Quote from: Aos;517339QFT- I've even done it in supers games.

Yeah, that's how I ran by Marvel Super Heroes game back in the late Eighties.

The thing of it is, the players need to get away from the, 'I'm on patrol!' mindset. They need to make contacts, cultivate informants, and such and pay attention to news reports - these take the place of the ubiquitous rumor-in-the-tavern from fantasy sandboxes - and they need to think strategically, not just tactically - weed and seed, as criminologists like to say.

I had one player who was really good at this. Both the player and her character were lawyers, and when the heroes basically gutted a building during a fight, her character arranged a fundraiser with her lawyer friends to repair the damage and get a better class of (non-supervillain) tenants in the building.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;517337With the right environment, it is possible to run proactive heroes without all that plot-hook and story nonsense.

I agree. It's all about the set-up of the environment in the first place, and how engaging it is for Upright Heroes to "do something about it".

Quote from: Black Vulmea;517340Yeah, that's how I ran by Marvel Super Heroes game back in the late Eighties.

The thing of it is, the players need to get away from the, 'I'm on patrol!' mindset. They need to make contacts, cultivate informants, and such and pay attention to news reports - these take the place of the ubiquitous rumor-in-the-tavern from fantasy sandboxes - and they need to think strategically, not just tactically - weed and seed, as criminologists like to say.

I had one player who was really good at this. Both the player and her character were lawyers, and when the heroes basically gutted a building during a fight, her character arranged a fundraiser with her lawyer friends to repair the damage and get a better class of (non-supervillain) tenants in the building.

Yeah, my guys work with the police and with the Federal Investigative and Strategic Task-force (F.I.S.T.) so they network through those guys and help with various/cases and missions. Right now, however, they are lost in time and on my universe's equivalent Toho's Monster Island of in the year 2004.The island is currently being assaulted by super villains and they guys are just trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. So in short: super hero hex crawl.

Sounds like cool gaming.

I was reading Zak's post and I think the problem, to me, is here:

Quote"So what do you want to do today, Supes?"

"Uh, I guess I'll go on patrol."

Off he flies.

"Do I see any crime?"

"Umm, nope, not much, Metropolis is a fully-functioning independent world going about its business."

"Ok, I keep going. Now do I see any crime?"

"Ok, some jamoke is robbing a bank."

"Well then I stop him!"

The example doesn't work so well if we're talking about Gotham now.

"Do I see any crime?"

"Crime is everywhere. The police is corrupt. The city hall is populated by opportunists. The crime syndicate control most of the economic activity of the city. The slums are a constant battleground. It's war everywhere, and you are on the losing side, my friend."

"Alright. I'll start by gathering some help. I'll search for someone, anyone, that wouldn't be corrupt. Maybe the cop that told me about my parents' death? I'll put on my suit and go to him."

And so on.

Lex Luthor is more proactive (assuming the player is the same here for argument's sake) because the environment is hostile to him. There's no obvious stuff to do like going on patrol to find Superman sympathizers and beat them up. You've got to confront the environment head on.

Well. The sandbox setup should do that in spade. Whether we're talking about the city, the wilderness, there should be an abundance of stuff that is not right for do-gooders to confront one way or the other, on their own terms, by formulating strategies to go about it efficiently, rather than just go on patrol and not solve anything pertaining to the big picture in the end.

Quote from: Benoist;517347Lex Luthor is more proactive (assuming the player is the same here for argument's sake) because the environment is hostile to him. There's no obvious stuff to do like going on patrol to find Superman sympathizers and beat them up. You've got to confront the environment head on.

Spider-man has the same problem as Luthor in this regard.

Anyway, IMO, Supers is best played as a combination of mystery and sandbox, with the occasional GM instigated event, e.g., Galctus shows up (he is the superhero equivalent of the wandering monster) or the characters are catapulted into a another time dimension, whatever.

Anyway, its game day! I just finished making the perfect gamer food  (tortilla de España) and I'm going to load the car in a bout 5 minutes.

Having skimmed this thread, I think it's important that we set a distinction between:

"Murder hobos" as I had understood the term (people who go about and kill EVERYTHING that moves, because they can, despite their alignments. And no RP or anything)

And a party composed of ruthless mercenaries. Heck - in my WFRP game, after I had started playing Mount & Blade, I had told my GM "I think I'll recruit a bunch of mercenaries and peasants, then hire myself under some lord that goes to war with orcs or whatever, so that we can loot the villages en route".

Superheroes are a wee - bit different, because they are indeed looking for trouble - and when you toss a guy through 10 skyscrapers, there will be collateral.

Quote from: Simlasa;488080I guess the question is why does that 'support' just about always come in the form of killing and looting... vs. diplomacy, peacemaking, exploration without conquering?

Largely because no one has ever managed to develop an interesting game structure for resolving social conflicts. Efforts in that direction have either been (a) mechanically non-interesting or (b) heavily dissociated to the point where the result is no longer a roleplaying game.

Partly because most of us have been heavily conditioned by the combat-heavy games in the hobby to default to combat solutions even when other solutions are present. For example, I've recently been playing Technoir. This game has a slightly dissociated core mechanic, but it's notable because it's the first game I've played which features a truly universal mechanic which remains mechanically interesting. This is a mechanic which can be used just as easily to resolve diplomatic negotiations as combat... but sessions still end up skewing heavily towards combat because players are all conditioned for it.

To expand on the first point a bit: Combat provides a clear-cut "winner" and "loser" within a well-tested mechanical structure which almost always provides a satisfying conclusion. The only other game structure that provides that clear and satisfying "winner" condition is the successful solution of a mystery. But often mysteries will fizzle on the "satisfying conclusion" part of the equation; so even most mystery scenarios will cap things off with a fight against the villain to provide the satisfying conclusion.

(It might be interesting to experiment with a Law & Order style game where you not only have to solve the mystery, but you also need to prove your case in court. The courtroom mechanic, if properly designed, could provide combat-like structure and a clear build to the winning moment.)

And as much as some members of this board bemoan the "neutering" of GMs, one of the reasons why players like jumping into combat is specifically because it's the one place where most railroad GMs finally give them the freedom to make meaningful choices. In other words, the clearly defined nature of the rules does, in fact, help to negate crappy GMing.

Quote from: Peregrin;488109That sort of diversity in desire for different types of content and self-reflection on said content I've found lacking in tabletop wargames and RPGs.

To put my point above a different way: The degree to which RPGs are games is generally under-appreciated. The earliest RPGs understood this and attempted to present clear game structures which scenarios and campaigns could be built around. Later RPGs were designed with the assumption that RPGs were some kind of pure and unadulterated experience. You'll often hear people say things like, "The players tell me what their characters are doing and then we resolve it. They can do anything!"

Except, of course, that's nonsense. And the RPG industry actually continues to roll around on the basis of the four major structures that were developed in the first half decade or so of the industry: Railroading, dungeoncrawling, mystery scenarios, and combat. (Recently hexcrawling, as a fifth structure, has been making a resurgence.)

And, at most tables, things are even more constrained. Many ostensible mystery scenarios are poorly designed and actually fall back into railroading structures. D&D's communication of dungeoncrawling procedures became anorexic in 1989 and has literally disappeared entirely from the 4th Edition rulebooks.

I suspect the result is that the vast majority of RPG sessions are built around a core structure of railroading and combat.

So RPGs are predominantly based around combat because, at a functional level, combat is the only game in town. (Pun intended.) And until the industry realizes that a universal mechanic doesn't meaningfully equate to "You can do anything!" -- particularly on the macro-level of scenario design -- that's unlikely to change.

Regarding the "murderhobo" thing (and apologies if someone's already said it), I think this is as much the GM's fault as the players.

Except for the most devastated post-apocalyptic settings, the consequences of murderhoboing (holy shit, it's mutated into a verb now) should catch up with the PCs pretty quickly. People have families who may want justice and/or vengeance served, for one. Local rulers won't look kindly to armed malcontents antagonizing everyone, even in the wildest frontiers. Hell, that's the sort of stuff spaghetti westerns are made of.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;517340Yeah, that's how I ran by Marvel Super Heroes game back in the late Eighties.

The thing of it is, the players need to get away from the, 'I'm on patrol!' mindset. They need to make contacts, cultivate informants, and such and pay attention to news reports - these take the place of the ubiquitous rumor-in-the-tavern from fantasy sandboxes - and they need to think strategically, not just tactically - weed and seed, as criminologists like to say.

I had one player who was really good at this. Both the player and her character were lawyers, and when the heroes basically gutted a building during a fight, her character arranged a fundraiser with her lawyer friends to repair the damage and get a better class of (non-supervillain) tenants in the building.

Love this, and the discussion that followed. I have a hell of a hard time grasping the operational practicalities of running a supers game, it's something I've always wanted to do but never managed to wrap my head around it.

Quote from: Benoist;517347Sounds like cool gaming.

I was reading Zak's post and I think the problem, to me, is here:



The example doesn't work so well if we're talking about Gotham now.

[Snip]

Lex Luthor is more proactive (assuming the player is the same here for argument's sake) because the environment is hostile to him. There's no obvious stuff to do like going on patrol to find Superman sympathizers and beat them up. You've got to confront the environment head on.

Well-put.  This, to me, boils down to "crapsack world = hero's playground".  (Crapsack worlds being strongly to my preference.)

Quote from: DestroyYouAlot;517151Whaaaaaat a load of horseshit.  (The linked post, that is.)  Evil PCs (as opposed to N/G ones that just act like asses to orcs or whatever) are automatically "disruptive"?  Gimme a break.  

One of the most "coherent" campaigns I've ever run (in terms of the group having concrete goals and the game having a consistent tone) was the one where the group of neutral-to-evil fighters, thieves, and 1 assassin (and a dwarf f/c of Abbathor, dwarven god of greed) were systematically grabbing power and turf from the Greyhawk City thieves' guild.  Hell, they only ran dungeon jaunts to lay low when the heat was on.  I never had to lead them by the nose for ANYTHING - if anything, it was all I could do to keep ahead of their ambitions.  Gimme that every time over, "c'mon, guys, the Count of Blah Blah Blah needs you to get the MacGuffin of Excuse, or they'll have to sell the orphanage".

Apparently they never watched The Wild Geese, The Dogs of War or The Wild Bunch. Sucks to be them.

Quote from: The Butcher;517388Regarding the "murderhobo" thing (and apologies if someone's already said it), I think this is as much the GM's fault as the players.

Except for the most devastated post-apocalyptic settings, the consequences of murderhoboing (holy shit, it's mutated into a verb now) should catch up with the PCs pretty quickly. People have families who may want justice and/or vengeance served, for one. Local rulers won't look kindly to armed malcontents antagonizing everyone, even in the wildest frontiers. Hell, that's the sort of stuff spaghetti westerns are made of.

Consequences for actions? But that means you limit what the heroes can do, as some more powerful then them npc (THE THOUGHT! THE DARE!) can show up and kill them for their sins!!1

As I pointed out in the "Revamped Basic Edition" of my post...

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2010/01/rogues-and-sandboxes-basic-edition.html


...the reason Benoist, Black Vulmea, and DestroyYouAlot are not exactly right is because Batman does not really have a choice about whether to address the:

"crack house (or the) pawn shop where stolen goods get fenced (or the) warehouse where human traffickers run their operation.
"
...first--or what he's is going to do about them.

He is picking which one to deal with first based on which seems the most important (he's good, after all, if problem A is more serious he MUST deal with it first unless solving problem B first leads to solving problem A) or tactically best to pick and there is only one thing he can choose to do with the situation: end it.

Batman's choice of target is what they call in chess a forced move.

The rest of the choices about how exactly to go about it are all tactics and can be pretty clever, but his options are definitely more limited than someone who looks at the board as resources to be exploited.

The exception is in the TOTAL crapsack world: a 1984 or WH40K situation.

In this case, the hero is essentially in a war with injustice and can pick targets based on an overall (chosen) strategy against that overarching injustice.

But, anyway, like I said, I think all this is covered in the revamped version of the post.

Interestingly enough that touches upon why I dig In Nomine. From angels to demons your character is given a prime motivation (further the cause of your Superior's word), while given two restrictions on how to go about doing it. So wandering around waiting for 'jamokes' to go break the status quo is generally an unlikely scenario. Even the 'good guys' have responsibilities to pursue, and that routinely puts them into conflict on how to execute them.

Just something I noticed...

Anyway, to kill a metaphor dead, I always thought it was odd for Batman to try to solve Gotham crime through running around beating people up. I mean, he's Bruce fucking Wayne, prime real estate holder and business employer of the city. He has the ear of every major institution and -- though the city is dark -- it is still functioning, so you think he could accomplish more by being Bruce Wayne than futzing around as Batman. And yet he routinely chose to go street level, like some sort of 6th gen Ventrue with a katana, to "restore order." Personally amusing to me, all that.

Also, I thought that the critical point of Superman was his alter ego. Without it he could not only not have an ear for what crimes were in progress (a la Spiderman working also as a news reporter). But his living as a mild manner citizen brought him into contact with regular life and the complications that created. But then, that's more Lois & Clark TV Superman than Golden Age Superman, isn't it? I think I liked the more modern renditions of Superman where he was a more complex character...

Quote from: Opaopajr;517547Interestingly enough that touches upon why I dig In Nomine. From angels to demons your character is given a prime motivation (further the cause of your Superior's word), while given two restrictions on how to go about doing it. So wandering around waiting for 'jamokes' to go break the status quo is generally an unlikely scenario. Even the 'good guys' have responsibilities to pursue, and that routinely puts them into conflict on how to execute them.

Just something I noticed...

Anyway, to kill a metaphor dead, I always thought it was odd for Batman to try to solve Gotham crime through running around beating people up. I mean, he's Bruce fucking Wayne, prime real estate holder and business employer of the city. He has the ear of every major institution and -- though the city is dark -- it is still functioning, so you think he could accomplish more by being Bruce Wayne than futzing around as Batman. And yet he routinely chose to go street level, like some sort of 6th gen Ventrue with a katana, to "restore order." Personally amusing to me, all that.

Also, I thought that the critical point of Superman was his alter ego. Without it he could not only not have an ear for what crimes were in progress (a la Spiderman working also as a news reporter). But his living as a mild manner citizen brought him into contact with regular life and the complications that created. But then, that's more Lois & Clark TV Superman than Golden Age Superman, isn't it? I think I liked the more modern renditions of Superman where he was a more complex character...

To be fair in "War on Crime" Batman both eliminates the street gangs in aprticular neighbourhood then backs and sets up a new industrial development and social housing schemes.
Provided in Mega-format by Alex Ross the artwork is great but the story in pretty fucking dull Batman tustling in the Ruins of Arkham asylum with the Joker - great stuff, Batman attending a resource planning meeting where he discusses a syndicated loan arrangement with a range of financial backers whilst negotiating with the City council who are trying to use the scheme for dubious political benefit..... yawnsville

Holding PCs responsible for their actions would never work in most RPGs. Supers in particular would be a real problem. Just imagine how big the Avengers insurance policy would have to be to cover the property damage, personal injury claims and psychological damage inflicted on the various members of the public they routinely tangel with.

Quote from: jibbajibba;517562To be fair in "War on Crime" Batman both eliminates the street gangs in aprticular neighbourhood then backs and sets up a new industrial development and social housing schemes.
Provided in Mega-format by Alex Ross the artwork is great but the story in pretty fucking dull Batman tustling in the Ruins of Arkham asylum with the Joker - great stuff, Batman attending a resource planning meeting where he discusses a syndicated loan arrangement with a range of financial backers whilst negotiating with the City council who are trying to use the scheme for dubious political benefit..... yawnsville

Holding PCs responsible for their actions would never work in most RPGs. Supers in particular would be a real problem. Just imagine how big the Avengers insurance policy would have to be to cover the property damage, personal injury claims and psychological damage inflicted on the various members of the public they routinely tangel with.

I dunno man. Play Dirty had some clues on having supers responsible for their actions. Make a Supers organisation that the player must register or be renegades, that has some laws (no killing, for example), and execute them.