RDU Neil

I have all the Adventurer's Clubs... I'll have to dig that one out. Haven't looked at 'em since the '80s or whenever they came out.

Another great way of putting it... but worth exploring exactly that... why is it NOT ok for characters to be changed socially?
 
I still think it comes back to PLAYER psychology. Traditionally, the only power the player has is "who is my character and what decisions do they make?"  The rest is up to the GM. If the game suddenly forces certain decisions on the character that the player doesn't want... you've taken the little piece of what they had away. It is legitimate to ask, "What is the point of me playing my character when decisions and personality changes are made for me?"

This is no small thing and must be addressed. Some may never want/like that kind of thing in their games. I think a great deal of acceptability is circumstantial. 
 
For example: Go to a CON and play in a game with pre-gens. Given a character already made with certain likes and dislikes, passions, loves, hatreds all decided ahead of time, a good player will do their most to bring that alive at the table, and work within the framework of the character they are given. But if the player themselves "created" the character, with certain likes and dislikes, passion,loves, hatreds all decided... then changing any of them is, again, an attack on the PLAYER. 
 
To paraphrase Duke Bushidod above, if the enjoyment comes from "using my character to influence the world", rather than "react and play off of how the world changes my character" then there is going to be a struggle here.
 
A great compliment from my players who did, much like Duke Bushido's group,  in my game. They felt like they mattered, that their characters were pillars of the game world, and what they did , the decisions they made had real impact on the game world. 
 
It was true, and very much something I wanted to promote... but it really wasn't until later that I realized that much of the enjoyment of the players came from the ego-stroking it gave them. This is not to cast aspersions, but to realize, psychologically, what is going on. The players have fun because the players feel good about themselves for what their characters did in the game. The character, as proxy for the player, was successful, so the PLAYER felt successful. This is a very direct and common and easy to understand bit of psychology. We all feel it, but I'd argue we are usually not really aware unless we do a lot of self-examination (my specialty my curse) to understand what is going on.
 
The downside is that when the characters fail or lose or die, it also feels like the PLAYER failed or lost (but hopefully not died). That can create bad blood at the table, or at least grumpiness. 

This psychology is very natural, and is separate from Play Preference (Gamist, Simulationist, Narrativist any combination of). As human beings, we need to invest our Ego in some part of the game, otherwise we aren't engaged. We need to feel our efforts were successful, or we didn't have fun... but what does success mean when it is stripped from character advancement, character influence, character winning... from the character as proxy?
 
How do you Ego stroke Players when the game may call for their character to be a humiliated failure?
 
I believe (and again, this is all just my interpretation) that Nar mechanics are trying to help the Player invest in something other than the character... so that the Player finds satisfaction that isn't dependent on character success.
 
I would also say that at the core, the difference can be in source material influencing the game.  "Literature" (mostly) is very much about characters learning and being changed by events and the realities of the world. "Genre Fiction" and "Comic books" etc., are (mostly) power fantasies. Stories where the characters impose their will on the world. Clearly, traditional RPGs play into the very natural power fantasies of the players/GM, so that things like social conflicts, give and take, falling short of your ideal self, being co-opted by the power structure, being socially changed are the ANTITHESIS of the power fantasy... thus feel... wrong.
 
 
 

Yes... it occurred to me afterwards that this might be what they were aiming for... let's not just set the movie in the '90s, but film the movie LIKE IT WAS A 90s movie... and that was a horrible choice.
 
This movie also asked no hard questions... it had no thematic heart. What was this movie about? Winter Soldier asked about fear and safety at the expense of freedom, Black Panther was about isolationism, tribalism, colonial diaspora, etc., Civil War was about responsibility of power and making wrong decisions, Wonder Woman was about acknowledging that humanity really is shitty but there are things worth fighting for... Captain Marvel was about nothing... what... maybe checking the fan-service boxes for pop-culture references and the shallowest, most superficial "grrrrl power"... while sanitizing it of any thing remotely weighty or emotionally resonant. Heck, Ant-Man & the Wasp was WAY better and even at second billing, Hope Van Dyne had more emotional resonance (she wants her mom back) and toughness (You'd never have been caught... now THAT'S a line!)... than CM had.
 
And if the Skrulls really were happy homemaker refugees... then why did they even try to kill Danvers at the phone booth or copy Coulson and attack Fury. That made no sense at all at that point, because their Leader already knew that CM was special after hooking her up to the machine. Heck... why leave that last Skrull to get butchered for no reason by Yon-Rogg? What did that serve?

This movie was made for lowest common denominator, bland, avoiding controversy or complexity of any kind mindsets. This, along with the awful "bro humor" of GotG are supposed to be the future of Marvel? No thank you.

It could have been enhanced by SI manipulation - letting memories slip where Carol failed (trying to drive her down - she really isn't good for much and needs the Kree/the SI) only to have her recognize that her strength comes not from succeeding every time she tries, but from never giving up - every time she fell, she got back up.  That's strength, not weakness.  That was the sense I got from that final mental montage where every scene we saw previously, (that looked like failure) was extended to her getting back up, ready to keep trying, even while everyone around her was telling her "you can't do it - give up".  Rediscovering that inner strength was her real victory.  After that, she knew she had nothing to prove to Yon-Rogg.
 
To me, the scene hammered that pretty heavy, and I did not want or need it beaten into my head any more than it already was.
 
But I would agree no scene in Captain Marvel matched the Wonder Woman scene where she climbed the ladder out of the trench and walked across No Man's Land.

The Guidelines actually say "the typical range of characters' base Combat Values".  I can interpret "base" to mean "characteristic", but I think the better interpretation is the level at which CV will typically be at (i.e. no Dodge, skill levels where they would normally be applied).  Otherwise, we create a setting where there is no real guideline for CV as we can just ramp up indefinitely with skill levels.
 
What a "highly trained normal" can do has never been precisely defined.  We have had characters with 35+ DEX and 7+ SPD defined as "trained normals" in various publications, although perhaps not since 5e set a bar for "superhuman".
 
I would tend to agree that, if there is a cap on how good someone can be naturally, there is also a limit on how far training can take them.  No matter how much I practice, I am never going to come close to Bruce Lee - that's not just innate ability, but limits on how far training can take a person.  Or, perhaps, it is simply a cap on the extent to which training can enhance one's innate ability.

Yes, it is inevitable. Wonder Woman was leaps and bounds better than Captain Marvel. I cared for Gadot while Larson was just in the movie. Danvers could have been an interesting character but was merely a cardboard figure in the movie and the supporting cast in CM, Fury leading the pack, was annoying at best. However, I tend to agree that the final action scene is better and that the vilains are more interesting (the visuals for that part of WW was not the greatest). WW had a better story, better character development and thank God, no flerkin
 
As they say, to each his own (is this what they say?)!

I am not as definitive than RDU Neil, I get where he is coming from. The movie was entertaining with an execution similar to an 80s or 90s action movie: predictable plot driving action sequences, cliche dialogue, cheap humour, good sountrack.
I personally thought Larson was wooden. I really did not care about the character and for that matter did not find anything to conect to emotionally.
I found the Skrulls faily pathetic as oppressed refugees and their situation was further cheapened by the somewhat light-hearted demeanor of their leader (forgot the name). The general "let's try to be funny" approach of the whole movie was distracting and the flerkin simply became an annoyance.
Nick Fury, cracking jokes and generally useless, was the low point of the whole movie. I heard people complain about Batman being to humourous in JL, let's try having Nick Fury as comic relief in CM instead (including the was he lost his eye).
 
At the end of the movie, my 10 yo daughter told me she "liked the movie because it was funny and tha cat and Fury were hilarious."
 
Was it entertaining? Yes. Was it a good movie, not really no.

Seen in a comments section at superhero hype article on Brightburn
 
"A brooding, joyless, terrifying alien in a red cape leaves death and destruction in his wake. But hey, enough about Man of Steel..."
 
Now, I liked a lot about MoS, but I laughed. And I agree, the deconstruction attempts are fair game, but form me, overplayed. Brighburn will have to be quite good to stand out from that over cluttered (In my experience) field.
To be fair, to those who never read a comic in their life, this might be new and 'fresh'
 
 

I'm arguing that superhero horror is just as valid as superhero comedy, superhero romance or superhero whatever. This includes "superhero action", which is basically what generic "superheroes" is.
 
Furthermore, since Superman is "the" superhero, he is a natural reference point for such stories, in much the same way that he was the reference point for films like Hancock or My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
 
That's my substantive point.
 
A side point: I wrote nothing about "power and responsibility". I wrote "power and privilege", which is entirely different.

I totally get what your are saying megaplayboy. Below is what I came up with for my current Heroic "cinematic modern action" campaign, called Secret Worlds. The intent is for PCs and others to be "special" in their level of skill and ability (maybe a weird ability that can be explained away by science... almost) but not really superhumans. (Jason Bourne meets X-Files). 

I'm not even sure I'd keep it this way if I really work on it over time, but it is a starting place for the campaign world. I certainly wouldn't say it has to apply generically across HERO games.

 
Character Combat Skill Classes 
“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”  
 -- Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5 
 
Secret Worlds characters, particularly Specials, are most often both superior in natural ability and highly trained. This combination makes them very dangerous combatants. Below are lists of mechanics along with a "descriptor" that gives a sense of how the character would be perceived by others. 
 
Stat Level: OCV and DCV (Reflecting natural ability and combat experience) 
Normal = 3 
Athletic = 4 
Talented = 5 
Natural = 6 (A person twice as good as normal without any particular training) 
Prodigy = 7 
Phenom = 8 
Peerless = 9 (A person three times better than normal without any particular training)  
OCV and DCV should be considered separately. A character could be a Prodigy in avoiding attacks (7 DCV) but only slightly better than normal in attacking (Athletic 4 OCV), if that matches the character concept. PCs are limited to Prodigy levels or below w/o GM permission. 
 
Skill Levels: (Reflecting Training with a weapon/attack maneuver/group of maneuvers.) 
Untrained: No Weapon Fam, -3 OCV w/weapon, base OCV for basic HtH maneuvers 
Trained: Weapon Fam, minimum martial maneuvers, but no levels.  
Skilled: Trained, +1-2 with a single maneuver  
Advanced: Trained, +1-2 CSLs with a small group of attacks 
Expert: Trained, +1-2 with a small group of attacks AND +1-2 PSLs with a group of attacks or other combination  
Veteran: Trained +3 levels with a group of attacks AND +2-3 PSLs, or other combination 
Master: Trained, +4 CSL with group of attacks AND +3-4 PSLs, or other combination (but no more than 5 CSL with any one attack) 
Legendary: 5 or more CSLs AND 5 or more PSLs with a group of attacks, and no limits to how they are combined on any one attack 
Skill Levels and Stat Levels should be thought of combined to establish the character concept. e.g. A Skilled Normal, or a Trained Prodigy, etc. 
 
Combat Class: The combined total of OCV (including PSLs) vs. DCV is important for game balance and sets a characters Combat Class. A character with both medium to high stats and skill levels will quickly out-strip most other combatants.   
Choices that can stack to affect the final Combat Class of a character are: 
Weapon Familiarities & Weapon Elements 
Martial Arts maneuvers 
OCV/DCV 
CSLs & PSLs 
Combat Related Skills (Defense Maneuver and Rapid Attack, Analyze Style, etc) 
 
Combat Class Evaluation: Each PC will be evaluated as to the extent they are "better than normal" with the following criteria. 
  Attacker’s OCV -  
Target’s DCV is 
Chance to Hit 
6 
99% 
5 
98% 
4 
95% 
3 
91% 
2 
84% 
1 
74% 
0 
63% 
-1 
50% 
-2 
38% 
-3 
26% 
-4 
16% 
-5 
9% 
-6 
5% 
 
Ranged Attack Comparison Examples:  
A Trained Normal firing at close range against Normal Defender = 63% chance to hit a non-specific area. 
A Trained Normal firing at close range against a Normal Defender = .5% chance to hit with a "head shot" (-8 modifier) needing a "3" to hit. 
A Master Prodigy firing at close range against a Normal Defender = 99%+ chance to hit a non-specific area. 
A Master Prodigy firing at close range against a Normal Defender = 63% chance to hit with a "head shot" (-8 modifier) without PSLs. 
 
Difference of "6": Compare a PC's best attack to the Combat Class where they have a 6+ advantage (99% chance to hit).  These odds must be considered closely to evaluate campaign balance. 
 
Per Attack: Remember that a Combat Class is referring to a specific attack or group of attacks. A character could be a Veteran Athlete with Small Arms, but only a Trained Athlete with knives, and an Untrained Athlete with nunchaku.  

He does get better, but its a lot less steady and extreme than games show.  He goes from being pretty good to being really good, and wiser.  Not worthless to godlike.  Fafhrd and Gray Mouser have a similar arc: they get better, but its more a natural progression of "Got older and got some training" rather than a gamer exponential curve.  

Um, well, sounds like what you really want is an opposed roll, which you could do on 3D6 by having the attacker roll 11+OCV, the defender roll 11+DCV, and whichever makes the roll by more wins; ties go to the defender.
 
 
 
 
 

Long story short, a sufficiently large dice pool behaves very similarly to 3d6.  More formally, both approximate bell curves.  The question will be if you like the change in behavior caused by the different RNG scheme. 
Can it work?  Sure, it's the same basic curve.  Will it work out-of-box with just a simple conversion formula?  I doubt it, I'd expect recosting and balance changes to be necessary. 
 
Here, have some data to process.  First number is OCV, second is DCV, output is % chance to hit.  https://anydice.com/program/13f25

Lay off the spicy food. XD Uaving a hard enough time wrapping my head around RDU’s initiative rolls per turn. 

That's my point. I think there should be.  If an OCV stat of 10 is the "max" stat for a Legendary human, then it follows that a number of combat skill levels which exceed 10(or thereabouts) should reasonably be considered superhuman as well.  

I’d be really interested to see your log as well. I’m interested in teaching some new people the HERO System, and I’d like to start with a heroic level game. There are so many fewer moving parts to keep track of. I’d most likely to a Danger International or Justice, Inc. sort of game, although updated to 6e.

Wow it was bad.
 
I'm sad to say, but Marvel made its first really bad movie. (I've not read other comments in this thread, yet, but I will.)
 
The writing and directing were the level of a bad after-school special. The Action scenes were badly staged, the plot was... pointless. Everyone, not just Larson, was stiff and awkward, with dialogue that was completely flat. The movie lacked heart in every way... I honestly shocked that this was allowed to be released. It didn't know if it wanted to be Guardians funny (it wasn't) or Avengers dramatic (it wasn't) or Ant-Man heartfelt (it wasn't)... it was a mess.
 
My wife was very unhappy. She wanted... badly... to like it and said, "Like thirty minutes in, I realized, I just didn't care about any of it. It was so stiff and just... whatever. I kept saying, "But this is Captain Marvel!" and am just SO disappointed."
 
So bad... I'm frankly amazed Feige let this be released.

I'm assuming Gamestorm is in Oregon? Probably can't get there from MI, but I'd be totally down for that game. I'd actually be interested in discussing how you make pre-gens and how you keep a team of "super spies" or whatever feeling like unique contributors to a team. It is one thing to hash this out with a regular play group, but to have it established going into a CON game... just interested in your approach.

Good luck!

This would make a good Con game, I think. Maybe the PCs are all security guards on another floor, called in at the last second, bummed to be working on Christmas eve, drinking in a half-finished break room on one of the floors under construction. Crazy shit starts to happen... just throw in another set of euro-trash bad guys and be prepared for all kinds of attempts to derail things from the events of the movie. In fact, that is the point... once stuff starts going down, how do things go differently? 

Make sure none of the PCs have names... just Security Guard 1, Security Guard 2, etc. Minimal skills, just enough to get themselves killed if they get too out of hand, but maybe enough to actually be heroes if they get lucky. 
 
Hell, this would be a blast. I'll have to work on this. I think it would take having a clear "Plot" mechanic, where the GM had clear resources for throwing "And then THIS happens!" that railroad events, but those resources run out and the PCs can begin to change things.
 
Also, at a CON, likely to get some younger players, who will likely be familiar with the movie, but unlikely to have worshiped at the alter of Die Hard for thirty years, like most of us, here.
 
Hmmm... this could be a thing.
 
Edit: oh... the more I think about this... each Security Guard has a major Complication...
1. "I'm retiring next month!"
2. "My wife is pregnant and about to have our first kid, and I'm stuck here!"
3. "My boyfriend, who works the front desk night shift, got me this job."
4. "I'm dating this real hotshot on the 30th floor. He's my white knight!" 

I brought this discussion up specifically with the group at last night's game. Immediately the players said, "Oh man... that's easily a Blue Chit use of Danger Sense!" which referred to my chit rules... a version of luck that allows limited expenditure each game that can modify a power use (do a power stunt), add plot points, etc.
 
It really does help when you have players who 'get it' and are looking to create a fun, dramatic game/story... and understand the rules are in service of that end, not in demonstrating some powergaming/show-off/competitive need.

I actually ran a Die Hard themed session, in Shadowrun, but with a twist.
 
The PC's were hired by a Mr. Johnson type to take control of a competing megacorps HQ during a New Years Eve party, control the civilians, coerce the CEO into opening a vault containing some McGuffin. Midway thru, an unexpected guest not on the attendees list who turned out to be a bad ass runner who was visiting his estranged wife at the party starts causing problems. Then a security team showed up outside and started working with that guy to cause further problems.
 
This was just a few years after the movie came out, but it took my players a surprisingly long time before one of them realized "hey, this is kinda like Die Hard".
 
 

This makes me so happy.

This would make a good Con game, I think. Maybe the PCs are all security guards on another floor, called in at the last second, bummed to be working on Christmas eve, drinking in a half-finished break room on one of the floors under construction. Crazy shit starts to happen... just throw in another set of euro-trash bad guys and be prepared for all kinds of attempts to derail things from the events of the movie. In fact, that is the point... once stuff starts going down, how do things go differently? 

Make sure none of the PCs have names... just Security Guard 1, Security Guard 2, etc. Minimal skills, just enough to get themselves killed if they get too out of hand, but maybe enough to actually be heroes if they get lucky. 
 
Hell, this would be a blast. I'll have to work on this. I think it would take having a clear "Plot" mechanic, where the GM had clear resources for throwing "And then THIS happens!" that railroad events, but those resources run out and the PCs can begin to change things.
 
Also, at a CON, likely to get some younger players, who will likely be familiar with the movie, but unlikely to have worshiped at the alter of Die Hard for thirty years, like most of us, here.
 
Hmmm... this could be a thing.
 
Edit: oh... the more I think about this... each Security Guard has a major Complication...
1. "I'm retiring next month!"
2. "My wife is pregnant and about to have our first kid, and I'm stuck here!"
3. "My boyfriend, who works the front desk night shift, got me this job."
4. "I'm dating this real hotshot on the 30th floor. He's my white knight!" 

I found, in decades of Supers play with HERO, that EXP worked fine. I had a 3 pts per standard adventure. 5 pts for showdown adventures and 10 points for Double Sized Issues! (Like when we'd game all weekend back when I was young enough to do that.) Supers gaining incremental power growth so that they start out at "New Mutant" or "New Warriors" level and then go up to "Teen Titans" and "X-Men" level... then eventually Avengers level... then Authority levels (we never got to, or wanted to go to absurdist JLA levels) of power worked well for us. It happened over the  years, and characters that started out at 250 were well over 600 plus, even as EXP plateaued in general. As characters became fully fleshed out and broadly powerful, adjustments to the characters became driven by story and plot more than simply power improvements.
 
Now, in Heroic level games, they tend to remain pretty static, as the characters are built as competent level for the campaign, and unless there is significant plot reason for them to become "other" than they were created, unlikely to change drastically. 

In the supers games, the heroes that struggled against a set of armored agents early in their career, might run into the same kind of agents later, and totally trounce them, because I had a certain power level set for the game world, and agents are agents are agents. If they fought some villains on equal footing at 300 points, maybe those villains got more powerful over time... maybe not. Maybe next time they faced them, they wiped the floor with them, because it wasn't with the Story for that particular villain to get more powerful. Sometimes those villains became even MORE powerful. That was plot driven. I loved how players, though, never felt they were powerful enough. I remember at one point, well into the campaign, a long term player saying, "Man, that was tough tonight... I always feel like we are eking things out by the skin of our teeth." And I'm like, "Are you kidding me? I threw two dozen 350 villains at you guys, and you essential brushed them aside and/or ignored them as you cut a swatch through the horde and went after the 1000 point mega-villain. Your characters ended WW3 in six days, over the course of two adventures. What are you talking about tough?" 

The player was like, "Those guys were 350 points... man... they were scary." I'm just shaking my head...

In my heroic games, when characters change, it tends to be based on the player saying, "I feel that x, y, z has happenened, and Agent Sureshot has developed x contact, or y skill because of that..."  I'll probably agree and the player adjusts their character. Growth happens because the story allowed for it.

I hate the "world levels up to match the PCs" concept completely. If you've played a character for 20 years and he has gone from fledgling to demi-god... he better damn well feel like a demi-god. He just now has to deal with OTHER demi-gods at times. But the players always make it harder than it has to be.  sigh.

This would make a good Con game, I think. Maybe the PCs are all security guards on another floor, called in at the last second, bummed to be working on Christmas eve, drinking in a half-finished break room on one of the floors under construction. Crazy shit starts to happen... just throw in another set of euro-trash bad guys and be prepared for all kinds of attempts to derail things from the events of the movie. In fact, that is the point... once stuff starts going down, how do things go differently? 

Make sure none of the PCs have names... just Security Guard 1, Security Guard 2, etc. Minimal skills, just enough to get themselves killed if they get too out of hand, but maybe enough to actually be heroes if they get lucky. 
 
Hell, this would be a blast. I'll have to work on this. I think it would take having a clear "Plot" mechanic, where the GM had clear resources for throwing "And then THIS happens!" that railroad events, but those resources run out and the PCs can begin to change things.
 
Also, at a CON, likely to get some younger players, who will likely be familiar with the movie, but unlikely to have worshiped at the alter of Die Hard for thirty years, like most of us, here.
 
Hmmm... this could be a thing.
 
Edit: oh... the more I think about this... each Security Guard has a major Complication...
1. "I'm retiring next month!"
2. "My wife is pregnant and about to have our first kid, and I'm stuck here!"
3. "My boyfriend, who works the front desk night shift, got me this job."
4. "I'm dating this real hotshot on the 30th floor. He's my white knight!"