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View Full Version : How Common Should Superheroes be in a Superhero RPG?



Lord Lemming
2018-05-08, 04:31 PM
So, I wanted to get a broad sweep of opinions on this topic, and figured this would be a good place to do it.

If you were to play in a superhero RPG, what kind of world would you want to step into? One where superheroes and their opponents are something new, novel, exciting, and relatively rare, such as in the Marvel movies? One where superheroes and their monsters of the week are common and accepted, like in One Punch Man, or something else?

Additionally, what kind of power levels would you like to see? DC and Marvel both have heroes and villains with a very, very broad range of abilities; from ordinary-if-plucky humans all the way up to nigh-unbeatable demigods. Should a party start off as the small fish in a very large pond, or should they be capable of tackling world-ending issues?

I suppose it's very much a matter of personal preference, but I can see arguments for pretty much all of these options. I'd like to play a game where the party is effectively the Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes. But it might also be fun to be in a game where the party are a bunch of C-class misfits trying to take on monologuing mustachioed maniacs who are literally above their pay grade.

Anonymouswizard
2018-05-08, 04:44 PM
The one great superhero game I had heroes we common enough that every city has their own specific laws about them (including what to do if surrender universe Venusians suddenly appear). The characters we played we mostly around strong X-Men/weak Justice League level. Secret Identities were also really rare for heroes in that game, most were employed as pseudo police and while they'd act under a hero name their identity would be on record (not that there weren't independents).

I personally prefer weaker but relatively common supers. My favourite superhero setting is Venture City for Fate, where most heroes will have one power that's either incredibly strong or rather versatile (e.g. talking to machines versus turning into an animated statue). Artificial supers are now relatively common, but PCs are assumed to be 'naturals' who aren't tied to a company (meaning they don't have the required PR and marketing departments to be 'heroes'). Supers themselves aren't they common, although that will change once a way to reliably give 'harmless' powers is worked out and sold.

Jay R
2018-05-08, 05:12 PM
So, I wanted to get a broad sweep of opinions on this topic, and figured this would be a good place to do it.

That depends pretty much on what kind of comic-book world you are trying to simulate (if any).

In an early Golden Age campaign, there should be almost none, beyond the PCs themselves.

In a late Golden Age campaign, there can be more, but still be seen pretty rarely.

In an early Silver Age campaign, there should be a few who have been around awhile, but all others should be quite new.

In a Late Silver Age campaign, there should be a lot, and they should mostly know about each other.

In a Brave and Bold or Marvel Two-in One type campaign, guest-star heroes should be extremely common.

But the introduction of NPC heroes should have some purpose that makes the game more fun, exciting and challenging for the players.

I once ran a campaign set in the very early Silver Age. The PCs were called to investigate a space ship that landed out of town. When they arrived, an orange alien hurled a tree at the flaming PC. Soon they were in a battle, and besides the super-strong alien, there was a flaming one, and an attack by a series of flexible loops, and something they never could find.

The battle lasted quite a while before they finally realized that they were fighting other earthlings. They had blundered into the origin of the Fantastic Four.

Cespenar
2018-05-09, 02:47 AM
One point I like to make between either ends of the spectrum is that you could pull a "superheroes are rare" scenario easier than the other option by the usage of most common tropes.

However, "superheroes are everywhere" requires much, much more worldbuilding, planning and thought to pull through. Neither Marvel, DC or most of the anime I've seen never come close to it, though I rather feel like it's their wish rather than skill. Because who cares about sociological, political and economic consequences, am I right? They aren't fun.

Knaight
2018-05-09, 05:09 AM
I'd want the particular setting built to be interesting and cohesive - what parts go into that aren't particularly important to me. That said, there are particular superhero settings that really worked worth looking at, most notably the WWII with superheroes setting of Wild Talents.

Doorhandle
2018-05-09, 06:40 AM
Most RPGs turn to "large super presence", and I think it's for the simple reason that it provides a much larger roster of foes and a much greater diversity of foes, both of which are useful for Game-masters. While you could potentially run a campaign using entirely mundane opponents, it would become increasingly difficult to find new ways for them to challenge the players. Though that's fine for a short campaign or one with a focus the consequences of the protagonist's existence.



Because who cares about sociological, political and economic consequences, am I right?
To be fair, the big thing with superhero series is that if any of their technology or superpowers becomes anything near replicable, it stops being a superhero series and starts being a sci-fi or fantasy series very quickly. Sure, it can still hew close to typical superhero seires, but when you describe Shadowrun, "superheros" or "supervillains" is not the first term you think of.

Cespenar
2018-05-09, 09:13 AM
To be fair, the big thing with superhero series is that if any of their technology or superpowers becomes anything near replicable, it stops being a superhero series and starts being a sci-fi or fantasy series very quickly. Sure, it can still hew close to typical superhero seires, but when you describe Shadowrun, "superheros" or "supervillains" is not the first term you think of.

I don't like to believe that the signature of the superhero genre is that it lacks depth, forethought, and overall sensibility.

Something like Worm has a pretty agreeable amount of consistency within its superhero-genre shackles, for an example.

JAL_1138
2018-05-09, 10:06 AM
I don't like to believe that the signature of the superhero genre is that it lacks depth, forethought, and overall sensibility.

Something like Worm has a pretty agreeable amount of consistency within its superhero-genre shackles, for an example.

I'm not familiar with Worm, but I don't think the assertion is that the genre lacks depth. It's just that it's going to cause such radical changes to a world if superpowers are a) widespread and b) replicable or commercializable, it starts to resemble the worldbuilding/tone of speculative fiction, be it sci-fi or various -punk genres more than it does the conventional superheroes genre. "Superpunk," maybe?

Lord Torath
2018-05-09, 12:20 PM
"And when I'm old and I've had my fun? I'll sell my inventions, so that eveyone can be super heroes. Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super, no one will be."
- Syndrome

JoeJ
2018-05-09, 12:50 PM
Most RPGs turn to "large super presence", and I think it's for the simple reason that it provides a much larger roster of foes and a much greater diversity of foes, both of which are useful for Game-masters. While you could potentially run a campaign using entirely mundane opponents, it would become increasingly difficult to find new ways for them to challenge the players. Though that's fine for a short campaign or one with a focus the consequences of the protagonist's existence.

A World War II setting is a little bit easier in that regard. Even supers can be challenged by entire armies. Especially since an army can attack in many places at once. Just create a few uber-soldaten for the other side and you can have an entire campaign. (And honestly, who doesn't enjoy beating up Nazis?)

GrayDeath
2018-05-09, 04:36 PM
Personally I enjoy the following 2 the most:

Option 1: Giants walk the Earth
Aside from a few surviving "Old Gods" and similar "Heroes of Old", who have more or less retired/Hide, the PC`s and say a dozen others are all there is.
Ergo a normal(ish) World where you and your friends/Enemies are the only "New Gods".
In that scenario I prefer middling Power Level (ergo somewhere around "normal" Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Storm and Vision to name some examples). Erring on the side of a little higher power if in doubt.

For the "We are the Princes of the Earth" Feeling.


Option 2: A World of heroes

In that scenario Supers of various origins have been around since at most the start of the 0th century, and their numbers increased steadily.
Meaning that, assuming we play in the early 21st, there should be around 1 Super for every 500000 people.
Of those, around half would be street level (topping around Spider Man strong), a third between that and the abovementioned level, and the rest equally shared between slightly and much more powerful (but no Cosmic Scale, world changing stuff unless kept in check by reasons) Supers.

THese include Aliens, Magic Users, Mutants, Cybernetics, Genetics, and so on as origins.

For the full "SIlver Age Massive Superhero Experience."

Telok
2018-05-10, 11:20 AM
For the last game I ran the number was pegged at about one in a million. It was closer to a silver age setting in the early 1980s in a semi-fictional US midwest city of about 8 million (for a party of 5). It cribbed most of a timeline from somewhere with significant modifications of my own. The result was very rare individual supers up through the early 1920s, say one in 10 million before and one in 5 million after. The world wars pushed the numbers up to about one in 3 million through super-soldier programs until the end of WWII when megadeath events and radiation pushed it up to one in 2 million. Then about 1960 there was an alien invasion (ok, an alien moon base that used mass teleportation to treat Earth as a meat farm) that killed of almost all supers but also spiked the numbers up to the one in a million level.

Lapak
2018-05-10, 11:58 AM
To answer in reverse, my preferred power level is in the Spider-Man / Fantastic Four-minus-super-tech level: a good step above street level, but a long step below cosmic. Where your everyday conflicts involve local or at most regional stakes, and a campaign Big Bad might be someone who could credibly be a national-level threat.

With cosmic-level / Avengers type heroes, I find you get diminishing returns on The Fate of the Universe Being At Stake, which it kind of has to be to threaten them. I like that as a once-per-superteam event.

For setting, this means one of two things:

- supers are a recent phenomenon and thus rare. Golden Age style, where every powered person is both notable and known.

- supers are relatively common (1/100K, 1/1M) but skew heavily to the lower end of the power scale. If there are 3,000 powered people in the US? 2,800 of those are in the street-level range, another 180-190 cap out at Spider-Man / average X-Man level, 10-20 in the Iron Man tier, and 1-3 tops in the Magneto / Dr. Strange zone. That's counting good guys, villains, and the folks who have super strength but get a construction job instead of punching people for a living.

JAL_1138
2018-05-10, 12:14 PM
"And when I'm old and I've had my fun? I'll sell my inventions, so that eveyone can be super heroes. Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super, no one will be."
- Syndrome

That's kinda why I agree it's out of "supers" territory when it's really, really common. Imagine if he did sell his inventions cheaply enough they were accessible to people besides millionaires. Or even just sold the designs to military/law enforcement.

It's not really a "supers" game anymore if every police department has those forcefield rays and flying boots; if you can just buy super-strength gauntlets at the local sporting goods store, etc. If the army had War Machine suits or Super-Soldier Serum as standard issue. If you could buy Shark-Repellent Bat-Spray at the surf shop. If heat-ray vision was so common you were more likely to get a job staring at the boiler of a thermoelectric power plant or staring at a crucible at the iron-smelter than being somehow special. You're into -punk or sci-fi territory, then.

comk59
2018-05-12, 08:57 AM
A World War II setting is a little bit easier in that regard. Even supers can be challenged by entire armies. Especially since an army can attack in many places at once. Just create a few uber-soldaten for the other side and you can have an entire campaign. (And honestly, who doesn't enjoy beating up Nazis?)

I was basically in this exact campaign, and I can attest that it was absolutely as fun as it sounds. There's something incredibly satisfying about the WWII setting.
It helped that everyone, including the DM, leaned hard into the narrative tropes of that kind of setting. It also helped that the payoff for the campaign was getting to fight the Frankenfüher on top of a massive armored derigible.

Lord of he Dank
2018-05-12, 09:50 AM
That sounds amazing!

It would be neat if you could then have multiple quests within different real-world countries! Like jump around to play a part in every major battle but all fantasied/supered up!

comk59
2018-05-12, 01:50 PM
That sounds amazing!

It would be neat if you could then have multiple quests within different real-world countries! Like jump around to play a part in every major battle but all fantasied/supered up!

That is a major upside of having the heroes all be part of the military/resistance. It makes assigning new "quests" super easy.
You could even print up a dossier of basic information and maps for the players to look through, if you reaaally wanted to get into it.

JoeJ
2018-05-12, 03:37 PM
I was basically in this exact campaign, and I can attest that it was absolutely as fun as it sounds. There's something incredibly satisfying about the WWII setting.
It helped that everyone, including the DM, leaned hard into the narrative tropes of that kind of setting. It also helped that the payoff for the campaign was getting to fight the Frankenfüher on top of a massive armored derigible.

The next superhero game I run will be WWII. One of the things I'm planning to do is make it clear to the players from the start that it is entirely possible for their actions to deviate from our history, even to the point of causing the war to be lost. If they fail badly enough at a critical juncture I am quite willing to turn the game into a campaign of resistance fighters in Axis-occupied America.

Mutazoia
2018-05-12, 08:47 PM
I guess the answer would be "just as common as you want them to be."

You could be anywhere from the Marvel Universe, where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a mutant, to the Watchmen, where there are a small handful of heroes, to Hancock, where there is only one (known) super hero.

It really is up to you to decide the style and tone of the game you are running.