Why does no one want to GM superheroes?

[massey]

Things to watch before playing a superhero rpg:

 

Sailor Moon (many major henchmen reformed in that one)

 

Any incarnation of the Superfriends

 

FOX Spider-Man

 

Did I mention the Superfriends?

 

Space Ghost (not coast to coast)

 

My Hero Academia

 

Batman (Adam West version)

 

Greatst American Hero

 

The Incridable Hulk (Bill and Lou)

 

Superfriends? Did I forget to mention them?

 

The Adventures Of Superman

 

I disagree with some of those.  I'd say to really understand how a superhero game should be played, you should watch:

 

Batman: The Animated Series

The Adventures of Superman

Justice League Unlimited

 

(basically all the Paul Dini/Bruce Timm stuff)

 

and then

The early 90s X-Men cartoon

The mid-90s Spider-Man

 

and of course,

The old Max Fleischer Superman shorts

[TheDarkness]

You really can't teach ethics. Your either a mostly moral person, or your not a mostly moral person. Mortality can not be enforced into others via punishment (or they would never be criminals), nor by rewards. Beyond that, each and every person has a different definition of 'right' and 'wrong'.

 

But in fiction, we love to pretend that there is a constant 'right' and 'wrong'. It gives us a piece of mind. But add people with different views on such things and having different goles, and we shouldn't be surprised if we are not reading the same book, let alone on the same page.

 

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to run superhero games. It just means we shouldn't be surprised if people have the wrong idea about superheroes.

I won't derail this thread further, but I actually think that an experiential approach to teaching ethics, over lectures, is fairly useful, and this is something I've seen play out in some games.

 

In short, doing the right thing does tend to feel good, having the kinds of relationships that develop from trust makes it easier, and, given the opportunity to do it again, most would do it again and do it better with practice, like anything else.

[massey]

I think you could attract fantasy players to Champions.  You just have to give them something they can't get in fantasy.  Huge action pieces and true-blue heroism have a lot of appeal.  But you have to GM it right.  You shouldn't screw over the players for doing the right thing.

 

Generally the hero shouldn't bash an already unconscious villain into the land of GM's discretion.  That's not heroic.  But if you want the players to behave that way, don't give the villains recoveries once they're at negative stun.  Because as soon as you have a villain who was laying there at -3 Stun, and he jumps up after a recovery and blasts the hero in the back, the players are not going to trust that any of these guys are really out.  And they'll be right to react that way, because the villain is still in the fight and is still dangerous to them.

 

Let the characters perform spectacular acts of heroism, even if its not on their character sheet.  If Bob has fire powers, and he just bought Flight, Force Field, and Energy Blast, go ahead and let him extinguish a burning building if he wants to.  Let him save a bunch of people with his power.  He controls fire, after all.  Let him do it, and then tell him that next time, he should think about adding Dispel vs fire to his power list.  But don't have the people burn to death because Bob didn't have the right power construct written on his character sheet.

 

When villains endanger civilians to distract the hero, they don't use the distraction to blast the hero in the back as he flies off to save the schoolkids.  They use the distraction to gloat, or to try to get away.  Have them continue to attack the hero, and you'll get players who quite correctly decide that their #1 goal is to curb-stomp this villain, and if they let themselves get distracted rescuing people then the villain will win the fight, producing more casualties in the long run.

 

If GMs want players to follow the comic book genre, then they have to do it themselves.

[TheQuestionMan]

The trick with converting Murder Hobos to Superheroes lies in giving them a satisfactory way of keeping score/loot/rewards.

 

Hero System mechanics can be used for looters by gifting then Foci, Favors, Resources, etc... Presented as Loot.

 

Anothet method is to show the Legal System working in a superhero setting. Where cynically it struggles for justice.

 

The Joker gets the chair for murder. The Bad Guys stay in jail. The Big Boss is imprisoned, flees leaving everthing behind, or dies in a blaze of glory.

 

Murder Hobos should see Rewards for just killings and consequences of unjust or unethical killing.

 

Rewards not punishment. Its a game we play for fun after all.

 

 

QM

[zslane]

As long as the players in question can behave unrestrained they are happy. They're usually the guys in the fantasy campaign that eventually steal from their fellow players or try to murder someone in their sleep (game wise) I mean I played with the same guys and they make the same characters no matter the genre. 

 

Yes, players do love to be unrestrained and untethered from pesky and inconvenient ethical considerations, don't they.

 

I played in an AD&D campaign in the 80s which was, previous to my arrival, composed entirely of characters with chaotic/evil or neutral-with-chaotic/evil-tendencies alignments. They spent many months questing for treasure and XP and inadvertently helping the Big Evil of the world in her bid for total dominance. They didn't care how ugly and repressive the campaign world was getting because they thought they were on the winning side and would have all the unrestrained freedom to be as obnoxious and "badass" as they wanted.

 

Then they discovered that the Big Evil's paranoid laws restricting the use of powerful spells and magic items (intended to reduce opportunities for a coup against her) applied even to them. As soon as it became apparent that this brave new world they helped create was no longer going to be much fun for them, the group immediately set about creating brand new lawful/good characters with the sole purpose of undoing everything they had spent the past year accomplishing with the evil characters.

 

I never saw karma function on so comprehensive a scale, before or since.

 

You really can't teach ethics. 

 

No? Well, you can definitely learn ethics (from an RPG experience and the group that shapes it). Maybe that's good enough.

[TheDarkness]

I think you could attract fantasy players to Champions.  You just have to give them something they can't get in fantasy.  Huge action pieces and true-blue heroism have a lot of appeal.  But you have to GM it right.  You shouldn't screw over the players for doing the right thing.

 

Generally the hero shouldn't bash an already unconscious villain into the land of GM's discretion.  That's not heroic.  But if you want the players to behave that way, don't give the villains recoveries once they're at negative stun.  Because as soon as you have a villain who was laying there at -3 Stun, and he jumps up after a recovery and blasts the hero in the back, the players are not going to trust that any of these guys are really out.  And they'll be right to react that way, because the villain is still in the fight and is still dangerous to them.

 

Let the characters perform spectacular acts of heroism, even if its not on their character sheet.  If Bob has fire powers, and he just bought Flight, Force Field, and Energy Blast, go ahead and let him extinguish a burning building if he wants to.  Let him save a bunch of people with his power.  He controls fire, after all.  Let him do it, and then tell him that next time, he should think about adding Dispel vs fire to his power list.  But don't have the people burn to death because Bob didn't have the right power construct written on his character sheet.

 

When villains endanger civilians to distract the hero, they don't use the distraction to blast the hero in the back as he flies off to save the schoolkids.  They use the distraction to gloat, or to try to get away.  Have them continue to attack the hero, and you'll get players who quite correctly decide that their #1 goal is to curb-stomp this villain, and if they let themselves get distracted rescuing people then the villain will win the fight, producing more casualties in the long run.

 

If GMs want players to follow the comic book genre, then they have to do it themselves.

You could, concievably, give the group a limited use item at the beginning that is no use against conscious foes, but, applied against an unconscious foe, acts as an entangle. That way, they have an idea that the bigger villains do wake up, but have a grace period in which they get used to the idea that pounding an unconscious person tends to cross some lines...

[steriaca]

No? Well, you can definitely learn ethics (from an RPG experience and the group that shapes it). Maybe that's good enough.

Yes, I hope that is good enough.

 

And your story you told (and I erased in this reply) goes to show one 'benefit' of ethics learning via rpg playing. We can gain a redo if we made a wrong choice, if not by the original character, by the next character. In real life, it only takes one wrong choice, and taking it back and do another better choice may be impossible to do.

[bigdamnhero]

And as for younger crowd, the meaning has stretched for me.   these days it is the under 30's.  

But mostly people who base their vision of Supes on 90's forward.   Sometime in the 90's, I don't recall exactly when because this is what made me lose interest, began to try and be super-gritty began making everyone a recovering addict and those it didn't began to lose the "hero" part.

Yeah, the Iron Age of comics was pretty awful and certainly poorly-suited for a Champions campaign. But if you stopped reading comics in the 90s, you may have missed that most comics have (mostly) gotten over that. Nowadays you can get anything on the spectrum, from simple silver Age silliness, to more genuinely complex. Sure, there's still some Iron Age stuff out there (pretty much anything with Wolverine in it), but it's hardly the majority anymore, let alone ubiquitous. The superhero genre is far from dead.

 

Most "under 30s" I game with base their superhero expectations far more on films like the Incredibles or the DC Animated shows. All I have to say is "this is a 4-color superhero game" and absolutely everyone gets that.

 

... "People with Powers".   Which does not lend itself well to Superhero RP IMO.  And before the point is raised, it does not mean the "People with Powers" stories are bad, it means that IMO they do not work well in  RP storylines  that have a cast of 3-6 players. 

"People with powers" is definitely a different genre. Not my favorite style of play but it can be fun, as long as everyone understands that it's not a superhero game and agrees which comic tropes are/aren't in play.

[BoloOfEarth]

I generally practice a "Do Unto Others" policy in my Champions games.  If the players pound an unconscious foe to make sure he stays down, that's their choice.  Not everyone is a Boy Scout in Blue.  However, the players shouldn't be surprised (and yet invariably are both surprised and offended) when the bad guys hit their characters again when they're down.  If their mentalist tiptoes through the bad guy's brain, they shouldn't be shocked when the same is done to them.  (And I make sure to point this out to the players when they protest.)

 

Sometimes they learn.  Sometimes they don't.

 

As to GMin'g superheroes, I refuse to do it.  I'm afraid they'll use their x-ray vision to read my game notes, or telepathy to probe my mind and figure out the loopholes in my plots.  Then you get that darn shapeshifter who mimics the NPCs you're trying to portray.  Or the brick who "accidentally" crushes the dice, just because they're not rolling well.  And that's to say nothing about the game disruptions when all the players have to fly off at a moment's notice to stop a bank robbery.  It's just not worth the bother. 

[bigdamnhero]

A lot of the problems faced with comic book role playing is that comics have drifted far from their square jawed heroic origins.  As late as the 80s it still was about doing good at great personal cost because it was absolutely right to do so.  These days, its questioned whether there is really any such thing as right and wrong and superheroes are more just costumed thugs ala Kingdom Come.  They fight each other, mostly because their gang was hurt by the other gang, but not for any overarching concepts of nobility or heroism.

Again, I don't feel this is true of most superhero comics anymore. Some, yes, and those are the ones that tend to get the most attention from ex-fans who haven't actually picked up a comic in years. But both Marvel & DC have made significant attempts to make their universes less Iron Agey in recent years. Marvel has titles all over the place, from straight-up Silver Age goofiness (Squirrel Girl) to Bronzish (Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man, among otehrs), and yeah some Iron Age stuff (anything with Wolverine on the cover). I haven't read much of Civil War II* but it seems to be driven by a genuine moral disagreement rather than pure tribalism. Over at DC, I haven't read much of their latest reboot** but it's pretty clear an attempt to move a little more 4-color after fans universally rejected the New 52 grimness. And that's just the Big Two: there's Indie stuff all over the place too.

 

For RPG purposes: that just means you have to be clear about what type of comic book game you're in, since "comic book" can cover anything from camp to grimdark.

 

* Mostly because I'm tired of big crossovers, but that's another thread.

** Mostly because I'm tired of reboots, but that's another thread.

[TheDarkness]

I generally practice a "Do Unto Others" policy in my Champions games.  If the players pound an unconscious foe to make sure he stays down, that's their choice.  Not everyone is a Boy Scout in Blue.  However, the players shouldn't be surprised (and yet invariably are both surprised and offended) when the bad guys hit their characters again when they're down.  If their mentalist tiptoes through the bad guy's brain, they shouldn't be shocked when the same is done to them.  (And I make sure to point this out to the players when they protest.)

 

Sometimes they learn.  Sometimes they don't.

 

As to GMin'g superheroes, I refuse to do it.  I'm afraid they'll use their x-ray vision to read my game notes, or telepathy to probe my mind and figure out the loopholes in my plots.  Then you get that darn shapeshifter who mimics the NPCs you're trying to portray.  Or the brick who "accidentally" crushes the dice, just because they're not rolling well.  And that's to say nothing about the game disruptions when all the players have to fly off at a moment's notice to stop a bank robbery.  It's just not worth the bother. 

Never mind the person who absorbs your powers and memories, and then still insists they'd rather play than GM.

[bigdamnhero]

Maybe D&D is to blame but it's how most video games are played as well. The Murder Hobos are the First Person Shooter ideals. I mean how many guys have wanted to play space marines and blow up everyone?

That's a really good point. Some people just like FPS; some people like roleplaying. Neither is wrong unless you're expecting one and get the other.

 

I suppose but that's a very narrow "Tomb of Horrors" look at even the old AD&D adventures. Plenty of them had story lines that could be conducive to critical thinking, morality plays, and cooperative story telling that the Supers Genre is supposed to entail. Some people just didn't care to do that. 

 

I'm not sure that just because there were item lists in the adventure booklet players and GM's suddenly were incapable of storytelling.

Hmm...I wonder if there's a difference between people who mostly play pre-written modules vs people who play home-written stuff? By their very nature, most modules tend to be more self-contained and about "achieve this extrinsic goal." After all it's hard to focus on character development when you're writing for "a party of 4-6 adventurers of level X."

[Spence]

Yeah, the Iron Age of comics was pretty awful and certainly poorly-suited for a Champions campaign. But if you stopped reading comics in the 90s, you may have missed that most comics have (mostly) gotten over that. Nowadays you can get anything on the spectrum, from simple silver Age silliness, to more genuinely complex. Sure, there's still some Iron Age stuff out there (pretty much anything with Wolverine in it), but it's hardly the majority anymore, let alone ubiquitous. The superhero genre is far from dead.

 

Most "under 30s" I game with base their superhero expectations far more on films like the Incredibles or the DC Animated shows. All I have to say is "this is a 4-color superhero game" and absolutely everyone gets that.

 

 

I'll readily admit my current exposure is an occasional sweep of 10-12 issues of 10-12 current comics to see if they grab my interest.  The last pull was the start of rebirth and it all felt meh, be it for story line, art style or just not clicking.  But I do like the Incredible's.

 

"People with powers" is definitely a different genre. Not my favorite style of play but it can be fun, as long as everyone understands that it's not a superhero game and agrees which comic tropes are/aren't in play.

 

Pretty much.

 

One thing to note.  I am not saying that other styles of supers games are bad or shouldn't be played or are somehow intrinsically wrong.  What I am saying is that, for me, the four color version is more fun and easier to run.  The other versions are not only boring to me, but I simply lose interest in devising an interesting story when it is all smash crash and "let the school bus burn because I am busy stealing the gems".

 

But in a good superHERO game, the PC's find themselves drawn into many situations that non-heroic supers would just bypass or avoid easily because, well, they have powers.  I also am a big fan of investigative RPG's such as the GUMSHOE system, so I have shifted to a game style that rewards the PC's using their secret identity occupations.   Deducing the master plan and how to foil it is as much a part of the game as the battles.   

 

But you need players that not only can come up with a superhero that fits into the super team, but also are able to come up with secret identity occupations that fit the non-super team.

Really hard to achieve these days. Too many me me me me me me concepts these days.

[bigdamnhero]

You really can't teach ethics. Your either a mostly moral person, or your not a mostly moral person. Mortality can not be enforced into others via punishment (or they would never be criminals), nor by rewards. Beyond that, each and every person has a different definition of 'right' and 'wrong'.

 

But in fiction, we love to pretend that there is a constant 'right' and 'wrong'. It gives us a piece of mind. But add people with different views on such things and having different goles, and we shouldn't be surprised if we are not reading the same book, let alone on the same page.

I disagree with almost every word of this. Without derailing too badly:

• Of course ethics & morality can be taught. Like most things, some people "get it" more quickly and naturally than others, and some people will never get it. But the vast majority of people can learn to do better.
• There's an entire field of study around what works and what doesn't, with numerous studies backing it up. (I'm too busy/lazy to look them up right now so you'll have to do your own Googling - sorry.)
• Most people think they're ethical; and more to the point, most people (non-sociopaths) want to believe they are good, moral people. So at its most basic level, part of ethical instruction is simply teaching people what the rules are.
• A further part of ethical instruction is helping them be better at ethical reasoning and better at recognizing their rationalizations for what they are.
• Just helping people develop basic empathy goes a long way.
• "Right" and "wrong" are to a certain extent social constructs, true. But even if you think they don't exist as universal absolutes, they can still be improved over time: hence why we no longer accept things like slavery and bear-baiting as being okay.
• That was kindof the whole point of the Enlightenment BTW.

[Christopher R Taylor]

One of the big advantages for fantasy games is that there's a host of materials out there to run, literally thousands of adventures written up, many free online.  Superhero stuff, not so much.  That means whoever runs the game has to come up with all this stuff on their own.  Now, for some folks that's an advantage because we love coming up with adventures, but for others its intimidating.  And if you have a job, school, kids, whatever it is tough to find the time to get that done game after game.

[bigdamnhero]

The trick with converting Murder Hobos to Superheroes lies in giving them a satisfactory way of keeping score/loot/rewards.

 

Hero System mechanics can be used for looters by gifting then Foci, Favors, Resources, etc... Presented as Loot.

 

Anothet method is to show the Legal System working in a superhero setting. Where cynically it struggles for justice.

 

The Joker gets the chair for murder. The Bad Guys stay in jail. The Big Boss is imprisoned, flees leaving everthing behind, or dies in a blaze of glory.

 

Murder Hobos should see Rewards for just killings and consequences of unjust or unethical killing.

 

Rewards not punishment. Its a game we play for fun after all.

Amen. When I first started putting together a new game group after moving (~12 years ago), that was a topic of discussion. My new players wanted to play 4-color Champions, but had a hard time reconciling that style of play with certain genre conventions, like Revolving Door Prisons. Once we were all clear that they would be rewarded, not punished for Doing The Right Thing, it all fell into place and everyone had a blast.

[Spence]

I think another very important issue is the belief that the GM exists to serve every whim of the players.

 

I literally get angry and walk away when I hear some idiot say "railroad".  99.999999999999999999% have no clue of what the concept even means, they are just upset because there is a story that is not just 100% them. 

 

Essentially anything not a sandbox game is "railroading" to them.  

 

It is like the players that agree to play in a high chivalric campaign and then want to make a thief and whine about being railroad.  

 

I run games with actual plots and villainous plots by Master Villains.   Things to be deciphered and explored, not a string battles so "Bob" can be cool and everyone else can be bored. 

 

Did I say I really hate the mental midgets that whine about "railroading" every time a different player gets the spot light.

[bigdamnhero]

The other versions are not only boring to me, but I simply lose interest in devising an interesting story when it is all smash crash and "let the school bus burn because I am busy stealing the gems".

 

But in a good superHERO game, the PC's find themselves drawn into many situations that non-heroic supers would just bypass or avoid easily because, well, they have powers.

I completely agree. But I think "ethical/heroic PCs" is a separate issue from "superhero genre tropes." You can wind up with Selfish Bastard PCs or Ethical Hero PCs in any genre, regardless of power level. I've played in "people with superpowers, but without comics tropes" games where the PCs nevertheless tried to be good, heroic people. And I've played in plenty of other genres where the PCs were selfish dicks, either by design or because of who was playing them. Just depends on having players who want to do more than just kill things & steal stuff, and a GM who rewards them accordingly.

 

Ironically, my last Champions campaign the PCs were actually supervillains. But they were all 4-color villains, and played accordingly; they were probably less villainous overall than the "heroes" of some D&D games I've played in.

 

I think another very important issue is the belief that the GM exists to serve every whim of the players.

 

I literally get angry and walk away when I hear some idiot say "railroad".  99.999999999999999999% have no clue of what the concept even means, they are just upset because there is a story that is not just 100% them.

Yeah, those players exist, and are jerks. But I don't actually run into too many of them, and they're usually pretty easy to manage when they do show up. I guess maybe I've just been really lucky in who shows up for my games, because it sounds like we live in very different worlds.

[TheDarkness]

I think another very important issue is the belief that the GM exists to serve every whim of the players.

 

I literally get angry and walk away when I hear some idiot say "railroad".  99.999999999999999999% have no clue of what the concept even means, they are just upset because there is a story that is not just 100% them. 

 

Essentially anything not a sandbox game is "railroading" to them.  

 

It is like the players that agree to play in a high chivalric campaign and then want to make a thief and whine about being railroad.  

 

I run games with actual plots and villainous plots by Master Villains.   Things to be deciphered and explored, not a string battles so "Bob" can be cool and everyone else can be bored. 

 

Did I say I really hate the mental midgets that whine about "railroading" every time a different player gets the spot light.

What, you mean NPC actions are supposed to have some bearing on the events?

 

I mean, there is such a thing as railroading. And there's also such a thing as, 'I literally couldn't find any other believable result to you ignoring all the warning signs and doing what you did, so maybe, really, you railroaded your group being in this situation?'

[bigdamnhero]

I have certainly played in a few railroad games. I remember one Pulp game I played at a convention, where we literally spent 4 hours following the Mary Sue NPC around watching her be badass. Needless to say, I didn't play with that GM again.

[bigdamnhero]

Another thought occurs to me:

My favorite Champions campaigns were the ones where the basic structure of each evening's play was thus:

 

1. Characters hear about the crisis.

2. Characters spend about an hour doing the detective work to discover who is behind the villainy, what their ultimate goal is, and where "it is all going to go down."

3. Head to the showdown site and attempt to thwart the villain (i.e., play out the combat for the rest of the evening).

4. Hopefully be victorious, but either way, while the GM hands out XP, discuss (as a group) which players deserve a bonus XP for their play (either outstanding roleplaying or outstanding tactical performance on the battlefield).

I enjoy that style of play, as do a lot of people. But some people find it gets too repetitive. And I think some (non-murder-hobo) people's resistance to playing superheroes stems from a (mis)perception that superheroes is all about simplistic plots built around "Bad Guy Show Up, Punch Bad Guy, Repeat."

 

Definitely don't mean to dis your gaming, and I get the logistical concerns that made longer storylines difficult! Just pointing out another perception issue.

[Enforcer84]

That's a really good point. Some people just like FPS; some people like roleplaying. Neither is wrong unless you're expecting one and get the other.

 

Hmm...I wonder if there's a difference between people who mostly play pre-written modules vs people who play home-written stuff? By their very nature, most modules tend to be more self-contained and about "achieve this extrinsic goal." After all it's hard to focus on character development when you're writing for "a party of 4-6 adventurers of level X."

true. but they ok. I mean let's be honest, the first adventures I made in middleshcool were random dungeons from the back of the DMG. It was exactly the murderhobo dream. 

 

Only the guys I played with weren't necessarily like that. They took prisoners. They once adopted the last kobold from an encounter as their mascot because he knew where the traps were and how to disable them. His reward was once they got what they were looking at he went back and ruled the tribe. (Being the only warrior left) And I have always been a sucker for story elements. 

 

I've seen some great adventures for later editions of D&D, especially as the game evolved towards adding skills and other non combat points of emphasis. But that happened because the players were doing it anyway.

 

Of the major groups I've played with in my youth through adutlhood, three were very Supers Focused, my middle school and highschool buddies and the Online Games I've played with various board members the face to face gamers of my adult hood were more into fantasy but we also played a few sci fi, some RIFTS (ok still fantasy...) they also got me into cooperative board games as well as a few other competitive ones. It also had the highest concentration of Murder Hobos...but that was never more than 2 or 3 at a time. And the latter I left real quick. 

[zslane]

I enjoy that style of play, as do a lot of people. But some people find it gets too repetitive. And I think some (non-murder-hobo) people's resistance to playing superheroes stems from a (mis)perception that superheroes is all about simplistic plots built around "Bad Guy Show Up, Punch Bad Guy, Repeat."

 

Sure. For many, a steady diet of any one particular style of play could feel too repetitive. I found it rather addictive. Probably explains my 8-year addiction to City of Heroes...

[Christopher R Taylor]

The "revolving door" villain always getting free thing is an artifact of comic books, not the super hero genre.  What I mean is this; the Joker keeps getting free and doing terrible stuff not because he must in order for comic book adventures to work, but because you put out a comic every month and almost nothing ever changes.  After 500 issues of Superman, Lex Luthor's still there.  A popular character comes back not because its required for superhero stories, but because he's popular and people want to see him against.

 

For all the people yelling "just kill the Joker and get it over with!!!" I bet almost all of them would throw a fit if he was killed and never came back.  Because the comics keep coming out and what's Batman without the Joker?

 

In a Superhero RPG that's not necessary.  The bad guys can get thrown into prison, or sometimes get killed by their own dumb plot, and just are gone.  And that's fine, more bad guys show up.  In fact, I would argue that having the bad guy get free and escape justice over and over tends to turn some players at least into murderous vigilantes: he's not coming back this time.

[bubba smith]

Patrol vs Parole an entire city? I would hate to be the Parole Officer!

so would i