Quote from: Tulpa Girl;1025378I grew up on the latter Bronze Age era of comics.  So if I were to run a superhero game, killing bad guys wouldn't be *completely* off the table... but it would be A Moral Quandary, with consequences and fallout for many issues, er, game sessions to follow.

Of course, if you don't want the heroes to go all Punisher in a game, it helps if not every villain is a murderous psychopath.  While the bank-robbing villain is a cliche these days, I think it would be good to have a healthy mix of those sort of malcontents in a four-color campaign; the sort you can sock on the jaw and not feel awful when they eventually escape from prison (most of Flash's rogues gallery fall in this category).

I think you really point out an important issue here. The setting and NPC have a a big influence. The Jokster might get smacked around and put in jail if he does stuff like robs banks  with goons dressed in clown suits while forcing the hostages to listen to his bad stand up. but when he say, scalps an entire team that loses to the Redskins...well, he might not end as well with some characters.

Supers is a broad genre, Superfriends to the The Authority and then some. You can run it anyway you like. This makes being on the same page with your players even more important. Supers is also pretty stylized overall. Realism (such as it exists) tends to bend to genre tropes rather than the other way around. For instance, in most 4 color worlds accidental death rarely if ever happens. Character can slam normal folks through walls and they're "knocked out". Killing is generally a conscious act, fraught with drama and moral weight. One of the reasons the death of Gwen Stacy was so shocking (and is considered the birth of the Bronze Age by some) is that it brutally subverted that trope.

The default setting for my game is more Bronze/Iron-ish. Most superheroes considers themselves "cops". They enforce the law, they are not judge, jury and executioner but some situation do warrant lethal force. And superhuman fights often involve fights that by their very nature are extremely lethal with powers that can slag military vehicles. People get hurt and sometimes dead. It happens and it effect different characters in different ways and is something most try to avoid and few seek out. But there are exceptions both ways from idealists to vigilantes.

Most supervillains tend to treat heroes like cops as in killing them isn't hard but is generally a bad idea. The kid glove come off next time, allies of the late hero want vengeance, etc. Its just bad policy for most. Doesn't mean that they hold back a great deal but going for the "kill shot" is comparatively rare and villains that do gain notoriety. Killing tends to be more common among ideological driven characters, the kind that consider themselves more soldiers (or terrorists) than police.

My preferance is to have rid of the 'white hats vs. black hats' setup and go for shades of gray... so supers can kill and they're not all 'heroes'. Some are just vigilante thugs and others only show up when paid.
Pulps and old serials being a bigger influence than comics and the old Comics Code.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1025396Well, what if you were playing a WW2 Supers game, with the PC's being Allied Superheroes, would it be OK to kill Fascists? (And by that I mean, Nazi, Italians and Japanese, depending on which combat theatre they were in.)  Because they'll be trying to murder the PC's back, if not first.

This is always a good question for Supers. I also ask this question for Alien Invasions etc. This kinda stuff, especially depending on the system you use (Since I use FASERIP it's *extremely* punishing on PC's to kill bad guys) you need to upfront with your Players. Ideally you need to have this cooked into whatever system you're using before-hand.

I'm not a huge fan of supers, but when I want to play it, I want to play it Silver Age, because that is something notably different.  I can get my "super hero" characters killing evil or even "evil" in a fantasy game.  But then, I'm not a big fan of modern age games of any stripe, and no doubt that affects my interest in deadlier supers, too.

In one of my graphic novels, we did an alien invasion. The attackers were aggressive and everything you would imagine in a hostile force that was dedicated to conquest.

But later on. Several graphic novels later. It was discovered that the invaders were not in their right mind when they invaded. That the whole species has been systematically poisoned by an infiltrating species for well over a century. And that the poison was not only killing them. But it artificially heightened their aggression to insane levels.

The only cure for the poison turned out to be a plant extract that only exists on earth. And if their invasion had been successful, it would have resulted in the destruction of the medicine they desperately needed.

This time, they approached the heroes of our books peacefully and asked for help. Explained the situation. And showed shame and remorse for all the damage that had been done.

My point in showing this is simple: That even alien invaders can be more than meets the eye. And not just faceless thugs to be beaten down and killed.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1025485In one of my graphic novels, we did an alien invasion. The attackers were aggressive and everything you would imagine in a hostile force that was dedicated to conquest.

But later on. Several graphic novels later. It was discovered that the invaders were not in their right mind when they invaded. That the whole species has been systematically poisoned by an infiltrating species for well over a century. And that the poison was not only killing them. But it artificially heightened their aggression to insane levels.

The only cure for the poison turned out to be a plant extract that only exists on earth. And if their invasion had been successful, it would have resulted in the destruction of the medicine they desperately needed.

This time, they approached the heroes of our books peacefully and asked for help. Explained the situation. And showed shame and remorse for all the damage that had been done.

My point in showing this is simple: That even alien invaders can be more than meets the eye. And not just faceless thugs to be beaten down and killed.

Sounds like a Bronze/Modern age plot to me.

Quote from: tenbones;1025491Sounds like a Bronze/Modern age plot to me.

I would say, Bronze Age. The excesses of the Modern age I tend to avoid in my graphic novels.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1025492I would say, Bronze Age. The excesses of the Modern age I tend to avoid in my graphic novels.

So did your heroes kill the aliens in the "invasion" part of the story early on? That would be hard to justify avoiding if the characters really believed it was an invasion. Or did they have a reason to suspect it wasn't the case?

Quote from: tenbones;1025494So did your heroes kill the aliens in the "invasion" part of the story early on? That would be hard to justify avoiding if the characters really believed it was an invasion. Or did they have a reason to suspect it wasn't the case?

They didn't kill. They captured.. My heroes don't kill.

The superheroes in my setting. They are part of the police and emergency services. Even if they are independant heroes. They have the power to arrest under specified circumstances. They are not vigilantes.

Since UNDERGROUND by Mayfair Games is my main entryway into Supers gaming, obviously killing is no biggie.

Villains are monsters. Monsters are for killing. Permanent solutions require permanent methods, and few things solve monster problems like killing it and burning the corpse to ash.

I prefer not but unless you are playing Silver Age, it's not really a black and white issue. I'm not big on dark and gritty or grimdark. The last game I had with superheroes was a Cyberpunk setting, but more Post-Cyberpunk where the tech is better but the Megacorporations aren't any more evil than they are in the real world. As a GM, I will try and make the options to capture or apprehend a villain, but even this has it's exceptions. In the aforementioned game, the bad guys were "Angels" (Extradimensional energy beings that used humans as hosts), and the only way to really identify them was to physically drag the hosts into a digital extradimensional space which the Angels weren't compatible with. Basically, humans and espers could exist in that space, but a human host possessed by an Angel would kind of pop like a balloon. But that was okay because the Angels only took over the bodies of followers of an ancient religion they set up, and the hosts were all recently deceased by accident or design. Mind you this was complicated by the other Angel faction, the Demons, who made pacts with their hosts and lived more symbiotically with the host persona intact though merged with the alien. Mind you that was not a typical supers game.

Something Marvel or DCish, I would try to encourage them to avoid killing. Most of the time... Hmm...

Okay, now that I think about it... I might actually be full of shit. Any supers games I have run have had a lot of killing. I say my preference is to not kill, but in the end I make up bad guys who really need to be killed. I try not to make them two dimensional, and even try and give them qualities that the heroes can empathize with because I like screwing with the player's heads. I can probably blame the Watchmen Graphic Novel for that. In my usually Post Cyberpunk setting, the heroes are often agents of some government or covert agency. In the above example it was actually an AI who ran a nation state inspired by Genosha and Madripoor, who was mostly unknown even to most public officials. The AI was a benevolent dictator who saw her human population as her children, and viewed them as something to protect. She even used time manipulation technology to make the espers in the first place because espers were somehow naturally resistant to possession by both Angel factions, with the added benefit that the Angels did not think a human created supercomputer was a threat... Well until she had the heroes hijack a US Military Satellite with a Terawatt laser which she used to kill a whole bunch of them. From space.

So... I guess I'm okay with lethal supers games. When I'm not traumatizing the player character by say having an Angel pop and douse the heroes with bits of host body, I do try and add in some more lighthearted downtime activities, including more light crime fighting like dealing with purse snatchers and street level gangs where killing can totally be avoided.

I do like Silver Age stuff and if I had the right group of players I would totally run something cheesy and campy. Anyone remember the Prime comic book, which was kind of a Supermanish like hero? When that guy punched someone, they would literally get dismembered and ripped to pieces from sheer force. That comic was an example of inverting the Silver Age trope by applying some semblance of real world physics. In a Silver Age came, either you have to consider that physics works quite a bit differently, or that people like Supes were really really good at pulling punches. Maybe both. It's totally a world of Paladins and do gooders. Nothing wrong with that, sometimes it's fun just to be a hero.

In long term campaigns though, I have conspiracies and cabals as well as villains who are genuine assholes despite any redeeming or likable qualities they may have. I'm not sure how long I could run an idealistic Silver Age game before it got corrupted.

As a player though, I love playing heroic heroes. I love iconic characters and paragons. I like playing good guys as good guys. My super characters try not to kill unless they absolutely have to. I like giving them self imposed codes of conduct that they strive to live by. Sometimes it even works and I totally don't have to make a crater in the chest cavity of some big bad. Sometimes.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1025499They didn't kill. They captured.. My heroes don't kill.

The superheroes in my setting. They are part of the police and emergency services. Even if they are independant heroes. They have the power to arrest under specified circumstances. They are not vigilantes.

Police can and do kill. On a regular basis. Use of lethal force doesn't make one a vigilante. In fact, if they're officially authorized law enforcement makes it impossible to be a vigilante (acting outside the law) by definition.

Quote from: tenbones;1025494So did your heroes kill the aliens in the "invasion" part of the story early on? That would be hard to justify avoiding if the characters really believed it was an invasion. Or did they have a reason to suspect it wasn't the case?

It seems strange to describe killing the resulting in the case of a full invasion (as implied) with all the death and destruction that entails as "excesses" in a general terms. It borders on disingenuous, IMO, as having that kind event in the first place seems excessive in a 4 color universe. It reminds of the stories and settings where the writer has a villain figuratively sitting on a throne of skulls but protagonists get scolded for even thinking about killing them.

Villains and antagonists can (and should) have rationales for what they do, some of them might even be sympathetic, even understandable but it taxes my sense of belief to have the characters act as if that 'must' be the case all the time and treat every situation the same. When I hear "aggression heightened to insane levels' and 'did everything expected of a force bent on conquest' that doesn't paint pretty pictures. Its odd to imagine the protagonists taking the precautions necessary not only to non-lethally capture their opponents but imprison them given their implied power (able to pose a threat globally and to superhumans), aggression and insanity along with the atrocities of war, all out war. Look at what humans have done to each other in war and in our right minds. It would be odd to have supers acting in say, WW2 that killed Axis combatants scorned as "not being heroes but vigilantes".

Alien invasions were done all the time during the silver age. Where the heroes did not kill. So no. I don't see a problem there.

My books are aimed at an all ages audience. So showing blood. gore. and atrocity isn't on the table at all.

I have been going for a bigger, wider audience than adult comic book fans. The bigger, wider audience that the big companies completely abandoned by making the books they put out only to be focused on adult readers.

The audience is still there. The interest is still there. It has just been disenfranchised by publishers who chose to turn their backs on it.