zslane

Would a nuke even stop a Kryptonian? For me, that was the most compelling question raised by Kingdom Come, namely, how do you stop a godlike being who has decided to go off the reservation? The Watchmen briefly flirted with this question too, but chose to put its god into exile rather than really examine the issue too deeply. Somehow I doubt that such a serious subject would creep into a show so relentlessly cheery as Supergirl, even indirectly via arguments with nameless random "DEO thugs". Um, what is a DEO?

Doc Savage is basically a superhero. Doc Savage is classic pulp. I don't see a crossover conflict there. After all, "Pulp" as we use it here refers to an era, not a genre. It encompasses many different genres including proto-supers like Doc Savage. Basically, pick a literary genre template from the pulp era, be it horror, lost-world adventuring, crimebusting, planetary romance, or what-have-you, and base a campaign around its style, tone, and plot structure. Voila! You have a pulp game. The only reason golden age superheroics isn't usually lumped in with pulp is because it's the genre you get when you cross the WWII bridge from the pulp-era side. You could conceivably run a pulp-era costumed crimefighting game with characters exactly like Batman and his rogue's gallery and I feel it would feel appropriately pulpy. The fact that Batman survived the pulp era and transitioned successfully into the silver age of superheroes doesn't expunge his pulp origins. Similarly, I feel The Rocketeer is pulp through and through. He's a hero/protagonist in the same tradition as Indiana Jones. It's just that he has moxy and a rocket pack rather than education and a whip.

Players may want to take a "don't tell me what to do" attitude, but ultimately what they do and what they spend their XP on will be subject to campaign guidelines, house rules, and GM discretion. There's kinda no getting around that. In my experience, players who can't accept the intrinsic limits of being a player don't stick around long.

Clearly you guys aren't playing a supers campaign... In my experience, most fantasy rpgers aren't willing to sign up for Hero's complexity and detail. That sort of opt-in seems to be easiest to sell when playing superheroes.

If he appears again at all, Klaw will probably end up in the Black Panther film.

My only concerns are: low-budget fx (distracts from the emotional impact of her superheroic actions), tendency towards cheesy camera angles, cheesy fan-service gags. Oh, and her costume is a bit bland. But other than that, it looks fairly promising. Casting is good. Tone is nice and cheerful (not unlike The Flash). Bringing in alien/super threats is an excellent move (i.e., it won't just be this generation's Lois and Clark). I sorta like the whole "evolving costume" bit, though I confess I liked her first outfit best (the one she refuses to wear). I realize it would be impossible for viewers to take her seriously all cheesecaked out like that, but it really was a sweet/sexy design.

If by "pulp systems" you mean broadly scoped genre supplements attached to a generic system, then it should be no surprise to anyone that they aren't big sellers. Those types of books don't provide you with a game to play. They give you a history lesson, some period gear lists, and a smattering of adventure ideas. I don't think that is the kind of product that is ever likely to "catch on and take off." Don't get me wrong; I feel that the Pulp Hero books you and Steve produced are chock full of wonderfully written, high-quality material. It's just that very little of it constitutes what I would call a "Pulp RPG Game". An example of how to do it right is Call of Cthulhu. It is a pulp-era horror RPG with a distinct tone, style, and setting. That is a pulp RPG. Genre books are not RPGs. They are just "idea books" which have limited sales potential no matter the genre, and no matter how brilliantly written. If I were to create a pulp game product for the Hero System, I would choose a specific pulp-era genre (e.g., Doc Savage style world-spanning action/adventure), and take selected bits and pieces from my omnibus edition of Pulp Hero to build a focused setting around it. The goal wouldn't be to teach would-be GMs how to build their own pulp campaigns, but to give them one they can play with the moment they finish reading the core book. Inventive GMs will kit-bash their own ideas into the setting and "make it their own," but the idea is for the official product line to do most of the heavy lifting for them in terms of world-building and adventure seeding. Is there a market for such a product? Maybe. I don't think Hero Games has ever really tried to find out. The Hero Games paradigm has rarely been setting-based, it has always been rules/ideas based, leaving all the setting creation to the players. In order to find out if an actual pulp-era RPG can succeed, one must produce one first...

Steve and Rob's work definitely makes Pulp Hero a worthy successor to Allston's work on Justice Inc. In my view, Pulp Hero occupies an interesting position within the Hero System product ecology. If we imagine a product like Dark Champions, but broader in scope, called Action Hero, then we would probably describe Pulp Hero as its inter-war/pre-atomic-age offshoot. Kind of like how Galactic Champions is the far-future, cosmic-level offshoot of Champions. It's not even really a genre so much as a block on a timeline and a spot on a power-level scale. You can be playing in the "pulp era", and at "pulp action" power levels, but be playing in any number of genres: horror, crimebusting, exploration, (early) scifi, etc. And I think that is the one glaring weakness of most "pulp" game products out there. Pulp gaming books attempt to explain the entire literary era and present it as if it was a single gaming genre, even though they often go out of their way to describe all the distinct literary genres that fit within its purview. What we don't usually get is a focused pulp-era setting designed to give players a specific pulp-era adventure experience (pick a genre, please). White Wolf comes pretty close with Adventure! and its Aeon Society setting, and Pulp Hero dips its toes in those waters with its Empire Club. It's too bad neither of them spawned much in the way of follow-on material specific to these settings.

Yes, this is exactly how the Hero System can be used to improvise power stunts on the fly during play. However, in that moment you basically gave the character several CP worth of a Multipower slot for free. If players want that sort of flexibility, to change the powers they can fire off at any given moment, well, that's what VPP is for. If you aren't going to make them buy a VPP and you are going to give them situational powers/slots for free, I recommend at least making the "stunt" dependent on some sort of skill or characteristic roll. Make that sort of flexibility at least a little unpredictable and potentially unreliable.

This is very true, though the same is true of all RPGs. Nobody should feel beholden to every word of the written rules--we don't live in the Gygax era of roleplaying anymore. :-) But you know, there was a time when the Hero System was digestible enough that using all the rules was not just manageable, it was the desireable norm. In my view, the system lost this quality once the original BBB ceased to be the game standard. As much as I'm in favor of entirely new presentation for the game going forward, I'm not so sure that's enough to do the job. I think some major reconsolidation of rules/mechanics might be in order, though I suspect I'm in the minority in feeling this way.

I agree whole-heartedly. I also look forward to seeing the MCU evolve to look and feel a bit less like the modern folklore of patriarchical white priviledge. Don't get me wrong, I love the Marvel Universe and I love its history. But I also have this desire to see it reach (and speak to) as many people as possible, and that's hard to do when all your main characters are white males. War Machine, Black Widow, Falcon, and Scarlet Witch are a decent start, though none of them are lined up to star in their own movies. Black Panther, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Captain Marvel will help tremendously, I think, since each could represent an entire sub-franchise that spawns more interesting and varied characters and projects. It's a great time to be a fan of superheroes!

Both of which are awesome, btw. Highly recommended.

The Hero System used to be quite easy to learn if: 1. You had experience with some other RPG first (e.g., AD&D). 2. You understood your current RPG's weaknesses/shortcomings in terms of mechanics. 3. Your reading comprehension and basic math skills could handle what was in Champions 2nd ed. 4. You had access to at least one person who knew the game well (even if only via e-mail). I see people here trying to jump into HS6 cold. The odds are not in their favor. For one thing, HS6 is harder to grasp compared to, say, Champions 2nd because of the continual process of decoupling things for greater flexibility by the publisher(s). But that greater flexibility also makes the game harder to digest for newbies. For another thing, Champions was never a great fit for newbies lacking a previous RPG experience to compare the new mechanics to. I don't feel this has changed at all in 30 years. And lastly, the general reduction in the Champions/Hero player base since the 80s/90s means it is that much harder to find experienced players to learn from. These forums are a great resource, but they are no substitute for a local group who knows the game well already.

Asking if there are too many superhero movies coming out is like asking if there are too many horror movies coming out. The answer will always come in the form of box office performance. As long as people show up and buy tickets, Hollywood will keep making them. On a more personal level, only you can answer that question for yourself; that is to say, maybe there are too many superhero movies coming out for you, because you have some sort of saturation point beyond which you are no longer capable of enjoying something. *shrug* As for myself, I have a limited capacity for bad movies, superhero or otherwise, but as long as they are well made I say keep 'em coming! As for Dr. Strange, I think an amorphously defined "extradimensional energy" could bridge the gap between science and the supernatural. Clarke's Law and all that. I mean, if the energy that Strange draws from the Dark Dimension is called Dark Energy, then it seems to me it comfortably inhabits both realms at the same time. As long as they simply decline to explain things in physics terms, it'll feel adequately "magicky" for me. I mean let's face it, there's no way of explaining Scarlet Witch's powers without acknowledging that the pseudo-science used to describe it is actually "magic" (i.e., having nothing whatever to do with real physics) after all.

Don't forget that PRE attacks are compared against the higher of PRE or EGO. I mean, there's got to be a reason why someone is resistant to being impressed, awed, terrified, or whatever, and if it isn't because they themselves are impressive, awesome, terrifying, or whatever, then it is because they have some sort of "Iron Will", i.e., extra EGO. The special effect of a power might be allowed to counteract some number of situational PRE Attack bonus dice, but that in itself isn't a new kind of defense, it is just the ad hoc judicial application of special effect (against a bonus that is already under ad hoc judicial governance). Look, PRE Attack isn't a power; it is just an action, like a punch. It is something normal people do all the time. There is nothing intrinsically "super" about it. Even when someone's PRE is at superhuman levels, what they are doing with it isn't the same as activating a power, or even attacking with one. I suppose it is possible for the PRE Attack to become an exploit if players are allowed to use it in situations that more properly call for Mind Control, but that mistake should be easy to avoid (by insisting that players buy and use Mind Control).

That's why most campaigns go the trouble to define and enforce active point limits on attacks and defenses. It has already been mentioned how the diminishing returns aspect of Presence Attacks is one of its self-limiting factors that helps keep it from being abused. But beyond the raw mechanics, there are also campaign consequences to anything that gets "abused". For example, when it becomes common knowledge that Pride Lion's roar tends to take thugs out on the opening Phase 12 of every combat, smart master villains are going to start handing out noise-cancelling headgear to all their agents. I find that the most effective remedy against abusive rules exploits is in-game campaign consequences. Rather than trying to plug every loophole in the rules, it is more fun to bring the weight of the game world down upon the character (in a plausible fashion, mind you).

Assuming such a ruling has no noticible play-balance impact, go with whatever helps you tell a better story, as it were. If the game flows better and everyone has more fun with summoned demons that go poof at 0 BODY, then by all means do it that way.

I agree that this sort of thing falls under GM/campaign discretion. It is very common for GMs to treat 0 STUN as equivalent to GMUnc for thugs, just to speed things up. In that vein, I would take no issue with a campaign rule that says minion-calibre demons die/go-poof at 0 BODY (treated as equivalent to -BODY). For boss-calibre demons, however, I think you'd want them to have all the same benefits as PCs, including full STUN/BODY damage/recovery benefits.

Only if his goal is to create a game world his players would recognize as (equivalent to) the Indiana Jones milieu.

It's a fun show, but it sure likes its characters to act stupid sometimes. In fact, the entire episode last week was just painful. And the whole "we must keep Iris in the dark" thing has become so idiotic that I am almost ready to stop watching. I hate it when the script requires characters to lose about 100 IQ points just for the plot, like when Eddie suddenly appears at Barry's place claiming the DA just decided to let him go, and Barry buys it. Or when Caitlin decides to confront Wells, alone, at Wells' home, despite all the dire suspicions of everyone else she knows and trusts. Dumb dumb dumb. There's a point where the fun factor no longer trumps the so-dumb-its-retarded factor, and this show is skating awfully close to that point for me lately.

I imagine, then, that they won't recognize a campaign world with monsters as an Indiana Jones world either.

What is the concept/special effect of the Summon? If the demon is literally being summoned (i.e., called out to mystically), and when it appears it is "gating" in with its own power, then going "poof" would be a function of its own teleportation ability, and not subject to the whims of the summoner. If, on the other hand, summoning means dragging the demon into our dimension against its will, then sending it back would be under the summoner's control (or lack of it if he goes unconscious), and it would have nothing to do with the demon's own physical condition. Determining how a power should "work", as always, depends entirely on its concept and sfx. Without knowing those things, it is impossible to really advise how to design it or run it in play.

I am definitely "out of touch" with current pop culture tastes. I prefer the good old days when Batman was the hero and Bruce Wayne, the rich man about town, was just a way to explain how Batman afforded his Batcave and all his Batgear and had the free time to be Batman without the distractions of a mundane day job. I have zero interest in Bruce Wayne or his childhood trauma or his life as a billionaire industrialist. That's also why I have little patience for the Bruce Wayne branch of the Gotham story tree; I don't care about how Bruce became Batman, least of all how Bruce navigated his childhood. None of that has anything to do with what I like/find interesting about Batman. I realize this puts me out of touch with superhero culture today, but the MCU doesn't gaze so obsessively at its characters' navels and the MCU franchise is immensely popular, so I don't think the dark, gritty aesthetic that dominates DC-based films is necessarily the only way to go.

I take it that all/most of your players have read the Indiana Jones novels and comics?

Anyone who writes as much as Goyer does is going to have misses as well as hits. His Blade II was brilliant. And most folks worship the keys he typed out The Dark Knight on, so clearly Hollywood has good reason to turn to him for this sort of thing.