, the Heroes characters powers were a complete rip off of the X-Men.

 

I don't know about that.

Regeneration (Claire), Flight (Nathan), Power-Mimicry (Pete), Telepathy (Matt), Superstrength (Jessica), Teleportation/Time Travel (Hiro) and whatnot are, save for power-mimicry, fairly common superpowers.

[GestaltBennie]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Interested players. And whatever elements can be tailored to hook them, or added by the players to give them a sense of investment.

[Greywind]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Alphas is more a Hero level show, with characters that would be 150 point total at best. Costumes would not be appropriate, although it would be a good super agents setting.

 

Lois and Clark is a good representation of Superman and Lois, given the romantic comedy format. A lack of other superheroes and villains caused it to lose focus (Tempus, and Lex Luthor in the first season were pretty good).

 

Smallville lost me when Lana married Lois but I came back for Supergirl. I didn't like it when she left for the future (Huge threat to humanity. No, Kara, Kal-El has to handle it by himself.)

 

When did Lana marry Lois? I must have missed that episode.

[Clonus]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

A Super-Agency. (Checkmate, SHIELD)

[Cassandra]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

I meant Lana married Lex. Lane marrying Lois would be a good reason for me to stay.

[Cassandra]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Superhero Teams

 

There should be groups of superheroes, each with a different style/objective/tactics. Some would be a mix of members with various powers and abilities (Justice League/Avengers), while others would have a common power source/origin (X-Men being Mutants, and Teen Titans being Sidekicks).

[CaptCastle]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Why is it people who aren't comic book fans hired to make comic book movies/tv shows?

 

This always bothered me. I always felt that they never took it seriously, and even thought of comic books as silly. However, some of the recent movies do seem to indicate a change in this trend.

[kahuna's bro]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

i should hope so

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Well' date=' its not like shows with costumes haven't been cancelled or "costumeless" shows haven't done well (Smallville, Louis and Clark, Alphas, etc).[/quote']

Louis and Clark -- weren't they the ones that headed that expedition across the continent to the Pacific with Sacagawea at the start of the 19th century? Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

Golden Age already mentioned innocents, but I'd expand that to all NPCs -- a great setting includes a cast of more-than-two-dimensional extras, whether as innocent victims or as competant help or hindrance for the heroes. Some of the best TV shows and movies I've seen have included interesting side characters that were nearly (or sometimes even more) compelling than the main protagonist(s) and antagonist(s). The same applies to RPGs.

 

In my last Champions campaign, I required each player to provide me names and one-sentence descriptions for five NPCs that his/her character interacts with either frequently or infrequently. Family, friends, coworkers, old college buddies, whatever. This was done with the promise that they wouldn't be regularly endangered and become 0-point DNPCs. They really helped flesh out the world, IMO, and some of them became beloved enough to make very regular apperances.

 

[Edit: one of my favorite scenes in Lois and Clark was at the end of an episode, where Perry White and Jimmy Olsen are chatting about Lois and Clark's relationship, and IIRC Jimmy says something like, "Do you ever feel like we're just bit players in a story about them?" ]

[CaptCastle]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Cops on the take and crooked politicians.

[sinanju]

Re: What elements should a great superhero setting contain?

 

Golden Age already mentioned innocents' date=' but I'd expand that to [u']all[/u] NPCs -- a great setting includes a cast of more-than-two-dimensional extras, whether as innocent victims or as competant help or hindrance for the heroes. Some of the best TV shows and movies I've seen have included interesting side characters that were nearly (or sometimes even more) compelling than the main protagonist(s) and antagonist(s). The same applies to RPGs.

 

In my last Champions campaign, I required each player to provide me names and one-sentence descriptions for five NPCs that his/her character interacts with either frequently or infrequently. Family, friends, coworkers, old college buddies, whatever. This was done with the promise that they wouldn't be regularly endangered and become 0-point DNPCs. They really helped flesh out the world, IMO, and some of them became beloved enough to make very regular apperances.

 

I've done the same. I required the players to create 3-5 people they knew/interacted with on a regular basis. And like you, I didn't use them as 0-point DNPCs. I just wanted to make sure the players were connected to the game world, that they weren't friendless orphans wandering through a world divided into a) faceless masses and enemies to be vanquished.

 

I regularly do the same when I create PCs for other peoples' games. I write up several friends/relatives/lovers/coworkers/whatever for my character but very specifically don't take them as DNPCs. They're color, not Complications.