Capes is pretty good. However, that is a game that genuinely lies in the borderland between RPG and "story" game.

Quote from: Grymbok;470268As a Marvel fan first who was trying my first GMing as a teenager and using the published modules, I think the main problem I had was that the characters in the 80s comics I was emulating were mainly reactive. A D&D party takes control of the adventure, even if they're just deciding which tunnel of a dungeon to go down next. Spider-Man, on the other hand, just swings around town until he finds a mugger, or the Green Goblin starts trying to kill his girlfriend. Trying to do this in an RPG always felt to me like a collection of fight scenes, each of which ended with the players finding a note saying "this way to the next fight".

This is the biggest sticking point with supers RPGs in my opinion. There are proactive things you can do with supers, like fantastic-four style exploration or squadron-supreme style takeover, but they're a pretty big break from the things most think of as "what superheroes do."

Unlike other genres, with supers, I think, sometimes the bigger the situation, the more latitude the PCs can have. PCs fomenting revolution on Apokolips, dealing with a big Secret Wars kind of setup, JSA vs. the axis powers, etc.. But again,  not typical spider-man stuff which in the genre itself is a wait-for-the problem kind of thing much of the time.

Quote from: daniel_ream;470225Superhero RPGs are a specific case of the general problem that nearly all traditional RPGs are about combat first, foremost and only.  This is, I think, not a controversial statement; one need only look at the relative number of pages devoted to combat rules vs. anything-else rules in pretty much any RPG, including superhero RPGs.

Or are all superhero RPGs intrinsically sucky?

Your flawed analysis is leading you to some bad conclusions.

RPG's are "about" whatever the people playing them want them to be about. I've played D&D games that took place in palace ballrooms. I've played super hero games where damn little violence occurred.

Attempts to tell what a game is "about" by looking at page count simply don't work -- it ignores the primary source of 'about-ness' -- the imagination of the players.

Don't be fooled by people who tell you that the rules in a book have to constrain your play -- it's not true. Traditional RPGs can be about whatever you like. If you choose to make your super hero games about combat, it's because that's what you prefer.

I'd also note that super hero comics have an awful lot of violence in them... I think any faithful representation of the genre would need rules to cover fighting... but whether fighting actually occurs in any game? That's up to the players, not the game author.

Cheers,
-E.

The real problem is that superhero comics cover every other possible genre. Mysteries? It has them. Rescues? Battles? Romance? Love triangles? Comedy? Space Exploration? Diplomacy?  So on and so forth.

The fact of the matter is the games need to allow for all of that. I know some games are problematic in that they think stats and combat rules are the most important thing. I don't. I know H&S made a few mistakes, but I think 2E will be awesome in approaching all the things above with tools (and a few rules.)

Quote from: Silverlion;470302The real problem is that superhero comics cover every other possible genre. Mysteries? It has them. Rescues? Battles? Romance? Love triangles? Comedy? Space Exploration? Diplomacy?  So on and so forth.

That's a great point. I think the genre subset "standard superheroics," is the sticking point because it's so structurally formal, and that tends to cause trouble with RPGs. With all the rest you get a much more open playing field.

I think the big scope of heroes-in-space like LSH reflect this and I can see how that would help them work well.

Maybe I was corrupted by playing MERP at an impressionable age, but I like the emergent properties that come from RPGs "not matching the source material". My fantasy games don't play like R.E. Howard or Tolkien, and my superhero games don't play like a Marvel comic.

Sometimes the way they actually play may be an artifact of a design that doesn't quite do what the maker intended, and sometimes it's because RPGs are their own medium. Either way, when I play Champions I enjoy Champions and it works well (or it did a few years ago when last I played with the Hero system).

Quote from: -E.;470299RPG's are "about" whatever the people playing them want them to be about. I've played D&D games that took place in palace ballrooms. I've played super hero games where damn little violence occurred.

Attempts to tell what a game is "about" by looking at page count simply don't work -- it ignores the primary source of 'about-ness' -- the imagination of the players.

I agree totally. This used to be the accepted wisdom about RPGs, and it makes perfect sense to me. Guess what, it also works in actual practice. I'm curious as to why it is so unpopular a stance among people who write on RPG forums these days.

I'm with you guys! I don't want to replicate some comic. I want to do my own things.

-clash

Quote from: The_Shadow;470334I agree totally. This used to be the accepted wisdom about RPGs, and it makes perfect sense to me. Guess what, it also works in actual practice. I'm curious as to why it is so unpopular a stance among people who write on RPG forums these days.

I think the gist is that with so many different systems out there to choose from it seems silly not to choose the system natively supports the style of game you want. In the olden days it was common to repurpose AD&D to play anything but I think that was more a reflection of perceived scarcity of game choice (scarcity due more to information, distribution deficiencies or budgetary constraints of the poster who were often just kids at the time).  

What does native support give you? Running a game "to type" helps set expectations. If I willingly join a D&D 4e game it would be disingenuous of me to then complain that we are doing is killing and looting stuff all the time (unless somehow the GM had suggest something different in his game pitch).

If a system gives a players loads of really cool combat abilities I think they would be rightly disappointed if they did not get a chance to use them. They might resent having spent an hour building a character and filling up a character sheet with redundant stats and abilities - why are we doing this if we aren't going to use it.

Also in play player often tend to gravitate towards actions that are supported mechanically. If I chose to do something for which there are rules and for which I have specific skills/abilities I have a good idea of idea of what my chances are and how effective it is likely to be. If this not handled by the system it becomes a stab in the dark based on GM discretion. It's not an issue of lack of trust, just the difference between known and unknown returns.

And the same goes with issues of style and tone. The same action can have very different outcomes depending on the system. The most obvious example is lethality of combat. Hard to see how rules will not influence how you play your character if it gets you dead.

I can still see reasons to take an existing game, tweak the rules and run games against type, especially if you like the setting more than mechanics. But the general proposition of right tool for the right job makes a lot of sense too.

Quote from: flyingmice;470336I'm with you guys! I don't want to replicate some comic. I want to do my own things.

I think that what it is for me is that supers exist in this strange space in my brain where if I'm not doing genre emulation then I start feeling like we'd be better off playing something other than supers. But if I am doing genre emulation then I'm not happy due to the reactiveness issues. Hence why I haven't done any supers gaming in 25 years. I only read threads about it because I have an idle curiosity about how others make it work.

I suppose ultimately the supers genre trappings just aren't a net positive for me, despite enjoying supers comics.

Quote from: daniel_ream;470225When I pick up just about any comic from the start of the Silver Age on, the superhero combat scenes make up a third or less of the panel count.  The rest of the book is taken up with amazing superhero stunts, rescues, action scenes that are not combat, investigation (if you're reading DC) and/or relationship drama (if you're reading Marvel).

With Great Power by Michael Miller does a good job on the latter department.

Golden Heroes contains no rules for skills (though there is a Skills superpower for the Batman types). But it does have campaign ratings to cover the hero's relationships, ostensibly with the world and the systems of law. There is also a system for using 'day utility phases' toward character change or improvement (training and such). This was in 1985 too.

Quote from: flyingmice;470336I'm with you guys! I don't want to replicate some comic. I want to do my own things.

-clash

But you have to admit that the reason many gamers want to play a supers game is so that they can emulate the comics genres they love to read.

RPGPundit

Quote from: The_Shadow;470334Sometimes the way they actually play may be an artifact of a design that doesn't quite do what the maker intended, and sometimes it's because RPGs are their own medium. Either way, when I play Champions I enjoy Champions and it works well (or it did a few years ago when last I played with the Hero system).

Hmm...I have to wonder what other games out there worked by going against some genre conventions? What makes for a good book doesn't necesarily make for a good RPG, IMHO.

Quote from: Soylent Green;470340Also in play player often tend to gravitate towards actions that are supported mechanically. If I chose to do something for which there are rules and for which I have specific skills/abilities I have a good idea of idea of what my chances are and how effective it is likely to be. If this not handled by the system it becomes a stab in the dark based on GM discretion. It's not an issue of lack of trust, just the difference between known and unknown returns.

Hey Soylent...
I think I agree with this - though with the proviso that in many cases, more rules isn't necessarily equal to better rules and the "native support" from a badly designed subsystem could possibly be worse than the GM winging it.
My point would be that sure, the right tool for the right job is good, but I'd be very careful in picking up something and saying that because it has a lot of rules for something (chases/seduction/combat), that its necessarily a good game for doing that.

Quote from: RPGPundit;470451But you have to admit that the reason many gamers want to play a supers game is so that they can emulate the comics genres they love to read.

RPGPundit

I think that's pretty obvious, Mr, LSH!

-clash

I shared some of the issues of this thread's OP, not so much that most supers games were too combat oriented, but that they didn't match the emulation of the comics genre.  There was almost always a problem of power-disparity not being handled like in the comics, power levels, and also in some rpgs lethality levels.  

The game that I think does the best job of actually feeling like the comics is ICONS.

RPGPundit