Quote from: Simlasa;937753As do I. As a fan of NOT-superhero comics there's always that moment when I go to the comic shop and sulk to the back corner ghetto where the stuff I like has been shuttled.

OK, to that point, I will concede that (the bulk of) modern US comic books are rather constrained to a few genres (family friendly adventure books like Archie and Donald Duck, or spandex-clad crime fighters). That's an consequence of accidents of history and the industry having to try to survive purge attempts from moral guardians in the 50s (I'm sure I'm not telling anyone anything they don't know). Before then, US comic books had wonderful mystery and horror titles, among others. I think it's coming back, at least outside of the mainstream titles.

QuoteIf I want to play The Shadow and Joe wants to play Green Lantern... we aren't picturing the same sort of game at all.

Sometimes it can be the same character and still not be the same game. Someone wants to play Christian Bale Batman and someone wants to play Adam West. :-P

Quote from: Simlasa;937753That said, I do like the concept of heroes... heroes with powers... even heroes with powers in weird costumes. But even that description leaves the door open to a LOT of stuff most folks aren't going to think are 'superheroes' (is Ultraman a superhero? Kamen Rider? Dick Tracy?)... so what does define a character as a superhero?
If I want to play The Shadow and Joe wants to play Green Lantern... we aren't picturing the same sort of game at all.

Why are Kamen Rider and Ultraman not superheroes? What is the functional difference between them and DC/Marvel characters that do essentially the same thing? The themes might differ culturally - but they inhabit the exact same space. In fact in one of my Marvel campaigns I wrote up the Kamen Riders as Japanese superheroes in Los Angeles chasing down some villain from Japan where they ended up running afoul of my PC's who have no fucking clue who or what a Kamen Rider is. Likewise I re-appropriated Ultraman as a Space-Knight for one of my space-adventures.

The Shadow occupies a lot of the same space as Batman. Batman does stuff with Green Lantern all the time - the difficulty here is in the GM's conception of putting them together and making it meaningful. Let me stipulate: Batman from Detective Comics is *not* the same Batman that's in the JLA. This is the understanding one has to have to make it work. You don't just put Green Lantern into a story about a cat-burglar that seems to get away from his robbery - that would be trivial to GL. So you scale your game accordingly. The "sort of game" you're talking about needs to be discussed ahead of time.

Quote from: tenbones;937895Why are Kamen Rider and Ultraman not superheroes? What is the functional difference between them and DC/Marvel characters that do essentially the same thing?

That was my point... IMO they're all superheroes, along with Sailor Moon, Speed Racer, and Gandalf. But I'll get arguments...

QuoteThe "sort of game" you're talking about needs to be discussed ahead of time.

Damn near written ahead of time... because I don't think it leaves much leeway. But it's a crappy compromise because, as the person playing The Shadow I want relatively street level crime-fighting... and the Green Lantern player wants cosmic super adventures. Put us both in space-planes and neither of us is getting what they want.

It might all come under the tent of 'Superheroes' but it's like saying, 'We're playing a fantasy game' where half the group that wants WFRP while the other half wants Godbound.
Better to settle on one flavor or the other, rather than trying to put them all in a blender and hope it doesn't taste like shit.
But my impression of why some people think superhero games suck is because they try to do exactly that, because they want to have it all.

Quote from: Simlasa;937907But it's a crappy compromise because, as the person playing The Shadow I want relatively street level crime-fighting... and the Green Lantern player wants cosmic super adventures.

That's not necessarily true, though--Green Lantern spent the 70's being a Hard-Traveling Hero, arguing politics and fighting street-level crime with Green Arrow. The Shadow and 70's Hard-Traveling Hal Jordan would work great together in a game. You just have to get the group to talk to each other and iron out what they want to do, and where the common ground is.

That's not a "superhero games suck" problem, it's a "the players and GM didn't put enough effort into the pre-game" problem.

I PLAYED GL in Champions for years and another character played Bats.

We had a GREAT time together.  With GL Bats can take on a bigger mob, and GL can solve mysteries.  I didn't have enough points to have both a force field AND lots of detective skills.

And crime is crime, big or small.

Quote from: Barghest;937916That's not necessarily true, though--Green Lantern spent the 70's being a Hard-Traveling Hero, arguing politics and fighting street-level crime with Green Arrow.

Even so... I'd expect the common vision of Green Lantern nowadays doesn't involve encyclopedic knowledge of all his various incarnations and more closely resembles something like the recent movie.  

QuoteThe Shadow and 70's Hard-Traveling Hal Jordan would work great together in a game. You just have to get the group to talk to each other and iron out what they want to do, and where the common ground is.

I'm saying that sometimes there isn't going to be any common ground between all the ideas/preconceptions at the table. I mean, yeah, everyone could compromise and play some shit where Hal Jordan and Kent Allard and Jimmy Olson are hobos on a train... but that ain't gonna make anyone's day. Better to say, 'We'll play some cosmic level supers for a month and then switch  over to their street-level counterparts to deal with the fallout of the cosmic action'... or something.

QuoteThat's not a "superhero games suck" problem, it's a "the players and GM didn't put enough effort into the pre-game" problem.

Agreed... in that I think 'superhero game' is too broad of a description and requires a lot of narrowing down... just like 'fantasy' or 'scifi'.

Quote from: Simlasa;937928I'm saying that sometimes there isn't going to be any common ground between all the ideas/preconceptions at the table. I mean, yeah, everyone could compromise and play some shit where Hal Jordan and Kent Allard and Jimmy Olson are hobos on a train... but that ain't gonna make anyone's day. Better to say, 'We'll play some cosmic level supers for a month and then switch  over to their street-level counterparts to deal with the fallout of the cosmic action'... or something.

Agreed... in that I think 'superhero game' is too broad of a description and requires a lot of narrowing down... just like 'fantasy' or 'scifi'.

How I handle those kinds of things is I do both but I tie those elements together. It's important for me when i'm running Supers that my players "feel" their characters are doing their own thing whilst being part of a team. When powerlevels and scales of influence (by this I mean the scale of things which the character might effect - GL is a sector guardian - Bats plays in Gotham), I try to weave the machinations of their respective concerns together so all the characters have skin in the game.

In keeping with the Bat/GL - I might have some scientist from Gotham hire some of Bat's villains (or Intergang) to pull off a crime that involves capturing a Macguffin that is connected to /gasp space-aliens! Only it's not a Macguffin - it's a double-Macguffin w/cheese, because it's made of Kryptonite and it has Parallax DNA (or whatever) and is resistant (but not immune) to GL rings. So it's on the Most Wanted list from the GL Corps. Neither can handle the problem on their own. Team-up adventure ensues. And the campaign just builds from there.

The point being you have to keep your characters in their element otherwise the characters change. And you can't emulate every single facet of every character (if you're using one from the comics) - you have to let the actions in-game define their context.

I don't think this is specifically a superhero issue.

You can say "fantasy" to people, and they could come to the game with wildly different expectations...from Andrew Lang-esque fairy tales, to World of Warcraft videogame, to gritty Barbarian sword and sandal epics, or even mythical battles between gods. Heck just look at the disparity in assumptions between "fantasy fucking Vietnam" AD&D and "everyone's a magical princess" 4th edition. Warhammer Fantasy has an entirely different assumption depending on whether one is playing the wargame (massive battles between mythical creatures, wizards, and over-the top heroes) or the RPG (gritty subterfuge and skulduggery with Lovecraftian overtones on the dirty streets of renaissance not-Europe).

Its only an issue with superheroes if the GM isn't doing their job, i.e. being upfront about what kind of game they are running. Again, "superhero " isnt a genre, it tells me absolutely nothing about a game, the setting, or the mood, anymore than saying "lets play a Robot rpg" or "lets play a game of science fiction".

Quote from: Tristram Evans;937961I don't think this is specifically a superhero issue.

You can say "fantasy" to people, and they could come to the game with wildly different expectations...from Andrew Lang-esque fairy tales, to World of Warcraft videogame, to gritty Barbarian sword and sandal epics, or even mythical battles between gods. Heck just look at the disparity in assumptions between "fantasy fucking Vietnam" AD&D and "everyone's a magical princess" 4th edition. Warhammer Fantasy has an entirely different assumption depending on whether one is playing the wargame (massive battles between mythical creatures, wizards, and over-the top heroes) or the RPG (gritty subterfuge and skulduggery with Lovecraftian overtones on the dirty streets of renaissance not-Europe).

Its only an issue with superheroes if the GM isn't doing their job, i.e. being upfront about what kind of game they are running. Again, "superhero " isnt a genre, it tells me absolutely nothing about a game, the setting, or the mood, anymore than saying "lets play a Robot rpg" or "lets play a game of science fiction".

I would disagree with the premise that Superhero and/or Fantasy are so wildly different as to be meaningless.  There are some basic assumptions:  Fantasy often (but not always) circle around a setting that has 'magic' or 'magical' creatures, often defying science and accepted as such, it also focuses a lot on the power of the individual or small group, often able to make a change to a setting.  And even the land itself can be 'magical' or reality defying.  Conan for example, he's one man, and yet had managed to become King of a foreign country by his own hand.  Even the Lord of The Rings, Samwise Gamgee is the one who effectively saves his best friend, and saves the world, by being the one who throws the Ring into Mount Doom (an oversimplification, but still.)

Superheroes are more focused on pseudo-science and real world issues, even if the setting takes place in a far off age and/or world.  Also, there's a focus on the societal changes that one faces.  Spiderman and his "With great power comes great responsibility", the X-Men and their racism analog, even the Avengers have members who are struggling with their place in society (Captain America is a man out of his time, the Hulk has extreme anger issues, Hank Pym feels that he's a failure in all he's ever done, Tony Stark had a massive drinking problem.)  DC's pantheon of heroes are more akin to the Grecian Gods, but they have their own issues, Batman is a vengeance driven man whose rigid code of imposed morality keeps him as close to sanity as it can, Superman is an Alien who's mostly managed to fit in, but still isn't quite part of the world he wants to be, Wonder Woman looks through everything with a superhuman warrior woman's lens.

That's not to say there isn't bleed in with each other, but there are quite a few differences that if one actually spends time reading both can find and can say that they are a separate genre.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;937964That's not to say there isn't bleed in with each other, but there are quite a few differences that if one actually spends time reading both can find and can say that they are a separate genre.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, but my point was that "superhero", just like "fantasy" and "science fiction", refers to hundreds of various genres, not a single identifiable genre. And just like "fantasy" and "science fiction", a GM should be specifying what kind of game they want to run, not catering to any of a thousand individual interpretations or preconceptions any given player might have.  But that's not an issue with superheroes so much as it is ANY rpg, though for some reason its specifically brought up in regards to superheroes more often than not.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;937970But that's not an issue with superheroes so much as it is ANY rpg, though for some reason its specifically brought up in regards to superheroes more often than not.

Maybe because superhero games often seemed aimed at covering ALL the various sorts of supers... rather than narrowing down to a specific sort. Some, like Wild Talents and Godlike, seem to have more of a focus... but most I'm aware of are much more broad and generic. So yeah... you need to have 'the talk' before proceeding.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;937970I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, but my point was that "superhero", just like "fantasy" and "science fiction", refers to hundreds of various genres, not a single identifiable genre. And just like "fantasy" and "science fiction", a GM should be specifying what kind of game they want to run, not catering to any of a thousand individual interpretations or preconceptions any given player might have.  But that's not an issue with superheroes so much as it is ANY rpg, though for some reason its specifically brought up in regards to superheroes more often than not.

I may have misunderstood, it appeared to my reading that you were claiming that Fantasy and Superhero were the same thing.  My apologies.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;937926I PLAYED GL in Champions for years and another character played Bats.

We had a GREAT time together.  With GL Bats can take on a bigger mob, and GL can solve mysteries.  I didn't have enough points to have both a force field AND lots of detective skills.

And crime is crime, big or small.

Here too. Not sure why the original poster was so down on supers games. Was in tremendously good game of Champions that ran from November of 1985 until about July of 1986 or so... First game I ran of Supers was using Mutants & Masterminds 2.0 (Which I still my preferred Supers game, although if champions were republished I'd probably pick up a new copy). M&M is pretty awesome, is simple to use, plays fast, and lends itself to recreating just about anything you can find in traditional comics, as well as making it easy to create your own super-hero themed world.

At the time and what it was designed for, Champions worked splendidly well. Now Mutants & Masterminds remains a favorite, although I don't play or run in Supers games often.

Champions is still being published (latest edition was Champions Complete). As for M&M, I didn't care for it past 1st (that one of my group's rotating GMs wants to replace his regular Champions game with a 3E M&M game is annoying).

Quote from: Simlasa;937975Maybe because superhero games often seemed aimed at covering ALL the various sorts of supers... rather than narrowing down to a specific sort. Some, like Wild Talents and Godlike, seem to have more of a focus... but most I'm aware of are much more broad and generic. So yeah... you need to have 'the talk' before proceeding.

I suspect you might be on to something here to a certain degree. My original post on this was that part of this issue is due to lack of understanding on comics in general beyond cartoons, movies, or very casual reading of material. RPG's could be better served much like Fantasy is better served in this capacity, by having "splats" aimed at sub-genres of supers. If nothing more than to help shoe-horn GM's interested in running Supers games.