Quote from: Christopher Brady;937964I would disagree with the premise that Superhero and/or Fantasy are so wildly different as to be meaningless.

Yep.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;937970I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, but my point was that "superhero", just like "fantasy" and "science fiction", refers to hundreds of various genres, not a single identifiable genre.

And yet they both recognizably narrow the field, which is what genre does.

It's okay to see the forest as well as the trees.

Quote from: Simlasa;937975Maybe because superhero games often seemed aimed at covering ALL the various sorts of supers... rather than narrowing down to a specific sort.

The problem is taking a game that's "aimed at covering ALL the various sorts of supers" and failing to build a campaign that tightens the focus. It's a gamer problem, not a game problem.

My favorite Mutants and Masterminds game had us playing pulpy, 'street-level' heroes in the years before the First World War. My character was a Wild West show trick shooter with a little Indian shamanism magic thrown in. In a campaign with a character similar to the Flash or the Hulk he'd be utterly inconsequential but we set the power level lower and all the characters conformed to it.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;938135The problem is taking a game that's "aimed at covering ALL the various sorts of supers" and failing to build a campaign that tightens the focus. It's a gamer problem, not a game problem.

Maybe the games could give a bit more guidance on that though. IME, It's a common trait among gamers to try to use EVERYTHING in the rulebook all at once... which is part of why GURPS has the reputation it does for being so crunchy... and its fans kept screaming for it to dole itself out in bite sized, setting/genre-focused chunks.

Quote from: Simlasa;938153Maybe the games could give a bit more guidance on that though.

I  agree and thats something I'm aiming at with my Phaserip pseudoclone, which is like 10% system and 90% GM advice culled from my last 30 odd years running FASERIP with various genres.

Quote from: Simlasa;938153Maybe the games could give a bit more guidance on that though.

Or as OG is fond of saying, maybe gamers could learn to shit unassisted.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;934805Yeah, I know people will react to this by suggesting Their Favourite Game (TM) doesn't suck, and probably give detailed reasons why not, but from a personal perspective I've never really been satisfied with any of them.

Nothing I enjoy 'sucks', because I'm enjoying it.  If shoving my cock into a jar of grape jelly feels better than whackin' it, then you can't really say I'm an idiot for being a Smucker-fucker.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;934805There are possibly cultural reasons for this. The superhero genre is essentially an American genre. It has created a modern mythology that encapsulates American values and ideologies, through various ages, and most notable worlds are set in America. They are US centric. This ought not be a big deal, culturally, in the same way that most fantasy settings owe something to medieval Europe. However, I live in NZ now and was brought up in the UK and I'm not sure that, in my upbringing, there was anything like the same enthusiasm for supers settings and games.

You Brits are kinda weird with what you call comics.  Don't get me wrong, I love Judge Dredd.  I loved the UK Transformers comics (did you know that Death's Head was originally in the Transformers universe, and was shrunk down by Dr. Who?  You fuckers are nuts).  However, yeah- 'superhero comics' are more American than John Wayne punching Mohammed in the face at the Super Bowl.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;934805So, help me out here. Are there any Supers RPGs that don't suck?

The closest I've got to having a shitload of fun in a superhero setting?  D20.  We also played reasonably low-powered superheroes (no real 'flying' or 'super speed' or anything else that teabagged Isaac Newton's corpse in terms of physics).  Most of it was 'enhanced human' in a street-level campaign that escalated higher.  The true fun was 'make your hero, now make your villain' (my villain was guy diagnosed with harlequin ichthyosis, that could somehow regenerate vital organs- which he discovered by shooting himself when he was a teenager... and what he saw 'on the other side' made him a horrible monster that treated supervillainy like a game, just doing what he wanted to 'stir the world up a little'- so he was a sick fuck).  

So, my advice?  Don't focus on the powers.  Find a system that has some cool little abilities (you can use cybernetics like I did, or even a magical ability or two, whatever your game has) and focus instead on the low-level (in terms of 'heroes and villains') stuff.  Do investigations.  Shut down criminal syndicates.  If you're GMing, set up a network of bad guys in an association matrix (I can teach you how to do this), and just enjoy.

I can't help with mechanics, but I can help with theme if you like.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;938164Or as OG is fond of saying, maybe gamers could learn to shit unassisted.

If it's down to adding a few paragraphs in the rulebook vs. piles of shit in the hallway... I'd say drop some of that crappy fan fiction, or an illustration or two, and add in some general advice regarding game focus.

Quote from: Simlasa;938178If it's down to adding a few paragraphs in the rulebook vs. piles of shit in the hallway... I'd say drop some of that crappy fan fiction, or an illustration or two, and add in some general advice regarding game focus.

I can find no fault in your logic, Sim.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;938164Or as OG is fond of saying, maybe gamers could learn to shit unassisted.

The rules can't fix stupid, and the rules can't fix asshole.

We started playing Champions in 1981 or 82, whenever it came out.  We had no problem at all realizing that we all had to work cooperatively to make sure that Green Lantern and Doiby Dickles could participate in the same adventure.  Of course, reading JLA and the Avengers helped.

Sure, it meant you had to play along with the tropes.... "GL, hold off Lex Luthor's legion of killer robots while Batman uses his great detective skill to hack the computer" ... but we were playing a comic book supers game because we WANTED to play comic book supers, not because we hated it.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;938180but we were playing a comic book supers game because we WANTED to play comic book supers, not because we hated it.

Which I think is the crux in the matter, in regards to the OP.

 If you don't like (conventional "four colour") superheroes,  you arent going to enjoy a (conventional) superhero game. It doesn't mean the game sucks, it doesnt mean superheroes in general suck, it simply means one isn't buying into the premise so they shouldn't waste other people's time.