SPECIAL NOTICE
Malicious code was found on the site, which has been removed, but would have been able to access files and the database, revealing email addresses, posts, and encoded passwords (which would need to be decoded). However, there is no direct evidence that any such activity occurred. REGARDLESS, BE SURE TO CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS. And as is good practice, remember to never use the same password on more than one site. While performing housekeeping, we also decided to upgrade the forums.
This is a site for discussing roleplaying games. Have fun doing so, but there is one major rule: do not discuss political issues that aren't directly and uniquely related to the subject of the thread and about gaming. While this site is dedicated to free speech, the following will not be tolerated: devolving a thread into unrelated political discussion, sockpuppeting (using multiple and/or bogus accounts), disrupting topics without contributing to them, and posting images that could get someone fired in the workplace (an external link is OK, but clearly mark it as Not Safe For Work, or NSFW). If you receive a warning, please take it seriously and either move on to another topic or steer the discussion back to its original RPG-related theme.

Are all superhero RPGs intrinsically sucky?

Started by daniel_ream, July 26, 2011, 02:49:30 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Benoist

Quote from: CRKrueger;471431I didn't have that problem, since I played with adults.  :D  The decker fucks up his part of the run, your Street Sam may as well go home.  In our games, people were hanging on every single Decking roll.
Word.

Silverlion

#91
Quote from: daniel_ream;471512This is why I love the Internet.  So many words, so little reading comprehension.


Seems like I'm spot on to what you said.  Paraphrased "Games as they are don't work, so they must be changed." Yet, they DO work for people. People handle the situation all the time of many PC's. Your average super team varies a bit but most of them hover around 4-5 "active" characters in a comic book story.   The X-men, the Avengers, Fantastic Four. Even the JLA's active in a story characters usually resolve around one core team or another.

I've even run games for larger groups. My preference is smaller groups, but I have run many (up to 20 people.) Kept them all entertained, with MSH.

There are problems, and I won't say their aren't, but most superteams won't be near that large, and I've manage standard size hero groups, with no problems using traditional games.

How many superhero games have your run? How many have you played? How many are you running right now?
High Valor REVISED: A fantasy Dark Age RPG. Available NOW!
Hearts & Souls 2E Coming in 2019

pawsplay

I love superhero RPGs. You can set aside lots of the usual pettiness about balance and so forth and focus on doing interesting things, and other people doing interesting things to you. You can accomplish that in most games, but in many games you would have to leave behind a lot of rules subsystems. Not so with a good supers RPG. A good supers RPG is about getting weird, and is designed from the start for popping the top off your story. Even a character like Batman is so vastly capable that "ordinary" challenges could involve extraordinary solutions. I mean, if Batman decided the President of the USA really, truly needed to be kidnapped in order to save the world, you know he totally could.

The Traveller

Quote from: daniel_ream;471409By this point no one remembers, but this was my actual point: RPGs either need to give up on genre emulation as a goal or else change their logistics to suit the genre.
Only if you feel that genres need to be inescapably tied to the number of protagonists in them.

Which they clearly don't.

There's no particular reason why you couldn't produce perfectly palatable sci-fi, fantasy, whatever, using the criteria you outlined. Thus the genre is not dependent on them.
"These children are playing with dark and dangerous powers!"
"What else are you meant to do with dark and dangerous powers?"
A concise overview of GNS theory.
Quote from: that muppet vince baker on RPGsIf you care about character arcs or any, any, any lit 101 stuff, I\'d choose a different game.

Ghost Whistler

I love supers, but in an rpg they are the ultimate game of exceptions. Trying to create a single unified set of rules is always difficult because everything a superhero can do or would do is an exception.
"Ghost Whistler" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Parental death, alien battles and annihilated worlds.