Quote from: Pat;1026068. It's fine to prefer different ages, particularly since they're so readily available now. But until recently, the Golden Age was almost entirely forgotten.

The first big collection of old issues I bought was well over ten years ago, and I'd known then that they'd been around for a while... at least for the more popular characters.

But this thread is about our own preferances anyway, not what will sell to the masses... and on that topic I'd prefer something that did it's own thing and avoided the trap of trying to too closely emulate the writing of the comics.

Quote from: Simlasa;1026076The first big collection of old issues I bought was well over ten years ago, and I'd known then that they'd been around for a while... at least for the more popular characters.

How many kids were reading comics, a decade ago? Not many. The people who read comics then or today are mostly adults, thanks to the way the industry alienated the kids market in favor of collectors and mature themes. The formative years I mentioned are the 1990s or earlier, which corresponds with the dying of the Code, and pre-dates the omnibus collections of older comics.

Quote from: Pat;1026068Going back and reading the classics is a new trend, though. Reprints of even individual issues were incredibly rare, and the massive omnibus collections of today didn't exist. Nearly every comic book fan's formative years were defined by the Comics code. It's fine to prefer different ages, particularly since they're so readily available now. But until recently, the Golden Age was almost entirely forgotten.

The only company I recall really doing reprints regularly was AC Comics. I know I got interested in Golden Age characters thanks to All Star Squadron by DC (still one of my all time favorites series), but it wasn't until places like comic book plus or the digital comics museum was around before I could really delve into many characters

Quote from: Pat;1026079How many kids were reading comics, a decade ago? Not many.

I dunno, I remember seeing plenty of kids in the comic shop when I was there. It's not like it was when every store had a rotating rack of them, but the kids still find them. At the school I work at there are lots of kids who read/collect comics. My friends kids all have comics of some sort, a lot of digest sized manga.

Quote from: Simlasa;1026104I dunno, I remember seeing plenty of kids in the comic shop when I was there. It's not like it was when every store had a rotating rack of them, but the kids still find them. At the school I work at there are lots of kids who read/collect comics. My friends kids all have comics of some sort, a lot of digest sized manga.

Manga are certainly big among kids, but they don't really fall into the comic book ages. Kids are less than 1 in 20 in the regular comic racks, IME.

A decade ago is not a long time ago.

Now git offa mah damn lawn.

Depends on the campaign.

I enjoy running Aeon Trinity. It's White Wolf's super heroes in space...and they often kill. For me, that works.

But when I ran Champions, killing attacks by PCs were rare and usually limited to 1D6. That's how we had our Wolverine clone PCs. AKA, he could stab people into the hospital (thanks to the Stun multiplier), but unless he went to town on them, they lived.  Instead of increasing to 2D6, the players would invest in more Speed so they could stab more people in a turn or wear down a major villain.

I've also enjoyed running Necessary Evil...and there's lot of killing there. But it makes sense because its Super Villains vs. Alien Invaders.

It totally depends on the subgenre you want to run.

In my Legion campaign, obviously killing was right out because you would be expelled from the LSH if you killed.

I can only think of one time I had player characters kill a villain in one of my supers games. The villain they killed was called the Devourer, who killed people when he touched them. It was personal and they had seen him killing bystanders so he could keep fighting them, it got dark, and was very memorable.

Some earlier posters mentioned that it depends a lot on who the villains are, and I agree. The more heroic and upstanding your heroes are the wider the array of villains you can have them fight as well.

I run a lot of con games and the default assumption is that heroes don't kill. Otherwise your not playing "supers" you are just people with powers. At least one of the people at the table is bound to want to be the white knight, and inter-party conflict over levels of acceptable violence can really derail things.

I read the first 20 or so appearances of Batman a while back and from what I recall the villain got killed every time at the end of the story - usually by being dropped from somewhere high. Exept for the Joker, who also suffered such a fate but Batman said "I wonder if that is the last we will see of the Joker."

Off to play (not GM) in an ongoing campaign with a few new players tonight. They'll be joining the Exemplars if my duplicating hero Maniple has anything to say about it.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1025888So if you allow killing in your superhero games, and the characters aren't law enforcement officers, how do you deal with the fact that murder is a crime?  Or is it OK when they do it because everybody knows they're the good guys?

I ask because 40 years ago when John M. Ford wrote a spaceport module for Traveler, he got a LOT of shit from gamers for suggesting that if the authorities were in a firefight with miscreants, if the PCs grabbed their blasters and waded on in, the authorities might assume they were part of the bad guys.

Unless there has been a specific genre guidelines set up, I treat killing opponents in a super game like I would in other games for the most part: it depends on the situation and characters involved. Superheroes in my default setting are generally viewed in a positive light, seen as heroes and celebrities. They engage in dangerous activities to protect people, they posses and are the targets of incredibly lethal abilities on a regular, even frequent basis. Severe injury and death seem to be pretty inevitable for most if you do this for very long. Police kill when required though they ideally try to avoid lethal force, soldiers kill as a matter of definition, sometimes superheroes may have too as well or it can happen accidentally.

That's not the same murder in the colloquial sense, setting out to kill with intent. They're are heroes they set themselves up as judge, jury and executioner, some of of them are even popular though the authorities seek them out for their transgressions (perhaps not as much as they could, again depends on circumstances.

Basically, its varies. I don't allow killing or disallow it but actions have consequences and repercussions even in comics though in my games, not just supers violence is treated more like it is in action movies and action oriented genres unless specifically noted. Not sanitized but not as traumatic as it could be in real life.

My Golden Age supers campaign was really interesting in this respect.  It ran from the start of the Golden Age (1938) until the late 1940s.

At the start of the campaign, in keeping with the very early Golden Age, it was normal for the PC heroes to kill villains when necessary. But as the Golden Age moved on, the heroes (including the PCs) came to a general understanding that they should not kill.

Quote from: CarlD.;1026941They're are heroes they set themselves up as judge, jury and executioner,

That's what I mean.  By what right to they do that?  If I'm Commissioner Gordon, a "hero" who kills is a murderer, unless it's clear and obvious self defense.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1027486That's what I mean.  By what right to they do that?  If I'm Commissioner Gordon, a "hero" who kills is a murderer, unless it's clear and obvious self defense.

That could make a fun campaign -- Iron Age with Plausible Deniability. The heroes kill and kill and kill, but murder is just the start. They spend as much effort covering their tracks as they do beating up villains, either staging accidents, making it look like a clear case of self-defense, making sure they have iron clad alibis, or framing other villains.

Jesus, that sounds like a nightmare to me.

If I want to play a horrific dystopia where might makes right and the only crime is getting caught... well, I'm already LARPing that game.  It's called "real life."

Quote from: Pat;1027514That could make a fun campaign -- Iron Age with Plausible Deniability. The protagonists kill and kill and kill, but murder is just the start. They spend as much effort covering their tracks as they do beating up villains, either staging accidents, making it look like a clear case of self-defense, making sure they have iron clad alibis, or framing other villains.

No, I'm not going to pull a 'corrected that for you,' those are stupid. Let's just call it a 'suggested alternative.'