The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

[Thomas Shey]

You usually need to either have more powerful supers be more moral, or morally ambiguous supers be less powerful, or your world should logically involve some extremely quick "solutions."

Yup. Its why its often so jarring when someone suddenly gets it in their head to write a run of a particular character in a "realistic" fashion. Because it rapidly starts asking why they haven't done the things they've done all along.

And some of this doesn't require extreme power. Relatively low end speedsters, mentalists and those with insubstantiality have so much ability to throw massive wrenches in the lives of opposition it isn't funny.

If you want anything to look at all like conventional supers, you just have to walk away from that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Exactly. The Suicide Squad is fine in a world where the Justice League exists. Swap the morality and suddenly you have the JL taking over the planet and murdering anyone who tries to get in their way. There are entire alternate reality storylines of that exact thing happening. Entire other comic companies have made their brand on that kind of thing. One's even on Prime as a cartoon right now. Another as a live-action series. The superhero genre has a lot of conventions and tropes that need to be followed otherwise the genre falls apart.

Actually, its funny contrasting that animated series and the live action one; the animated series actually doesn't assume most supers use their powers to the fullest; it just happens to have one extremely powerful one who does at one point, and doesn't make the usual convenient assumption that supers powers are less potentially lethal. In other ways its a fairly conventional supers setting.

In contrast, the live-action one is a very different beast and looks only like a conventional supers setting very superficially.

 

[Cadence]

There are any number of super-power sets that only work properly because they're chronically underutilized. You just have to accept it as a genre convention or the whole genre blows up.

I've been reading them semi-regularly since 6th grade in '81 (a lot of Avengers through the good and as much bad as I can stand, including the back issues) and I can let a most of it slide when reading it.

It kills me as a player or DM though, and I don't even try to imagine writing my own stories.

 

[Hussar]

But other people might buy it, which will only encourage them to make even more stuff I don't like.

That’s pretty much nailing the argument on the head.

 

[Cadence]

I'm not sure what the connection is. I get the modern technology angle and the 80s mysteries. And I completely agree. Same with horror. But I'm not sure how that relates to your earlier comment on superheroes.

They feel like they're giving me too many tools that cut out a lot of the challenges if you have to long to think about them. So it's even worse for me DMing any of them.

 

[Hussar]

I often marvel at the discourse here.

Then I think back and ponder how Wizards used the term Godlet.

It’s like Godot but no points are scored.

 

[Hussar]

I've been reading them semi-regularly since 6th grade in '81 (a lot of Avengers through the good and as much bad as I can stand, including the back issues) and I can let a most of it slide when reading it.

It kills me as a player or DM though, and I don't even try to imagine writing my own stories.

That’s always the problem right? Players are far, far more pragmatic than genre conventions. Goes all the way back to flooding dungeons and using flocks of sheep.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've been reading them semi-regularly since 6th grade in '81 (a lot of Avengers through the good and as much bad as I can stand, including the back issues) and I can let a most of it slide when reading it.

It kills me as a player or DM though, and I don't even try to imagine writing my own stories.

Its usually not a problem if you can get away from playing in too much of a simulationist/immersive fashion (or if you can program in the necessary blindspots when doing the latter). If you can't, well...

 

[overgeeked]

That’s always the problem right? Players are far, far more pragmatic than genre conventions. Goes all the way back to flooding dungeons and using flocks of sheep.

Like most genres in RPGs, either the players are actually on board with the genre and its conventions, or the game will fail. Playing horror where the PCs simply nope out and run away...game's over. Unless the horror follows them home for some reason. Playing superheroes where the PCs simply ignore civilian casualties and murder all the villains...game's over. Unless you're specifically going for the Snyder-Verse. But then, that's not superheroes. That's action movies with superpowers. Entirely different genre.

This is why I mentioned the Lord of the Rings eagles problem, the gamers optimizing the fun out of games problem, and the gamers aren’t generally good storytellers problem, etc up thread.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That’s pretty much nailing the argument on the head.

To be fair (though this is damning with faint praise) this is usually coming from a zero-sum perspective where what they're concerned about is not other people getting things they don't like; its that there will be creation of things they don't like instead of the things they like (and sometimes mixed with it making it hard to find players for what they do like.

So while its selfish, its not mindlessly so if you accept the premise.