What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

[phoenix240]

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.

 

I would call that more "Rusty Iron Age" than the nature of the entire genre. There are heroic characters but they are fairly flawed individuals particularly compared to the more black and white characters of the Silver and Golden Age.

[kahuna's bro]

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.

that is one way to describe it

[John T]

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting?

 

Well, I'll preface my comments with this: I despise most Iron Age comics. They're a large part of the reason I stopped reading comics entirely.

 

That being said, I do at least know *why* I feel the way I do about so many of them. Thus, I can readily define the one thing that (for me) make a *bad* Iron Age setting.

 

The one overriding trait that galls me the most about them is what I refer to as the "With Great Power Comes Great Douche-baggery" syndrome. I don't have a problem with heroes that are, at their moral core, "just human" - I've played in several such games. What annoys me are "heroes" that seemingly have a *lower* moral center than most normals, and even many criminals.