Difference between revisions of "Super Heroes"

Revision as of 00:08, 6 May 2008

I thought I'd get down some ideas about a supers game I'd like to run or play in, after seeing Iron Man this weekend.

Executive Summary

I'm proposing a super-hero genre game with the following key meta-mechanics:

  * Episodic plot:  The plot is about the heroes, and as such, chronicles their triumphs small and large, and their failures minor and catastrophic.  The plot as such will be focused on such moments, and continuity will be a minor, at best, focus.
  * Theme-driven: The best heroes are quasi-mythical, and are about something - they have themes.  Heroes for this game will have primary

themes, the essential story of the character. The theme of the overall game is about "outsiderness" (since everyone will be neccessarily different), either fore- or backgrounded by the intersection of the themes of all the heroes. Which is to say, I'm sure the group's heroes will share some very interesting themes, and I'd rather have the game be about stuff the players have built into their characters than something I've arbitrarily decided.

  * Contemporary, legible setting:  The setting is May, 2008.  There are at least 6 ( group + Nate ) superhuman people extant.  The rest is essentially wide-open, though will be significantly defined once the heroes are.  Also, my favorite old saws are factionalism, moral ambiguity, and collateral damage, so in absence of other mood-defining elements, expect those to play a role.
  * Custom Antagonism:  I'm going to be cooking up archnemises based on the characters, ideally with your input.  These will provide the bulk of significant antagonism.
  * About People:  The best comic stories are about people, even stories about people who aren't people like Vision.  I'm going to do what I can to make sure a decent amount of focus is on human relationships: friendship, rivalry, hatred, maybe even love.
  * About Whooping Ass:  Without the old can-a, we'd just be in a soap opera, people!  While the best conflicts have a heightened sense of stakes and are integral to the human drama, sometimes an old-fashioned barnyard brawl is in order, and I'll be more than happy to oblige.

Key Elements

A Blank Slate

The game world would basically be the world as it is today, with the heroes as the first beings of such stature. A key theme is that the focus is on the heroes, and their actions.

Importantly, the mechanics of the world are no secret. Society functions as it does today, and the actors in it respond in believable ways with plausible motivations. Specifically, this means that people follow common sense. If your hero turns into a fiery demon and tortures enemies with the screams of the damned, they'll freak out. Further, the world today builds up its heroes only to mine them for schadenfreude later, and as a time-honored comic book tradition, expect that sort of public opinion.

However, the main plot mechanics are the heroes, and to an extent the villains. The mechanics of the world will only matter in as much as they contribute to the heroes' story.

Setting

2008 New York. Seattle is a possibility, if players would prefer a more familiar setting.

Role of Super-Folk

Doing "good". I expect and hope that debates over the specific nature of that phrase will ensue, but when the cards are down, there's someone doing wrong and someone doing right and there's not always time to figure out where the best place to put down the cards is.

Theme is Important

I want the heroes to have definable major themes, and at least one theme per hero that doesn't overlap with the rest of the group. Iron Man, for example, is about the future - about technology, about our fears of it and hopes for it. The Hulk is about the dark side of rage that hides in us all. The X-Men were about being different. It's reductive to paint the hero as entirely about such a theme, but the best stories are where the main character and the theme intersect.

The focus of the story would probably shift from hero to hero as the game went on, but I anticipate a lot of overlap in themes - a story arc involving an "anger" hero would ideally include the other heroes' difficulties with anger and its destructive potential.

Introducing the Villians

Each hero ultimately has a nemesis, and I want the players to be collaboratively involved in the creation of their enemies. I see most of the conflict in the stories taking place between the heroes and their enemies, and would ideally like for the villians to be interesting and compelling beyond a set of stats or a particular difficulty of fight.

Contained Arcs

Whether it's this or another game, the next game I run will involve contained arcs. This group trends heavily toward continuity, and I'd like to try something different. My hope is that framing the game with theme as opposed to objective, continuity breaks will be easier to handle.

Super

Most importantly, the game has to be fun. Comics as a medium aim to entertain, and do so, in the best examples, by mixing mythic actions with humanistic heroes. While a bunch of the key points I'm describing are trying to nail down how to keep one foot tied to an involving story, the other foot needs to wreak glorious, demolitionary havoc for the game to work.

System

I know I villify it, but I think the Hero system is the best choice. A big part of a supers game is hero construction, and while I've cooked up a DitV hack for supers, I think it's too reductive. The system for this game needs to have reliable benchmarks in terms of ability, so the heroes can exceed those benchmarks in satisfying ways. Also, consistent with the idea of thematically focused heroes, the heroes' ability to affect the world needs to have domains, so that "hit people guy" and "armor suit guy" can each have a niche.

Let Me Have It

I know I've rambled, so mark down my score in the Talk page!