TheRPGSite

Spun off from the "Ethics of Telepathy in Supers" thread...

Let's talk about KILLIN!!!! in Supers RPGs.

Bren brought up some good points on Pulp Heroes and their varying proclivities on dealing with bad guys. I'll defer to his details on Pulp Heroes over mine - because they varied more widely than standard comic-fare given that they were often multi-media affairs, but tended to have their roots in pulp novels and radio serials. Those novels and serials were huge influences on comics later.

A Little Context...
So while as Bren points out, Pulp heroes often used non-lethal methods to deal with their opponents, others used lethal force with varying degrees of regularity. This was true of early comics too - or at least implied. The closer to those pulps ones gets the more lethal the comics were. Batman kills people with uncommon fashion, usually by punching people into environmental hazards - often on purpose. (He hung a mental patient from the Batplane as he flew over Gotham in Batman #1 and said "He's probably better off this way.") Golden Age comics had some... crazy standards of violence and whacky stuff. The noir aspects of the era outlived most of the other conceits especially in RPG's that go beyond just Supers of this era.

But the trend definitely slowed down and came to a campy halt once the Comics Code landed in 1954. Which coincides with the rise of the Silver Age of Comics. For the most part, this is the era that defined modern Supers that we know of today with DC's and Marvel's respective pantheons being updated at the beginning and end of the Silver Age respectively. The Comics Code forbade graphic violence, and supernatural elements. But the genre was still defined by these constraints. The no-killing "rule" started here. But with the advent of the modern form of Marvel Comics in the early 60's - they pushed back almost immediately.

By the early 70's several "landmark" events happened where Stan Lee published comics without the approval of the Code Authority forcing a change in the rules. The Bronze Age is when comics matured dramatically. Very adult-themed storylines began to show up, that led to the direct evolution we see today in the Modern Age where the contrast of Supers in the "real world" conflict with out rosy-imaginations of the "Good Ol' Days".

So where do you stand in Supers in RPG's where heroes either kill bad guys? Anti-heroes? How do you handle it?

I game for escapism, so my comic book gaming is 100% Silver Age-Comics Code.  But that's just a matter of taste.

Depends on the type of game you want to play.

I think every superhero game I've ever GMd (from TSR Marvel onward I've pretty much tried them all, me and my guys are big comic nerds) has ended up dancing along this line at some point. Nowadays I don't think of it in binary terms, like "Lethal ON/OFF", but more in terms of how realistic I want the game word to feel. For the most part, my players run heroes that are the "banish, capture or reform" type, but like you say, every now and then there's a "landmark" moment when they take the gloves off and someone gets banished to the sun's core, or one of the Evil Underwater Cities gets its dome cracked open, or whatever.

Personally, I like that balance. Iron Age styled games just come off as murder simulators to us, though one of my personal favourite campaign arcs (one campaign, a billion different systems over the years) had them transported back to pre-Code Pulp World, where the characters were shocked and horrified at the levels of violence.

I don't quite understand the idea of *wanting* to be a mass-murdering Super, since it's so trivially easy. Giving context to your supers game other than "Well we're supers, we save people just because it's what we do" is important to me. That's probably the big distinction between Silver Age DC and latter Silver Age Marvel.

I liken it to my Sandbox style GM-style. You can do what you want. The world will react accordingly. It's another reason I try to ground my PC's into their background and the setting. So they have something to fight for or something to lose. If they ditch all that and try to go Murder Hobo... well again, the world will react accordingly and I'll flip the Campaign Header around from Supers to Villains and they'll quickly learn why the Avengers/JLA are not to be trifled with.

Of course there's killing for a reason... and killing "just because".  There's a large gulf in that ellipse. Wolverine (unless he's berserking) doesn't wantonly kill people. The Punisher kills a lot of people by his code.

I don't have an issue with anti-heroes in my games (I use FASERIP and I have my own rules for anti-heroes that make it a lot steeper to advance though they get fewer restrictions on Karma) as long as they adhere to a code of some sort.

First, I pretty much never play supers games. But if I did, I would not want to artificially avoid deaths. I like setting up interesting situations and then playing them out to see how those situations would play out. Artificially preventing things from happening that would otherwise happen, usually seems to me like the opposite of what I usually want.

Of course, there are plenty of non-lethal situations that can be fun to game. And there can be plenty of good reasons not to kill people. In fact, I'm usually more sensitive to reasons not to kill people than most other players around me in most games. I'm the guy whose characters tend to object when someone wants to kill prisoners for convenience, when there's a reasonable alternative and they aren't someone who we agree should be dead. I like the baseline human behavior to be not killing without a good reason.

But when resolving action and fighting with deadly weapons, generally a lot of people tend to die.

And in comic books, as well as in other fiction and games, I tend to think it's lame and annoying when the situation supposedly involves using deadly weapons, but no one (or almost no one, or way fewer than should) actually gets killed by them. I also think that if the supposed effect is to avoid messing people (kids?) up with violence, or to model good attitudes to violence, that making combat out to be safe is a particularly backwards way to go about it.

I think we're on the same vibe. I once nuked a PC (well, the USA did) as he crossed the line from anti-hero to strategic-level threat. One of the characters is a highy-trained cult assassin, but her schtick is that one of the other PCs is playing her god and forbids her from killing. Of course, sometimes he 'leaves the room', so to speak. I can usually tell when an evil NPC or villain is going to merit that kind of attention, so I'm pretty much in charge of pacing. And of course, a lot of the time there isn't party consensus on whether an NPC warrants permanent removal from the setting. Makes for some nice inter-party conflict. But if your have too many NPCs like that the game starts to turn into a kill-list, which is not what I'm going for when I play supers. On the other hand, a complete lack of a killing is probably skewing too Silver Age for us over the long haul. And I do have one PC who maintains his own personal list, no matter what. No matter what game or genre we're playing, now I come to think. Gee, maybe I should talk to him about that.

They do sometimes sideswipe me and take a fatal dislike to someone out of the blue, which is a lot of fun, because then I know I have someone who's going to torment them for ages.

I've never ran a straight-up Supervillains game, though one campaign had them playing as villain-versions of themselves for a while, Mirror Universe style. For a game where they actually played villains on the make, I'd probably look at Blades in the Dark's set-up for structure, though something more super for the engine.

My superhero campaigns are not what you would consider modern age. They take pieces of the pulp/golden age, silver age and bronze age. But hug pretty close to the line on morality to the silver age.

It's my comfort zone.

I was never really into super hero comic books (more horror for me), but I do like the old pulp crime fights, like the Shadow and Doc Savage.

The Shadow would kill dozens of people a story. Doc Savage had. a code of not killing, but his henchmen didn't and they would often "accidentally" kill the villain at the end and have a good laugh about it. (At least the ones I've read, it was not uncommon). The Spider would not only kill villains, he'd brand their foreheads.

I 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).

Depends on the rea played in and more importantly the tone of the sessions.

Is it gritty pulp and serial heroes gunz-a-blazin?
Is it early comic book mayhem where sometimes criminals didnt make it to the justice system.
Is it some Comic Book Dark Age where the villains slaughter people in droves but the heroes refuse to put the mad dogs down.
Is it some balance where you try not to kill for obvious reasons. But some will pull the trigger of necessary.

I usually lean to a balance. The heroes should not be slaughtering people. But they wont just stand back and let a villain kill again and again. Classic Marvel as it were.
But a dystopia can be tons of fun and I had a blast GMing Aberrant.

Quote from: Omega;1025380But a dystopia can be tons of fun and I had a blast GMing Aberrant.

I've always wanted to run the Savage Worlds Necessary Evil campaign for that reason, but I don't like SW and so I've never bothered. But I've gone too far in the dystopian direction before, which made the PCs literally abandon earth for one of the better ones the players knew about, the metagaming bastards. Good times though. Who doesn't like vampire-cyborg police states and disintegration booths?

Well, 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.

I've run numerous superhero games in the past, ranging from Pulp heroes to cosmic level games where entire systems were at stake. Each game had its own set of rules for what was allowed (or not allowed) in regards to killing. Pulp Heroes did kill, but not indiscriminately. I've run 2 or 3 Golden Age games. In one, the heroes didn't kill at all, and tended to take a "we're better than you" attitude because of it. Another one the heroes had no problems killing Nazis, etc, but didn't go out of their way to do so all the time. The third one was a mix, where killing was considered ok, but they would sometimes take the moral high ground. I've run plenty of Silver Age games, where killing didn't happen, because heroes just didn't kill.

I have run Iron Age style games, but they tended to fall more along the lines of the Suicide Squad comics, and not Image Comics and their gun porn and multiple pockets on costumes attitude. The characters did kill, but only when necessary (with one exception). One character was a vigilante because his wife and daughter were killed by Russian mobsters. Normally, he would wound opponents, but when he fought Russians, he showed no mercy. The consequences of their actions fed future storylines (such as a man becoming a vigilante who tried to hunt them all down because his child was killed during a running battle the players had with said Russian mobsters on a highway). By the end of the campaign, the character who hated Russians turned himself in after they broke the Russian mob in their city, and he personally killed their leader. It was actually pretty fun. Of course, I had players who didn't turn each session into a slaughterhouse; they spent more than one session doing non-combat stuff (investigations, etc). They would take money from criminals, and use it to help improve bad neighborhoods, fund programs for recovering drug addicts, etc.  They still tried to make a difference, even though

I like my superhero game high on drama and low on the body count.

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. :D 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.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1025569Alien 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.

This is incredibly naive when you're enemies may be trying to wipe out an entire species...  But maybe, I'm jumping the gun.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1025569My books are aimed at an all ages audience. So showing blood. gore. and atrocity isn't on the table at all.

Did they happen, though?  Did the alien invaders actually try and wipe out entire cities of men, women and children?  Or did you set it up like a Saturday morning cartoon, where no one ever got hurt?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1025595Did they happen, though?  Did the alien invaders actually try and wipe out entire cities of men, women and children?  Or did you set it up like a Saturday morning cartoon, where no one ever got hurt?

Police and emergency services I don't treat as incompetant. Together with the heroes, they were able to contain the invasion at its point of entry. The collateral damage was the town that was at ground zero. Which almost got wiped out entirely.

An entire graphic novel was dedicated to the aftermath of the invasion. Heroes helping the relief effort, Heroes finding survivors and getting them medical attention. And the mourning of the lives lost because of the invasion. So yes, the damage had a real human impact.

I should preface that by saying that I seldom play anything superhero-related...or maybe I play it all the time. Does Exalted count? Legends of the Wulin, Tianxia and Qin? Witchcraft and Sorcerer:D?
So yes, I definitely play games with superpowered protagonists.
They're not always games with superheroes, though.

Anyway, I generally have no problems at all with killing, as long as it's for a reason. I mean, I've played a S&S character that would consider "drowning the world in the blood of thy enemies" a perfectly reasonable answer to losing someone she was attracted to:). She wasn't exactly an exception.
Then again, I also play characters who believe in proportional response, and I've even played pacifists who refused to inflict lasting harm (though those are the exception).

Are all of the above heroes? Yes, because the word "hero" has at least two different meanings. In the one I'm using, it's about "a person who is admired for their courage and/or achievements". Superheroes default to "being admired for noble qualities and possibly achievements". Oh, and courage is part of said qualities, too.
So, I use it like I'd use it for Greek heroes. Even if I, personally, consider a lot of them to be flawed people;).
Then again, we're all flawed.

The problem is, the hero part of superhero genre has the meaning of "noble qualities". Might be because of the Comic Code, or whatever, but that's how it's seen today.
I tend to play games that don't care about said qualities, though. And I seldom, if ever, played games like FASERIP, where killing is out of bounds.
If anything, my games have featured, much more often, the moment where striking someone with Exalted power turns out to be not merely punishing, or even disabling, but can be outright murderous. (Being struck by someone who can press several tonnes would realistically be like this, because it's worse than being run over by a car).

That said, I wouldn't mind playing in a game with a Silver Age code. It would be a change of pace, if nothing else...but I don't know anyone who's a fan of Silver Age comics and would run a game (I know some people who are fans, but don't play RPGs, and obviously I know RPGs players who aren't fans).
But, and here's a big butt...don't make it a Silver Age game in a world where those standards make no sense!
If I'm playing Batman, and the Joker is killing people, I might capture him alive, if it wouldn't endanger other people. If he runs out of Arkham after that? He's bound to suffer an accident when we meet again.
Not killing where the antiutopia is deploying annihilation cameras? You'd need a really good pitch to get me to play someone like that.
Otherwise, prepare for full-blown V for Vendetta times.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1025606Police and emergency services I don't treat as incompetant. Together with the heroes, they were able to contain the invasion at its point of entry. The collateral damage was the town that was at ground zero. Which almost got wiped out entirely.

Not the way most invasions would go.  Multiple targets at the same time, force the enemy on the back foot as they scramble to contain all the 'fires' so to speak.  Well, if it's a Silver Age style of story, having incompetent bad guys is pretty much par for the course, so that's 'in setting'.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1025606An entire graphic novel was dedicated to the aftermath of the invasion. Heroes helping the relief effort, Heroes finding survivors and getting them medical attention. And the mourning of the lives lost because of the invasion. So yes, the damage had a real human impact.

Oh, so it's a post-apocalyptic style of story, where the big bad thing that destroyed the world has already happened, the stories are about the aftermath, rather than the event.

Even though I don't mind violence and death in superhero games, I'd be OK without it if the nature of the villains was street-level... bank robbers and cultists and demented weirdos. It would mean stopping some bullets and the occasional explosion... but not the sort of juiced up power that destroys whole blocks of a city.
Still, I prefer The Shadow... who was more than happy to gun down his enemies.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1025624Not the way most invasions would go.  Multiple targets at the same time, force the enemy on the back foot as they scramble to contain all the 'fires' so to speak.  Well, if it's a Silver Age style of story, having incompetent bad guys is pretty much par for the course, so that's 'in setting'.

It sounds pretty cartoonish and sanitized  on the level of G.I. Joe or Super-friends or similar shows. Its a style, just not one I'd employ or get into (aside from maybe nostalgia driven one shot). For a serious game, it'd feel really fake for me. But I'm not gonna finger wag at people that like it. The thread is about how you feel about death in supers games, not the Ultimate True Way it should be.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1025624Not the way most invasions would go.  Multiple targets at the same time, force the enemy on the back foot as they scramble to contain all the 'fires' so to speak.  Well, if it's a Silver Age style of story, having incompetent bad guys is pretty much par for the course, so that's 'in setting'.

It was an invasion through a wormhole hose end is just outside of a small island port town town southeast of New Orleans. That was the entry point. It wasn't an entry from orbit.

This wormhole makes that town the most dangerous place on the planet. Because the other end wiggles through the universe randomly. Causing all kinds of things to come through at random.

The town doesn't exist in real life. Where it would be is a small patch of islands in the gulf. Making fictional towns or cities have a long tradition in comics fiction.

I wouldn't call my books sanitized or anything like G.I. Joe. I just don't show the gore on screen. It's not necessary.

Leaving the nasty stuff to the imagination of the reader is something I vastly prefer. I subscribe to the idea that a reader's imagination filling in those blanks is the best approach. That it carries more impact on the reader than a blood and gore scene ever could.

Quote from: CarlD.;1025628It sounds pretty cartoonish and sanitized  on the level of G.I. Joe or Super-friends or similar shows. Its a style, just not one I'd employ or get into (aside from maybe nostalgia driven one shot). For a serious game, it'd feel really fake for me. But I'm not gonna finger wag at people that like it. The thread is about how you feel about death in supers games, not the Ultimate True Way it should be.

I meant from a Silver Age design, it's perfect.  It's the right amount of 'incompetence' that a Silver Age comic typically has, as typified by Adam West's Batman series.  It's meant for fun, not wallowing in tragedy.  It's not my kind of thing, but I'm not the arbiter of anyone's fun but my own.

I agree, that a more 'realistic' (In a superhero game?  Am I CRAZY?) invasion would not just attack a single, easily defended choke point, but again, not my call, and if the Graphic Novels are or are not enjoyed, who the fuck am I to say they're right or wrong?

They are enjoyed. A grandmother was looking for something suitable for her young grandson when she discovered them at one of the conventions we attended.

They were the source of one of my first reviews. They both loved the books and the characters in them. Which made me very happy and proud. And very much validated.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1025797They are enjoyed. A grandmother was looking for something suitable for her young grandson when she discovered them at one of the conventions we attended.

Well, I think we can agree that's great, regardless of whether we're personally interested in said graphic novels:)!

Although I allow killing in my supers games, I don't think I treat it lightly.  It's a massive event that gets a lot of 'societal' attention every time.  But I also don't punish my players excessively like the FASERIP system does.

Quote from: tenbones;1025331So where do you stand in Supers in RPG's where heroes either kill bad guys? Anti-heroes? How do you handle it?

Part of the problem when the villains are killed off is you have to come up with new villains. In a supers game you try to have them be as unique as the heroes. That becomes difficult after the first 20 or so.

That said, the power level and scope of the game is important. I find it easier when we're playing at a street-hero level. Then powers tend to be in addition to neo-Olympic level physicality or hyper-competent professional skills.

These days, if I'm running a supers game it is either a mid-level Silver age style, and there isn't killing except for the truly evil bad guys at the end of an arc. Otherwise, it's more of a Strikeforce Morituri style game, where there are casualties on both sides expected.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1025852Although I allow killing in my supers games, I don't think I treat it lightly.  It's a massive event that gets a lot of 'societal' attention every time.  But I also don't punish my players excessively like the FASERIP system does.

The FASERIP system was created and existed before the Iron Age of comics took over Marvel. It was very much a Bronze Age game that enforced Bronze Age sensibilities. That's the reason why that game punished so harshly for killing. Because it was outside of the boundries Marvel had previously existed in.

It also is why the game itself had problems when they started importing Iron Age characters via later supplements. They just didn't fit within the paradigm of the game.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1025871The FASERIP system was created and existed before the Iron Age of comics took over Marvel. It was very much a Bronze Age game that enforced Bronze Age sensibilities. That's the reason why that game punished so harshly for killing. Because it was outside of the boundries Marvel had previously existed in.

It also is why the game itself had problems when they started importing Iron Age characters via later supplements. They just didn't fit within the paradigm of the game.

I can't remember exactly what it was I did, but I had a negative-karma fudge for Punisher/Ghost Rider/Rapier-style vigilante characters in my high-school FASERIP game. Like, they could 'spend' negative karma but couldn't use it to advance, or whatever. But yeah, what you said above makes a lot of sense.

So 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.

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.

I have the cops chase/shoot at the PCs in my supers game for much lesser infractions than murder. But when they do remove an NPC from the setting (my favourite euphemism for murdering a baddie they can't stand) it's usually heavily premeditated and they rarely leave much evidence behind.

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?

Given my usual campaigns, mentioned above:

A) Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

B) War makes evil men of us all.

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?

Hasn't that been something of a common trope in the comics? That the law considers Batman/Spiderman/Whoever-man to be a bad guy vigilante? The 'hero' walks a fine line... and many villains thought they were on the side of justice.
I'd assumed it was part of the reason for keeping a secret identity... in addition to hiding from the bad guys.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1025871The FASERIP system was created and existed before the Iron Age of comics took over Marvel. It was very much a Bronze Age game that enforced Bronze Age sensibilities. That's the reason why that game punished so harshly for killing. Because it was outside of the boundries Marvel had previously existed in.

It also is why the game itself had problems when they started importing Iron Age characters via later supplements. They just didn't fit within the paradigm of the game.

The Bronze Age of comics came AFTER the Iron Age.  It was a reflex on dialing back on the constant ultra-violent revenge porn that was being shot out, it takes Iron Age seriousness and tries to apply a Silver Age's sense of fun and responsibility to frame it.  When done well, it can be thought provoking, or can just be fun, but not as silly as some of the stuff in the Silver Age was.

The first 'Edition' of the FASERIP system came out in 84, the Advanced Version came out in 86.  Both the Punisher and Watchmen, two of the biggest influences of the 80's Iron Age era, came out in 86.  They could have implemented a system for those types a heroes, if interested, but instead stuck with the Silver Age of storytelling.  Which again, is perfectly fine.  The real problem with the Karma System was in it's awards, you could ignore crimes if you did charities for example.  It actually harmed those who would be superheroes, by knocking off points for property damage that did not involve innocents.

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?

Since when is being a Superhero been 'OK'?  As pointed out, Spiderman and Batman, who since the Silver Age, and even through the Iron Age did NOT kill, were still shot at by police, both legit and corrupt.  Killing is a personal thing, it will affect anyone.  But some times, when you look at all the variables you can and only one solution proves to be the best option at the time, do you let the Joker gas thousands of people to die a horrible death?  Or do you break his neck and end him and his threat?  Sometimes, that's all you have.  And that's what you have to deal with.  It's not going to be easy, or 'fun' for the character, but for the player that sort of moral dilemma helps shape their hero.

It's not for everyone, but it's a style of play I can respect.  Just like I can respect those who prefer the four colour Silver Age style of the 50-60 and 70's.  Or Golden Age or Bronze or whatever.

I don't care for it, myself, for a few reasons.

1) It just seems contrary to the genre for me. The thing about superheroes is that they show the constraint not to use their powers to that extreme. That there is a line they will not cross. That's the balance against them having all these amazing powers which can easily be abused.

2) From a gaming perspective, it falls into the same problem as ongoing comics. If you kill a major villain, then you need to replace them with a new one. Unlike a lot of the Golden Age, heroes now don't just fight random, generic gangsters. All their villains are expected to be unique and colorful and have original abilities and origins. Building a good and memorable rogues gallery can be hard enough in and of itself. If you let them die, then you have to keep making new ones over and over. That's almost impossible to do, unless your campaign is one which has a definitive beginning, middle, and end and will only take place along that one story arc, with the expectation that there will be deaths and you don't plan on replacing them.

3) Also from a gaming perspective, however, is the competitive nature between GMs and players. Players, including myself, want to win. GMs want to keep the main villains around to keep being threats, especially if they are major arch-villains behind the overreaching plots. If the players aren't given decent opportunities to defeat the villains, even lesser ones working for the main villain, because they keep escaping somehow, it can lead to some resentment in not having any sense of closure or victory throughout large portions of the campaign. This can lead to the danger of the players getting sick of being robbed of what they feel is victory or progress and deciding to finish off the villains before they can escape again. This isn't an issue with comics, since the heroes react as the writer/GM wants, but ina  dynamic game, there is effectively more than  one writer, and they all have to be satisfied with the result.

I see your Spiderman and Batman and raise you Superman.

And if Superman kills, hail our Kryptonian overlord.  Cuz Earth is fucked.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1025932The Bronze Age of comics came AFTER the Iron Age.

the Bronze age of comics is considered to be from 1970 - 1985. The Iron Age supposedly started in 1985 with Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1025932The Bronze Age of comics came AFTER the Iron Age.

You've got your ages confused. It's Gold, then Silver, then Bronze, then Iron/Modern. The Bronze Age scaled back the silly extremes of the Silver Age, both in terms of power and absurd plots. Real issues like racism, drugs, abuse, and poverty were addressed, and death happened. But unlike the anti-heroic Iron Age, killing was rare, and genuine heroism was still the dominant theme. O'Neil and Adams' run where socially-conscious Green Arrow brought Green Lantern down to earth by showing him problems like poverty, or Claremont's Dark Phoenix storyline in X-Men, are both classic Bronze Age. It's a good compromise between the absurd abstraction of the Silver Age, and the anti-heroic pessimism of the Iron Age.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1025932The first 'Edition' of the FASERIP system came out in 84, the Advanced Version came out in 86.  Both the Punisher and Watchmen, two of the biggest influences of the 80's Iron Age era, came out in 86.  They could have implemented a system for those types a heroes, if interested, but instead stuck with the Silver Age of storytelling.

Wikipedia seems to think the Bronze Age ended in 1985, but the effects of Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, and Crisis on Infinite Earth took a while to kick in. While the game appeared at the end of the Age, MSH is almost 100% Bronze. Anti-heroes like Wolverine and Punisher existed, but they weren't the norm. You could make killing attacks (hack & slash, shooting, etc.), but heroes lost all their Karma if they killed anyone, and even villains were mechanically discouraged from murder.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1025949I see your Spiderman and Batman and raise you Superman.

And if Superman kills, hail our Kryptonian overlord.  Cuz Earth is fucked.

Mark Wade's Irredeemable runs with that concept. The Plutonian is a Superman-analog who snaps. It's got a bit too much murder and weird sex, but it's a decent series that keeps adding new twists until the end (10 graphic novels, however many issues).

Quote from: The Black Ferret;10259351) It just seems contrary to the genre for me. The thing about superheroes is that they show the constraint not to use their powers to that extreme.

How much of that restraint comes from the heavy-handed censorship of The Comics Code enacted in 1954? There was a time when Batman carried a gun and regularly killed his adversaries. The old serial version of Captain Marvel has the hero machine gunning fleeing thugs and throwing another one off a roof.

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.

Shoot 'em all and let ghu sort it out!

Quote from: Simlasa;1025970How much of that restraint comes from the heavy-handed censorship of The Comics Code enacted in 1954? There was a time when Batman carried a gun and regularly killed his adversaries. The old serial version of Captain Marvel has the hero machine gunning fleeing thugs and throwing another one off a roof.

Does it matter? It came into existence in 1954, so very few people remember those years. Nearly everyone's idea of how super hero comic books work was defined by the Code.

Quote from: Pat;1025982Does it matter? It came into existence in 1954, so very few people remember those years. Nearly everyone's idea of how super hero comic books work was defined by the Code.

History matters, yeah. The Comics Code had a blandifying effect across the board. Also, plenty of people like to go back and read the original tales of their favorite heroes.
My point is that there's nothing about the 'not-killing' rule that's sacrosanct, we who would like less cartoon violence with our supers are not changing the 'genre', are not trying to take it someplace it's never been (not that anyone was overtly claiming that...).

Quote from: urbwar;1025955the Bronze age of comics is considered to be from 1970 - 1985. The Iron Age supposedly started in 1985 with Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Quote from: Pat;1025956You've got your ages confused. It's Gold, then Silver, then Bronze, then Iron/Modern. The Bronze Age scaled back the silly extremes of the Silver Age, both in terms of power and absurd plots. Real issues like racism, drugs, abuse, and poverty were addressed, and death happened. But unlike the anti-heroic Iron Age, killing was rare, and genuine heroism was still the dominant theme. O'Neil and Adams' run where socially-conscious Green Arrow brought Green Lantern down to earth by showing him problems like poverty, or Claremont's Dark Phoenix storyline in X-Men, are both classic Bronze Age. It's a good compromise between the absurd abstraction of the Silver Age, and the anti-heroic pessimism of the Iron Age.

So what I'm getting is the Iron Age never actually ended then.  Which seems odd to me (again, just me) because until at least 81 if not later until it's disbandment in 2001, the Comics Code was still plastered firmly on most comic covers, also Busiek's Astro City that came out in '95 was a serious step back from the blood and guts violence that lead to the introduction of Cable and Deadpool.  There's a lot of comics that just aren't Iron Age anymore, they've got some modern sensibilities, but they're lighter, more about the fun that the Silver Age.  Atomic Robo being one that comes to mind.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1026043So what I'm getting is the Iron Age never actually ended then.  Which seems odd to me (again, just me) because until at least 81 if not later until it's disbandment in 2001, the Comics Code was still plastered firmly on most comic covers, also Busiek's Astro City that came out in '95 was a serious step back from the blood and guts violence that lead to the introduction of Cable and Deadpool.  There's a lot of comics that just aren't Iron Age anymore, they've got some modern sensibilities, but they're lighter, more about the fun that the Silver Age.  Atomic Robo being one that comes to mind.

Ages are just tendencies, so there will always be exceptions. Ages also tend to be defined by milestones, and much as I love Astro City, it's nowhere near as influential as Superman appearing in Action Comics #1, Flash reappearing in Showcase #4, or Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, and Crisis on Infinite Earths. The problem with the Modern Age is while a lot of people think we may be in a new age, there's no defining event everyone can agree on that signaled the start of it, and they're struggling to describe its characteristics. That's also why the term Iron Age is less in vogue, because it's no longer as good a description as it was in the 1990s.

It's worth noting that ages are often retroactively defined -- the term "Bronze Age" didn't appear until 1995, and that was a similar gradual transition. Ten or twenty years from now, there's a good chance 2018 will be considered a different age from 1995. But right now there's no consensus.

Quote from: Simlasa;1025993History matters, yeah. The Comics Code had a blandifying effect across the board. Also, plenty of people like to go back and read the original tales of their favorite heroes.
My point is that there's nothing about the 'not-killing' rule that's sacrosanct, we who would like less cartoon violence with our supers are not changing the 'genre', are not trying to take it someplace it's never been (not that anyone was overtly claiming that...).

Going 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.

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.'

In general, for me it depends. Superheroes covers a pretty wide range - from street level crimefighting to galaxy-spanning space opera.

The main thing I look for is that action should be fun for the players and the GM. If I'm GMing, I don't want to be struggling to make the players behave in a way that I think is proper. The same if I'm a player. If the players want to play The Punisher or Spawn, then I'll try to make that fun. The fun may include running or fighting with the police who oppose them, but that's not me trying to make them into Batman when they want to be The Punisher.

I haven't played supers in a while, but one of the recent campaigns was a supervillains campaign where we were just trying to use our powers for profit. It's not moral, but in game terms one of the interesting things is that supervillains are pro-active. Superheroes tend to just wait around for a supervillain plot to foil, but supervillains will take a peaceful setting and start stuff.

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's true, but also note that a hero who doesn't murder but just beats people up is guilty of assault, probably along with destruction of property, obstruction of justice, and other crimes. In real life, the law usually doesn't look kindly on vigilantism - and for good reason. The game isn't real life.

Right. The reality is - depending on the powers of a metahuman - the ability to remain 1) anonymous or 2) free of moral ambiguity is virtually impossible.

You could mitigate #1 a lot in earlier history. In modernity, I'm afraid unless you have some seriously useful utility powers like shapechange or your powers are not overt, you'd be figured out eventually.

The real thing about Supers as a genre is the implicit notion that you as an individual have abilities that the rest of human society doesn't. It ignores the fact you may not even *be* human at all. It ignores that fact that your very perceptions and interactions with reality are radically different than the vast majority of the populace - but it assumes you're going to try to abide by the morality and ethics of these beings that in all likelihood are utterly inferior to you.

The real question is what conceits in considering these questions are you willing to allow in your game? The Incredibles gives it a solid nod, the Watchmen define it utterly. Magneto exemplifies one polar side of it, Captain America the other.

Without getting into the "Punch a Nazi thing" - (or maybe we should since this is squarely where it was co-opted) - Magneto makes a great case for this. He maintains he's *not* human. He's a different species entirely. And he thinks that his species is not beholden to the dangers that pose his kind from what he considers an inferior species. And he acts accordingly. His origin is a powerful statement to his beliefs. What would *not* justify Magneto going ham on Nazis in a WWII era super-hero game? Would he not, in fact, be a hero? Or would you say he's something else? Granted his views about Mutantkind (Homo Superior in his parlance) wasn't fully developed. Justapose that concept of what if he did have that idea while being a war-camp prisoner when his powers manifested? Then imagine if while in the throes of meeting out that justice - Captain America showed up.

I think one of the things the genre gets wrong in gaming is not adherence to this morality code which largely was being enforced in the content by exterior forces that came to define various periods of comic history, but that these games don't enforce that in-game reality with its own conceits.

There is a HUGE difference if super-humans start from a starting point of cultural positivity like in DC where they do a lot of hero-worship, than starting with a bit of fear and skepticism and more real-world issues like Marvel. It's a balancing act that most games either ignore, or use really punishing mechanics that gorilla-fist the rules to justify the conceits.

I think you can have your cake and eat it too - you just have to clearly define those bars and it isn't easy. What keeps Superman from killing bad guys? *Nothing* keeps him from doing it other than his own code which extols some very human rights, given the crap hes had to put up with, probably makes him a much more complex person to moral relativists. Batman once got Superman's powered and was horrified. Because he realized exactly how powerful Superman was - and didn't do everything he could to "fix things". So when Batman did - of course he became the super-tyrant.

I dunno... it's kinda fun to juxtapose those things in theory - even in game. Like imagine Spiderman telling Superman "With great power comes great responsibility." hehehe.

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.

The same justification vigilantes have used in the real world and some people support and endorse them for the reasons some in the real world. The reaction depends on the circumstances of the crime. For example, I don't think allot of Gotham would suddenly despise Batman if he kiled the Joker (as he's commonly been depicted: a gleeful mass murderer with a body count that must be in the triple digits). Given the number of police officers he'd killed I'm suprised the Joker hasn't "been shot while trying to escape" to tell the truth. So I don't find hard to imagine that GCPD wouldnt lose much sleep looking for his killer.

But if he beat Catwoman to death for pilfering a necklace that's going to go over differently.

Which doesn't mean, I always agree with those justifications, especially relative to the real world. But as far as games go I try to weigh things from the repercussions it seems they'd reasonable have, adjusted for intended mood and genre.

Quote from: jhkim;1027578That's true, but also note that a hero who doesn't murder but just beats people up is guilty of assault, probably along with destruction of property, obstruction of justice, and other crimes. In real life, the law usually doesn't look kindly on vigilantism - and for good reason. The game isn't real life.

This is a good point. Most superheroes are vigilantes that break multiple laws on a regular basis, some ignore due process and what are considered Rights in the U.S., etc. Like Action Movie heroes and the main characters in other genres. Its not realistic, at least not totally but its not real life. Its entertainment and sometimes meant to be thrilling, intense and cathartic rather realistic.

Quote from: tenbones;1027720Right. The reality is - depending on the powers of a metahuman - the ability to remain 1) anonymous or 2) free of moral ambiguity is virtually impossible.

You could mitigate #1 a lot in earlier history. In modernity, I'm afraid unless you have some seriously useful utility powers like shapechange or your powers are not overt, you'd be figured out eventually.

I've read some interesting analysis of this idea that considers it a little overblown. Forensics and things like facial recognition are blown out or proportion, etc. I'll see if I can find those articles again. Yeah, it would be harder than usually depicted (often seemingly effortless) but not as impossible as some detractors make it out, especially concealing it from the general public.

 I like the take more modern Super stories take on. Particularly when the characters are found or reveal their secret but there are circumstances involved that keep their identities limited knowledge rather than the 'no ones knows or everyone knows' binary in earlier comic stories.

Gotham PD likely knows the Batman is one guy (or is one guy most of the time) but not who. Unless Bruce's forensic data turns up in a spot to be compared (and he hasn't hacked and altered it or paid someone too).

If you (over) think it, many of the common activities on genres would be illegal, distasteful or just bizarre in the real world. But in the end it does boil down "this ain't the real world" for allot of things.

I'd love to see those articles if you could find them.

I was speaking not just with the consideration of facial recognition - but general forensics. Let's assume your character wants to be anonymous and isn't overtly stupid like not wearing mask. Take Spiderman. Full fask mask, body-suit, probably not going to leave a lot of evidence around unless he's getting into a knock-down drag out. So let's pretend for sake of discussion that doesn't happen normally (but it'll be a factor later).

I'm not saying that Spidey, a guy wearing a really overt costume, who goes around kicking the crap out of people (and takes pictures of himself while doing it to sell to the local papers) wouldn't immediately be caught - or discovered that he's Peter Parker... I'm making the claim that at *some* point not long after he gets on the radar a file will open on him somewhere in the city, and inevitable complaints by mom's who shitty sons got asswhipped by some dude in blue and red tights will mount.

At *some* point something will happen that will force the authorities to act because of the very nature of what being a vigilante is and what it might potentially inspire (see Batman). yeah you can handwave all this (at which point you're doing your Silver-Age 4-color homage), and after the big fight that levels a bank or so - next session everyone's happy and the bank is being rebuilt and you play golly-gee, it's a good thing Spiderman stopped the Rhino from robbing that bank! But if you want something a little closer to the Bronze... questions will be asked. If you go full Modern age - not only will questions be asked, Spiderman will get investigated (which makes for good roleplay). Who IS Spiderman. Basic analysis will pin the center of his web in Queens, and from there people in law-enforcement, perhaps good and bad will start adding to that file until a profile emerges. As to *what* anyone will do with that profile... is up to the GM depending on the game. But in modern day reality, I imagine you'd end up with a taskforce, and depending the circumstances and level of stuff being done - it might get kicked up to a Federal level. A couple of BIG knockdown-dragouts would have Peter leaving some DNA at some crime-scene and that would be fairly incriminating in its own right, but still not a deal-sealing in finding him.

On a Federal level... oh yeah, I can't IMAGINE Federal powers would be happy with metahumans running around. The general caveat to that is that as long as a superhero can resolve issues that the authorities can't - they remain in good standing heh.

Superman is too dangerous!!! - Until he diverts that comet that is about to end all life on this planet.
Spiderman killed my baby! - Until we find out that it was the Green Goblin's nerve agent that killed your kid and he had a tanker truck full of it heading into the water supply.etc.


But even that wouldn't stop dumbasses from trying to stop them - like in the Incredibles when that guy sues Mr. Incredible for ruining his death by saving his life. /facepalm. So brilliant.

More likely, the Feds would want you to join them for their own uses. Which is where the Magneto conundrum kicks in.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1027481My 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.

Pundit- I recall a rant you did several years ago about superhero RPGs, and combined with this statement, tells me you 'get' superhero RPGs.  Golden Age comics had a whole lot of killing and dead bodies, despite what people think of it as the 'innocent' age of superheroes.  They are probably thinking of the Silver Age post-Wertham Comics Code Authority era.

The thing his critics hate, was the truth that Wertham pointed out. The fact that the comic book companies of the time kept ratcheting up the sex, the violence, and the straight up horror to pander to controversy. Wertham had valid points he was illustrating about a comics industry that was was out of control and rushing themselves toward self destruction. By pandering simply to a very narrow adult audience.

The problem still exists today. With even superhero comics pandering to a narrow adult audience now. It's history repeating. Because the comics industry did not learn its lessons the first time around.

The Comics Code Authority wasn't created by the US government. It was created by the comics industry itself to avoid government regulation.

Nobody knows what form the government regulation would have been. Yet the majority of the comics industry keeps pointing the blame at the government and Wertham. Instead of taking responsibility for their own continual rush to self destruction.

Tits, muscles, and gore sell funnybooks.

Part of it for me is also that after almost 63 years, after living through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Civil Rights war, Vietnam, Watergate, the Cold War, Grenada, Panama, and a shitload of other stuff, my deepest feeling is "fuck moral ambiguity."  I get enough of that shit in real life.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1027808Part of it for me is also that after almost 63 years, after living through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Civil Rights war, Vietnam, Watergate, the Cold War, Grenada, Panama, and a shitload of other stuff, my deepest feeling is "fuck moral ambiguity."  I get enough of that shit in real life.

Pretty much sums up my attitude about modern mainstream comics put out by the big publishers.

Quote from: tenbones;1027720Right. The reality is - depending on the powers of a metahuman - the ability to remain 1) anonymous or 2) free of moral ambiguity is virtually impossible.

You could mitigate #1 a lot in earlier history. In modernity, I'm afraid unless you have some seriously useful utility powers like shapechange or your powers are not overt, you'd be figured out eventually.

The real thing about Supers as a genre is the implicit notion that you as an individual have abilities that the rest of human society doesn't. It ignores the fact you may not even *be* human at all. It ignores that fact that your very perceptions and interactions with reality are radically different than the vast majority of the populace - but it assumes you're going to try to abide by the morality and ethics of these beings that in all likelihood are utterly inferior to you.

The real question is what conceits in considering these questions are you willing to allow in your game? The Incredibles gives it a solid nod, the Watchmen define it utterly. Magneto exemplifies one polar side of it, Captain America the other.

Without getting into the "Punch a Nazi thing" - (or maybe we should since this is squarely where it was co-opted) - Magneto makes a great case for this. He maintains he's *not* human. He's a different species entirely. And he thinks that his species is not beholden to the dangers that pose his kind from what he considers an inferior species. And he acts accordingly. His origin is a powerful statement to his beliefs. What would *not* justify Magneto going ham on Nazis in a WWII era super-hero game? Would he not, in fact, be a hero? Or would you say he's something else? Granted his views about Mutantkind (Homo Superior in his parlance) wasn't fully developed. Justapose that concept of what if he did have that idea while being a war-camp prisoner when his powers manifested? Then imagine if while in the throes of meeting out that justice - Captain America showed up.

I think one of the things the genre gets wrong in gaming is not adherence to this morality code which largely was being enforced in the content by exterior forces that came to define various periods of comic history, but that these games don't enforce that in-game reality with its own conceits.

There is a HUGE difference if super-humans start from a starting point of cultural positivity like in DC where they do a lot of hero-worship, than starting with a bit of fear and skepticism and more real-world issues like Marvel. It's a balancing act that most games either ignore, or use really punishing mechanics that gorilla-fist the rules to justify the conceits.

I think you can have your cake and eat it too - you just have to clearly define those bars and it isn't easy. What keeps Superman from killing bad guys? *Nothing* keeps him from doing it other than his own code which extols some very human rights, given the crap hes had to put up with, probably makes him a much more complex person to moral relativists. Batman once got Superman's powered and was horrified. Because he realized exactly how powerful Superman was - and didn't do everything he could to "fix things". So when Batman did - of course he became the super-tyrant.

I dunno... it's kinda fun to juxtapose those things in theory - even in game. Like imagine Spiderman telling Superman "With great power comes great responsibility." hehehe.

Quote from: tenbones;1027735I'd love to see those articles if you could find them.

I was speaking not just with the consideration of facial recognition - but general forensics. Let's assume your character wants to be anonymous and isn't overtly stupid like not wearing mask. Take Spiderman. Full fask mask, body-suit, probably not going to leave a lot of evidence around unless he's getting into a knock-down drag out. So let's pretend for sake of discussion that doesn't happen normally (but it'll be a factor later).

I'm not saying that Spidey, a guy wearing a really overt costume, who goes around kicking the crap out of people (and takes pictures of himself while doing it to sell to the local papers) wouldn't immediately be caught - or discovered that he's Peter Parker... I'm making the claim that at *some* point not long after he gets on the radar a file will open on him somewhere in the city, and inevitable complaints by mom's who shitty sons got asswhipped by some dude in blue and red tights will mount.

At *some* point something will happen that will force the authorities to act because of the very nature of what being a vigilante is and what it might potentially inspire (see Batman). yeah you can handwave all this (at which point you're doing your Silver-Age 4-color homage), and after the big fight that levels a bank or so - next session everyone's happy and the bank is being rebuilt and you play golly-gee, it's a good thing Spiderman stopped the Rhino from robbing that bank! But if you want something a little closer to the Bronze... questions will be asked. If you go full Modern age - not only will questions be asked, Spiderman will get investigated (which makes for good roleplay). Who IS Spiderman. Basic analysis will pin the center of his web in Queens, and from there people in law-enforcement, perhaps good and bad will start adding to that file until a profile emerges. As to *what* anyone will do with that profile... is up to the GM depending on the game. But in modern day reality, I imagine you'd end up with a taskforce, and depending the circumstances and level of stuff being done - it might get kicked up to a Federal level. A couple of BIG knockdown-dragouts would have Peter leaving some DNA at some crime-scene and that would be fairly incriminating in its own right, but still not a deal-sealing in finding him.

On a Federal level... oh yeah, I can't IMAGINE Federal powers would be happy with metahumans running around. The general caveat to that is that as long as a superhero can resolve issues that the authorities can't - they remain in good standing heh.

Superman is too dangerous!!! - Until he diverts that comet that is about to end all life on this planet.
Spiderman killed my baby! - Until we find out that it was the Green Goblin's nerve agent that killed your kid and he had a tanker truck full of it heading into the water supply.etc.


But even that wouldn't stop dumbasses from trying to stop them - like in the Incredibles when that guy sues Mr. Incredible for ruining his death by saving his life. /facepalm. So brilliant.

More likely, the Feds would want you to join them for their own uses. Which is where the Magneto conundrum kicks in.

OK, tenbones, what do I have to do to persuade you to run this kind of supers game for me in PbP:)? Because you most certainly "get" what kind of supers game I'd like to play...
But I haven't found many of those;).

Going on a kind of tangent, everyone has their own taste in comics, but when I read a comic where such consequences are absent, I feel like I'm watching an RPG session with a heavily fudging railroady GM. Like, yeah, those consequences should be there, but the GM has only prepared fighting other supers, so he ignores them, and makes sure the main character wins as long as said character plays up to his or her ideas of how supers should work.
That was the main reason why I didn't like supers, until I learned that not all supers comics ignore that kind of stuff:D.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1027799The thing his critics hate, was the truth that Wertham pointed out. The fact that the comic book companies of the time kept ratcheting up the sex, the violence, and the straight up horror to pander to controversy.

Yeah, comics of that era were great!

Leave it to Wertham and we'd all be stuck reading Archie.

Quote from: Simlasa;1027909Yeah, comics of that era were great!

Leave it to Wertham and we'd all be stuck reading Archie.

False nostalgia. The comics of that age were selling at their lowest point in the history of the medium.

The deathblow came from the Comics Code. Which was created largely by National Comics. Which outright banned the few genres that were still selling.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1027984False nostalgia. The comics of that age were selling at their lowest point in the history of the medium.

What does the rate of sales got to do with me liking what I like? I never saw those older comics till reprints, though I did grow up on 'underground comics' my uncle snuck me... no stinking Comics Code there either.

Quote from: AsenRG;1027884OK, tenbones, what do I have to do to persuade you to run this kind of supers game for me in PbP:)? Because you most certainly "get" what kind of supers game I'd like to play...
But I haven't found many of those;).

Alas I'm super busy with my weekly and I'm working on a grueling writing project in my very little spare time (and this is aside from my day job, family shit, my online gaming stuff I'm deep in - blah blah). Not sure I could do a PbP game too. But it's worth mulling over for the future! I love Supers precisely for the reasons that a it can be a flexible genre that really lets players go hog-wild doing things they could never do in other genres. My experiences with comics as both a fan and collector (the only thing i've done longer than RPGs) allow me to be super flexible in how I approach my games. I've turned all my players into fans where before they were ambivalent at best.

Quote from: AsenRG;1027884Going on a kind of tangent, everyone has their own taste in comics, but when I read a comic where such consequences are absent, I feel like I'm watching an RPG session with a heavily fudging railroady GM. Like, yeah, those consequences should be there, but the GM has only prepared fighting other supers, so he ignores them, and makes sure the main character wins as long as said character plays up to his or her ideas of how supers should work.
That was the main reason why I didn't like supers, until I learned that not all supers comics ignore that kind of stuff:D.

I don't think that's a tangent - I think it's directly pertinent to the question of the thread. Killing in comics *is* a choice for both the Players and the conceits of the campaign as laid down (hopefully) by the GM for the exact reasons you specified. I treat my supers games with the same "world in motion" mentality that I do my other games - with a few different nobs and whistles.

For instance if I'm doing a DC-"style" game - metahumans are generally looked upon favorably by the authorities until proven otherwise. This is not to say that they don't have concerns, but methods matter, as do outcomes. There are dispensations depending on how things happen. My Marvel-style games are a little closer to reality. The government fears and mistrusts metas until situations occur, usually as a reaction to circumstances the government simply can't contend with *without* metas. This establishes the various raisons d'être for metahumans to "do their thing". Part of the fun for me is establishing those relationships within the campaign - the conflict of authority that inevitably has to bow before the simple fact that Superheroes are Gods among men, and there are some situations that are simply larger than normal people can handle.

And I'm not speaking simply from a power-angle. I'm speaking metaphorically that the goal should be for Supers to be transcendent despite what authorities want. It has nothing to do with super-powers. Nowhere is this concept better exemplified than in The Dark Knight Returns when the incoming police commissioner Ellen Yindel confronts Jim Gordon about Batman. They put that scene in the animated movie.

https://youtu.be/3L4qYkzcsPE

I felt the comic was more sombre, but the point remains the same. Supers are larger than life. It's important for the GM to ratchet that tension and allow players to exult in that power, but also make them realize their very presence invites conflict on many levels that affects many aspects of their lives and their presence impacts the lives of many people. Both good and bad. And let the chips fall where they may.

Or you know you can go Silver Age and do stuff like this...

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2278[/ATTACH]

Quote from: Simlasa;1027988What does the rate of sales got to do with me liking what I like? I never saw those older comics till reprints, though I did grow up on 'underground comics' my uncle snuck me... no stinking Comics Code there either.

And that's why you got corrupted and turned into the perv you are today!

It depends on how realistic and pointlessly violent you are trying to be.

Realistically, if the courts did not give people like the Joker the death penalty then the citizens would form lynch mobs. Gotham is not particularly realistic since it generally portrays all criminals as violent psychopaths rather than human beings with reason to commit crime.

On the other hand, even if you are the kind of superhero merely trying to help the cops apprehend criminals you can still make mistakes. I remember reading a particularly disturbing example where a ten year old with superpowers trying to capture a criminal for prosecution accidentally rips his quarry in half and suffers PTSD afterward.

The Joker originally was the head of the Red Mask Gang, who were just plain thieves.  He turned into the Joker from chemical exposure by swimming away through the chemical sewer.

He didn't become a psychopathic murderer until much later.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1028024The Joker originally was the head of the Red Mask Gang, who were just plain thieves.  He turned into the Joker from chemical exposure by swimming away through the chemical sewer.

He didn't become a psychopathic murderer until much later.

The criticism could be applied to any mass murdering psychopath supervillain. Just look at any real world example of mass murderers.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1028044The criticism could be applied to any mass murdering psychopath supervillain. Just look at any real world example of mass murderers.

So would that justify the heroes of your Supers game killing that supervillain?

Would it be justified for Captain America to kill Magneto - both born as a reaction to their individual circumstances stemming from WWII? That's the critical question I'm asking. The moment you identify the very thing you've illustrated, it then asks the necessary question about your game: do those things in fact happen? There is a *ginormous* difference bettween Caeser Romero's 'Joker' in the Batman TV show and Heath Ledger's 'Joker' in The Dark Knight (and the various portrayals inbetween). The issue is what form of Joker appears in your RPG - and the corollary of what is acceptable to you in reaction from your PC heroes?

Personally I've always been a big Captain America fan... but the late 70's early 80's era really made him pretty milksop to me. Pre-Ed Bruker, when Cap was "reimagined" in Ultimates, now *that* was a modern Cap that took the totality of what Cap was - a good man, with good intentions, trained to the gills to be the ultimate Soldier, and set him loose. Brubaker did a superb job translating that to the standard iteration of Captain America which I think Chris Evans portrays damn well in the movies.

Does he kill? Sure. But only when absolutely necessary, but he's definitely maiming people and causing potentially permanent damage. But I dunno anyone that would question whether or not Cap is a hero or being out of character.

Lemurian Star
[video=youtube_share;tnneckDUG28]https://youtu.be/tnneckDUG28[/youtube]

Probably one of the best establishing action sequences in the MCU. But if some of these things were done on the streets... yeah this would be pretty brutal. (Brutally awesome!)

I like Winter Soldier because of the dichotomy of being a hero and being a soldier.  The first scene of the bridge, before the Winter Soldier shows up, was what hammered it home that shit was real.  People died, people tried to help each other and the heroes had to deal with a threat in as permanent fashion as they could.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1028206I like Winter Soldier because of the dichotomy of being a hero and being a soldier.  The first scene of the bridge, before the Winter Soldier shows up, was what hammered it home that shit was real.  People died, people tried to help each other and the heroes had to deal with a threat in as permanent fashion as they could.

Which is why I find it more heroic.

And I find the counterpoint to that true too - the bad guys aren't making juvenile gestures about simple revenge. They out for world domination because they have the power to make it happen and are willing to roll those dice. That point/counterpoint with regular people being the ultimate price-payers is where the real dynamic of Supers exists, right?

Otherwise it's just a cartoon. I extend this to fantasy hero-play too.

Quote from: tenbones;1028209Which is why I find it more heroic.

And I find the counterpoint to that true too - the bad guys aren't making juvenile gestures about simple revenge. They out for world domination because they have the power to make it happen and are willing to roll those dice. That point/counterpoint with regular people being the ultimate price-payers is where the real dynamic of Supers exists, right?

Otherwise it's just a cartoon. I extend this to fantasy hero-play too.

Same boat here.  It's why I like the good Iron Age comics/stories (and I freely admit that in the cesspit that was mostly ultra-violent revenge porn, it's a rare thing) because there are REAL stakes, people will get hurt, and as nice as it is, you can't save every one.  You can just try, and frankly, if you save JUST one, you've done good.  Superheroes allow us to be in those situations and do more and be more.

The issue I have with Silver Age is that it turns superheroics into a theme park where no one gets hurt, no one is threatened.  And slightly off topic:  It's an issue I have with the FASERIP Karma system.  It punishes the players for things that they often can't control.

Quote from: tenbones;1027992Alas I'm super busy with my weekly and I'm working on a grueling writing project in my very little spare time (and this is aside from my day job, family shit, my online gaming stuff I'm deep in - blah blah). Not sure I could do a PbP game too.

Well, I didn't really expect you to agree outright:). People do have obligations, I've found.

QuoteBut it's worth mulling over for the future!

Fine! Let me know if you have the ability and willingness to run something like it:).

QuoteI love Supers precisely for the reasons that a it can be a flexible genre that really lets players go hog-wild doing things they could never do in other genres. My experiences with comics as both a fan and collector (the only thing i've done longer than RPGs) allow me to be super flexible in how I approach my games. I've turned all my players into fans where before they were ambivalent at best.

...well, I am ambivalent at best;).

QuoteI don't think that's a tangent - I think it's directly pertinent to the question of the thread. Killing in comics *is* a choice for both the Players and the conceits of the campaign as laid down (hopefully) by the GM for the exact reasons you specified. I treat my supers games with the same "world in motion" mentality that I do my other games - with a few different nobs and whistles.

Which is how I think it should be.
But comics fans keep telling me that would be wrong. Hence, I do read some supers (which a colleague who knows my tastes recommends me - he reads a lot more comics). But I run no supers RPGs.

QuoteFor instance if I'm doing a DC-"style" game - metahumans are generally looked upon favorably by the authorities until proven otherwise. This is not to say that they don't have concerns, but methods matter, as do outcomes. There are dispensations depending on how things happen. My Marvel-style games are a little closer to reality. The government fears and mistrusts metas until situations occur, usually as a reaction to circumstances the government simply can't contend with *without* metas.

The Marvel approach makes more sense;).

QuoteAnd I'm not speaking simply from a power-angle. I'm speaking metaphorically that the goal should be for Supers to be transcendent despite what authorities want. It has nothing to do with super-powers. Nowhere is this concept better exemplified than in The Dark Knight Returns when the incoming police commissioner Ellen Yindel confronts Jim Gordon about Batman. They put that scene in the animated movie.

https://youtu.be/3L4qYkzcsPE

Quote from: tenbones;1028196Personally I've always been a big Captain America fan... but the late 70's early 80's era really made him pretty milksop to me. Pre-Ed Bruker, when Cap was "reimagined" in Ultimates, now *that* was a modern Cap that took the totality of what Cap was - a good man, with good intentions, trained to the gills to be the ultimate Soldier, and set him loose. Brubaker did a superb job translating that to the standard iteration of Captain America which I think Chris Evans portrays damn well in the movies.

Does he kill? Sure. But only when absolutely necessary, but he's definitely maiming people and causing potentially permanent damage. But I dunno anyone that would question whether or not Cap is a hero or being out of character.

Lemurian Star
[video=youtube_share;tnneckDUG28]https://youtu.be/tnneckDUG28[/youtube]

Probably one of the best establishing action sequences in the MCU. But if some of these things were done on the streets... yeah this would be pretty brutal. (Brutally awesome!)

Yes.
Which is why doing it or not doing it on the street is a matter of choice and consequences. Which is what playing is all about, right:p?

Quote from: tenbones;1028196So would that justify the heroes of your Supers game killing that supervillain?

I do not believe so. Superheroes are just vigilantes making up for the fact that the police are ill-equipped to deal with supervillains. If they are legal persons, then it is still illegal for them to take the law into their own hands. It is up the justice system to determine whether to administer the death penalty. If they get a Bond-style license to kill from the government, then I had no problem at all.

Supervillains are living weapons. If they make a nuisance of themselves by casually massacring everyone in their path whenever they get the chance, then there is no doubt in my mind that the justice system would put them down like rabid animals or, more likely, shut them in a government laboratory so we can study them and build armies of superheroes.

Let's be realistic here. The Joker, at least in the comics where he is portrayed as a boring killing machine, makes Al Qaeda look like Mother Teresa. If he gets run over by the batmobile, Batman will be lauded as a national hero and get a presidential pardon. Heck, he might even get voted President! That's why I like the versions of the Joker where he is known for his absurd attempts to literally blow up the world, not being a serial mass murderer who gets free room and board at the Arkham Hotel for Serial Killers and Mass Murderers. The comics really, really did their best to make him utterly contemptible and no longer entertaining.

Good depictions of destructive villains may be seen in the works of Jhonen Vasquez. Invader Zim is an alien who is repeatedly trying to conquer and/or destroy the Earth, and is responsible for numerous deaths; his antics are entertaining and his victims are unsympathetic morons. Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is a serial killer and mass murderer, who the reader lets off the hook because his public killing sprees are ridiculously gruesome and his victims are unsympathetic (at one point he visits Hell and his victims' souls are revealed to go there).

I'll be honest and admit I've only skimmed the thread but I found it odd that no one has mentioned WILD CARDS.

Quote from: Redforce;1027750Pundit- I recall a rant you did several years ago about superhero RPGs, and combined with this statement, tells me you 'get' superhero RPGs.  Golden Age comics had a whole lot of killing and dead bodies, despite what people think of it as the 'innocent' age of superheroes.  They are probably thinking of the Silver Age post-Wertham Comics Code Authority era.

Yes. Batman originally used a gun.

But the thing is comics eventually developed (even before the comics code, when it came to superheroes) a mentality that superheroes, being the good guys, mostly do not kill.