Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND

[RDU Neil]

11 hours ago, zslane said:

 

SHIELD strikes me as more like Homeland Security than the FAA in terms of the nature of its mission statement and scope of operations and responsibilities. I really don't see SHIELD as being in the business of formulating, implementing, and enforcing civil regulations of any kind (and handling all the bureaucracy that goes with that). But I definitely think they would be consulted if and when the FAA was tasked by congress to expand the existing corpus of civil aviation regulations to account for superheroes. 

 

And maybe I'm weird (well, yes... I am) but this kind of thing is absolutely what I want to explore, and at least somewhat address in gaming, because it never gets addressed in comics. What happens when the FAA expands regulations to cover self-powered flight? What are the social implications and the protests of "Ground the Muties!" and "Freedom to Fly!" movements that spring up? This stuff doesn't have to be heavy handed, but can be in the background and surface when it becomes interesting for the PCs, or the PCs find it interesting to explore. Entire sessions and blue booking rounds would go into debating the "how it likely plays out" scenarios, usually based on some super-fight or action that took place... and it gives the players a real sense of the world, their place in it as PCs, and the effect the players have on shaping the world.

Love that stuff.

[zslane]

That sort of thing can be an interesting thought experiment, I guess, but unless it contributes directly to an exciting superhero adventure plot, I personally wouldn't bother with it. That degree of verisimilitude is useful for RPG campaigns that drag players through the mundane day-to-day activities of their characters (ala most fantasy campaigns), but that sort of thing always felt unnecessary and out of place to me in a supers campaign. But, I suppose that's a game style thing, like playing Paranoia seriously, or playing W40K for laughs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Christopher R Taylor]

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And maybe I'm weird (well, yes... I am) but this kind of thing is absolutely what I want to explore, and at least somewhat address in gaming, because it never gets addressed in comics. What happens when the FAA expands regulations to cover self-powered flight? What are the social implications and the protests of "Ground the Muties!" and "Freedom to Fly!" movements that spring up?

 

I used to like that kind of thing more than I do now.  To the extent I want that in a game, I want it in terms of a scenario that the heroes solve rather than an overarching campaign theme.  Unless you want emo heroes as your campaign I guess.

[RDU Neil]

31 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

I used to like that kind of thing more than I do now.  To the extent I want that in a game, I want it in terms of a scenario that the heroes solve rather than an overarching campaign theme.  Unless you want emo heroes as your campaign I guess.

 

Like I said, it doesn't have to be the focus, but if it matters, the moments of a PC engaging with the legal ramifications of what they do... having the discussion can be a lot of fun. I think the assumption is that the GM uses rules/regulations/etc. to hit the players over the head with unnecessary complications. That isn't my intent at all. Where it tends to come up, is the PC/player driving it, because, say, one of them is looking to build relations with authorities, and they are a known high flyer and wants to take a public safety stand, etc.

 

It can be fun role playing bits, enhanced by a group discussion on, "huh... what WOULD the likely laws be in this situation, in this kind of world...?" and we have fun hashing out a basic idea. Understanding the legal and social background of the world to add depth, not to create  Civil Administration: The RPG.

[Dr.Device]

6 hours ago, RDU Neil said:

 

And maybe I'm weird (well, yes... I am) but this kind of thing is absolutely what I want to explore, and at least somewhat address in gaming, because it never gets addressed in comics. What happens when the FAA expands regulations to cover self-powered flight? What are the social implications and the protests of "Ground the Muties!" and "Freedom to Fly!" movements that spring up? This stuff doesn't have to be heavy handed, but can be in the background and surface when it becomes interesting for the PCs, or the PCs find it interesting to explore. Entire sessions and blue booking rounds would go into debating the "how it likely plays out" scenarios, usually based on some super-fight or action that took place... and it gives the players a real sense of the world, their place in it as PCs, and the effect the players have on shaping the world.

Love that stuff.

 

In the last supers campaign I ran (lo those many years ago) I had this. Super powers (and a bunch of other weirdness) were relatively new, and the government was trying to figure things out. A decent chunk of one session was spent with the group taking the FAA inspector on a test flight in their flying car [1] so she could license it. If the players hadn't been into it, it would have been a few minutes of the game, but they seemed to enjoy it, so we played the whole thing out.

 

They were also targeted by assassins[2] sent by De Boers because of their Gemerator 3000™[3]. It was a bit of a wacky game.

 

[1] It was a 1960s looking station wagon (wood paneling and all) that they had received as a boon from an extra dimensional entity when they requested a vehicle that could take them "anywhere on Earth". 

[2] One of the assassins made the mistake of trying to blow up the car.

[3] Another boon from the entity. All the boons they got were excuses to spend character points.

[RDU Neil]

10 minutes ago, Dr.Device said:

If the players hadn't been into it, it would have been a few minutes of the game, but they seemed to enjoy it, so we played the whole thing out

 

^ This.

 

It is all about the play. If the players are into it, and it makes for fun, then it can be a focus. If it is not something they are really into, it can be a couple sentences or a throwaway comment.

 

In a long running sub-campaign based in NYC, their was one flyer and a superleap glider and a Hulk level super-leaper. The players were actually quite self-conscious about how these powers played out in the confines of Manhattan. THEY would bring up "I fly low, through the streets. It will take longer, but I don't want to interfere with helicopter airspace" or "If I'm leaping over to Brooklyn, am I going to piss off LaGuardia flight control?"

 

It only takes a little bit of attention to these details... not a preponderance of legalese... to add some flavor and depth.

And yes... mostly driven by the players.

[RDU Neil]

16 minutes ago, Dr.Device said:

They were also targeted by assassins[2] sent by De Boers because of their Gemerator 3000™[3

 

And this is great. Maybe it was played more for laughs, but I had serious political fallout occur when the supers who had spent years building up Sanctuary into an actual city state, declared nationhood and petitioned for recognition by the UN... they were immediately blockaded by the US Nave and Boris Yeltsin, in the depths of his drunken fall from grace, ordered a nuclear strike from a submarine that the PCs had to stop. It was deadly serious and very intense, but that was the kind of campaign it has been for decades now.

The economic impact of a magic machine that created gemstones... brilliant. The fact that it would bankrupt just a small, corrupt piece of the economy would be a fascinating "what if" to play out.

[Christopher R Taylor]

The main thing is to remember to not damage genre by this kind of thing.

For example, superhero comics the high tech of certain heroes never has an affect on the world around them.  Why?  Because then you lose the sense of heroes in our world -- it becomes science fiction, unrelatable, and loses its feeling of justice being brought to your own world in some fantasy measure.  Super hero tropes sometimes don't make sense or are contradictory but they are part of what makes the whole work, makes it fun, and gives it the particular feeling it does.  Nibbling away at that too much loses the genre.

[RDU Neil]

8 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

The main thing is to remember to not damage genre by this kind of thing.

For example, superhero comics the high tech of certain heroes never has an affect on the world around them.  Why?  Because then you lose the sense of heroes in our world -- it becomes science fiction, unrelatable, and loses its feeling of justice being brought to your own world in some fantasy measure.  Super hero tropes sometimes don't make sense or are contradictory but they are part of what makes the whole work, makes it fun, and gives it the particular feeling it does.  Nibbling away at that too much loses the genre.

 

Maybe for you, but that seems a very closed and absolute statement that wouldn't apply to my games at all. There are genre absolutists, and I find them as troubling as any other kind of absolutist... one right way. That isn't how it should be. There are many paths.

[Christopher R Taylor]

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I think you're reading more into what I said than what I said, or meant.  

I thought I'd put enough language in there indicating uncertainty and imprecision to make the point clear: its a danger, if you go too far, that it can have a negative impact.  Not "DO IT MY WAY OR YOU'RE WRONG!"  

[Starlord]

James Gunn fired for remarks about rape

[zslane]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

The main thing is to remember to not damage genre by this kind of thing.

   :
Super hero tropes sometimes don't make sense or are contradictory but they are part of what makes the whole work, makes it fun, and gives it the particular feeling it does.  Nibbling away at that too much loses the genre.

 

I agree with you. However, I've encountered more than my share of gamers who didn't give a rat's arse about genre conventions. They invariably felt they were too restrictive and that they stifled their creativity. In my experience, those campaigns had no distinctive genre feel at all, and someone walking by could be forgiven for mistakenly thinking they were witnessing NYPD Blue: the RPG rather than a Champions session. It always seemed to me that players who embraced a lot of "genre busting" in their games had waning interest (if they had any interest to begin with) in the genre supposedly at the core of the campaign. Genre subversion has never been my cup of tea. I like strong genre flavor, and prefer to play with others with the same love for the genre and all its best conventions and tropes.

[zslane]

18 minutes ago, Starlord said:

James Gunn fired for remarks about rape

 

Well, I guess that means Louis C.K. won't ever be working for Disney...

[Christopher R Taylor]

I mean, Gunn said some really horrendous, unthinkable stuff.  Seriously repulsive to the point I wonder honestly about his private life and the people he's worked with.

 

But I don't like people being fired for things they said, no matter who they are or what it was.  And I think the Guardians of the Galaxy is going to suffer in tone and humor without him.  The movies only really worked because of his fun sensibility, on their own they are objectively, in order, not bad and pretty poor.

 

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It always seemed to me that players who embraced a lot of "genre busting" in their games had waning interest (if they had any interest to begin with) in the genre supposedly at the core of the campaign.

 

That's been my observation as well, they're people who didn't really even like the genre to begin with, so they just play outside it and then get tired of it after a while.

[zslane]

19 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

But I don't like people being fired for things they said, no matter who they are or what it was. 

 

 

Given Disney's image, they had no choice. We live in such a politically charged environment right now that no studio can afford to get dragged into the quagmire of social outrage. Especially Disney who has too much on the line right now, what with their acquisition of Fox hanging on a shareholder meeting that will only go well for them as long as their stock price continues to make the deal look palatable.

[Ternaugh]

10 hours ago, zslane said:

That sort of thing can be an interesting thought experiment, I guess, but unless it contributes directly to an exciting superhero adventure plot, I personally wouldn't bother with it. That degree of verisimilitude is useful for RPG campaigns that drag players through the mundane day-to-day activities of their characters (ala most fantasy campaigns), but that sort of thing always felt unnecessary and out of place to me in a supers campaign. But, I suppose that's a game style thing, like playing Paranoia seriously, or playing W40K for laughs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

The previous version of Paranoia had rules for playing it "Straight", which was sort of like 1984 with the cheerful bits cut out.

 

[Old Man]

1984 was a love story!

[Bazza]

Thanos-- a movie super villain who achieves his goals. Despite 20+ main heroes opposing him. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

He had the mighty plot armor

[Starlord]

Boy is he going to be surprised in Avengers 4 when he learns about the 7th stone:  the Stone Stone

[Christopher R Taylor]

He'll have to defeat Sly and the Family Stone to get it.

 

This kind of big movie event doesn't work as well in movies as it does comics.  In comics you can build up to this over decades.  The time between Captain America coming back and the Infinity Stone encompassed literally thousands of comic books, and almost three decades (1964-1991).  It was depicted across multiple issues of comic books, not just the mini series.  As a result, there's plenty of background, story, and character built up over the years.  Thanos was in comics in the 70's in Starlin's fascinating cosmic stories. 

 

This gives a depth and breadth to the story which creates not only more emotional impact, but greater perspective.  We knew what the characters could do and why, what they had faced and overcome, and what was a challenge.  So when Thanos shows up, defeats everyone, and murders half the universe, it has incredible power and is amazing.

 

In the movies, they can't really do that.  Not only would it take so long people would forget what came before, but you can't have Chris Evans at 57 years old playing Captain America any longer.  You have to move faster, tighten the storyline, and get to the point.

 

In some ways this can work because movies have an easier time creating emotional impact (music, lighting, tone of voice, etc), so you don't need the years of comics building up affinity and connection to characters.  And this is an interesting experiment, pulling together all these various characters from different movies into a big event to depict a massive, cosmic happening.  But I think that the lack of time to really develop and establish characters hurts the story and what they are trying to do in a way that does not have the same impact and meaning as it did in the comics.

 

So probably it would have been better to do a different kind of story, rather than trying to duplicate a 90s' era comic event with a foil cover variant and special collector's editions.

 

[Starlord]

 

18 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

So probably it would have been better to do a different kind of story, rather than trying to duplicate a 90s' era comic event with a foil cover variant and special collector's editions.

 

 

But what about the chromium cover with a hologram card inside!  

[zslane]

26 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

But I think that the lack of time to really develop and establish characters hurts the story and what they are trying to do in a way that does not have the same impact and meaning as it did in the comics.

 

 

This is true of most books adapted to film as well. The movies almost never have the same impact as the books, and you typically find fans of the original source material pointing out how much better it is than the movie version. Nature of the beast, really.

 

What makes the MCU different, though, is that whereas most film adaptations only get one, sometimes two or three, movies to tell a book's epic story, Marvel has spent a decade and 20+ movies telling the various stories that are all culminating in Avengers 4, bringing three "phases" of films and the Infinity War storyline to a dramatic close. This is wholly unprecedented in the history of cinema. I don't think we can reasonably expect more from a movie studio.

[Old Man]

51 minutes ago, zslane said:

I don't think we can reasonably expect more from a movie studio.

 

Not with that attitude.

 

[Cassandra]

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD returns for a 13 episode Six Season next year.  Apparently Inhumans was so bad not only was it cancelled but it book nine episodes of Agents of SHIELD with it.