zslane

The results from The Snap has an official name: The Decimation.
http://goo.gl/KrbCNV
 
Comment: decimation is one tenth, not one half. 

Disney, along with all the media conglomerates, have spent many years and untold millions of dollars lobbying for and getting the changes to Copyright law necessary to guarantee that their IP never goes into the public domain. Since all of their properties are listed as created and owned by the corporation, "75 years after creator's death" is meaningless unless the corporation itself dissolves without passing its rights onto another corporate entity. Some people might call it ironic, but I call it hypocritical that companies like Disney gleefully profit off the vast stores of public domain creations out there while at the same time seeing to it that their own creations never become accessible to the broader culture in the same way.

Today's pre-written adventures are no great shakes.
 
They aren't anything I'd be excited to play. Sure, they often have lavish production values, but they suffer from the need to cater to a style of play I rather detest. Which is a style that is heavy on narrative play and is way too dependent on the players achieving specific objectives at various points in the plot. There's little room in the written text for how to deal with a near TPK, or characters who decide to completely bypass a "chapter". If a GM doesn't have time to come up with their own adventures, then they also don't have time to prepare contingencies for player actions and outcomes that deviate heavily from the expectations of the pre-written adventure text. That puts today's adventures on rails for the most part.
 
Back in the day we used to complain about adventures, whether pre-written or GM-created, that felt like they were on rails. Nowadays the rails have become necessary and expected to a large degree. Players seem to want the adventure spoon fed to them, with little to no chance of failure at any point so that nothing derails the all-important Story. This has become painfully evident after watching numerous RPG streams on YouTube, and hearing various GMs vlog about their campaigns.
 
The evolution of pre-written adventures/modules away from "adventure settings with a dramatic situation" towards "adventure paths with a series of chapters" has been slow and subtle. The stark contrast between the two really only became apparent to me after I read Matthew Finch's essay, A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming, and I realized just how far today's adventure path products have drifted from the iconic AD&D modules of old (ala G1-3/D1-3/Q1 or the T series).
 
How does this affect Superheroes vs. Fantasy? Well I grew up expecting fantasy RPG play to have an ongoing plot where we, the players, drove most of the action and where a sense of continuity from session to session was paramount. Superhero RPG play, on the other hand, was a refreshing change where each session was more or less standalone, with "continuity" only existing insofar as we remembered past missions and maybe the consequences of one mission might have some minor impact on some future mission/plot. Moreover, as superheroes we were reacting to the actions of the villains, rather than going out into the world and carving out our own heroic destiny, like you typically find in fantasy.

I had very much the same trajectory as you, starting out with AD&D in 1980 and then discovering Champions in 1982. However, Champions revealed to me how tired I was of the fantasy genre as a whole--not just as an RPG genre but also as a literary one as well--and so I only ever reluctantly played fantasy RPGs after 1982, usually because it was the only genre being played by the group I joined at any given time. The superhero genre remains my favorite RPG genre of all, probably with science fiction right behind, mostly because I've had so little opportunity to play sci-fi RPGs and so  it is sort of an itch that never really got scratched. But to this day I still feel that if I never play or read the fantasy genre again I'd be just fine with that (I approach the prospect of someday bingeing Game of Thrones with a mixture of ambivalence, curiosity, and mild indifference, especially having read the first book many years ago and thinking it was merely okay).

I hear you. Superhero (comic book) fatigue never hit me because by the early 1990s I had pretty much stopped reading them. So my love of the genre is in many ways a nostalgic love for late silver age and early bronze age Marvel comics (e.g., Claremont/Byrne era X-Men), and isn't tainted by all the convoluted nonsense that came after. For instance, I've pretty much missed the whole "annual mega-crossover" trend, and have only experienced it in its heavily diluted MCU form. It is easy for me to avoid superhero saturation because I don't over-indulge in the genre by also reading superhero comics and playing superhero video games (side note: I still deeply mourn the loss of City of Heroes).

I hear you. Superhero (comic book) fatigue never hit me because by the early 1990s I had pretty much stopped reading them. So my love of the genre is in many ways a nostalgic love for late silver age and early bronze age Marvel comics (e.g., Claremont/Byrne era X-Men), and isn't tainted by all the convoluted nonsense that came after. For instance, I've pretty much missed the whole "annual mega-crossover" trend, and have only experienced it in its heavily diluted MCU form. It is easy for me to avoid superhero saturation because I don't over-indulge in the genre by also reading superhero comics and playing superhero video games (side note: I still deeply mourn the loss of City of Heroes).

I had very much the same trajectory as you, starting out with AD&D in 1980 and then discovering Champions in 1982. However, Champions revealed to me how tired I was of the fantasy genre as a whole--not just as an RPG genre but also as a literary one as well--and so I only ever reluctantly played fantasy RPGs after 1982, usually because it was the only genre being played by the group I joined at any given time. The superhero genre remains my favorite RPG genre of all, probably with science fiction right behind, mostly because I've had so little opportunity to play sci-fi RPGs and so  it is sort of an itch that never really got scratched. But to this day I still feel that if I never play or read the fantasy genre again I'd be just fine with that (I approach the prospect of someday bingeing Game of Thrones with a mixture of ambivalence, curiosity, and mild indifference, especially having read the first book many years ago and thinking it was merely okay).

I had very much the same trajectory as you, starting out with AD&D in 1980 and then discovering Champions in 1982. However, Champions revealed to me how tired I was of the fantasy genre as a whole--not just as an RPG genre but also as a literary one as well--and so I only ever reluctantly played fantasy RPGs after 1982, usually because it was the only genre being played by the group I joined at any given time. The superhero genre remains my favorite RPG genre of all, probably with science fiction right behind, mostly because I've had so little opportunity to play sci-fi RPGs and so  it is sort of an itch that never really got scratched. But to this day I still feel that if I never play or read the fantasy genre again I'd be just fine with that (I approach the prospect of someday bingeing Game of Thrones with a mixture of ambivalence, curiosity, and mild indifference, especially having read the first book many years ago and thinking it was merely okay).

Yeah here's my problem with it: when Thor and Hulk fought, they destroyed the arena.  When Thanos and Hulk fought, it was like they were against a painted background.  It doesn't matter if you're hitting where you want to, its a problem of knockback and shoving around.  The Hulk casually destroys whatever he touches (remember the quinjet in Thor 3?).  THere was zero sense of strength or power in the blows, it was just punches.  It felt completely disappointing, a huge letdown.  There was no emotional impact, no response by the hulk, no face shots of him going "wow this guy hits hard" or a sense of concern or even that he noticed being hit.  Then suddenly he laid down and didn't get back up.  It was absolutely terrible.
 
Let me explain a bit more.  This isn't Bruce Lee fighting Chuck Norris.  This isn't a boxing movie.  This is a Superhero movie with what are essentially gods fighting each other.  When Thanos and the Hulk fight it should be epic, even if its brief.  Every single hit should give a massive sense of the unspeakable power being delivered, rather than just two computer generated cartoons bopping each other.  Glass should break nearby with the shockwaves of these punches.  You should get character moments where the Hulk goes "oh crap" not just fight fight fight lay down.  

It was a critical scene to establish how powerful Thanos was and instead it just made the Hulk look weak.

So much has already been said that I can't really add anything more, other than my own experience. I won't try to make accurate generalizations about each genre, but I will just give my own personal experience of each in the hopes that it may help distinguish between the two.
 
My first love was fantasy and D&D because they were pretty much the only gaming genre available to me back then. What I loved about it was learning that entirely new worlds existed with their own rules and assumptions, and I got to dive in and learn about them. What really excited me was the maps of strange and unknown places, and the feeling that if I traveled from one city to another, I could spontaneously leave the road and go cross-country in any direction and go exploring. Really, dungeon crawls and all of that are really about exploring something new, and the sense of wonder and surprise that comes from it.
 
My second love was comic books, and Champions. Superheroes represented different personality archetypes to me, and it was fun trying on different characters in my imagination and asking myself, "What would I do if I was virtually invulnerable and had claws?" and stuff like that. Superman never appealed to me because he seemed too polished and predetermined: he was fighting for truth, justice, and the American way and there was no other explanation needed. I was into the comics where there were actual personality conflicts and power-driven conflicts. They allowed me to learn about myself, and the game allowed me to create new versions of myself and imagine how I might behave in the world if I had these sorts of abilities. 
 
In short, D&D, and fantasy in general, allowed me to explore new worlds, conquer different problems, and get cool treasure. Champions allowed me to investigate different parts of myself and imagine how I might react in similar comic book situations. Fantasy was more external and comics were more internal for me.
 
And then Fantasy Hero brought both together for me, and that's all she wrote. I was hooked because I could do both: open-ended vast exploration, and deep-dive internal investigation. I came across Champions and Fantasy Hero a couple of years after they were released, but I had already given up on D&D because they were working on a 2nd edition. I had already given TSR all of my allowance for several years, and they were trying to talk me into giving them even more, and I was pissed! (It was my first experience of a new edition transition). I still loved fantasy, but hated what was happening with D&D. So I devoted all my time and energy to doing things in the HERO System: Justice, Inc., Danger International, my own Western spinoff, and more fantasy and comics stuff. I realized that they all brought both sides of what I loved about gaming. 
 
I suspect a lot of people, like me, loved the fantasy tropes in gaming but got sick of D&D and so turned to, or created, other versions of fantasy games. D&D dissatisfaction seems to have driven much of the market in the late '80s and the '90s. Perhaps people are still trying to find the "perfect system" for fantasy these days, as evidenced by how many games there are out there, many of which are now "indie" in approach. "Indie" is another way of saying they're tired of being constrained by D&D and Pathfinder. They have the feel and wonder of fantasy, but I don't think any of them have captured the right game mechanics that HERO System provides. The one thing that probably holds Fantasy Hero back is that it doesn't have a standard setting that everyone agrees upon. But that is why I love it so much: I can wander off the map and create my own stuff. I think the people now who are looking for alternatives have the desire for a game without an "official" setting, but they have an aversion to "crunchy" game systems, and HERO just has an unfortunate reputation.
 
Anyway, that doesn't really explain why fantasy tends to be more predominant in gaming, but it may lend a bit of insight based on what I got out of fantasy versus comics.

Yeah, what Duke said.
 
It seems to me that extrapolating from the way objects are measured according to their BODY (i.e., 2x size for each +1 BODY), characters could conceivably do the same thing (i.e., buy up BODY) if all they want to do is have a Very Large character (who isn't also super strong, super dense, etc.). I don't recall ever having to spend hours pouring through 2e or 4e to arrive at this conclusion.

Yes. In-game benefits and penalties come and go constantly during the course of play. It is how RPGs are played.

Rules that may not apply in my science fiction campaign.
 
 
But maybe in my campaign setting, it is absolutely necessary to perform this particular ritual using the complex two-handed gestures without variation in order to tap into the supernatural forces at work, or to successfully "call" the supernatural being to our dimension (or whatever). The player doesn't get to change the laws of magic in my campaign setting just because he elected not to take a Complication.
 
The way I see it, this is really no different than a player who creates a character whose backstory says they are a member of a prominent family who are barons of industry, commerce, and politics, but elects not to take a DNPC Complication for any of them. Now, if anyone thinks that I as GM am prohibited from imperiling those family members as part of a larger plotline just because the player did not take a DNPC Complication they are not only dead wrong, I seriously question their grasp of the game.
 

The way we always did it was that the first thing the GM did at the start of each session was roll all the Hunteds and Watcheds and so forth, and jot down in his notes which ones came up. If it felt plausible and dramatically appropriate to have one or more of the Hunteds show up that session, the GM would add them to the mix. Otherwise he would treat the roll as the Hunted being near by and studying the hero, plotting his next move, and would then figure out how to work the Hunted into a future session.

I'm guessing that Aquaman will wear his classic colors in the final act of the film only. And I bet we'll never see it again after that.

She just stands there???
 
No, 'hammer-shattering action' or 'kung-fu grip'?!?!
 
Awwww 

And if you were the player who wanted your one-armed character to climb a sheer cliff face without any special gear or powers (to use just that one example out of the countless other similarly "impossible" feats a character might ask to perform), then I would need to hear how you imagine your character accomplishing that, and I'd have to be convinced that it is plausible within the fictive reality of the campaign world, before I would allow it. But I would certainly hear your case. However, off the top of my head I can't imagine a plausible explanation (that doesn't come with half a dozen "if this and this and this" qualifiers that require way too much handwavium), and so I feel your job would be a difficult one.

And to think some people actually argue that RPG combat isn't a tabletop wargame at heart...

Hmmm this may be why I want to stick with 4th Ed.. I worked in video games, and the  analogy for me is that the size of the game books is like the increasing graphics requirements for games. Champions was originally like Quake, then came Champions 2e like Quake2, 3rd edition was like Unreal. 4th was like Unreal Tournament, etc. The work needed for the increased requirement grows exponentially. I am not convinced the increased specificity of modifiers, was a good thing. 

I'm guessing that Aquaman will wear his classic colors in the final act of the film only. And I bet we'll never see it again after that.

I kinda feel that both of the above observations are a by-product of contemporary RPG designs having to cater to a new generation of players whose ideas of what a "roleplaying game" ought to be is shaped more by video games than wargames. Today's players expect D&D to have most of the trappings of MMORPGs, and they expect their characters to start out highly competent and become superheroic after about 20 hours of play.

The way I look at it, if a game uses a D20 for most action resolution mechanics, including combat to-hit, features six stats called STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, and CHA, has classes, XP levels, hit points, armor class, saving throws, spells with vocal, somatic, and material components, and a spell called Magic Missile, then the game is either D&D or a descendant of D&D. Pathfinder fits all these criteria, and no matter how many other bits they add, it can't escape its D&D3.5/D20 DNA.

It's not always a choice or a physical complication driving that, however.  For example, a person might have taken a disabling blow to one arm, forcing him to wield his 1 1/2-handed weapon in one hand.  As I say above, not getting points from a Physical Complication doesn't make him immune to potential penalties that his teammates might face if circumstances put them into a similar situation, albeit temporarily.  After all, they didn't get points for being in that situation that forced them to fight one-handed. 

Well, yeah, sorta. The PCs are the main players on a grand stage they share with NPCs. The fact is the PCs are just as capable of compromising the game experience as the GM with his NPCs. The Rule of Fun applies to everyone, and when someone's character concept creates friction with the tone or internal-reality of the campaign the GM has to step in and endeavor to keep things on track. That's what it means to take on the job of GM.

Well, my thoughts are that missing an arm in almost any campaign setting is going to create issues for the character. You've already mentioned a few. As GM I would not make this character immune to those issues and their drawbacks/penalties just because they didn't take it as a Complication. The player is basically saying, "I want to have a missing arm, but I am willing to not take points for the problems that will create for my character." As a GM you are under no obligation to protect the player from his own creative choices, and should let the campaign world present all the normal challenges it would present to any character. The fact that he chose not to take points for being challenged in this way was his choice, and that shouldn't mean you have to go out of your way to figure out how to sidestep those challenges even at the expense of plausibility within the campaign.