What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

[phoenix240]

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 thought this sounded like a great idea so I decided to start a couple of thread focused on the superhero styles that I enjoy. Of course, they won't be for everyone but I ask that the thread please not turn into an attack on one style or another. We all enjoy different things.

 

 

Sometimes call the "Iron Age" these comics are more: violent, often morally gray with more antiheroes and vigilantes. Even the heroes have human drives, motivations and frailties that sometimes make then act in less than heroic ways. It's often (but not always) associated with Street Level Supers though the two are not inseparable. The stories are more grim, morally ambiguous or even cynical or the heroes don't always win.

 

 

The truly bleak grim and nihilistic (sometimes to the point of parody) style is occasionally dubbed "The Rust Age" but that's not what I'm talking about here (though if someone wants to start a thread on that it could be interesting).

[Clonus]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

The Greatest Hero In The World...corrupted by his position and it's pressures and turned into a menace.

[wrestlinggeek]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

Fallable heroes who realize and try to rise above their limitations. Not just physical or power-level limitations, but people who knpow their not as noble, heroic, and just good as they should be, as they want to be, as they're perceived to be, and are constantly trying to rise above that. Yes, they fail, and they grieve for their failures, and determine to try harder next time. And that is the difference between really good Iron Age stories like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns and just exploitative drivel, like most of the rest of what is considerred Iron Age.

[Grailknight]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

A core of nobility, deeply hidden. It is clung to and protected by the few true heroes, mocked but longed for by the antiheroes and despised by the villains who seek to corrupt or destroy it.

[Cassandra]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

A city that is in the grips of a corrupt political machine. It's citizens don't expect help, because the police are in the pockets of the criminal syndicate. Hope is all but forgotten.

 

So, Detroit.

[Clonus]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

Geezers. Good Iron Age comics had a sense of history. While there were always some elderly supervillains, there were never any superheroes and former superheroes who were near or past retirement age save for the JSA in the Bronze Age, and they rarely even made it into middle age until the Iron Age.

[Greywind]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

A city that is in the grips of a corrupt political machine. It's citizens don't expect help' date=' because the police are in the pockets of the criminal syndicate. Hope is all but forgotten. So, Detroit.[/quote'] Detroit just hung up a "going out of business" sign is all.

[Andrew_A]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

I was thinking about this thread the other day and I realized something. All of Rob Liefeld's back catalog is the closest thing you're going to get to a D&D style superhero dungeon crawl. 99% of all of his characters are murder hobos in tights.

 

As a public service, to keep you from wasting your money, here is the "plot" to Youngblood, Team Youngblood, Bloodstrike, Bloodpool, and Bloodwullf*: Our "heroes" find out about a secret bad guy base, they have to slaughter their way through an army of guards, kill the head bad guy and go home. There are slight variations of course, but that's the gist of it.

 

The only difference between that and a bad D&D campaign is that you don't get any treasure or magic items. However you don't need any of that, because your covert team of "black ops warriors" is already paid huge amounts of money by the shadowy corporation/government agency/girl scout troop they work for. As for gadgets, players would get an ever escalating number of bigger and bigger guns (even if your character doesn't need them).

 

*In my wildest dreams, I couldn't make up those titles. Click on the links to see for yourself.

[Andrew_A]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

One way to visualize the Iron Age, is to imagine what Arrow would be like if it aired on HBO.

[brionl]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

I don't think it's possible to use "great" and "Iron Age" in the same sentence.

[phoenix240]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

I don't think it's possible to use "great" and "Iron Age" in the same sentence.

 

That's fine but as I asked in my opening post: let's not turn this into an attack thread. If you don't like Iron Age comics, fine, but the purpose of this thread isn't to bash the genre, defend or argue about it. Thanks.

[phoenix240]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

I don't think it's possible to use "great" and "Iron Age" in the same sentence.

 

But you just did.

 

Seriously, That's fine but as I asked in my opening post: let's not turn this into an attack thread. If you don't like Iron Age comics, fine, but the purpose of this thread isn't to bash the genre, defend or argue about it. Thanks.

[Guest dan2448]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

For some, the term "Iron Age" may be synonymous with Rob Leifeld and: (i) death, (ii) agonized navel gazing by 'dark' heroes, (iii) 'dynamic' artwork and gaudy/revealing costumes at the expense of anatomy and storytelling, and (iv) multiple covers and collector mania.

 

I was an enthusiastic buyer of the Image Comics line when it first started, but lost interest in them all after about a year, in part because I tired of all that.

 

But I think it'd only be fair to note that there were several standout super hero comic books published during that era which are not so easily dismissed, even after putting to one side the seminal publication in 1986 of "Watchmen"/"Dark Knight Returns"/"Maus." Alan Moore's run on Rob Leifeld's "Supreme" comes immediately to mind. Bill Willingham's "Elementals" continued to be published during that era. Mike Mignola's "Hellboy." "Marvels" by Busiek and Ross, and their "Astro City," too. Frank Miller and David Mazuchelli's "Daredevil: Born Again" and "Batman: Year One." To name a few off the top of my head.

 

These and other 'great' works of the period each tend, in my opinion anyway, to embody only a selected few of the elements enumerated in the survey of the Iron Age on p. 41 of the 6e "Champions" genre book. And they didn't all use the same elements.

 

As a result, I think a great "Iron Age" setting starts with a decision to use the stereotypical elements selectively.

[Brother Jim]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

The original TMNT books are great Iron Age books. IMO, YMMV.

[Lucius]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

The setting has to include available ore, of course, and really a whole suite of technologies; mining techniques, the making of charcoal, the metallurgical knowledge involved in building and using a bloomery, and so forth.

 

In terms of mechanical rules as such, something that gives iron weapons and tools a definite edge over bronze.

 

In any iron age culture, there will be a mystique about the occupation of the smith and probably about iron as a substance as well, such as believing that it repels faeries or breaks glamors. This might be a superstition or part of the actual campaign ground rules, such as giving Elves a Vulnerability to iron.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The confused palindromedary thinks it's about the Age of Neatly Pressed Clothing

[Ranxerox]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

A city that is in the grips of a corrupt political machine. It's citizens don't expect help, because the police are in the pockets of the criminal syndicate. Hope is all but forgotten.

 

So, Detroit.

 

Yes, but not just local governments. Assume that the federal government or at least some federal agencies are interested in either putting the superheroes in a lab and studying them or in coercing them to work for the government.

[The Main Man]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

A "serious" Iron Age setting deconstructs superheroes in terms of genre tropes and in placing them in a modern day context.

 

A "silly" Iron Age setting is basically "Superpunk."

[Andrew_A]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

To me, the best Iron Age stories acknowledge life's complexities, even moreso than late Silver Age (Marvel Age) or late Bronze Age (Claremont's X-Men or Wolfman/Perez's New Teen Titans). The best Iron Age stories are anti-utopian. They might be idealistic, but not naive and they tend to avoid easy answers. In fact easy answers might cause greater problems.

 

I had a whole breakdown of Waid's Kingdom Come planned, but my thoughts are scattered right now. Will post something more, when I'm ready.

[Clonus]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

Cloning technology and other forms of necromancy so that players can indulge their murderous fantasies even when they are trying to kill an enemy on their character sheet.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

Yes' date=' but not just local governments. Assume that the federal government or at least some federal agencies are interested in either putting the superheroes in a lab and studying them or in coercing them to work for the government.[/quote']

 

For a while, I ran a campaign in which this had already happened. The PCs had to contend not only with supervillains both independent and organized, but also with supers who had "sold out" and agreed to work with the US government's corrupt paranormal agency. When a super-powered crime syndicate began offering "protection" from the government to supers who wanted it, then things got really complicated. The PCs, of course, found themselves in a crossfire between two groups they wanted nothing to do with.

[Matt the Bruins]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

In addition to the examples above, I think Ellis' original 12-issue run on The Authority was the Iron Age done right.

[phoenix240]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

In addition to the examples above' date=' I think Ellis' original 12-issue run on [i']The Authority[/i] was the Iron Age done right.

 

I agree

[Ranxerox]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

For a while' date=' I ran a campaign in which this had already happened. The PCs had to contend not only with supervillains both independent and organized, but also with supers who had "sold out" and agreed to work with the US government's corrupt paranormal agency. When a super-powered crime syndicate began offering "protection" from the government to supers who wanted it, then things got [i']really[/i] complicated. The PCs, of course, found themselves in a crossfire between two groups they wanted nothing to do with.

 

Ouch!

 

Do your players have Stockholm syndrome?

 

Seriously though, that absence of white hats is very Iron Age. If it is Rust Age both the government and the crime syndicate will be complete bastards. If it is "good" Iron Age they will just be morally complicated.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

Greetings Programs, I experienced this as a Player in on short lived Champions Campaign. Unfortunately it was my second or third experience outside of d20. The government discovered my Secret Identity after a two sessions. They tried to negotiate (ie;blackmail) my PC. The Superhero became a Vigilante who bedeviled the Supervillains as ferociously as he did the Government. The first Media (ie; Paparazzi) who exposed his identity found his office, home, and vehicle destroyed. Basicly he Hunted them. Turning him eventually into a Supervillain.

 

Age, Wisdom, and Maturity happened later.

 

QM

[phydaux]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

The whole premise of the Iron Age is that there are no heroes.

 

The cops, the politicians, the clergy, school teachers, and especially the superheros, are all corrupt, selfish, thieves, alcoholics, drug adicts, rapists, pedophiles, rotten to the core, and this is the most important part - hypocritical.

 

The only ones who are "honest" are the villians. They tell you what they're going to do and then they do it. You pay them off and they protect you. You cross them and they come after you.

 

Think Mel Gibson in Payback. Or go watch Braveheart on DVD while streaming Mel Gibson's various racist rants over the internet at the same time.

 

Iron Age is the Silver Age upside down, and Bizarro is the hero.