Why does no one want to GM superheroes?

[TheQuestionMan]

Played in a Werewolf the Apocalypse Convention Game way back. Lost my voice and had to communicate with a deck of note cards I had brought.

 

A Mary Sue NPC attempted to manipulate and force my Shadow Lord to submit. Shadow Lords as presented respond exactly wrong to bullying. Even from more powerful Mary Sue NPCs.

 

Used lethal attack and 13 rage eviscerated the Mary Sue leaving the Players and GM stunned. Politely excusing himself for a momment and stepping outside. We could hear the GM banging his head on the partition wall.

 

When he came back in he presented a new NPC and continued the story with a little bit of railroading. Because our group allowed my PC to slaughter a Greater Were Leopard we were being asked by the council to undertake the mission.

 

Rairoading is not a bad fix to a GM's story, but a terrible way to run a campaign.

 

IMOHO

 

QM

[zslane]

I think it is primarily the "iconic" villains who continue to pop up again and again like weeds. The history of superhero comics is replete with villains who appeared only once and were never heard from again.

 

Of course, if villains should have a realistic shelf life, then so too should heroes, but you can't have a successful comic book publishing empire if you can't sell your best-known heroes (and their best-known nemeses) to every new generation that comes along.

[massey]

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.)

 

 

I think this argument avoids a key component of the situation though.

 

Superhero punches Supervillain on Segment 8, knocks him to -7 Stun.  Stun taken exceeds Con score, Supervillain is stunned.  Supervillain (Spd 5) would normally recover from being Stunned on Segment 10 (assuming he's already gone on Segment 8).  Supervillain would then get a Recovery (Rec 12) on Segment 12, making him conscious.  Supervillain would then get a post-12 Recovery as well, bringing him up to 17 Stun.  Supervillain is now back in the fight.

 

All Superhero has to do to prevent this is to hit Supervillain one more time before his Segment 12 Recovery.  If he does, Supervillain will take double Stun for being hit while unaware, and he'll be firmly into GM's discretion.  Tactically, it makes perfect sense.  Put one more shot into him to keep him down.  However this move is entirely out of genre.

 

If the players know that Supervillain is about to stand back up and continue the fight, they'll almost surely hit him while he's down.  Whether the villain stands back up or not is entirely within the GM's control.  If you establish in a game that once the villain is down, he stays down, then players will generally not feel the pressure to curb-stomp him at the end of the fight.  Particularly in a hard-fought, close battle, the players do not want to see Dr. Disintegrator stand back up and reactivate that 30/30 Force Field and start chucking 5D6 AVLD RKAs again.

 

It's quite possible that you hit that unfortunate "sweet spot" (though it's really anything but) in a battle where you knock the villain unconscious, stop hitting him because heroes don't hit downed opponents, and then he stands back up as soon as he gets a Recovery.  He trashes more of the city, you eventually knock him out again, only to repeat with him standing up again 5 seconds later.  I've seen fights where the players repeatedly knock someone to negative single digit Stun, but they can't get him any further unconscious because they just aren't doing enough damage past defenses.  But all they have to do to keep him down is to break genre and blast him one more time.

 

If you want your players to abide by 4 color genre conventions, don't let your supervillains act like the killer from a slasher movie, always jumping back up at the end to get one more round of killing in.  When the villain is down, have him stay down. Staying in genre conventions is the duty of both the players and the GM.

[Christopher R Taylor]

If you want your players to abide by 4 color genre conventions, don't let your supervillains act like the killer from a slasher movie, always jumping back up at the end to get one more round of killing in.  When the villain is down, have him stay down. Staying in genre conventions is the duty of both the players and the GM.

 

 

Right, its GM choice how the game is going to feel and seem.  Too many times it seems like the GM is their own worst enemy by doing things which reinforce or encourage behavior from players that they do not want in the campaign.  Sometimes GMs get competative with players as well, making each enemy tougher and meaner and worse in the name of "more challenge" but really just meaning "they beat my guy too easily, lets see how they deal with this guy!"

[TheQuestionMan]

Strike for STUN Only -2 OCV vs uncouncious target DCV 3 (minimum).

 

Works for Me!

 

QM

[Christopher R Taylor]

Sure but here's the thing: do you want your superheros beating the crap out of an unconscious foe?  If you have your guys pop up constantly from recoveries after being put down, that's what will happen.  I can see with the "end boss" of an adventure (to borrow a term from computer games) maybe, but the mooks you mow through to get to him?

 

In Die Hard, Bruce Willis beats Alexander Gudonov's head against a metal pipe and punches him the face like 18 times, then hangs him from the neck for a good 5 minutes --  we see him still hanging there unconscious when the people run back down from the rooftop.  Which explodes, a couple floors up, obliterating everything for multiple levels.  And he still shows up again at the end of the movie like Michael Myers from Halloween.  The only plausible solution is to shoot him dead.  That's the story forcing a reaction and you don't want to do that with your game if you're trying to do four color superheroics.

[steriaca]

Rule one: Mooks do not recover Stun naturally.

 

Rule two: Henchmen at negative STUN remain at negitive STUN durring battle.

 

Rule three: The major bad guy/bad guys get all the choices as the players (post 12 recoveries, taking a recoverie action, ect).

[steriaca]

Something which may work for Game Masters which may save them much work, but make the game world much more populess. Take a generic write-up for each minor villain type (Brick, Energy Blaster, Martial Artist, Mentalist, ect, ect). And have a small list of generic names for each type (about twenty per type should do it). Need a type, but all your go to villains are in Stronghold? Well then, good thing you have a generic brick write-up and can go down the list till you get Musselbound. (Don't worry if the name is lame-o, as many one time villains have such names).

[sinanju]

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.

 

This is an excellent point. Unless you expect your campaign to run for decades, you needn't have villains recurring over and over and over again. A master villain might--MIGHT--reappear a few times over the course of the campaign, but not in a "revolving door on the jail" kind of way.

 

As for PCs turning into murderous vigilantes...I've had some experience with this. I spent many, many years in a campaign that was very heavily influenced by pulps and comics (and still is, I expect, I'm just not living in that state any longer). One of the features of adventures was that fairly often the PCs would get captured, then escape and stop the bad guys' plans. Also, recurring villains who got away only to bedevil us again later on. And mostly we were okay with that. But occasionally...in one instance my PC decided "enough was enough" when a recurring thorn in our side tried to negotiate a temporary alliance with us. I flatly refused to go along, convinced that we could rescue a PC who needed rescuing without her help, and did my best to murder said NPC, nearly killing one of my PC allies in the process. (This caused long-term hard feelings in-character between said PCs and some short-lived hard feelings with the other player, who was not amused).

 

In another instance, while driving over for our weekly game, another player and I discussed the previous adventure, wherein we'd gotten hosed by the bad guy. We decided that, no, we didn't care what the planned adventure was--we were going to hunt that SOB down and murderize him. And we did (the GM, to his credit, saw that we were not going to let this go this time, and plotted said adventure pretty much on the fly).

[Christopher R Taylor]

One of the things I stated explicitly when I started my Golden Age game is that back then heroes would carry guns and use them, but wouldn't deliberately kill most bad guys.  They wouldn't be terribly upset if one died "he deserved his fate" but wouldn't go out of their way to kill.  Pulp heroes were often quite lethal like The Shadow but Golden Age guys were mostly just boxers with maybe a power and a colorful costume.

[bigdamnhero]

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.

Absolutely right, and that's what I meant to say. Add that to a long list of tropes that work great in comics but not in RPGs.

 

Superhero punches Supervillain on Segment 8, knocks him to -7 Stun.  Stun taken exceeds Con score, Supervillain is stunned.  Supervillain (Spd 5) would normally recover from being Stunned on Segment 10 (assuming he's already gone on Segment 8).  Supervillain would then get a Recovery (Rec 12) on Segment 12, making him conscious.  Supervillain would then get a post-12 Recovery as well, bringing him up to 17 Stun.  Supervillain is now back in the fight.

 

All Superhero has to do to prevent this is to hit Supervillain one more time before his Segment 12 Recovery.  If he does, Supervillain will take double Stun for being hit while unaware, and he'll be firmly into GM's discretion.  Tactically, it makes perfect sense.  Put one more shot into him to keep him down.  However this move is entirely out of genre.

Totally valid point. Tho one thing that can help mitigate this: remember that a character who's at less than -10 STUN is technically conscious, but just can't act. RAW even says he may still be in his feet, just woozy and trying to shake off that last shot. So if you describe it that way, with the villain barely on his feet or maybe on his hands and knees trying to stand back up, then it feels less out of genre for a hero give him the "And STAY Down!" finishing move.

 

Right, its GM choice how the game is going to feel and seem.  Too many times it seems like the GM is their own worst enemy by doing things which reinforce or encourage behavior from players that they do not want in the campaign.  Sometimes GMs get competative with players as well, making each enemy tougher and meaner and worse in the name of "more challenge" but really just meaning "they beat my guy too easily, lets see how they deal with this guy!"

Even beyond that, I think some GMs feel obligated to follow the letter of the rules whether it makes narrative sense or not. I think it's the latent wargaming gene that comes pre-instaled in a lot of gamers.

 

Rule one: Mooks do not recover Stun naturally.

 

Rule two: Henchmen at negative STUN remain at negitive STUN durring battle.

 

Rule three: The major bad guy/bad guys get all the choices as the players (post 12 recoveries, taking a recoverie action, ect).

As per above, I would add "...unless it makes narrative sense to do it differently" but basically yeah these are good rules.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Tho one thing that can help mitigate this: remember that a character who's at less than -10 STUN is technically conscious, but just can't act. RAW even says he may still be in his feet, just woozy and trying to shake off that last shot. So if you describe it that way, with the villain barely on his feet or maybe on his hands and knees trying to stand back up, then it feels less out of genre for a hero give him the "And STAY Down!" finishing move.

 

 

That is a good point, and its very common in older comics, the bad guy is on his heels woozy and staggering, and the hero gives him one more shot. The way we always described it is when in the fight between Douglas and Tyson where Buster put him on the mat and Tyson is dazed reaching around trying to find his mouthpiece.  That's at -5 stun.  You're sort of aware of what is going on, but unable to act except to recover.

 

But I like the "on his feet but reeling" because it is more cinematic and heroic, more classic comic book and pulp literature stuff.

[drunkonduty]

I've used the "woozy and on their feet" thing quite a lot. It works fine for letting the hero take one more shot without looking like a thug.

 

But I like Steriaca's 3 rules above for how to handle it.

[Spence]

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.

 

Key phrase.  

 

In my supers games, I always have recurring villains.  But I generally don't know who they will be until the players have settled in.

 

In the beginning of my games there is a Master Villain driving the major plot and 2-3 not-Master Villains driving 1-2 plots not really related to the big bad plot, and 1 directly supporting the MV.  At the time of the campaign start I will only have a loose outline for the Master Villain's plans and initially I do not even know who the MV actually is.  The 2-3 sub-plots will also be loosely outlined.    Only once the game has started and the players "select" the villains that they really like to hate, do I start firming up the cast for the sub-plots.  And only after we are a few sessions into the game do I make a selection of who the MV is. 

 

The main point of how I develop a Supers game is the initial scenarios are more general and allow everyone to find their feet.  The initial plot points and clues in the beginning are less specific.  Once the players have played enough to see what kind of Heroes they are, I plug in the actual long term Villains. 

 

In the end, players have fun in games that have the villains that are fun to hate.  And since that villain is different for every person, I don't lock them in until the players "choose".

[Kesedrith]

Here are some reasons people don't try to run superhero RPGs. 1) The system used is to complicated compared to other types of RPGs (it is true, but not overly so. A good supers RPG must account for anything the players think up, character wise.) 2) Mistaken believed that comic books are for "kids", so RPGs set in a supers world must also be so. 3) Just not intrested in supers RPGs. 4) Not intrested in the morality of comic books. ("To smiplistic", to "But I want to murder beings I consider subhuman in fiction, else I do so in real life".) 5) Don't have the time. (A problem which affects us all at times. The reason I don't run or play currently is I have no idea when I get a free day from week to week.)

#3 is a big one for me....when I'm running. It's why I've taken to just stating up front that my supers games are more along the lines of things like the Elementals by Comico or the Vertigo titles from DC. It's just how it is. I can play that comic book morality just fine, but for whatever reason, I can't run it worth a flip.

 

I have a similar issue with running games, period. I've tried so hard on so many occasions to run a more episodic campaigns, simply because most of my groups were fluid enough that you just didn't know who exactly was going to show up from week to week. No matter how hard I try though, continuity takes hold, a story line forms in my head, and suddenly the whole thing is an epic adventure. Every time. Every genre.

[TheDarkness]

Key phrase.  

 

In my supers games, I always have recurring villains.  But I generally don't know who they will be until the players have settled in.

 

In the beginning of my games there is a Master Villain driving the major plot and 2-3 not-Master Villains driving 1-2 plots not really related to the big bad plot, and 1 directly supporting the MV.  At the time of the campaign start I will only have a loose outline for the Master Villain's plans and initially I do not even know who the MV actually is.  The 2-3 sub-plots will also be loosely outlined.    Only once the game has started and the players "select" the villains that they really like to hate, do I start firming up the cast for the sub-plots.  And only after we are a few sessions into the game do I make a selection of who the MV is. 

 

The main point of how I develop a Supers game is the initial scenarios are more general and allow everyone to find their feet.  The initial plot points and clues in the beginning are less specific.  Once the players have played enough to see what kind of Heroes they are, I plug in the actual long term Villains. 

 

In the end, players have fun in games that have the villains that are fun to hate.  And since that villain is different for every person, I don't lock them in until the players "choose".

Totally stealing this. Nice!

[DasBroot]

I only really have two rules for running a Champions game:

 

Rule 1: Is the character you are designing fun for you to play?

Rule 2: Is the character you are designing fun for the rest of the table to see you play?

Rule 2a: Reminder that the GM is someone at the table.

 

Champions is currently on hiatus because a few players violated rule two on a regular basis.   We have less tolerance for that now in our 40s than we did in our teens but it was still disruptive enough.

 

The greatest offender took the spot with an 'anything goes' style game but only ran it two sessions because, indeed, anything does not go and we broke him immediately and deliberately (I played an intangible character with an affect physical world double penetrating 0 end killing attack and 32 identical duplicates). 

 

That's a big reason why people don't run Champions games, however, in my experience - it's very easy to derail: Either everyone builds all their characters together with an idea of how they're going to work together and with a definite 'goal' for the game or it all falls apart.

[Opale]

Like Enforcer84 said, I experienced that lots of casual RPG players are willing to break the basic concepts of superhero playing. I.e using killing powers, and behaving more like vigilantes and egotist assholes with powers who pretend to serve the good, but only seeks glory.

 

At first I tried to trust the PCs, but not anymore. Now each character is totally supervized, and created (background included sometimes !) by me.

 

And if the player can't fit, I invite them to quit the table. No bad feelings.

 

Now, it's true that noone else want to GM a Champions campaign, mostly because of the system complexity. 

 

And there is the cultural difference. Superheroes are an american fantasy. In France, most people like them but find them silly, and unrealistic. Which is the main point.

[TheQuestionMan]

More silly than Magic, Fearies, and randy Gods?

 

 

LOL

 

 

QM

[Christopher R Taylor]

In France, most people like them but find them silly, and unrealistic. Which is the main point.

 

Well that really is the main point: they are silly and unrealistic.  And fun.  Dragons are silly and unrealistic.  James Bond is silly and unrealistic.  Harlequin Romances are silly and unrealistic.  That's the point; they are escapes.

[Spence]

These days I always use pre-built PC's for new players. Not just for Hero either. All of my games.

 

This way a new player doesn't "waste" their character concept on a bad build due to misunderstanding of rule mechanics.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I too really like Spence's approach and its something I've tried to do in games; let the players pick their favorite bad guys and recurring enemies.  I even started to do something that someone way back in the  90s on the email group (Captain Spith I think?) who said you should watch for agents and nobodies, and if someone stands out in some way, have them come back.  That Viper Agent that got a huge crit on the hero, or failed spectacularly and hilariously, or was in some way memorable; have them come back as a Viper leader with a promotion or something.  Have the players able to recognize him.

[Spence]

I'm on the road. But when i get a chance ill post one of my campaign "frames".

[bigdamnhero]

These days I always use pre-built PC's for new players. Not just for Hero either. All of my games.

 

This way a new player doesn't "waste" their character concept on a bad build due to misunderstanding of rule mechanics.

My approach to this problem is to say "Describe your character to me in narrative, non-mechanical terms" and then build it for them. More work for me of course, but I actually like building Hero character, so it's all good.

[Greywind]

And there is the cultural difference. Superheroes are an american fantasy. In France, most people like them but find them silly, and unrealistic. Which is the main point.

 

And this is the thanks Captain America gets for his efforts during WWII.