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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5974285" data-attributes="member: 177">Superheros are not general sci-fi.  Supers is its own genre, with it's own tropes, and plot structure conventions.  "Sci-fi" is very, very broad...Yeah, that's the thing - superheroes are generally not proactive.  They *cannot* be.  Their environment is not target-rich, like a monster-laden wilderness or dungeon.  The only valid targets for superheroes are villains, and villains hide really, extraordinarily well.  Finding a villain who does not want to be found is needle-in-a-haystack, finding one person among seven billion kind of thing.  Superheroes only get to get a shot at a villain when the villain acts, and thus exposes himself.So, Supers-games run rather like Hand of Evil mentioned.  You pick some villains, give them motivations, figure out what their goals are, and they set about those goals.  However they approach their goals, they occasionally expose themselves to heroes, who then try to run them down.  Lather-rinse-repeat, throwing in the occasional hitch in the hero's personal life or powers.  It is a reactive life.When they become proactive, trying to beat evil before the evil starts, well, that's when the hero becomes the oppressive villain <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=":)" />This is not nearly the same as sci-fi, in general, which can lend itself to any plot or organizational style, as well as fantasy can.  That's because "sci-fi" is as broad as "fantasy", while "supers" is pretty narrow.  For example, Star Trek can be modeled as a sandbox - you have a bunch of planets, each with their own shtick going on, and the players wander around in their starship from place to place, doing what they think they ought at each one.  Simple sandboxiness.  Meanwhile, Shadowrun is typically a choice of railroads - you take your pick of jobs you can get paid for, and that job's what you're doing this week.</blockquote>

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