"The game is not interested in simulating superhero physics, it's combat is focusing on other aspects of it." This doesn't even make sense. Much like GNS theory, it is a bunch or words being thrown around that don't describe really anything.
I think the "it's" is a typo for "its" (
@Blue can clarify if I'm wrong about that).
With that pretty minor correction, and a semi-colon in place of a comma to formalise the punctuation a bit, it reads
The game is not interested in simulating superhero physics; its combat is focusing on other aspects of it. Which make perfect sense and in my view is a pretty clear description: the game isn't simulating the physics of superhero combat, such as
How far will Iron Man go flying if Titanium Man punches him while they're fighting 20 km above the ground. Its combat resolution process focuses on other aspects of combat, like
who is angry with whom or
who is shamed by whom. (I've never played or read Masks, but from what I've read I'm confident what I've just posted is not too inaccurate.)
A longer expression of a similar approach to resolution is found in the rulebook for Maelstrom Storytelling (p 116, under the heading "Literal vs Conceptual"); Ron Edwards quotes it, in part,
here:
A good way to run [Maelstrom Storytelling] is to use "scene ideas" to convey the scene, instead of literalisms.... A ten foot fence might seem really tall to one person, and a little tall to another. But if the fence is described as really tall instead of 10 feet, everyone gets the idea. In other words, focus on the intent behind the scene and not on how big or how far things might be. If the difficulty of the task at hand (such as jumping across a chasm in a cave) is explained in terms of difficulty, it doesn't matter how far across the actual chasm spans. In a movie, for instance, the camera zooms or pans to emphasize the danger or emotional reaction to the scene, and in so doing it manipulates the real distance of a chasm to suit the mood or "feel" of the moment. It is then no longer about how far across the character has to jump, but how hard the feat is for the character. In this way, the presentation of each element of the scene focuses on the difficulty of the obstacle, not on laws of physics.... If the players enjoy the challenge of figuring out how high and far someone can jump, they should be allowed the pleasure of doing so - as long as it doesn't interfere with the narrative flow and enjoyment of the game.
The scene should be presented therefore in terms relative to the character's abilities A chasm can be "very wide, the kind of wide you don't want to think about jumping" and the rogue can be "so charming that your feet fall off." Either way, the players get the idea. Players who want to climb onto your coffee table and jump across your living room to prove that their character could jump over the chasm have probably missed the whole point of the story.
Edwards goes on to say that "I can think of no better text to explain the vast difference between playing the games
RuneQuest and
HeroQuest. (By HeroQuest he means the Gloranthan RPG that is a successor to HeroWars, not the TSR boardgame.)
Taking this back to superheroes. Any decent superhero RPG has to be able to capture scenes such as when Storm, without her powers, defeats Cyclops in the Danger Room to claim the leadership of the X-Men; you don't get that via "physics simulation", you get it via a resolution system in which Cyclops shame and guilt hinder him, while Storm's new-found confidence and sense of self permits her to prevail.
I think this is the sort of thing that
@Blue was pointing to, even if not identical to it.
