Merlin HERO

[Alcamtar]

Am just finishing watching the BBC Merlin series on Netflix. Was going to wait to post this until after I finish, but I'm thinking about it now.

 

My sons and I have enjoyed the show a great deal. It has occurred to me over and over that it would be a perfect setup for a Fantasy Hero game, for several reasons:

 

- Small cast of recurring characters. This is ideal for Hero, I don't want to stat up new characters constantly and want to get some mileage out of those that I do put work into.

 

- Location based soap opera. The story is loaded with Secrets, DNPCs, Hunteds, Rivalries, and the like. It is really all about the characters and how they interact with each other. The HERO mechanics are specifically designed or this type of thing.

 

- Generally nonlethal. I am pleased that they avoided the stupid "punching/throwing" combat you often see in fantasy shows, and characters get stabbed, coup-de-graced, and killed. But main characters are also surprisingly durable, they often either recover or are magically healed. Also they are very often knocked unconscious by magic while taking modest damage... looks like a Normal Attack to me! Sometimes they recover their STUN in a few segments, sometimes they remain out for some time; usually they have some bruising to show for it but they are up and walking again in short order. Most people, even villains, seem to have a Code vs Killing unless it's really necessary. Even assassination plots are long winded, elaborately plotted Rube Goldberg devices that virtually always fail, offering plenty of warning. Anyway this seems perfect for HERO.

 

- Relatively few combats. I like to say HERO is a game for the combat connoisseur, where instead of a large number of short junk food combats, you have a single elaborate meaty combat that forms a climax or centerpiece for the session. Furthermore, HERO offers a great deal of tactical texture, and to my thinking this is a feature in the Merlin series. There is a definite pecking order among combatants, and it often seems to come down to the martial arts maneuvers one knows and uses effectively.

 

- The magic seems well suited to HERO. I see clearly identified EBs, RKAs, Telekinesis, Healing, Shapeshift, etc. Merlin apparently has an Aid SPD. The show itself seems to be powers-based, not spells-based. And there are just as obviously powers that are not allowed: healing, teleportation, invisibility, etc. The magic has little ritual associated with it, just a quick incantation; they are a lot like superpowers. Again it's almost like it was modeled on HERO powers.

 

- The show is a tutorial on how to make a villain your players will HATE. Betrayal. Slander. Manipulation. Hitting below the belt. Cold malice cloaked in loving lies. Always getting away with things, smelling like a rose and being praised as the hero when you're actually the villain. You can see them but you can't touch them because your hands are tied. Every attempt to unmask or eliminate them is thwarted and turned back on you. It makes the final vengeance oh so sweet.

 

Has anyone else noticed this? Anyone run a Fantasy Hero game inspired by the show?

 

I have often thought a "fantasy superhero team" would be fun, but wasn't too sure how to go about it. Merlin made me sit up and say "that's what it should look like." It's not surprising; the show is patterned after Smallville, which is supers based. Also not surprising that it seems perfect for HERO, since both Merlin and Hero are drawing on superhero tropes.

 

My concept was originally that all the characters would be supers, like in a silver age comic, they'd fly around and use energy blasts to defeat dragons and instead of spandex they'd wear chainmail or wizard robes or something. That may be cool, but Merlin opened my eyes to a different take on it: lower power, incorporating both supers and normals, but keeping the same tropes. Mixing normals and supers is already standard fantasy practice, so that's a plus as far as capturing the essential fantasy flavor. I'm not really a comic book reader and while I get the basic idea of the city-based team, I don't really understand how it looks in practice. This made me reluctant to bite it off... where to start? How to balance it? How to explain it? Merlin offers are familiar mythos, a familiar setup, and basically a blueprint for how to organize and structure the campaign.

 

I find the structure interesting. There are episodic "filler" adventures that have only minor effects on the story, but the season finale/start move the plot ahead in dramatic ways. Most of the adventure challenges are not powers based, but interpersonal- or mystery-based. That takes balance out of the equation! Of course Merlin can blast a demon to smithereens, but he can't do it in front of anyone, or maybe if he does it will hurt someone he cares about. I never really got this before. I think in pragmatic D&D tropes, not melodramatic superhero tropes.

 

So anyway this was an eye opener for me.

 

Some things I didn't like:

 

- The whole "assassin/monster of the week" gets old. It got better in later seasons, but a lot of episodes felt like filler.

 

- People are always sneaking into (or out of) the castle! The place is like swiss cheese. Don't they ever close the doors? One of my boys commented that if he was king, he'd not allow strangers into the castle and that would solve almost all the problems. Again this rapidly got kind of stale: "who will sneak in this week, and what monster will they turn into?"

 

- There is ALWAYS a spy sabotaging, informing, and betraying. It's a great plot and the show does it expertly, but I could have used a break. No sooner was one spy revealed than another was added to replace them. After a while it seems like the show is entirely about betrayal. More variety needed.

 

- The show kept promising that someday Arthur would allow magic, Merlin would get credit, etc., and it didn't deliver. Well okay so far -- we have three episodes left. But now its too late, even if it happens it will be a pyrrhic victory because then its game over man! This is very frustrating.

 

- There was not NEARLY enough of "wisecracking old man Merlin." I would watch a whole season of nothing but this!

 

The downsides are all well done on their own, they just camped on them too much.

 

[NuSoardGraphite]

Must....resist.....from.....commenting.....*faints from overexertion*

[Chris Goodwin]

I've never seen the show.  

[NuSoardGraphite]

I've never seen the show.  

Then count your blessings my friend.

[Zephrosyne]

I rather liked the show.  Although, I do think the last season was rather weak compared to the rest of it.