Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1054797I was looking for a broad range of answers that cover all kinds of things. So by approach I meant both what kinds of systems and tools do you like, or dislike, for genre emulation, and what kind of things do you like, or not like, GMs to do when they emulate genres.

I see. Well, in that case I certainly believe rules are a very important part of Emulation of Genre.  It's one of the problems I have, for example, with most supers games. So many of these just apply standard d&d-type conventions, which make for very poor emulation of the superhero genre.  ICONS is my favorite supers game because it comes much closer to effective emulation.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1055102Watchmen was an intentional Inversion-of-Genre, which ironically became a genre itself as other comics tried desperately to copy it.

Well yes.  But that's how genre's grow and develop.  They do things which at the time would have been considered out-of-genre and in the process the genre changes.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1055102Watchmen was an intentional Inversion-of-Genre, which ironically became a genre itself as other comics tried desperately to copy it.

This is spot-on. Sadly.

Quote from: TJS;1055115Well yes.  But that's how genre's grow and develop.  They do things which at the time would have been considered out-of-genre and in the process the genre changes.

As someone that worked in the comic-industry during this time - I'm going to disagree. Not because I think your logic is flawed, it's not. It's TOO logical. What you, and myself as someone that was there, missed - is the propensity for sheer unadulterated stupidity among people that have zero understanding of business, and life in general, whose capacity for low-expectations is orders of magnitude deeper and dumber than you can imagine.

And thus we have the current comicbook industry today. A dying festering shitpile, being feasted upon by the flies of political ideologues in the aftermath of the extinction-event they're prosecuting on themselves.

I think with growing genres and keeping them alive, that is a tricky balance. Genres can get stale and die from just repeating themselves, but it isn't easy to innovate within a genre and the people who have done it well, usually bring in highly complimentary alternative sources of inspiration. You can end up making the genre meaningless if you just add stuff purely for the purpose of being different from what came before. I think the trope twisting thing got old fast as a method because it is just an automatic flipping of ideas usually, it doesn't require thought.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1055103I see. Well, in that case I certainly believe rules are a very important part of Emulation of Genre.  It's one of the problems I have, for example, with most supers games. So many of these just apply standard d&d-type conventions, which make for very poor emulation of the superhero genre.  ICONS is my favorite supers game because it comes much closer to effective emulation.

I am not that familiar with ICONS. Curious what it did that you feel brought it closer to good emulation

Quote from: tenbones;1055144As someone that worked in the comic-industry during this time - I'm going to disagree. Not because I think your logic is flawed, it's not. It's TOO logical. What you, and myself as someone that was there, missed - is the propensity for sheer unadulterated stupidity among people that have zero understanding of business, and life in general, whose capacity for low-expectations is orders of magnitude deeper and dumber than you can imagine.

And thus we have the current comicbook industry today. A dying festering shitpile, being feasted upon by the flies of political ideologues in the aftermath of the extinction-event they're prosecuting on themselves.

I can't parse this at all sorry.  I don't really know much about superhero comic books.  I was just making a general point.

The same point can be made about fantasy - fantasy has been dramatically changed by people like George R R Martin and Joe Abercrombie taking tropes that had become cliches and then turning them upon their heads.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1055147I think with growing genres and keeping them alive, that is a tricky balance. Genres can get stale and die from just repeating themselves, but it isn't easy to innovate within a genre and the people who have done it well, usually bring in highly complimentary alternative sources of inspiration.

Coming back to the genre after 20-30 years seems to work best. Eg swords & sorcery flourished first in the 1930s (eg REH) and was revived in the early 1960s (eg Michael Moorcock). It often seems best to allow a fallow period, then come back to the great old stuff with fresh eyes. The OSR is a good example of this in RPGs.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1055147I think with growing genres and keeping them alive, that is a tricky balance. Genres can get stale and die from just repeating themselves, but it isn't easy to innovate within a genre and the people who have done it well, usually bring in highly complimentary alternative sources of inspiration. You can end up making the genre meaningless if you just add stuff purely for the purpose of being different from what came before. I think the trope twisting thing got old fast as a method because it is just an automatic flipping of ideas usually, it doesn't require thought.

I don't think inverting tropes is necessarily the point I was trying to make - more ignoring them - or treating the situation in a more logical manner.

Which is what role-playing games are set up to do.  It's a product of the medium that they tend to de-mythologise things - it takes real forcing on the part of rules to prevent pcs taking the more realistic approach to a situation based on logical extrapolation.

If you set up a role-playing game in which pcs play supervillains they will "do it 35 minutes ago" because players want to be clever and creative.  If you try to do the bond hero schtick of capturing the heroes in a spy game so the villain can gloat out his plans - they will resist getting captured - then recklessly try to escape before they are taken before the villain, then interrupt and wisecrack while he tries to threaten them with his plans for world domination because that's what PCs do.  If they travel to the mystical utopian city of the high elves deep in the mountains where every inhabitant is ancient and wise they will immediately ask things like who shovels the shit and does all the menial labour?

There, is I think, an inherent tension between genre emulation and the rpg medium, and that is, I think one reason why most so many games designed to emulate genres to specifically come and go in endless succession and rarely seem to stick around for very long.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1055148I am not that familiar with ICONS. Curious what it did that you feel brought it closer to good emulation

It's sort of hard to pin it down in one single detail. But generally speaking, of all the Supers games I tried, it was the one that in actual play FELT most like traditional superhero comics.

Quote from: TJS;1055115Well yes.  But that's how genre's grow and develop.  They do things which at the time would have been considered out-of-genre and in the process the genre changes.

Dave Gibbons just apologized for what Watchmen did to comics.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1055682Dave Gibbons just apologized for what Watchmen did to comics.

FFS  I couldn't give a shit about what Watchmen did to comics.

Quote from: TJS;1055709FFS  I couldn't give a shit about what Watchmen did to comics.

If Watchmen had destroyed comics entirely, it's creation would still have been worth it. It's not Moore and Gibbons' fault that a bunch of idiots got all the wrong lessons from it.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1055921If Watchmen had destroyed comics entirely, it's creation would still have been worth it. It's not Moore and Gibbons' fault that a bunch of idiots got all the wrong lessons from it.

Yes.  Agreed entirely.

Quote from: TJS;1055158I can't parse this at all sorry.  I don't really know much about superhero comic books.  I was just making a general point.

The same point can be made about fantasy - fantasy has been dramatically changed by people like George R R Martin and Joe Abercrombie taking tropes that had become cliches and then turning them upon their heads.

Basically what tenbones said is that everything SJWs touch turns to suck.