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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mikelaff" data-source="post: 4369091" data-attributes="member: 39664">(emphasis mine) that's an interesting question. it's hard to say how to get tone right at the gaming table. Since you mentioned the Ultimates - I'd say two elements are key to emulating that book (at least the Millar, Hitch run) I Cinematic feel.  In an interview about the inspiration for the book Hitch said: "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimates" target="_blank">We just set out with the basic idea: What would we do if we had to make The Avengers as a movie?"</a>" And the book reads that way - it's got that bigscreen feel.  The main thing I'd recommend for getting a cinematic feel in a supers game: Keep combat fast and fun  Things that help me personally run fast MM combats (err - relatively fast, anyway). YMMVa) liberal use of the minion rulesb) handy gaming aids at the table. <a href="http://www.ecore-central.com/mm-action-cards-by-silverback/" target="_blank">These action cards </a>for MM come in very handy and eliminate a lot of page flipping. Also - they're free.c) I make the knockback rule optional. This saves some additional number-crunching that can slow down combat.d) MM has a lot of powers that don't deal damage but have status effects. Be familar with the different status conditions (stunned, dazzled, fatigued, snared, etc) to save yourself some more time pageflipping. I try to have a cheat-sheet of the different status effects the NPCs for a given session are capable of inflicting.  II Contrast of "real world" issues and the accompanying complexity with the fantastic elements.  Without delving too deep - here are a few key examples from Ultimates a) Bruce Banner is worried about the team's PR. They're a high-profile government funded super-team with no visible super-villains around to fight. There's some grumbling in the press and in Congress about how much the Ultimates must be costing. So - to save the team (in his mind anyway) - Banner triggers a transformation into the Hulk in downtown New York, to give the team a dangerous highly visible threat to combat. b) Hank Pym goes on the lam after beating his wife. Capt America mounts a rogue mission to bring him to justice. c) In the Grand Theft America arc, a coalition of various (well, nameless) Middle Eastern, Asian and Eastern European nations are concerned about how America is aggresively deploying its super-soldiers (or "persons of mass destruction") and decide to build their own team and launch a preemptive strike against the US in the name of self-defense. At the end of the day - it was the basic superteam vs superteam fight, but the political commentary/stage-dressing elements gave it another dimension.  In regards to bringing this kind of 'feel" to the gaming table, there's obviously a danger of veering into preachy/"very special episode" territory here if you do it wrong.  What I do is1) Occasionally have opponents who are motivated by a different or greater causes than just world domination or pure evil.  Obviously, Magneto's a good example of this. A mercenary super-villain like Mirror Master is another (in the Morrison-penned [ame="http://www.amazon.com/JLA-Vol-3-Rock-Ages/dp/1563894165"]Rock of Ages [/ame]JLA story-arc, Batman gets Mirror Master to drop out of the fight by simply doubling what Luthor was paying him.) At the very least, it adds a smidgen more depth to a situation and sometimes it can give the PCs another way to solve a situation besides smashing things (if they're so inclined). 2) Occasionally have allies who are misguided or outright turncoats. In the last year in my own campaign, I've had a jingoistic super-cop who needed to be reigned in by cooler heads and a long term ally who (while outwardly a big blue paragon of virtue) was actually hatching a secret amoral scheme to increase his own power and riches. (not too terribly different from the Jeff Bridges character in Iron Man, come to think of it.) Nothing earth shattering here - just some NPCs who are drawn with shades of grey - and the occasional "oh <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />" moment when the PCs uncover some surprising dirt on someone.</blockquote>

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