(was: "I will never run your superhero game" - changed to improve the tone)
Fact One
I think the idea of running a superhero game could be fun,
especially a year one style game
Fact Two
I do not care for what I consider classic, superhero comic books
Query
How do I resolve this situation?
Exhibit One
Lowell, Steve, and myself have been tossing around
ideas based on running a year one super hero campaign for the past few years.
As far as I know, Lowell is the only one who had done anything with the ideas.
He is currently gearing up to run the third season of his Mutants & Masterminds online game. The premise of the game is
the players chose different superheroes from various sources and have
re-invented them in a “year one” style game. They were allowed to change up the
characters as they are known and go their own way. Hey, they do it in the
movies, why not at the game table?
Exhibit Two
I have played three superhero roleplaying games: Superworld
from Chaosium, Champions
from Hero Games, and Mutants & Masterminds
from Green Ronin. By all accounts, I had fun with all three. Mind you, I was in
grade school with the first one. I stepped in to the second one to help cover
while another player had to take a break. I ended up staying for most, if not
all of, the rest of the campaign. It has been awhile and I apologize for not
remembering. The third was the most recent and not a painful experience. The
players were a disparate group that surprisingly gelled, in my opinion, to form
a supergroup. It was a limited run campaign, going for less than 20 sessions.
Exhibit Three
I have not read and enjoyed a classic superhero comic
book since the 1990s, outside of several Batman graphic novels and a single
Superman graphic novel. I have read Punisher
MAX, Nocturnals, Gotham Central and
enjoyed them. I have read various Conan
series and liked them. Punisher remains my favorite character and has been a
constant favorite since watching him go toe to toe with the likes of Captain
American and Spider Man. When I was still in school, my father bought my
brother and I a comic a week (or thereabouts). We would also save up our money
to buy other comics, quite often from the $0.25/5 for $1 bin. Looking back, I
remember reading a lot of Transformers, Power
Man and Iron Fist, Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew (I was old
enough to get the jokes and my brother was old enough to like anthropomorphic
animals), GI Joe, Master of Kung Fu,
Aliens, Spider Man (not Peter Parker,
not Spidey and His Amazing Friends), The Teen Titans, and spatterings of The Brave and the Bold.
The blog Ask Chris
provides some elements of why I may or may not have liked different comic book
styles over the years with an article on DC,
Marvel, and “The Problem”. Reading this article is not imperative to my own
post here, but it suggests a few things that make sense to me, now. I am not
certain his thoughts are correct, so I will let you read the article and make
your own decisions later.
Exhibit Four
My father wrote comics. My friend Lowell writes comics.
So, how do I make
this work?
I don’t.
In the Play on
Target podcast discussing superhero roleplaying games, they make one thing
abundantly clear – if you don’t like superhero comics, don’t run a superhero
roleplaying game. That is a pretty bold statement. However, I think it is spot
on. I have run games I don’t enjoy running, most game masters have. There’s
nothing worse than dreading an upcoming event that happens on a regular
schedule. So, why do it? If you cannot find a way to enjoy a hobby, it’s not worth
doing.
Yet, I liked playing in the superhero roleplaying games.
I like elements of the genre. I’d like to be able to run something like a year
one game in the future.
No, really, how do
I make this work?
I have to break my mind and reform my thoughts around
what a “superhero” roleplaying game is about. I need to remove any elements I
do not enjoy and boil the rest of them down into a nice hero reduction sauce. So,
what are the elements I enjoyed from those roleplaying games, the few comics I
recall enjoying, and the movies I have enjoyed that fit this genre?
Heroes don’t have to have classic superpowers. They don’t
need the ability to move faster than a speeding bullet, flame on, or hulk out. Heroes
can have a high level of agility and acrobatics. They can be very smart crime
fighters. They can bring the fury of two-fisted justice to criminals. They can
cast spells. They can move things with their minds. Yet, they can also be a
speedster, meat-shield, or robot.
Being a hero is often about saving the day and making the
world a better place. They stop criminals, expose the truth, and bringing evil
doers to justice. They can fight mobsters, aliens, mad scientists, or super
powered criminals. They do not only fight the latter.
I think this leads to an easy set up for a year one game
where the power level is local, not global, not epic. The rules system for said
game would need to support this ideal. I should be able to do it with Gumshoe
system’s Mutant City Blues and work
in elements from Kerebos Club and Night’s
Black Agents, Unisystem (especially if Beyond
Human ever sees the light of day), or even one of the World of Darkness
flavors.
Could I use Superworld?
Probably, but I doubt it as I have no interest in it. Could I use Mutants & Masterminds? Absolutely,
but it tempts for a higher power range than I currently think I want. Could I
use Champions? No, no I could not. I
am not running a game which requires as much detail as Champions.
Two Worlds
I see two options for a world wherein to run a superhero
roleplaying game. The first option is to take an existing comic universe and
drop the game into it. This could be the world of DC, Marvel, or even a
television series like Heroes. The
other option is to put it in our known world and sprinkle in a few heroes. The
idea of building a whole world from scratch is a bad one to me. It takes up too
much time and offers too many possibilities of jacking something up. However,
if you are like me and love the sandbox approach, you can still develop a grand
world in which to set the game.
Start local, think global. By using the real world, a lot
of the basics are complete. You have street names, maps, and events you can tie
into the game. By starting “locally,” you can keep it under control without the
lid blowing up. Local can be a street, a neighborhood, or a town. This also
allows you to build up and out as the game goes on.
I think my approach would the city setting would be to
give the players options I think I could work with. For me, that is likely to
be NYC (classic home of so many comic books), Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, or
Seattle. All of these cities are large enough and have enough elements that I
think I could place a modern game in them.
My Superheroes are
Supernatural
The second part of the setting deals with the supers and
the how/why they exist. I think this is the area where my world breaks from the
superhero genre and runs away screaming. The sources of power in my game will
be supernatural and/or super-science based. Genre characters like Dr. Strange, Blade,
and Swamp Thing come to mind. However, the tropes of television shows like Buffy, Angel, and Supernatural also would work here. There is a good blog series of
posts called Strange Squad
starting up. It looks at taking supernatural elements and using them to make a
world of crime fighters with the game Mutant
City Blues. Strange Squad is about supernatural criminals in a Ryker’s
Island style jail who are given the option to help hunt down other bad guys.
While this setting is a bit darker than I want to run, I think it proves the
idea of a supernatural based, superhero style, roleplaying game can be done.
Okay, so I have potential rules systems, a city setting
to use and the start of the sources of power. The latter will need to coalesce
with more setting details. I also need to decide where the world sits when it
comes to viewing these supers. The important thing is that the supers are out
and known. They may not be wanted, acknowledged or have voting rights, but they
are known. I have run two games in the past where superheroes/supernaturals
were hidden in the background and soon to come out to the forefront. The lead up
time involved with such a game is not worth it. It needs to be put on the table
at the start. It is the subject of the game, do not hide it. The lead up is
great in a form of singular experience like a book, comic, tv show, or movie.
It is not all that great at the table. I think letting the mystery be the
crimes to be solved and experiencing different powers with various setups is a
better way to handle the game.
The next step for the players
is to decide if they want to have powers or to be the humans dealing with the
supers. Do they want to run around chasing down bad guys ala Gotham Central, do they want to be more
like Angel or Scooby Do,
investigating supernatural crimes, or are they interested in being the local
superpowers who are on the side of the good guys, or functioning as freelancers
for the local Major Crimes Unit/FBI special agent in charge? I think all of
these work and depending on
I will need a list of potential character types for the
players. I will also need something akin to the Mutant City Blues Quaide
Diagram for both the players and myself. The players will need it for the
supernatural character types, so they know what builds they can put together. I
will need it for the core clues and bad guys. Whether I share it out with the
players or not, does not matter. I still need to know how things will work
together. I think the he old game Psi-Wars
had a similar structure to it.
Floating back to the setting, I will need to design the
power structure for each of the supernatural groupings and individuals within
the setting. Vampires could form families around similar ancestors within the
bitten blood line. They may or may not have different powers based upon siring.
The werewolf pack unit can be based around family. Is there a werewolf gene, is
it due to bite, or to curse? Is there a mad scientist working for the mob,
supplying them with versions of Adam Frankenstein? Do chantries styled after
games like Ars Magica exist? Are there cultists like those found within the
pages of Unknown Armies or the books
of HP Lovecraft? Witches lurk about town in their shops forming loose-knit
covens. Demons flit in and out of the world, as summoned by magic users. Psychics
move about the city trying to find each other and figure out why they have
these migraines and nose bleeds. Scoobies exist the world over, trying to make
sense of it all.
Which superheroes and super-villains currently exist? Can
I or the players take existing comic book characters and rework them for this
type of setting? Does the Daredevil have a magical ability to see granted by a
demon? Is the Punisher actually a cursed knight named Frank Castle who was
charged to defend the innocent? Could Doctor Octopus actually be a leader
within the Cult of Cthulhu with tentacles for arms? Green Arrow could become a
super-scientist with various bows and arrows which produce different effects.
What if the reason Doctor Banner “hulks out” is due to being a descendant of
Doctor Jekyll (or Dr. Hekyll and Mr. Jive
for those of you old enough to remember the song). Like I mentioned earlier,
characters such as Blade and Dr. Strange already fit the setting.
How is this different than running a World of Darkness or Unknown Armies game? For some of you, it may not be any different. For me, it would mean not leaping down the monsters we are, lest monsters we become rabbit hole. While that can be an element within the game, it should be limited to one particular NPC. It also means the game is not about world domination through the occult underground. I know many people have run WoD and UA which have more in common with superheroes than with the horror elements of those games. I have done it myself. It can work, but that is not the purpose of those games, as written.
If this game sounds like something more akin to the television shows Buffy or Supernatural than to Birds of
Prey, it should. Superheroes don’t need giant letters on their chest. In my
opinion, they simply have an important decision to make: the decision to do good. Some, like John
Constantine, do it reluctantly. Others, like Cordelia, grow into their role.
At the end of the day, there are many questions that need
answering.
1. Which city do the players want to explore?
2. Do the players want to be humans or supers?
3. What level of involvement with the law do the players
want?
4. What is the structure for the different supernatural
creatures and powers?
5. Are there lone practitioners with powers or abilities not
displayed in others?
6. What is the purpose and drive of the supers in the city?
7. What is their place in the world?
8. How are the non-supers dealing with those just coming out
of the superhero/villain closet?
9. What are the super-villain/criminal types up to?
10. What are superheroes/vigilante types up to?
11. What place does super science have in the world?
12. Which normal superhero stories do you take and twist into
a supernatural story about spooky types?
13. What is the story I want to tell?
I think if I took the time to answer these questions (or
work with the players to answer these questions), I could build out a game of
superhero horror or supernatural heroes.
