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i like it when the superhero punches the supervillain
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Jan 19, 2022 13:49
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thatbastardken posted:oh, so now you wanna kill batman?
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Jan 19, 2022 13:53
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Andrast posted:i like it when the superhero punches the supervillain indeed, sometimes, when you wanna make geopolitical statements, it's better not to choose the undie pants man genre
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Jan 19, 2022 14:21
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Splicer posted:Bruce Wayne leaches billions from the workers of Gotham and uses it to turn the unemployed and mentally ill into his own personal punching bags in lieu of therapy. Into the sun with him. what does bruce wayne have to do with batman..?
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Jan 19, 2022 14:22
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pog boyfriend posted:what does bruce wayne have to do with batman..?
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Jan 19, 2022 14:34
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Xiahou Dun posted:I generally favor intimacy moves over sex moves in PbTA just because of narrative flexibility rather than prudishness, but Flying Circus is very much the exception that proves the rule in that it actually is appropriate that it's played as a trip to pound town. Since no one actually expanded on this... how so? I stopped paying attention to Flying Circus a while into development for various reasons, but this particular topic never came up as far as I recall, discussion was primarily focused on the air combat and on a specific playbook. Not going to pick up a copy so I evidently missed the implementation of "intimacy moves" (as GimpInBlack clarified) that was actually good for once, let alone appropriate played as sex moves. FWIW about to be playing Apocalypse World and we had to strip out "sex moves" for "intimacy moves" for the game to even see the table, so interested in games that do it right from the start.
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Jan 19, 2022 14:58
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Superhero-in-real-world stories only hold up at their origins. Batman came to be because crime was out of control, Gotham's police were hopelessly corrupt, and a billionaire had a moment of empathy for the downtrodden. Once Gordon became commissioner and purged the department, Batman should have been able to retire, or else get captured and given therapy. I kinda like the GODLIKE approach, where heroes are extremely powerful on a human level but the war is still way bigger than them. Supers change things here and there, but they also spend most of their time fighting other supers, so WWII goes on more-or-less as history recorded it.
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Jan 19, 2022 15:02
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SkyeAuroline posted:Since no one actually expanded on this... how so? I stopped paying attention to Flying Circus a while into development for various reasons, but this particular topic never came up as far as I recall, discussion was primarily focused on the air combat and on a specific playbook. Not going to pick up a copy so I evidently missed the implementation of "intimacy moves" (as GimpInBlack clarified) that was actually good for once, let alone appropriate played as sex moves. Flying Circus explicitly has intimacy moves. Sex comes up in the game mechanically as one of the ways to express intimacy and/or as one of the ways PCs can blow off stress in between missions.
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Jan 19, 2022 16:14
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Haystack posted:Flying Circus explicitly has intimacy moves. Sex comes up in the game mechanically as one of the ways to express intimacy and/or as one of the ways PCs can blow off stress in between missions. Nothing especially new/unique, then. All right.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:09
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As an aside, part of why I really enjoy superhero settings in RPGs is that they can get around some of the enforced stasis they traditionally have. You can't go all the way with it, since it still needs to be recognizably similar to the real world, but you can have Dr Fantastic donate a bunch of healing lasers to local hospitals or have the power grid run on superscience and have that actually mean something.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:33
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Mirage posted:Superhero-in-real-world stories only hold up at their origins. Batman came to be because crime was out of control, Gotham's police were hopelessly corrupt, and a billionaire had a moment of empathy for the downtrodden. Once Gordon became commissioner and purged the department, Batman should have been able to retire, or else get captured and given therapy. Edit: DC actually did this twice! Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 19:43
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Lurks With Wolves posted:As an aside, part of why I really enjoy superhero settings in RPGs is that they can get around some of the enforced stasis they traditionally have. You can't go all the way with it, since it still needs to be recognizably similar to the real world, but you can have Dr Fantastic donate a bunch of healing lasers to local hospitals or have the power grid run on superscience and have that actually mean something. The GM was absolutely astonished.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:47
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Halloween Jack posted:I think my favourite Elseworld Batman is the one where he plows his family fortune into restoring Arkham Asylum, and captures the criminally insane so that he can make them go to therapy The Batman of Arkham is the number one under-appreciated Elseworld story and there should have been a sequel where Bruce Wayne hung out with his best buddy Croc more.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:58
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The whole Civil War arc in Marvel was about confronting the inherent conflict between vigilante "freedom" justice warriors and fascist "control" government, but also shouldn't civilian voters and their freely-elected officials have the right to regulate superheroism, and also tony stark's megalomania really does need to be controlled, and aren't quite a lot of superpowered people seriously dangerous and often kinda deranged, etc. etc. When it actually ran originally in the comics it felt good to me to have the folks at Marvel recognizing through story that the old era of Mighty Men doing Great Things was dead and now our stories needed to actually acknowledge that there's Problems with that setting trope. I don't know that Marvel adequately addressed it or that the conclusions were all good, but it was still a step forward. e. The Watchmen, despite all its problems, was also somewhat on theme here. At least as far as pointing out that at some point, supers are corrupted by their power, or are so separated from humanity that they're not really human any more, and pretty much the nonsuper public is victimized regardless of the motivations of the uncontrolled, uncontrollable teams of "heroes." Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 20:14
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Leperflesh posted:The whole Civil War arc in Marvel was about confronting the inherent conflict between vigilante "freedom" justice warriors and fascist "control" government, but also shouldn't civilian voters and their freely-elected officials have the right to regulate superheroism, and also tony stark's megalomania really does need to be controlled, and aren't quite a lot of superpowered people seriously dangerous and often kinda deranged, etc. etc. Marvel is apparently doing a street-level sequel to the same ideas now, with Kingpin being Mayor of NYC and going after Spider-Man, Daredevil, etc. They arrested Captain America for acting as a vigilante but didn't kill him, so there's a bit less ham-handedness.
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Jan 19, 2022 20:31
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hyphz posted:They try, but it has to be done very carefully to avoid replacing the status quo with one that is dependent on supers. WELL ACTUALLY Power Man can't fly and his powers were forced on him when he was imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. You gotta go way stupider than you expect if you want to make a hypothetical superhero nobody's named already. It's one of the most difficult parts of playing a supers game.
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Jan 19, 2022 20:32
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Leperflesh posted:shouldn't civilian voters and their freely-elected officials have the right to regulate superheroism
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Jan 19, 2022 20:51
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maybe don't build genocide robots even if the kids these days are evolving i blame that virus everyone except the mutants has
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Jan 19, 2022 21:03
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It's like Kid Omega's shirt says: Magneto was Right.
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Jan 19, 2022 21:39
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PeterWeller posted:It's like Kid Omega's shirt says: Magneto was Right. "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for mutant children."
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Jan 19, 2022 23:24
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grassy gnoll posted:WELL ACTUALLY Power Man can't fly and his powers were forced on him when he was imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. That's why for most of my Superhero setting concepts I just reuse various Golden Age Superheroes who have fallen into the Public Domain, saves a lot of time coming up with concepts and designs, like in a setting set in the Early 70's that's meant to invoke the late Silver Age to early Bronze Age transition period, if I had a player ask who was the first major superhero of the setting, I'd tell them it was The Fighting Yank and the Black Terror, who both debuted at about the same time back in the mid 50's(and who roughly fill a similar role that Superman and Batman do in DC), or if they ask for any times where real world history got altered due to the presence of Superheroes, I would point to how JFK wasn't assassinated in this universe due to the interference of Stardust The Super Wizard as part of his arrival onto Earth, with Stardust then using his phenomenal cosmic powers to then do absolutely horrifying things to first Lee Harvey Oswald and then to everyone else who had been knowingly involved with the would-be assassination plot
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Jan 19, 2022 23:25
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drrockso20 posted:That's why for most of my Superhero setting concepts I just reuse various Golden Age Superheroes who have fallen into the Public Domain, saves a lot of time coming up with concepts and designs, like in a setting set in the Early 70's that's meant to invoke the late Silver Age to early Bronze Age transition period, if I had a player ask who was the first major superhero of the setting, I'd tell them it was The Fighting Yank and the Black Terror, who both debuted at about the same time back in the mid 50's(and who roughly fill a similar role that Superman and Batman do in DC), or if they ask for any times where real world history got altered due to the presence of Superheroes, I would point to how JFK wasn't assassinated in this universe due to the interference of Stardust The Super Wizard as part of his arrival onto Earth, with Stardust then using his phenomenal cosmic powers to then do absolutely horrifying things to first Lee Harvey Oswald and then to everyone else who had been knowingly involved with the would-be assassination plot Stardust uses a special ray to transfer LHO to a world full of grassy knolls where he is endlessly assassinating himself
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Jan 19, 2022 23:27
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mellonbread posted:That's how we got the Sentinels. e: Also, the guy I stan on Twitter who's trying to fist-fight Superman in a robot suit is completely different from the guy you stan on Twitter who's trying to fist fight Superman in a giant robot suit. They're teaming up because it's a popular front. I know Superman was claiming to be building a seawall for Metropolis at the time but what will we do if we need infrastructure if Superman isn't around? Anyway, Nessus fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 23:33
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sebmojo posted:Stardust uses a special ray to transfer LHO to a world full of grassy gnolls where he is endlessly assassinating himself fixed that for you
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Jan 19, 2022 23:47
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Arivia posted:fixed that for you Now I really want art of hyena people in ghillie suits.
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Jan 19, 2022 23:54
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PurpleXVI posted:I find it hard to decide which is the more realistic perception. On the one hand, going by politics as-declared, right-wing movements should be pretty big fans of vigilante lawmen(often in some way rich or privileged), going around beating up poor people committing financial/property crime to try and survive. On the other hand, plenty of right-wing governments would be real worried about the existence of a left-leaning superhero that couldn't just be put down with water cannons, pepper spray and casual police violence. I recenty had to think about this issue when a bout of nostalgia for Ultimate Marvel hit me. Re-reading the comics, you can clearly see that Mark Millar viewed superheroes as part of the military-industrial complex. He clearly had issues with that concept but also did things that were intentional or unintentionally facist. For example, while congress is presented as incompetent (as are the heroes), the actual military is shown in a positive light. I decided to take a stab at it in a Masks playtest but I never finished it. It had so many trigger warnings that people kind of convinced me such a depressing playset probably would never see play. The general conceit, in regards to politics, is that superheroes were general disliked individually in the political sphere. The Right Wing hated superheroes who policed business, government corruption, and fought against social issues. The Left Wing hated superheroes who helped American colonial actions abroad and at home, and disdained their status as unaccountable vigilantes. The former cirtiscims only came from out-of-government as no sitting poltician in America ever critizes America's colonization efforts. The center held little to no strong opinions because centrists generally don't have strong opinions, instead focusing on compromise between the two wings. This is addressed loosely and barely elaborated on in the playset since the old status quo is thrown out after the Halycon Incident. The Halcyon Incident is when a group of social media influencers who bought their powers accidentally blow up 20 city blocks when they fall for the super equivalent of "swatting." A live stream shows them attack an innocent scientist and accidentally detonate her experiment, setting off a chain reaction with other experiments in this super-science skyscrapper. The Halycon Incident accidentally creates a wave of randomly powered people called Mutants from the fallout. The incident quickly led to the Mutant Registration Act, which defined all powered individuals as Mutants, defined all Mutants as inhuman under the law, and required all heroes (even unpowered ones) to work for AEGIS (Mask's SHIELD equivalent). Mutant City, a Mutant ghetto, quickly formed from disenfranchised mutants. The Enforers, the Government's super team, set up shop across the nation with their Fifty State Initiative. Corporal Punishment, the self-hating Mutant leader, quickly cleaning up Halycon through use of lethal force and coercion to quell super crime in the city. The playset was mainly to focus on the Modern Generation of heroes operating out of Mutant City. They would be a group of community focused, grass roots anti-fascist heroes that would be at odds with the government heroes, the centrist heroes trying to bring back the old status quo rather than something better, the elders in their community who bought into the model minority myth, cops, and other forces against progressive change.
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Jan 20, 2022 00:02
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Xiahou Dun posted:Now I really want art of hyena people in ghillie suits. didn't some goon just make pbta tmnt, there you go
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Jan 20, 2022 00:07
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Stardust chat is making me nostalgic for a Masks character I never got to play, append for a game here that wanted explanation of where your character fit in to a comics continuity. I apped a Protege of a thinly-veiled Stardust-type, with the meta-explanation being "our publisher just got the rights to this gonzo vintage title about a crazy space wizard, and someone wants to put a modern spin on it with a likable/marketable teen protagonist."
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Jan 20, 2022 01:07
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Gatto Grigio posted:"We must secure the existence of our people and a future for mutant children." this is a weird swerve when talking about a character who's primary character trait is that they were radicalized by being a holocaust survivor.
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Jan 20, 2022 03:01
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Der Waffle Mous posted:this is
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Jan 20, 2022 03:11
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Covok posted:The Halcyon Incident is when a group of social media influencers who bought their powers accidentally blow up 20 city blocks when they fall for the super equivalent of "swatting." A live stream shows them attack an innocent scientist and accidentally detonate her experiment, setting off a chain reaction with other experiments in this super-science skyscrapper. The Halycon Incident accidentally creates a wave of randomly powered people called Mutants from the fallout. I think part of what matters to a superhero setting is also where powers are from. In like a grab-bag setting like Marvel or DC's it's hard to focus things, but if superpowers are genetic, and more importantly inheritable traits, that makes it one thing. If they're markers of divine favour(or disfavour), that's another thing. If they're mostly super science that can be replicated, bought and sold, that's a third thing(for instance you can be quite sure anyone with superpowers has government/corporate funding, or is already rich, and is thus likely to be a real shithead), and so on. I always felt like having too many different power "sources" was often a bad thing for superhero settings, since it would ruin any kind of thematic focus.
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Jan 20, 2022 08:19
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Every superhero on Earth has the same origin: an item of power given them by a dying alien hero to carry on the legacy. Big questions in the setting include "why are all these aliens crash-landing here? It's like fifty now, what gives"
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Jan 20, 2022 08:25
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Earth as space Bermuda triangle
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Jan 20, 2022 08:26
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Antivehicular posted:Every superhero on Earth has the same origin: an item of power given them by a dying alien hero to carry on the legacy. Big questions in the setting include "why are all these aliens crash-landing here? It's like fifty now, what gives"   Warren Ellis wrote a bunch of those real world superhero things where the heroes operate on a grand scale, including a loose thematic trilogy of Black Summer (a superhero goes after the US president for war crimes [from 2007]), No Hero (superheroes spring up during the late 60s and ingrain themselves in world politics) and Supergod (explores the idea of literal superhumans who no longer follow the same constraints, ethics or basic thought patterns as people). Also worth mentioning is The Authority, where the heroes are firmly interventionist and put themselves in a position above any government bodies. And of course there's Watchmen. Generally it feels like the most valuable material to get into superhero politics ideas can be found in series off the DC/Marvel mainstream that aren't beholden to editorial guidelines and the status quo.
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Jan 20, 2022 08:48
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I'm wondering if a confounding factor is that your big comics companies need to return to the status quo at the end of each arc because they're expected to keep creating comics in that world indefinitely. If you're free to write a self-contained story with an actual end point you can have it actually go places and end up with things being different.
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Jan 20, 2022 09:11
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potatocubed posted:I'm wondering if a confounding factor is that your big comics companies need to return to the status quo at the end of each arc because they're expected to keep creating comics in that world indefinitely. Ideally yeah, but we never did really get to see the end of Miracleman.
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Jan 20, 2022 09:17
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Leperflesh posted:e. The Watchmen, despite all its problems, was also somewhat on theme here. At least as far as pointing out that at some point, supers are corrupted by their power, or are so separated from humanity that they're not really human any more, and pretty much the nonsuper public is victimized regardless of the motivations of the uncontrolled, uncontrollable teams of "heroes." There's gotta be an angle for this as a metaphor for billionaires in a $10 banana kinda way. Considering what little I know of his politics, Moore may even have meant it in that way. Like, I haven't watched The Boys for various reasons, but I think that bigboy fashy superman is just a complete loving sicko in part because who could ever stop him? In a warped Ring of Gyges kinda way. What we mixed the metaphors if someone had his powers somehow directly and absurdly because of privilege and generational wealth instead of something seemingly unchangeable like genetics? Like, having a wealth over 2 billion rolls over The Great Computer like it's Pac Man and suddenly you get superpowers? I mean, it's already clear this exists in the form of immunity to the laws of man, why not also the laws of physics?
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Jan 20, 2022 09:25
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potatocubed posted:I'm wondering if a confounding factor is that your big comics companies need to return to the status quo at the end of each arc because they're expected to keep creating comics in that world indefinitely. Oh, absolutely. Heroes who have a definite end to their story arc and aren't expected to keep being rebooted, resurrected, passing on the mantle, etc. for the next 200 years so they can keep getting milked for money would actually have a chance to tangibly change the world they operate in. Which is also why pretty much any comic worth reading is exactly that kind of story, stuff like Nextwave, etc. as soon as it's one of the big interminably existing heroes, you're going to get one worthwhile storyline out of them in a hundred, at best.
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Jan 20, 2022 09:36
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Magnetic North posted:Like, I haven't watched The Boys for various reasons, but I think that bigboy fashy superman is just a complete loving sicko in part because who could ever stop him? In a warped Ring of Gyges kinda way. Homelander is also helped by both the Vought Corporation, who help cover up his crimes, and society at large who think of superheroes as a great and necessary force for good. Basically, superheroes in The Boys are celebrity cops. Homelander is terrifyingly powerful, but in that series a huge thing is how a bunch of this poo poo is systemic in nature and there's no single bad force you can just beat up to make it go away. There's also a part of Homelander's character where he wants to be genuinely loved and admired by ordinary American people, even as he thinks himself above them. He could attempt to take over and force everyone to obey him but then he'd be feared and hated. So Vought can try to control him in control that way. Heliotrope fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Jan 20, 2022 |
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Jan 20, 2022 09:38
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Mirage posted:Superhero-in-real-world stories only hold up at their origins. Batman came to be because crime was out of control, Gotham's police were hopelessly corrupt, and a billionaire had a moment of empathy for the downtrodden. Once Gordon became commissioner and purged the department, Batman should have been able to retire, or else get captured and given therapy. Some versions of Batman like the DCAU at least kinda work implying that he was mostly successful in cleaning up Gotham and by then he'd moved onto bigger things with the Justice League and all that. Heck, the later JLU seasons even have a not-Legion of Doom form specifically as a counter to the Justice League, because they've been so successful in dealing with supervillains that they can't operate solo anymore. The Incredibles also comes up with these kinda arguments a lot. I feel there's something to how Mr Incredible was forced to stop saving lives and stopping maniacs from hurting people and made to work an office job bilking old ladies out of their money instead; kinda presents the idea of superheroes as a social safety net, stepping into help people when authorities are unwilling or unable. Obviously has even more problems than usual when you get into the details, but still. Also as I said in the other thread, most superhero stuff written by people who actually know the history of the medium have right-wingers be hostile to superheroes, starting with McCarthy, as a reflection of the Red Scare and moral panics specifically targeting comic books and nearly killing the genre (and killing basically all kinds of comics except superheroes, ironically)
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Jan 20, 2022 13:34
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