Where's the American Fantasy RPG?

L. Frank Baum's Oz series established American Fantasy as a genre, and yet it hasn't had much influence on popular tabletop role-playing games despite several American fantasy authors providing the inspiration for co-creator Gary Gygax's Dungeons & Dragons. Why not?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

American Fantasy Defined

As described in The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature, the tenets of American Fantasy include a contrast between real world struggles and a fantasy land (Kansas vs. Oz), the Garden of the World set in the midst of the Great American Desert (Oz), and pastoral qualities that encompass the heartland like corn fields, crows, wildcats, and field mice. Baum's Oz is different in character but similar in texture to American agrarianism.

There is technology too, always at the cusp of becoming ubiquitous, with objects taking on a life of their own. Baum was uneasy about the impact of technology on society: concerned about the impact of "flying machines", worried about what would happen to premature children in "incubators", and wary of slick-talking characters using gimmicks and puppetry (the titular Wizard of Oz). Judging by the abuse Baum heaps on an animated phonograph, he wasn't a fan of recorded music either.

As Brian Attebery puts it in The Fantasy Tradition:

"Oz is America made more fertile, more equitable, more companionable, and, because it is magic, more wonderful. What Dorothy finds beyond the Deadly Desert is another America with its potential fulfilled: its beasts speaking, its deserts blooming, and its people living in harmony."

Gygax and Dave Arneson were following a European tradition, itself descended from historical battles of interest in Chainmail, infused with their own American influences, such that little of Oz appears in D&D. At least not overtly.

Ozian Elements in Plain Sight

Jack Vance's influence on D&D is significant. From the "Vancian" spellcasting system to the Eye and Hand of Vecna, Vance's work permeates the game. Vance was a big fan of Baum's work and cited him as a major influence. One character recreates the Land of Oz in The Madman Theory (written by Vance under the pen name Ellery Queen), but Baum's influence goes beyond that work and appears in the Dying Earth series, as explained in Extant #13:

"...I speculated that the Phanfasms inspired the village of Somlod, as seen through the lost lenses of the demon Underheard (Cugel the Clever), and that Sirenese society, in The Moon Moth, was inspired by the Whimsies. Among the scarce commentators on Vance there seems little interest in the Baum influence, while influences which are minor or even nonexistent are often emphasized, such as Clark Ashton Smith."

Cugel, whose adventures take place in The Dying Earth setting, has more in common with the Wizard of Oz than Dorothy of course, and his adventures would go on to form the thief archetype in D&D, as per Gygax:

Of the other portions of the A/D&D game stemming from the writing of Jack Vance, the next most important one is the thief-class character. Using a blend of “Cugel the Clever” and Roger Zelazny’s “Shadowjack” for a benchmark, this archetype character class became what it was in original AD&D.

The Dying Earth wasn't a fantasy world, but a post-apocalyptic one set long after technology had fallen into decay. And that's a hint of where we can find Oz's influence.

Talking Animals, Weird Technology, and Untold Wonders

D&D has strayed from its cross-dimensional sci-fi roots, but one game has never wavered from its focus on a post-apocalyptic world filled with strange beasts, ancient technology, and hidden secrets: Gamma World.

The parallels between Gamma World and Oz (where animals can talk, characters can play robots, and humans are relics of another world), as filtered through Vance, finally gives Baum his due. If Baum was so influential on Vance, why hasn't there been more discussion of the parallels? The editor of Extant #13 explains:

"Given Vance’s own repeated and enthusiastic declarations regarding Baum, as well as the obvious parallels between Vance’s favorite Oz book (The Emerald City of Oz) and several of his own stories, I cannot rid myself of the suspicion that this lack of interest suggests an enthusiasm about certain subject matters and styles rather than an interest in Vance as such. I also suspect the Baum influence lacks appeal because he seems old fashioned, quaint and childish. The fashionable taint of the weird is absent."

This may be why Gamma World has struggled to find its audience like D&D has. Where D&D's tropes are so embedded in pop culture to be ubiquitous these days, Gamma World—like Oz—has alternately been treated as ludicrous, deadly serious, or just plain wacky ... the same criticisms leveled at Baum.

It seems we already have our American Fantasy RPG, it’s just a little “weirder” than we expected.

 

[Aldarc]

Like anything else, I suppose, it helps to define our terms. What is meant by "American Fantasy"? Simply written by Americans? Well, that's pretty solidly part of D&D. Or, is something else meant?

Socio-economic mobility. So it’s pretty easy to see how D&D’s old “XP through plundering the wealth from others” system factors into that fantasy.

 

[Neonchameleon]

American Fantasy Defined

As described in The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature, the tenets of American Fantasy include a contrast between real world struggles and a fantasy land (Kansas vs. Oz), the Garden of the World set in the midst of the Great American Desert (Oz), and pastoral qualities that encompass the heartland like corn fields, crows, wildcats, and field mice. Baum's Oz is different in character but similar in texture to American agrarianism.

There is technology too, always at the cusp of becoming ubiquitous, with objects taking on a life of their own. Baum was uneasy about the impact of technology on society: concerned about the impact of "flying machines", worried about what would happen to premature children in "incubators", and wary of slick-talking characters using gimmicks and puppetry (the titular Wizard of Oz). Judging by the abuse Baum heaps on an animated phonograph, he wasn't a fan of recorded music either.

As Brian Attebery puts it in The Fantasy Tradition:

"Oz is America made more fertile, more equitable, more companionable, and, because it is magic, more wonderful. What Dorothy finds beyond the Deadly Desert is another America with its potential fulfilled: its beasts speaking, its deserts blooming, and its people living in harmony."

Gygax and Dave Arneson were following a European tradition, itself descended from historical battles of interest in Chainmail, infused with their own American influences, such that little of Oz appears in D&D. At least not overtly.

[Note: Some emphasis mine]

American Fantasy as described in "The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature" would appear to me to be significantly more dead than the Western as a genre - and that's why you don't see it much in modern RPGs. I can think of a lot of good modern fantasy novels by Americans but I'm struggling to think of anything significant in the last half-century that qualifies as American Fantasy ("The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature" was written in 1980 so the death of the genre might not have been so obvious).

If I'm looking for modern specifically American fantasy settings I don't look for what self-aggrandizingly calls itself "The heartland" (and in response gets given the only slightly less inaccurate nickname of "Flyover country"). I look at where the majority of Americans actually live and work, and it turns out htat Americans are not actually children of the corn. Instead the majority of Americans live in cities, and that is where fantasy coming out of America is in general set - and roughly two thirds of Americans live in 100 miles of one of America's borders. Urban Fantasy is the American fantasy genre, and in the 90s the World of Darkness was about as popular as D&D.

And Urban Fantasy has the contrast between real world struggles and fantasy land, technology frequently being dangerous and normally ubiqutious. But instead of "pastoral qualities" and "American agrarianism" it has complexities, different cultures, diversity, struggles with immigration - and is more equitable, more companionable, and because it is magic, more wonderful. It's just written for Americans about something based on America as experienced by far more Americans than ever got to experience the largely propagandist America of Little House on the Prarie.

So where's the American Fantasy RPG? They exist - but they are every bit as niche as the so-called American Fantasy genre is in 2020.

 

[Minigiant]

Like anything else, I suppose, it helps to define our terms. What is meant by "American Fantasy"? Simply written by Americans? Well, that's pretty solidly part of D&D. Or, is something else meant?

I think American (the country) Fantasy isn't fantasy written by Americans but for Americans using American ideas, mythology, and tropes.

This is why Urban Fantasy is bigger in the US than Europe or Asia. The US is a young nation and shyed away from the history of the Natives for so long. It missed the boat on Medieval knights and Classical empires. And by the time it fully united, it was the Modern Era. So it's fantasy would be based around the thoughts and fears of the cities, the ruggedness and familiarity of the small towns, or the sense of exploration of going out on your own.

For example, factions are big in American Fantasy. Because the US is a melting pot of different cultures, there is always a sort of faction system in most American societies. American facial has racial groups, "racial" groups, gangs, cartels, unions, alliances, cliques and the like.

Look at Vampire. It's vampire families teaming up to make an organization. Then some other the families rebel and make their own organization. Then OH NO the first organization didn't learn their lesson and the youth ones ditch AGAIN. Then OH NO one of the major clans goes neutral and a clan almost completely switch sides. THEN you have the magic vampires who do their own thing with all the groups. THEN their is the vampire church in Africa unsure where to go. And that's before you add in the many human groups and the werewolves and the other stuff in WOD.

You have factions in European style Fantasy but it's different. It's less about the factions and more about the heads of them as Europe has a history or kings and emperors. The US rebelled against a king so it runs power and methods in different ways.

 

[ART!]

Surprised no one's managed to make a Pokémon RPG a thing then

...But why aren't superhero games more popular then?

I don't think anyone has figured out how to emulate modern super-hero movies and tv shows specifically, and in an era of Critical Role et al this hypothetical game might also need a big YouTube, Twitch, etc. presence.

It's hard for a GM to present a challenge, and if you do, the math behind doing it will drive you crazy.

...except in games where math isn't much of an issue. I've played in many super-hero games using narrative-based systems, and it worked really, really well.

lack of advancement.
Difficulty in creating a game system with all the power and balancing time.

Designing a RPG that replicate all he popular heroes for the players to replicate is HARD. And if you succeed it's like GURPS or super complex.

I get where you're coming from, but narrative games put less emphasis on traditional ideas of advancement.

A drama build of Cortex Prime (modeled after the Smallville version of Cortex Plus) emulates superhero tv series, eliminates concerns of power differentials completely, and works beautifully.

None of these are like GURPS or super-complex.

Zero to hero's not usually part of the superhero flow. Or rather, it's non-super powered to super powered - it's a binary. There's no sense of progression typically.

There are plenty of games that emulate the kind of dramatic progress that super-hero comics, shows, and movies focus on.

It's an interesting cultural phenomenon that more mechanical, XP-progress, leveling-up games like D&D are more popular than the alternatives.

I think part of the problem with superheroes for RPGs is the combination of high power levels with hyper-specialisation. Essentially, if a particular challenge falls within the ballpark of your power set, you'll be able to apply game-breaking levels of power to it, but if it doesn't, you'll be utterly outclassed.

It prevents the GM from creating a natural, varied scenario. The only way to ensure everyone gets to participate is to provide a constant mix of challenges tailored to their individual specialities, and telegraph them sufficiently that none of the players goes after the 'wrong' hook and winds up facing someone else's nemesis.

Games that emphasize a character's dramatic import (over mechanical stuff about super-hero physics, power levels, etc) skip this problem completely. Their drama can be just as natural and varied as anything else - perhaps more so since their focus is on the drama itself. Everyone's participation is equal because they have equal dramatic import, an effect created by rules that focus on things like convictions, connections to other characters and organizations, etc.

I dunno, you’ve got the entire Xaviers School and shows like The Flash, Smallville, The Greatest American Hero, Arrow (via flashback) which cover a whole lot of ‘learning to understand their powers” and gaining new powers as they ’level up’.
Even where learning powers is skipped over theres often an implied training montage. Maybe not zero to hero, more Chuck 1.0 to Chuck 1.5

Right, and the focus of those shows - like the comics they're based on - is more soap opera than dungeon crawl, so a rules system wouldn't need to focus on the same things we expect from a game that emphasizes leveling-up and the like.

I have to agree with the general sentiment here about why American fantasy isn't really present in D&D. D&D is based on medieval fantasy. There isn't a Medieval period in American history. It doesn't exist. So, stories about knights, and castles, and whatnot don't fit at all in an American setting.

I can't even really imagine what an "American" inspired D&D would look like.

The geographic spaces typical of D&D maps are heavily influenced by the American notions of westward expansion and "untamed" wilderness in the heads of D&D's creators.

For me, and American-inspired D&D would look like Colonial Gothic and Northern Crown, i.e. a magic-injected alternate colonial-era America setting.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

Superheroes are the American myth, right up there alongside the Western, and I'm kind of amazed by the seeming lack of awareness in this article and thread. There are more Superhero RPGs available now than ever before. M&M is probably the biggest and has been in its 3rd edition for at least ten years now and has had a steady stream of releases for years.

Yeah, i can't figure that one out, either. No publisher/game has figured out how to cash in on the super-hero movie and tv craze of the past 20 years or so. Weird.

• M&M. They had a DC Heroes branded version that was 4 books.
• Champions is still around in 6th edition "complete" form.
• Icons.
• BASH.
• various Savage Worlds super-books including Necessary Evil which is still an awesome concept and campaign.
• The late lamented Marvel Heroic Roleplaying from Margaret Weis Productions circa 2012 which was an incredibly different and interesting take on a superhero RPG.
• AMP Year One etc.
• Aberrant is coming back in a new edition
• Aeon Trinity already is back in a new edition

There are ten just off the top of my head. If you go to DTRPG and poke around there are far more. None of them are on a 5E D&D level but then Supers has always been a steady presence in RPG's, though never a dominant one.

Really the best there is are generic role-playing systems that can be tweaked to support supers play: GURPS, Savage Worlds, FATE.
I think it's largely because the power level is cranked beyond Eleven. It's hard for a GM to present a challenge, and if you do, the math behind doing it will drive you crazy.

I would not agree that they are the best but they are certainly workable and that balanced power level thing is kind of M&Ms signature feature, alongside being a d20 based system.

There are a lot of superpowers out there and you have to make it feel satisfying to be Hawkeye standing next to Doctor Strange.

So either you abstract the crap out of things, which is the way lots of modern games have tried it, which doesn't feel great to people who want being the Human Torch to feel a lot different than, say, Starfire, or you make it hyper-granular, like Champions did, which means that fast-paced superheroics can take hours to adjudicate.

The design studio that cracks this one will likely make a ton of money. But it's worth noting that even in the videogaming space, where a lot of the stuff that slows down Champions is automated, there's been relatively few big hits (Insomniac's Spider-Man being the big obvious mega-hit).

Again, this is what M&M was based around and even Champions (original pen and paper Champions) handled this fairly well. It's really not that hard. Marvel Heroic took an entirely different approach and it worked well too.

The biggest challenge is that to really get attention a Supers RPG has to be licensed and those DC and Marvel licenses are expensive. Costly to the point it seems to prevent any real financial viability for an ongoing, open-ended RPG line. So what's reasonable to produce are non-licensed or smaller-licensed RPGs. Hellboy and Sentinels of the Multiverse are both getting the RPG treatment right now so it's still an active area of the RPG scene.

 

[Cadence]

It's an interesting cultural phenomenon that more mechanical, XP-progress, leveling-up games like D&D are more popular than the alternatives.

People like to get cookies. Do chat/discussion boards that allow the collection of upvoting (and maybe give ranks) do better than those that don't, for example? Do phone games like Pokemon or Ingress with leveling lose a bunch of players when the leveling slows down or when they max it out?

Another thing I wonder about is the seeming more "recent" need to up the stakes. In Gunsmoke or Magnum PI or Detective novels or a lot of pre-1980s super hero comics or the original Star Trek there wasn't a consistent need to always up the power level of the opponents and threaten the entire world -- the story seemed to matter more. Now it seems like in the comic books there needs to be a new more-powerful-world-threatening thing every year, and in Star Trek you have the Borg, and Dominion and who knows what else, and the stakes need to get higher each time in Dresden books. That doesn't seem to be as consistent in D&D though - where a lot of games seem to run to about level 10 and restart, so I'm not sure how much of a factor that is.

 

[Undrave]

There are plenty of games that emulate the kind of dramatic progress that super-hero comics, shows, and movies focus on.

It's an interesting cultural phenomenon that more mechanical, XP-progress, leveling-up games like D&D are more popular than the alternatives.

Narrative focused game never do as well. I think people just like to get a sense that they are getting better...

Maybe, ironically, Japan has the better model for that kind of game: My Hero Academia! The school structure there could work...

There are ten just off the top of my head. If you go to DTRPG and poke around there are far more. None of them are on a 5E D&D level but then Supers has always been a steady presence in RPG's, though never a dominant one.

It doesn't feel like any of Superhero RPG ever got to the level of Vampire the Masquerade, for exemple, to the point of dominating its genre.

I think the problem with M&M is the abundance of powers and possible build system. Point buy systems are more arcane looking to neophyte than the simple class-based system of D&D. I know M&M and others have sample builds and stuff, but I feel like it's not quite the same? Would it be possible to create a class-based superhero game? A bit like the ol' City of Heroes MMO? If anybody remembers Mutant X, that show had 'classes' of mutant (Telepathic, Elemental, Feral and Molecular).

Maybe the solution would be to try and focus your game on a specific power level? Don't try to cover Batman AND Green Lantern, just cover one or the other, ya know? I feel like a 'Street level' game would be a good place to start? Basically as if you segmented DnD into tiers of power that would flow into one another (one book has level 1-10, another 11-20 and a final one 21-30, for exemple) so you COULD eventually do Justice League if you wanted.

Just random thoughts.

 

[Marandahir]

I think there's a difference between Tom and that whole set of sidequests in the Hobbit as an artistic pursuit and how it fits together as a world.

All of the jokes about "why didn't Gandalf just call the eagles" are nothing compared to "why didn't anyone just ask Tom if he could help save the world?"

They discussed it at the Council of Elrond. Someone even asked why they couldn't just give it to Tom to look after. Tom would forget about it, and then with the Ring still extant, Sauron would conquer the world, and even Tom's country would fall, even if it was the last area to do so.

That's about as equal a solution as trying to throw it into the Sea. They HAVE to destroy the Ring because there's no way to beat Sauron at force of arms. Aragorn's last stand at the Morannon is a play for time, to give Frodo and Sam more time to get to the cracks of Orodruin. There was no way to win that battle unless Sauron himself was defeated.

The eagles are messengers of Manwë (albeit mortal ones) and are bound to specific missions similarly to the Maiar Istari. They can't directly intervene like that, and Tolkien himself said they had to be used sparingly lest this question be asked by everyone. He actually was frustrated with his usage of them in The Hobbit (which itself was a reference to Thorondor bearing Húrin to Gondolin, or Gwaihir and Landroval themselves rescuing Beren & Lúthien) later on during LotR, because it meant he was caught with this eucatastrophic tool. It let him get the "happy" ending for Frodo & Sam (of which he was altogether not sure was going to be able to happen - at one point in development, Sam was going to grab the ring and jump into the fire to end it all!). But the Eagles are not beholden to any mortals, they have no fëar (and thus cannot be considered among the "Free Peoples" of Middle-earth like the Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Ents, and Hobbits) and only help Mithrandir and Aiwendil due to great respect and mutual support for each others' needs and missions. Gwaihir even tells Mithrandir at Isengard that he cannot carry him far - he was sent to bear tidings, not burdens. He only takes him as far as Edoras, where Gandalf tames the Mearas, Shadowfax, to carry him the rest of the way. But even Shadowfax returns to the Mark after getting Gandalf to Rivendell in Fellowship.

Mortal animals, no matter how long-lived like the Great Eagles, simply are not like free peoples. You might be able to convince them to help you, they might be able to talk like the Eagles, but they are driven by instinct and evolution, not by free will. These Eagles were taught the languages of the Valar and Elves and Men by Manwë and in exchange tasked with watching Morgoth and later Sauron's forces from the skies. But any ride they grant to mortals is a momentous event - they are not simply a force Gandalf can summon at will by grabbing any random moth and calling for their aid like in the movies.

The Venn diagram of people who love Lord of the Rings but claim they hate Beowulf makes me super-sad.

I hear you there.

 

[Marandahir]

I dunno, you’ve got the entire Xaviers School and shows like The Flash, Smallville, The Greatest American Hero, Arrow (via flashback) which cover a whole lot of ‘learning to understand their powers” and gaining new powers as they ’level up’.
Even where learning powers is skipped over theres often an implied training montage. Maybe not zero to hero, more Chuck 1.0 to Chuck 1.5

We're totally thread busting (what else is new here on ENW?), but...

So I think you're conflating 2 concepts. There's the power level of the characters - street level (Punisher, Batman), country level (Captain America, X-Men, Wonder Woman), and cosmic level (Thor, Superman).

And then there's the idea of the actual fiction of the source inspiration material (I like the phrase touchstones) - in comic books the training up is a single issue; or a flashback. Daredevil learning all his marital arts from Stick? A flashback. It is not the point of the narrative arc. Xavier's School? We rarely actually see the characters advancing in grades. What we see is scenes set in a school; and sometimes there's a training session in the Danger Room. But the characters aren't advancing "levels" in the fiction of the source material.

Take instead someone like Luke Skywalker. Or Harry Potter. Or yes, even Peregrine Took - who starts as a villager and ends up Thain of the Shire (note, he inherits the title - but still...). All those narrative arcs in various realms of fantasy are zero to hero narratives.

(There's a whole other possible thread where we could discuss "Chosen One" narratives vs "Everyman Hero" storylines - and why very few TT RPGs actually feature "Chosen One" type characters. Monster Hearts being an exception that proves the rule).

I agree with Tonguez and disagree with Eyes of Nine.

It may not be evident in the often-resetting comic book storylines, but if you look at their famous film adaptations, the characters go through character arcs and growth not just in character, but also in power and abilities.

Tony Stark is always learning from his mistakes and failures and errors, and each suit is better and more powerful than the last, using newer and more advanced technology and featuring more innovative ideas sometimes weaker but more useful like his "football" suit i.e. Mark V - it was for situations where he didn't have time to get into the Mark III or Mark IV during Iron Man 2. By Infinity War and Endgame, he's got nano-particle suits with energy shields. This is a far cry from the Mark I suit he built in a cave. FROM A BOX OF SCRAPS!

Captain America's martial abilities, fighting style, and equipment advance from film to film. Some of this is technological upgrades from SHIELD or Stark, but his martial abilities are from his own growth.

Daredevil's flashbacks to learning from Stick are one thing, but they're really about how he got to be a Level 1 Hero character. He also goes through martial ability, equipment, and power level growth over the course of 3 seasons and a miniseries.

Trish Walker (Hellcat) says specifically to Jessica in Season 3 that she's spent the last year honing her martial skills, after the end of a montage of events she was involved in the last year. These are characters who are constantly training and getting better.

Even the Hulk goes a long way from his narrow (and scarily violent) victory over Abomination to being the Champion of the Conquest of Champions on an alien world, able to go toe-to-toe with Norse Gods and demons of the apocalypse. Each film he shows up in, it's not a static character. Both Banner the scientist and Hulk the monster grow over the movie series.

Perhaps the greatest example of character level up in Marvel is Agent Daisy Johnson aka Skye aka Quake, from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. She goes from being a Rising Tide cyberhacker to a shadow of Agent Coulson to a Level 1 Agent of Shield in Communications (like Coulson), to training with weapons and martial arts under Melinda May (the only agent with more blackbelts than Black Widow) to be a field agent, to going through Terrigenesis and turning into an Inhuman with earthquake powers that she can't control that start taking down everything around her, to turning those powers inward to protect her friends and family and destroy her own bones in the process, to training with power surpressing gauntlets that can help with the bone injuries, to healing from the injuries and learning how to make music and move mountains from an Inhuman teacher, to training to combine her powers with her field agent abilities to take on field missions, to figuring out how to use them to perform sonic resonance to hold open a portal, to unleashing her power and nearly destroying the entire base, to learning how to jump really good with her powers, to going toe-to-toe with freakin' Ghost Rider, to have to learn it all over again in a digital Matrix world, to fight for her life against terribly powerful Kree alien warriors, to becoming powerful enough that she could crack the entire world apart with her powers, to learning how to control said powers and survive the finale of the series (jumped over and brushed over some important spoilers I wouldn't want to give away). That's at LEAST a level 1-15 arc equivalent. And her story's not over.

 

[Cadence]

I agree with Tonguez and disagree with Eyes of Nine.

It may not be evident in the often-resetting comic book storylines, but if you look at their famous film adaptations, the characters go through character arcs and growth not just in character, but also in power and abilities.

How many game sessions would you consider a movie or episodes worth of screen time?

And some of the characters certainly develop a lot. How much did Coulson and May develop?

Are their at least three big reasons for needing resets in comic books? One is that character's appeal is in their development (like younger mutants or spider-man) and that at some point they've gone past that stage (they're the adults now and are getting married instead of doing teen angst). Is this like in D&D where campaigns stop some time between level 10 and 20 instead of continuing on (where an E6 type thing, or one with slower advancement like I remember in VtM could keep going). A second could be that they're looking for a big sales boost and to draw people in that have drifted over time whenever a story hits a lull? (The continual sets of new number 1s in comics, but no particular major change. The long time campaign has kind of stalled, so lets reboot it). A third could because one of the authors decided to have a formerly stable character develop to a dead end storytelling stage (after x00 issues of gradual armor improvements that don't really change the stories, Tony goes nanites, or after x00 issues of doing his thing Thor becomes powerful enough to put back together the moon)?