My current campaign has a history based on the ages of comics – Golden, Silver, etc. Appropriate characters appear in each time period. For example Golden Age superheroes are powered by chemicals, radio waves or by learning magical mysteries in Tibet. Silver Age heroes are aliens or radioactive. Communists are often involved in their origin stories. And so on.
If you have created a similar campaign history, how did you approach it? Did you make any unusual decisions?
This is kind of an interesting idea to me Doug. For two reasons.
Now I don't play "regular superhero" games, and even the "superhero comics" I write aren't regular comic characters like regular superheroes. For instance with my characters "powers" are always fluid, never fixed, and heroes are not always even aware of what their powers are exactly, or the full range of those powers. But I also like your ideas especially those contained in the first paragraph.
I have a personal theory about
God Technology which sort of parallels your breakdown of divisions in power distribution (among superheroes). That the technological capabilities of the age shadow, or even determine how those same (and other) capabilities are expressed in a given era. I mean that in relation to how technology is expressed throughout a society and culture, but it could just as easily apply to how the individual takes advantage of technological capabilities, and in your case of how superheroes react to the technology responsible for their powers, and how technology influences or shapes those powers and capabilities.
But I often think that with most comics something is usually overlooked in regards to the technology-superhero interface, and that is the way in which supermen (I'm using that term to designate all superhero types, even, or maybe especially heavily technology and gadget dependent guys like Batman) would actually influence, modify, invent, and develop both old technologies, and new technologies, and thereby change the way the entire society looks at and interacts and interfaces with technology. It is extremely unlikely to me that anyone like a Superman (the modern one), having access to advanced technologies, from a world or worlds like Krypton would be satisfied with the current technological status of the world. That he would naturally, as a result of his own nature and interfacing with and knowledge of advanced technologies, automatically set about spreading a new technological paradigm throughout the US, if not the world. Any superman, realizing that his or her technology would be of practical and even humanitarian benefit would naturally want to disseminate their beneficial technological capabilities far and wide. (After all superman can only be in one place at a time, but his technology can be as ubiquitously spread as immediate circumstances allow. And this idea of "the world isn't ready for this" is a complete canard of comic writers. Regardless of circumstances people always make use of new technologies, sometimes wisely, sometimes not, but the point is that people demand to make use of technologies, they do not let them sit fallow and unemployed. Somebody would see something in use then seek to emulate or redesign it, and soon would, and then would just as soon spread it throughout society, both to improve conditions and to make profit. Only in the limited imaginations of comic book writers is this natural impulse of man not understood concerning advanced technologies. Nothing of real use would be wasted on the speculation of the "day to come when we are all ready." Who determines that day and what qualifies as being ready? No, people build and design and invent things, and readiness develops as a matter of actual application. It is an organic, not a calculated and mathematical process. It doesn't really happen the other way around. Except in comic books.) And given our world and how rapidly our new technological achievements diffuse throughout the society and culture, it's very hard for me to believe that any sufficiently advanced superman, much less a group of supermen, would not fundamentally and rapidly change everything around them, like it or not. And they would likely advance technologies in ways we have not yet anticipated, and in both enormously beneficial ways, and in unintentionally malignant ways. But I just don't think (I know in truth) it would actually work like one man (Batman for example) retains in his own Batcave a number of unique and fascinating gadgets for purely personal use, or that alien (Superman) or advanced (Iron Man) technology would long remain the private domain of a very few individuals.
As a little sidenote I wrote a long essay on the Three Supermen of the Twentieth Century. The entirely fictional Superman (of the comic book model) who is American and stands for the principles of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Despite being entirely fictional (not a real person) the American model is universally applicable to any free man, or society of free men, or society of men who desire to be free. That is to say the principles of Truth, Justice, and the American Way can apply to anyone who so desires, and are obviously not limited to Americans or America, it's just that America is the home-model of that type of Superman. The second model was the Nazi Ubermensch. The Nazi superman was not principle or ideal based, but rather racial, political, and war-based (conqueror). He was obviously in direct opposition to the American ideal of Superman and he was of course not universally applicable because he was racially founded. The Nazi Superman seemed typified by the blonde haired blue eyed Nordic man but was in actuality the invention of men like Hitler and Himmler. The third Superman was the Marxist/Communist who was economically and politically based and was typified by Stalin (whose name actually mean "Man of Steel). The Communist superman seems on first glance to be universally applicable but since it depended upon the idea of economic class being the determination of value and capability towards both individual and societies, and sought to eventually reduce all men to the same economic class, it was of course in actuality very exclusionary and despotic, the despotism being one of class, not race. So you had two tyrannical ideals of the Superman in the twentieth century (and they are still with us to a certain or limited extent, the idea that the superman ought to rule by a notion of self-conceived superiority of group rather than serve out of wider responsibility to all), both exclusionary and despotic (one racially so and the other economically so) and a third ideal that looked beyond both race and class and gloried in and exemplified individual responsibility and capability and free will/choice over pre-determined or mundane characteristics. I always thought that this was a fascinating real world clash of ideals that occurred in the last century. And today you even see a sort of new Superman ideal with the rise of religious-based terrorism, the ideal of the Religious Superman (and to a smaller extent the Nationalist Superman), which is also an exclusionary idea about who is in fact superior and why. I think this will be an interesting historical development as well as in one way it completes the circle, race, class, religion, nation or tribe, individual. That of different types of Supermen in operation in the world, and eventually which ideal or ideals will succeed or fail, and in what way or ways. I also find it interesting how each ideal of the Superman makes use of technology in a different way, beneficially or corruptly.
I have no idea how Microsoft edited this thing guys. So if you see obvious typos or grammatical or terminology mistakes then forgive them. I just came out of my tent and I wrote fast.
