What are the most important factors when trying to worldbuild a good Superhero setting? What are things that should be avoided?
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What are the most important factors when trying to worldbuild a good Superhero setting?
The things that are important to a setting are different from what's important to a game.
Correction: the things that are important for a TTRPG setting are different from what's important to other kinds of setting.
The separation of what's important for settings and games exists regardless of if they're TTRPGs, board games, war games, video games, etc.
Settings are largely secondary.
No it doesn't. The setting is part of the game. What's important to the game setting is necessarily important to the game.
The only importance a setting has is facilitating what can be done in the game.
It's secondary.
>The only importance a setting has is facilitating what can be done in the game.
Yes, that is true for all parts of the game, the game setting is part of the game. I believe what you meant to say is that what matters for a game setting is different from what matters to a different kind of setting.
>It's secondary
That doesn't make sense in this context, your skin isn't secondary to your body, your skin is part of your body. If someone asked you "What is good for your skin", and you said "What is good for your body is different from what is good for skin", that wouldn't make any sense.
The context is that OP is asking what's important for something that's only secondary to a game, and I'm telling him that what he's asking for is only secondary to a game.
OP's case is more like going to a forum for muscle health and asking what's good for your skin. Your skin covers your muscles, but has little else to do with them.
You're an idiot. The setting is part of the game and is not secondary to any other part.
If someone asked what factors made the best broth for a beef soup, and you said "the things that are important to a broth are different from what's important to a beef soup", that would make you an idiot. Even universal RP systems have elements of implied setting, they must, settings are essential to tabletop roleplaying games.
This is the last analogy that you will receive from me, good day sir.
>This is the last analogy that you will receive from me
Good, because I'd rather see some actual arguments.
The primary aspect of a game is how it's played; there is no aspect of a game more important to the game than what the players need to engage with it.
Your analogy doesn't work because settings aren't as important to games as broth is to soup. Without a setting, a game still works, but without broth, a soup is just a bowl of meat, starch, and vegetables.
>Without a setting, a game still works
Then it isn't a tabletop roleplaying game.
Yes it is, because gameplay is what makes a game what it is.
"Gameplay" is a nonsense-word that people use when they want to ignore specific parts of a game. It came out of videogames, where it used to mean "everything but sound and graphics".
Roleplaying in a TTRPG is gameplay, but even if your table hates roleplay and you only play 0D&D on the 'outdoor survival' map and you only care about collecting coins, that game still has a setting. If you remove the setting then you turn it into something other than a TTRPG (a board game, basically, but a boring boardgame because good boardgames still have settings).
1. Gameplay actually refers to player engagement with the game's tests of strength, skill, and luck. In the case of tabletop games, it's almost always luck, often times with some mental skill involved with more crunchy games.
2. "TTRPG" is actually a misnomer, and I hate to break that to you, but this is because these so-called "roleplaying games" don't have consistent measurements for roleplay, and arbiters practically never rule the results of roleplay consistently, whether out of earnest error (as roleplay covers so many areas of expression and theatrics), or meta biases such as player behavior or desire for a certain narrative.
Since there is NO STRUCTURE for ROLEPLAY, and it is judged on ARBITER WHIM rather than PLAYER SKILL OR LUCK, it ISN'T part of the GAME.
3. The structure of a game's rulings is unchanged by its setting.
You could play baseball in a flat field, on an incline, in the woods, in a fricking gigantic pool; but as long as you have bases, the player positions, marked lines and bases, and are able to throw and hit the fricking ball, it's still a baseball game.
Star Wars D20 is D&D but in Star Wars. PbtA systems are various flavors of Apocalypse World. Tactical Waifu is Lasers & Feelings with action anime-inspired terms.
If you still have any confusion, check the reply chains starting from
, and if you're still struggling with reading comprehension, then I can't help you.
>1. Gameplay actually refers to player engagement with the game's tests of strength, skill, and luck.
It may or may not include menus and resource management, it may or may not include feedback from the game and other factors that change the experience without changing the skill test. Few games test strength, and there is no such thing as a "luck test".
>Since there is NO STRUCTURE for ROLEPLAY, and it is judged on ARBITER WHIM rather than PLAYER SKILL OR LUCK, it ISN'T part of the GAME.
Ah lol, I recognize you now.
Cops and robbers is a game. Seethe and cope.
>t. Autism
Yo can you post more of this or what homie? You got me bricked UP! I didn’t know I needed super clown girl
Having an idea of the power scale. There is a big difference between street-level vigilante stuff like Daredevil or Green Arrow, mid level stuff like X-men or Teen Titans, and big intergalactic multiverse shit like Justice League or the Avengers.
If you try to mix them all in one setting, it's ALWAYS a fricking mess and extremely unsatisfying to play.
A way to look at this is similar to a problem in alot of D&D settings, where there are so many god-wizards and legendary heroes and secret organizations and LITERAL GODS running around that it becomes hard to justify any real stakes for a low level player party. Any serious threats to the world realistically be dealt with by these powers. Same thing if you're running a street level vigilante game for players. In a world where Superman exists, as soon as the stakes get serious the players are going to be like "Frick it, let's call Superman". You can only say Superman and Green Latern and Martian Manhunter and Winder Woman are busy fighting aliens in space so many times before it starts to feel like bullshit. That's not to say it's IMPOSSIBLE to pull off, but be aware of what it means for the worldbuilding, especially from the perspective of players.
>as soon as the stakes get serious the players are going to be like "Frick it, let's call Superman".
If Superman exists then this is totally your job.
But this is where it gets silly, because if Superman existed then Clark Kent wouldn't, it would just be supes doing laps around the planet putting out every fire and saving every cat from a tree. Superman is powerwanked to the point of not making sense, that's something you can avoid in an original setting, "Wow he's so powerful" isn't as interesting as it used to be.
If some villagers are going to die, Elminster doesn't necessarily care, the PCs are the only ones who can save them and those stakes should be high enough for most. But if they find new evidence of an impending demonic invasion then yea that's when it's time to call Elminster. I know some people don't like it, which means that they don't like having high-level npcs running around, but I think it's a fun idea. It's certainly more interesting than if you stopped the demon invasion as 1st-level PCs. It's fun an exciting to know that bigger things are going on around you and that it's possible to get in over your head.
As long as you don't have a literal-Superman who can solve all your problems faster than you can blink. Because then it takes away your sense of accomplishment, because you're like "frick, why didn't he just do that last week?"
>because if Superman existed then Clark Kent wouldn't
Tell me you've never even glanced at a Superman comic. Normally I'd add in "without telling me", etc., but frankly you just told me in as blatant a way as possible.
See, you have it exactly wrong. Superman can't exist WITHOUT Clark Kent.
>it would just be supes doing laps around the planet putting out every fire and saving every cat from a tree
No, it wouldn't be. Oh he'd do that for a few months or maybe even years, but eventually this would drive him into either depression and he'd withdraw from the world; or he'd go insane and take it over trying to "save" it and basically become Earth's version of Darkseid.
Remember, Clark Kent, the farmboy from Smallville, is the real person. Superman is the alter-ego that he puts on when someone right in front of him needs saving or when Atomic Skull decides to start shit or when he just feels a need to go out and save people. Clark is perfectly well aware of the fact that he cannot be Superman all the time without completely losing his mind or working himself into exhaustion, because for all his power he CANNOT save everyone and he'll go crazy if he tries. He does do some regular patrolling or other good deeds where he'll show up in Melbourne just to stop a random shoplifter, but that's not how he acts day-to-day because he CAN'T.
That's why in continuities where Pa Kent is dead it's really, really important that he dies from a heart attack, or an aneurysm, or something similar. Something sudden and internal that Superman COULD NOT have prevented, because if Pa Kent is going to die it needs to be in a way that makes it clear to Clark that for all his power, he is not God.
It's can be something like, say, a tornado. A fricking tornado. Motherfricker I just reminded myself of Man of Steel. Fricking hate that movie holy shit. It's unreal the damage that did to Superman. And to John Kent. "Stop, invincible son!" Je-sus Christ...
>Clark is perfectly well aware of the fact that he cannot be Superman all the time
Then he's culpable in all of the deaths he didn't prevent.
>Then he's culpable in all of the deaths he didn't prevent.
But surely he's also to be lauded for all the deaths he did prevent by making sure to take care of his own mental health so that he doesn't become a despondent loner who can't bring himself to save anyone; or a despotic tyrant who'll kill anyone who gets in the way of his perfect world.
Deconstruction, like anything else, is a tool. It has a purpose and it should be used for that purpose in order to achieve something. Kingdom Come, for example, is a deconstruction of the '90s anti-hero genre of comic books.
Right, because the deaths that Superman doesn't prevent have no baring on his mental health, because he doesn't make any sense. He might make sense if you scaled him down to how he was before he could fly and then swore never to give him any new powers.
The main problem is that modern stories treat superman as a meditation on power and responsibility, and he doesn't hold up to that (very-low kid-tier) level of scrutiny. He's just too frickin powerful, he's not a hero story, he's a theological thought experiment.
Bibleman worked though.
>He's just too frickin powerful
No such thing.
>he's not a hero story
He is *iconically* a hero story.
>he's a theological thought experiment
False dichotomy, he can be both.
Christian ethics have been a disaster for humanity
If that butthole Paul didn't spread his brand of homosexualry around I swear moronic posts like this would never be made
What are you smoking? Do you think that Christians invented opportunity costs?
You have the capability to work in a soup kitchen in your spare time, therefore every hobo who goes hungry while you beat off on a Peruvian basket weaving forum is on your head
"There's now way we can win against them; let's just call Superman!"
>superman arrives
>superman quips wittily to player characters
>player characters basedface @ supes
>superman attacks the enemy
>superman immediately defeated by genre-savvy bounty hunters armed with kryptonite weapons who've been waiting in concealment near powerful enemy who was bait to lure & capture superman all along
>player characters occupied by original enemy and powerless to do anything about this
>player characters able to disengage from original enemy are quickly killed by overwatching bounty hunters pulling security for the other bounty hunters
>superman frozen in krypton-doped carbonite
>superman frozen frieze freighted aboard bounty hunter ship
>player characters fired upon by the bounty hunter ship as it lifts off
>superman carried far away from planet earth by bounty hunters to never again be seen in your campaign unless the player characters somehow rescue him in some super high-end arc
Yeah, that was cool, right? Who's the next superhero you guys wanna call for help? Huh? Who else? GO AHEAD! CALL THEM NOW!
>But this is where it gets silly, because if Superman existed then Clark Kent wouldn't, it would just be supes doing laps around the planet putting out every fire and saving every cat from a tree.
This is what the Samaritan from Astro City is like.
One fun way I did this was to play my Justice League expies so unbearably smug that the players adamantly refused to invoke their help despite having a direct line to them
Never meet your superheroes.
Add a dash of common sense. Not everyone has a direct line to Superman, red tape and excessive scrutiny should be the mandatory price for even attempting to contact his network. Batfrick has ‘stupidly thorough background checks’ as a superpower…given Player nature, the PCs are probably dripping with criminality — this is the obvious lock-out of their attempts to involve the Justice Feebs. This also gives PC accountability and allows you to up the opposition in a plausible way. 4th-string JL interactions, until direct proof of murderhoboing is uncovered, for instance. You might be surprised at how invested Players will get when it comes to covering up the last few sessions of (seemingly) consequence-free sociopathy.
Stakes need not be larger-than-life for PCs. Having Galactus-level NPCs doesn’t mean they have to meet him, nor does he need to mooch on their couch. Stakes only need heavy repercussions for the PCs to be engaging. Tying super-juice to inherently vulnerable stuff is one of my favorite parts of WT, it makes targeting PCs easy regardless of how moronic the PL gets. The mechanic doubles as an in-character reinforcer, which is a very clean design imho.
>Not everyone has a direct line to Superman
You can literally just yell.
>doesn’t realize that background noise for Superman is equivalent to permanently hearing Ganker, 24/7
Filters have multiple uses, society constantly shits on validation measures — but they remain a necessity if you want any good result, man. I recognize the deep irony of pointing this out on Ganker, of all places.
PCs can scream for Sooperman. Sho’ nuff. The same goes for millions of nutcases, crackheads, and buttholes. You better believe that they do it too. Sooperman’s most impressive power is resisting the urge to burn his planet into cinders after 5 minutes of hearing god-only-knows-what continuously. Let alone having ANY sort of faith in humanity…guess the homie got ‘super-delusions’ along with the breath and such. No wonder he nails Lois Lane, a woman with absolutely zero amounts of (metaphorical) fricks. Picrel is probably a first date for a girl who loudly, regularly, and publicly told mobsters to eat dicks — long before she got a spandex bodyguard.
>tfw when no nerdy, shy, but extremely strong Superman bf to sodomize
This truly is a hellish life
There’s a upper-limit to how good it can get for anyone, regardless of social class or power. So there’s that, I guess.
>Any serious threats to the world realistically be dealt with by these powers.
They're busy dealing with other serious threats to the world.
>In a world where Superman exists, as soon as the stakes get serious the players are going to be like "Frick it, let's call Superman"
How? Does your superhero team have him on speed-dial?
Also it's worth noting that this has been addressed directly in DC comics, specifically a Batman comic where it was noted that a lot of street-level thugs are moving to Metropolis. Why? Because Superman usually doesn't get involved in day-to-day crime unless he happens to be right there (Superman is here to help humanity, not replace it), and even if he does, he's so much more powerful than a street-level thug that he doesn't have to harm them, just vandalize a lamp post to tie them up. Compare/contrast Batman, who for all his skills is still just an ordinary man and so has to treat even a street-level thug as a potentially deadly threat, since one lucky gunshot could in fact kill him. Batman will not kill, but he's got no issue with crippling you for the rest of your life.
>How? Does your superhero team have him on speed-dial?
Just fricking shout
If you're doing super heroes you cannot do "um my party is low level adventurers who would get fricked up by the dragon." Super heroes are a power fantasy. If you need your players to be low level street people instead of the justice league, then don't bother. You are just missing the entire point of a power fantasy and should stick to swords and shit in fantasy dungeons. Why are you afraid of your players being on the level of Superman and shit?
What about the power fantasy of taking on the mob and corrupt elites of society? Why do you think every team NEEDS to be the Avengers? Both "street level" characters and "world level" are valid.
Not every power fantasy is Superman and Goku, moronanon.
First, this is a moron.
The whole point of a superhero setting is having gods and nigh-omnipotent aliens rubbing shoulders with detectives and guys with guns.
>What are the most important factors when trying to worldbuild a good Superhero setting?
Aliens. Alien factions and empires. What is the equivalent of the Green Lanterns? Etc.
Mythology and magic is easier to phone in, since the material is easy to find and you can't really deviate from Olympus and Asgard, but you can't just use kryptonians and thanagarians. Even if it's just for a game the players would find it weird. If you have a grounding in old sci-fi you can mine that for aliens most players won't know, but having your own races to mix them in is still best.
>What are things that should be avoided?
Easy time travel and easy multiverse travel. I'm not saying avoid at all costs, but they shouldn't be something easily acessible for heroes or villains. It was fun when there was one or two timetravelling villains that were considered huge threats, but nowadays when Flash can just frick time and there are multiverse bureaucracies, it's just... banal.
>Calls someone a moron
>Immediately follows up with an awful take that's just as bad.
This why people call superhero stuff "capeshit" and hate discussing it. It causes bigger moronation-fests than DnD Alignments.
You're a weird troll and should remain quiet on all topics.
>I have no counter argument so I'm just going to scream "troll" like an infant throwing a temper tantrum.
I accept your concession of defeat.
He's right, you're useless, a chatbot would contribute more.
Someone choosing not to engage with you on the terms you desire is not the same as them having no argument. In this case, your "argument" is so blatantly moronic that there is no need to do anything more than call you out.
It's actually kind of sad that you're genuinely so stupid you thought your bait could be treated as anything but.
>"Oh shit, he saw through me calling him a troll. What do I try next?!? Oh yeah, "bait", that's a good one!"
You didn't need to admit defeat a second time.
It’s amazing how homogenous and interchangeable you bluehaired freaks are in your responses to anything you disapprove of. No wonder there’s a rising sentiment of “AI > NPC”.
You are a moronic Black person homosexual, with a stupid opinion.
EVERY FRICKING SUPERHERO SETTING WORTH A DAMN MIXES ALL POWERS SCALES.
Your own examples
show that Marvel and DC go from Daredevil and Green Arrow to Justice League and Avengers, you moron. Same thing with Valiant or Image.
>EVERY FRICKING SUPERHERO SETTING WORTH A DAMN MIXES ALL POWERS SCALES.
Name them.
If I did name them aside from the obvious ones you're just gonna say there shit on principle. I know how this game works
So you can't name them? And you were obviously not going to name Marvel and DC just because they're popular, right?
Not that anonymous, but Marvel and DC definitely mix power levels in stories, while simultaneously segregating power levels in ways that make no sense. Marvel for instance has the Avengers and FF both operating out of NYC, along with most street level guys like Daredevil, Punisher, Blade, etc, as well as intermediates like Spiderman. Yet the Punisher manages to kill hundreds of criminal a year without being stopped by the dumbasses who have powers but disagree with him, the Kingpin still operates with impunity, there are literally vampires running around killing people every night but only Blade cares about that, it's nonsensical. And the normal humans only concern is mutants, ignoring the numerous robots, monsters, aliens posing as pagan gods, Atlanteans bent on flooding the city, etc. If crime was bad enough that the Punisher could kill hundreds of criminals a year and not impact things at all, what the hell are the Avengers doing? DC makes even less sense.
Yes, I'm saying they're both shit.
Marvel has had multiple heroes,stories and just about everything to point out that the Avengers do not deal with street-level crime.
I'm aware of that but crime in Marvel is so bad that the street guys literally can't do anything, or act like DD and refuse to kill the worst offenders while attacking the Punisher (and even defending criminals in court)
Nta, but off the bat, Invincible and Wildstorm have wildly varying power tiers of superheroes and supervillains too.
Image Comics has a shared universe for Transformers, GI Joe, and Void Rivals, so you've got basically normal people with exceptional training, to people with high tech gadgets, to chemically or genetically enhanced super soldiers, to cyborgs, to aliens like Agorrians and Zertonians, to robots that are millions of years old, to outright capital-G gods that have been around since the dawn of the universe.
Except there is no “superhero setting” worth a damn. When a few dumbfrick companies bought a bunch of superhero properties and thoughtlessly merged them into one setting was when superheroes started sliding off a cliff. It might’ve taken awhile to hit the “freefall” part of that, but the tractionless slide and desperate clawing at the dirt is visible for anyone to notice.
Superman and Batman and Captain Marvel and Aquaman and so on we’re not created to exist in the same setting, do not mesh well in the same setting, and never had the same success as them in their own standalone adventures. It clashed, it made reprints a patchwork nightmare due to crossovers, it created spitting contests that do no one any favors, and it spawned the arena league superheroes that both oversaturated the market and never amounted to a thing.
Marvel almost pulled it off in the earlier days, mainly by building every new hero integrated into their larger setting, but ultimately they oversaturated until the backstories clashed as badly as the bought-out hero mergers of other companies (which I think they also eventually did, but can’t recall names so eh)
TLDR: Every hero should exist in their own universe.
>arena league superheroes
What does this mean? I googled the term but can't find anything
What about the setting of The Incredibles? I haven’t gotten around to watching part 2, but 1 made it seem coherent and downright great for many different stories.
>Hey, you know the guy who could basically take down any army or government single-handedly, who's so far above the law that the only reason we're not living beneath him as slaves is because he has the incredibly rare predisposition to always try and help others even at great cost to himself?
>Yeah?
>I'm going to sue him for reversible damages caused by actions he performed at great personal risk to save the lives of countless people, which would never be upheld by any reasonable court
The Incredibles was incoherent right from the start.
1. Do you really believe that people won't sue people over petty reasons that would never stand up in a court of law?
2. It's not stated whether or not the suicidal idiot succeeded in his lawsuit, IIRC. What matters is that it was highly publicized and started a huge trend of lawsuits against supers.
Do you know what stops trends of lawsuits?
Ripping people in half.
Or, you know, just having a legal system that punishes people for making clearly erroneous and malicious lawsuits that no real court would even entertain, let alone allow go to trial.
You do know that IRL there have been multiple cases where people have been sued for saving lives right? At least where I am there's specific legal protections called Good Samaritan Laws so you can't be sued for helping someone, in situations where superheroes exist as legal entities they'd almost certainly be at risk of being sued for hurting someone while saving them or saving someone against their wishes. In the Incredibles, Mr Incredible gets sued for tackling a falling suicidal person through a plate glass window and there's an implication that he was sort of known for incredible amounts of public damage.
The Boys has done irreparable damage to the superhero genre
>Ripping people in half.
Things heroes are known to do, naturally.
>just having a legal system that punishes people for making clearly erroneous and malicious lawsuits
We have that in the real world. Does it stop people from making clearly erroneous and malicious lawsuits that no real court would even entertain, let alone allow go to trial?
Mr Incredible isn't Superman, none of them are superman, the powerlevels are more-or-less sensible and mad scientists are able to operate on the same level.
You’re right and I agree completely. However, from a gameplay perspective mixing powerscales in an rpg is pretty much always a mistake and it takes a GM who really knows what they’re doing to get something other than unfun dogshit.
No, what's important is that all the PCs are on the same power level. Your characters can exist in a larger world, and even the top tier of that world need help from other heroes that are objectively not on their level. Christ, it's not like Batman has never enlisted the aid of Detective Chimp.
The only good post in this entire topic of screaming morons.
The difference between mid level and big intergalactic multiverse level is literally whether the hero is working alone or in a team. That's the only real difference between Captain America and Captain America working alongside the Avengers.
Good:
>Interesting factions of varying moralities. Make team-ups possible even with smaller fish antagonist groups in the face of a larger threat.
>Multiple planes of existence with clearly defined rules that can be used as plot hooks or exploited by heroes with the right knowledge and ability.
Bad:
>NO TIME TRAVEL, at least none available to your setting itself. A lone visitor from a far-off age is okay for a one-shot deal.
>NO MULTIVERSES, shit is the shlockiest literary device ever. If you want Bizarro-dopplegangers use actual clones, or shapeshifters. Your universe is plenty full with the aforementioned other realms.
Mutliverses are fine if done in moderation and aren't easily accessible. This just kinda reads as
>popular thing bad
>popular thing is bad
Usually a completely valid take. The average normie is moronic as frick and popularity usually degrades whatever is the subject of it.
That's being a moronic contrarian.
Not everything popular is good, but hating something just because it's popular is even worse than liking something just because it's popular, because it requires a specific kind of braindead arrogance and misplaced sense of personal elitism.
I don't HATE popular things, I just have low expectations of anything that has mainstream popularity.
Wait until you start to appreciate that Sturgeon's law applies to both popular and unpopular things. Hell, you'd probably have lower expectations of unpopular things if you actually made the effort to explore the scope of just how much unpopular stuff there is and its general quality.
Are they really popular though? I think multiverses are schlocky and bad without actually being popular.
Though, there's a recent trend of having a time-traveling time-police bureaucracy whose job is to protect the sacred timeline, Loki did it and Umbrella Academy did it and they both sucked. Star Trek has done it for a long time now but they're allowed, Star Trek is a midas-hand that turns schlock into gold.
Red Sun was good, but that was more of a Mirror Universe type thing, "Superman but with a goatee".
I don't think that this is true as a rule, but it's often true at present, in the sense that modern marketing practices destroy brands and ruin the things that make them marketable.
I can't stop thinking about Ninja Turtles. The comics, the toys, the cartoon, the movies, the next cartoon, the other-other cartoon, they were all dropped into the laps of different random-ass people with different visions and yet all those people turned out to be super talented and they all built up the brand. Everyone thinks that their next big multi-media project is going to go that way but it never does.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is a recent and well received non-capeshit multiverse story, but in practice it was less meeting other versions of yourself and more attaining infinite knowledge and forcing alternate realities on the world.
When you no longer have a villian of the week you are out of superhero territory. When you are neither a secret or a part of the public's daily life you are out of urban fantasy territory.
Multiverses are just the end-point of crossovers, which are schlocky and full of fanservice, which have always been popular ever since children argued which of their toys could beat up the other and who are now manchildren arguing about it on forums about fictional mashups.
The issue of course if that most crossovers tended to be one offs. So when they're constantly brought up and added to something that already gives audiences fatigue like shared universes, it makes people groan.
People went to see that multiverse spiderman movie because they wanted to see their toys interact with one another and that's why it did well (even thought it half assed the concept).
Something like Flash flopped because it did even less, the 'crossover' parts felt disjointed (what is Flash doing with Clooney's batman and who tf is that new supergirl) and they did the literal bare minimum.
The Flash movie could have worked as a movie where he needs to recruit and train new people to fend off Zod after messing up or one directly doing Flashpoint, doing both was awful
But you can also use multiverses to tell one-off stories with a large sweeping scope. The Marvel WHAT IF comics were popular because the shared universe status quo was slow-moving and oversaturated and required a lot of engagement, whereas someone who hadn't read a comic in years could pick up a WHAT IF and fully enjoy it because it's self-contained.
The downswing was when alternate-universe versions of characters become recurring characters and meet other versions of themselves and then they just become even more redundant characters in the already-overburdened crossover nexus.
I see Spiderverse as part of a new upswing, because it just takes the concept of a multiverse and goes hard and has fun with it. "Spider HQ" is another one of those multiverse-police-bureaucracies that I sort of hate, but they went so hard that I can't hate it, it's fun.
>If you want Bizarro-dopplegangers use actual clones, or shapeshifters.
Remember when clones and shapeshifters were considered shlockiest literaty device ever, but now that people don't use it that much, it is now "okay" again?
>>NO MULTIVERSES, shit is the shlockiest literary device ever. If you want Bizarro-dopplegangers use actual clones, or shapeshifters. Your universe is plenty full with the aforementioned other realms.
YES THIS. I ALREADY HATED IT BEFORE IT WAS POPULAR.
It just makes everything you players do feel so insignificant and inconsequential.
Superheroes should be willing to kill if necessary. I'm not saying they all need to be the Punisher or the Shadow, but Batman's "taking one life to preserve my own or to stop a psychotic from torching an orphanage is WRONG!!" is insanely stupid. Literally less effective than a regular cop. Even Superman and Spiderman have been willing to kill, though they hate the idea. All the "no kill rule" nonsense was just because of the Comics Code anyway.
A kill should feel deserved though. You can't just bring 'BoomerangBoy' on the screen, robbing banks, and have the players going "This fricker goes 6ft under". There needs to be stakes, and a setup that makes the kill worth making.
Maybe BoomerangBoy goes to Prison, and a few sessions later, 'ShurikkenSam' comes along, having been hardenned by the criminal system (and possibly recruited by the mob)
Batman is aware that he is an extremely vengeful person. That's why he has the no kill rule. He needs a strict code for himself.
relatedly, you can probably have it where both villains and heroes don't merk eachother on first encounter, so your players don't go 'murderhobo' at the first provocation.
So...
How does this help Gotham city again?
Because, well, we can see that's not helping at all and never will help.
Yes, but that has less to do with Batman's personality and more to do with the "eternal status quo" supers convention. It doesn't really make sense for Joker to escape at will, and if he did then it wouldn't really make sense for Batman to keep sending him to Gotham. But each story ends with him being captured, and each new story begins with him being free, and the writers never really squared the circle.
I don't think it's necessary for Batman to kill The Joker, but the question of killing Joker should be treated more seriously, I think the ideal plot would have Batman going to increasingly laborious and expensive lengths to keep the Joker contained only for Joker's chaos-powers to help him escape over and over. But you can't glaze over the escape, you have to show how the Joker creates chaos and then benefits from that chaos and makes it work for him, that's part of the charm.
At some point, a reasonable Batman will conclude that Joke should be killed, after which the Joker should move beyond his reach and other heroes should start arguing with Batman.
>How does this help Gotham city again?
You've made a mistake. If Batman wanted to help Gotham City then he could do far, far more with his billions of dollars and legitimate connections, with his resources as the owner of a major corporation, then he ever will be able to do as Batman.
Batman doesn't want to save Gotham, Batman wants to save Thomas Wayne, Martha Wayne, and Bruce Wayne. That's why he spends his nights wandering the rooftops, going in alleys and stopping muggings and street thugs, rather than targeting big crime bosses.
like 85 percent of the guys he fights are fricking crime bosses.
>like 85 percent of the guys he fights are fricking crime bosses.
No, 85% of what we see in comics is him fighting crime bosses because it would be repetitive to just see him beating up random thugs over and over again. But the majority of his nights, Batman is doing just that.
Even then, the crime bosses never really go away, do they?
>never go away
Because he doesn't kill them. And honestly, if he slaughtered the worst of the crime bosses and maniacs like the Joker who somehow have gangs of cronies, and set limits for the more reasonable ones, Gotham would start to heal.
>"Moroni, you saw how I castrated Black Mask and burned the Joker? You run numbers and gambling. You can kill street level dealers. Any innocents get hit, any heroin gets sold, any human trafficking, I'm going to disembowel you and shoot your wife. Otherwise, make money and keep your neighborhood safe."
>Batman doesn't want to save Gotham, Batman wants to save Thomas Wayne, Martha Wayne, and Bruce Wayne
Ironically the LEGO Batman Movie actually demonstrated that its writers really got Batman with one of its jokes.
>Dick Grayson: "Batman lives in Bruce Wayne's basement?!"
>Batman: "NO! Bruce Wayne lives in Batman's attic!"
Batman does fund all sorts of philanthropic endeavours to be far. It's not like all he does is beat up on criminals. Its a weird mischaracterisation to suggest he doesn't care about helping people. Especially when his rogue's gallery is, y'know, 80% big crime bosses. Joker, Penguin, Black Mask, Carmine Falcone, etc.
>Its a weird mischaracterisation to suggest he doesn't care about helping people
No, you misunderstand. Of course he cares about people. My point, though, was that Batman didn't set out with the goal of "I'm going to save Gotham City". He set out with the goal of, "I'm going to make sure that no little boy loses his parents to a mugging ever again."
>Especially when his rogue's gallery is, y'know, 80% big crime bosses
I don't think we have the same definition of crime boss, because I wouldn't characterize the Joker as a crime boss - even the version of the Joker who has a crew under him, like in the '89 movie or TAS. He more is a guy who gets a crew together for a specific goal (like robbing a bank), then once the job is done the crew part ways with the Joker. Or he kills them.
He's like a weird freak-messiah who can recruit clown-thugs from anywhere at will. He functionally is one of the crime boss (which is variously explicit or implied depending on the writer), he just does way less desk work than the other crime bosses.
>Batman is le white privileged cis man who beats up mentally challenged pocs
Twitter is that way, gay
That assessment of Batman is older than you are, friendo.
>friendo
Like I said, twitter is that way
Gotham City is overrun with homicidal lunatics with armies of apparently suicidal goons willing to serve them. The city is home to numerous organized crime organizations, street gangs, usually several serial killers, I think at least two homicidal cults, and a bunch of the above have superpowers. If Batman wanted to help Gotham, he and his squad of sidekicks would use their wealth, tech, weaponry, and training to SYSTEMATICALLY KILL these freaks, as well as killing, maiming, or crippling the run of the mill muggers, rapists, murderers, etc that they come across.
Frick off Punisher, you're even more mentally ill than Batman is.
The Punisher with Batman's skills, budget, and support staff could really fix a city. But I'm not Batman has to kill everyone. But no one? That's ridiculous. It makes no sense for villains to fear Batman anymore. A regular cop is very likely to just shoot Joker, Batman is actually a safer option for a villain than a run of the mill police officer
It's also hard to believe that he has never accidentally killed anyone while punching or kicking them in the head.
Yeah, really. He should have accidentally killed hundreds of people by now. People die all the time irl getting punched by unskilled, untrained weaklings. A 240 lb martial artist who regularly punches and kicks guys in the head should have racked up a nice amount of deaths and crippling injuries dished out by now. Also, he regularly throws razor sharp metal bats at people.
Batman's villains don't fear Batman, they're too insane or egotistical, it's almost like they know they have comic book villain immunity. But their goons don't, and they know it. Your average street punk absolutely should be terrified of Batman because they have no chance of defeating him, will be arrested at best or brutalized and arrested at worst. Batman's fear tactics don't work on his villains but they do work on the criminals and thugs that support them.
>The Punisher with Batman's skills, budget, and support staff could really fix a city.
He'd more likely burn half the city down in the process before anything got "fixed". And it wouldn't be as interesting a story either; Punisher is better as an underdog, a lone soldier fighting against an overwhelming enemy with brutal and underhanded tactics because all he has is guns and grit. He's even more antisocial and broken, everyone acknowledges he's a violent lunatic, and even when he displays compassion to innocents he has to keep them far away because his entire life is bloodshed and he's never going to stop until he's dead himself. Batman is allowed to be, and should be, more human than that.
>brutalized and arrested AT WORST
Exactly why mooks have no reason to fear Batman. He might beat them up. Oh well! A cop or civilian might just kill them. They've probably seen or experienced worse in prison. Batman punching them isn't something a hardened criminal should be afraid of
>"He won't kill me so I have absolutely zero fear of having my bones broken, my organs bruised or ruptured, and being incarcerated for several years."
For people complaining about realism, some of you homosexuals don't seem to live in the real world at all.
Again, idiot, you're talking about habitual criminals. They've taken beatings before. Hell, if they work for the Joker they know that they could die for no reason at any time.
>"But Batman might break my collar bone!"
The Joker might set you on fire or shoot you in the groin for no reason. An armed civilian might shoot you. The cops are very likely to shoot you. Two Face is 50/50 whether he pays you or shoots you. If you can't understand why those things are more scary than a guy who is tougher than you who you KNOW WILL NOT KILL YOU UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES might beat you up? Oh well
All you're doing is explaining that Batman's villains make less sense than Batman himself.
By your own logic, nobody should ever be working for the Joker. If criminals are always 100% rational and never do anything wrong then they wouldn't be criminals because the risk of being killed while committing crime always exists.
You're operating under the impression that criminals know everything about Batman's methodology and motivations when in reality he's just a really strong man in a bat costume who leaps out of the shadows and beats them senseless with his bare hands. The common crooks are terrified of Batman specifically because they don't know what his deal is, they just know he's insane and violent and a friend of a friend said the Bat threw Chuckie Sol off a rooftop and drained the body of all its blood.
Didn't everyone like the Keaton Batman BECAUSE he was more realistic in his dealing with scumbags than Adam West?
Another thing to consider about Batman's psychology is the likelihood that his violence would escalate over time. Another (fictional) example of escalation: Paul Kersey (Death Wish). In the first movie, scumbags kill his wife and rape his daughter. He copes with this by gunning down like 6 or 7 muggers. The second movie, his daughter is gangraped. He kills those responsible as well as some of their associates and some other rapists, and cons his way into a psyche ward to kill one. The 3rd movie, some random friend of his is killed. He responds with the massacre of every criminal in a neighborhood, starts a minor war, and blows up part of building. The area looks like a war zone when he leaves.
>could really fix a city
No, he couldn't. He could royally frick it up, though.
>Frick off Punisher, you're even more mentally ill than Batman is.
Wonder Woman is a theocratic monarch who regularly beheads her enemies with a sword and meets all challenges to her sovereignty with punishment of death. Batman's no-kill rule has always been fricking moronic when he's literally in the Justice League with people like Wondie (who has more beheadings than ISIS under her belt) and Hal Jordan (who was a fighter pilot who now blows up entire alien space ships and their entire crew on a regular basis to save earth) and neither of which is particularly bothered by their mountain-high body counts.
Do you have any idea how many people the Green Lantern Corps have killed? And yet Batman is supposedly strong enough of Willpower to use the Green ring on occasion, but he can't stop himself from turning into a fricking murderhobo after shooting the Joker?
jason todd is an butthole with daddy issues like every other robin but he's not wrong that batman's a fricking moron
>pic related, famous jihadi Diana "THERE IS NO ALLAH BUT ZEUS AND HIPPOLYTA IS HIS PROPHET" Prince presenting her trophy to the camera
Well, they're certainly the only two ways of being a mutant. But there can also be magic (which in most cases is alien superscience) or unique equipment that only you can use (also alien superscience). Once in a while it's human superscience but then we don't call them powers.
Batman also gets edgier as the comics code softens, he just gets edgy in a different direction because he lives in a totally different genre, the badguys in gotham got more and more gruesome while batman retained a silver-age moral code.
LITERALLY no one gives a frick about Wonder Woman.
>who regularly beheads her enemies with a sword
No, she doesn't. She has killed SOME enemies, but murder is never her first choice. Not having a "no kill" rule isn't the same thing as being willing to kill everyone.
>and meets all challenges to her sovereignty with punishment of death
Seeing as anyone who challenges her sovereignty is usually actively trying to kill her with the intention of seizing or razing Themiscyra, as opposed to, say, some hooligan in a costume robbing a bank, this isn't the scathing rebuttal you think it is.
>who has more beheadings than ISIS under her belt
I don't know how many beheadings ISIS has, but I'd be surprised if it's less than 100, while I'd be surprised if Wonder Woman reaches 100 even if you include times she fought in actual wars against beings of comparable power and so was willing to kill more than when crime-fighting.
>Do you have any idea how many people the Green Lantern Corps have killed?
A tiny fraction compared to the criminals that they haven't. The Green Lantern Corps are cops. They kill when absolutely necessary, like cops. Their Rings, being the most powerful weapons in the universe, ensures that it's not typically necessary. It's just that we usually only see the extreme circumstances where it is because that makes for better, more engaging comics.
Consider it comparable to how the kill count of cops in TV shows tends to be way, way higher than the kill count of actual cops in real life. Even in LA.
>but he can't stop himself from turning into a fricking murderhobo after shooting the Joker?
The no kill rule is always best when it's a result of mental illness. Batman knows he probably should kill the Joker, it would save lives, but the idea of doing it is the one thing that makes him queasy. That scene in TDKR in the tunnel of love is the only time the no kill rule has been compelling outside of maybe The Dark Knight.
No, he has the rule because of the comics code, you're just regurgitating the in universe rationalization of it. In his first appearances, Batman killed criminals when it suited him or was convenient. You're talking about a guy who is supposed to obsessed, vengeful, etc, and who traveled the globe and spent millions on training and weapons to... beat people up slightly. Killing the Joker is obviously the right moral call. Yet he won't do it. Despite having lethal protocols to kill other heroes.
At what point does a superhero setting become an urban fantasy setting, and vice versa?
In a Supers setting:
-Relatively hard boundary between the powerful people (who frick around with magic/superscience/whatever) and the common people (who lead normal lives for their time period). Powerful people don't have to have superpowers, they just have access to super-stuff
-Heroes and villains are brands, they market themselves, to inspire hope and/or fear
-Less about main characters killing each other, more about main characters getting into trouble and then getting out again, more of a status quo of conflict.
"Urban fantasy" can be anything, but Supers comics are defined by cheesy conventions, strip out all the conventions and you have urban fantasy.
What distinguishes the two?
Presentation.
Could you elaborate on that?
The separation is on how casual the news would be about someone lifting a truck and flying away with it.
If it's the headline, with most of the "experts" claiming it's fake/alien/russians: it's Urban Fantasy.
If it's drowned in the small news, with the local mayor proposing a bill to impose permits to fly while carrying vehicles: it's Superhero.
When you don or doff a bright leotard.
Urban fantasy is less of a genre, more of a writing tool. It's taking our world which is familiar, and then inserting magic to it, which is what a writer does usually when he's lazy and doesn't want to do a bunch of worldbuilding. It's not inherently bad having said that its just most people who use the genre tend not to ask questions like 'what were the Elves doing during WW1?', and that becomes more and more apparent the longer it goes on.
Superhero stories are similar- they tend not to be interested in making fictional worlds, however I'd say the longevity of comic-books eventually forces them to. For instance how Gotham and Metropolis replace New York City, and how mutants have a whole civil-rights thing going on. It's usually still close to what happened in real life, but questions like 'what were all the superhero's doing during WW2' have concrete answers to them.
I think a useful distinction is how I'd argue Harry Potter isn't urban fantasy despite taking place in the real world. And I'd ay it's because the real world has no relevance to the story: In essence Harry Potter is isekai, just minus Harry Potter getting hit by a truck. It taking place in our setting is solely an excuse to make Harry Potter a POV character.
I think probably the biggest difference between superheros and urban fantasy is Superhero's are pretty much never a secret, while most fantasy settings have to justify that there's some sort of masquerade going on to hide magic from the public. And if you don't do that you get Bright.
It's gotta be fun. A la Project A-Ko
Is Akira technically capeshit? Tetsuo even floats and has a cape at one point.
That's definitely a reference to capeshit but I don't think it counts as capeshit, it's punk scifi leaning towards fantasy, everything that happens is brutal and decisive and irreversible.
You can have a supers story with character deaths and irreversible consequences but only if you're paying your respects to the other conventions. If there were other beings on Tetsuos power level with different origins and different themes and different worldviews then that would be two steps towards capeshit, but he's unique and that's the point, and then he dies.
I don't disagree that superhero settings can have differing powerlevels but it's different when it's actual playing. You can solve this simple by having a good GM build encounters around this (in my experience most people here just build straight up slugfests of encounters which yeah is not gonna showcase each characters abilities).
There always needs to be secondary, third and 4th side objectives from fighting the badguy, to saving Civilians to maybe disarming a bomb. Lex Luthor and Joker can set free a giant robot destroying the city and planting bombs around children's hospitals, of course Green Arrow can't do much about the robot but he can help disarm the bombs and save Civilians while Superman fights the robots. Which brings the other issue that you need to have a group of players that don't mind not constantly being part of the punch out with the main badges, it isn't like DnD where everyone at the same time can whittledown the bbeg healthpool and your gonna have to field groups ofnplauers that are okay with doing secondary objectives time from time.
For the best example of how to build a multi-power level encounter just look at the Whitehouse fight from Invincible. The powerhouses distract the bad guys try to minimize damage while the others continually try to clear the field of citizens and save them so that they can go all out without any risk
You need a major cultural foothold to server as a foundation for the superhero(s). The mists of time is littered with a thousand forgotten superheroes trying to cost by on their powers. Oversaturation of entertainment has destroyed the wow factor of superpowers in the eyes of the people, so the hero’s must MEAN something greater than their surface value.
This is why characters like The Shadow are making a cultural comeback despite being an ancient property and not even having superpowers in most incarnations, while the endless pile of arena league superheroes from the last thirty years rot in obscurity within dollar bins in dying comics shops.
Which is why I hate oversaturated shared universes. The amount of supers should be small, like just literally the players and no others. If Batman and Superman were the only superheroes in the world that's more than enough. You can get away with a few more just fine too but not a dozen or more.
I think you can have plenty of superheroes but the majority of them should be regional, limited to singular cities or counties, countries at biggest, with only a select few that operate globally.
Yeah, or at least keep the majority street level. Tbh I even have a problem with the idea that Superman should be operating nonstop or globally. In my opinion guys like Superman need the normal life or they'd go crazy. Can't expect Clark to spend all day and night fighting crime, ya know. Guy needs some downtime.
>In my opinion guys like Superman need the normal life or they'd go crazy
It's not even just your opinion, though, it's an actual fact that Clark himself, as well as others, have brought up multiple times in the comic. Clark Kent can't be Superman 24/7, it would literally drive him insane trying to save everyone all the time (especially since even with all his power, he just plain can't), and he's full well aware of that fact.
Yeah I guess I should have worded it different. I bring it up because that's the take I always see people give. Like he can't have a day off or sleep or he's somehow failing the world or whatever.
Superman attracts more moronic takes than any other superhero. He's a man who is super, but he is still a man. Never listen to anyone who brings up that speech from Kill Bill either because Bill is a manipulative psychopath, you could take that whole speech and put it in Lex Luthor's mouth and it would fit perfectly.
Speaking of which, Luthor is a good template for a tentpole antagonist. He can have some good points, like what actually stops the supers from taking over the world with their super powers, especially if they aren't human? But he can also just be an butthole who doesn't want the supers competing with him while he tries to take over the world. You can give him fairly reasonable points without having to go full grey on grey. Or do go full grey on grey, I'm not your dad.
It's only a problem in DC's moronic setting because it has literally infinite crime and disasters all happening at once.
It depends on the setting. I remember being in an Injustice game where le'Superman but evil. I find that to be boring and overdone at this point. What I'd like to do is a superhero setting that revamps suicide squad not as basic b***h concepts of being beholden to the government or just antiheroes that actually try to kill the Joker like any sane man would. But a conceptualization of people can have second chances. Maybe a Death of Superman arc where in the absence of a god figure, people stepup. Many villains realize they had the means to make the world a better place all along, and will pick up where Superman left off. Rather than bog down the system with mechanics. There's only three stats.
>Truth, Justice, and The American Way.
Last super game I was in I played something akin to a power ranger mixed with Booster-Gold. If I translated that to my system, he basically maxxed out the American-Way. Hyper capitalist fake hero. If ya wanna be a brooding vigilante, that's Justice stat, when you wanna go high like The Flash with your powers, that's truth.
You use guns? Ok Red Hood/Punisher. That's most likely a justice or American-Way check, depends on how I'm feeling lol.
Superman is only interesting when he's evil.
Cynicism and deconstructions are a fricking poison in the superhero genre and I fricking hate it. Like, you can be edgy or funny or have complex characters without them being evil pieces of shit.
>Like, you can be edgy or funny or have complex characters
We wouldn't have had any of that without cynicism and deconstruction.
Superman is one of the most boring characters ever made as far as personality and central conflicts go. Making him evil is the only decent way to spice him up.
Either that or cuckolding. And I know which one I'd rather see.
>t. I don't read comics
I know we're supposed to respect comics as the first source, but honestly, has anyone ever written him better than he was written in Justice League or JLU?
Yes various times
Which writers did better and what was the difference?
So many times, most prominently (to me) in Kingdom Come, All-Star Superman, and "Whatever Happened to Truth, Justice, and the American Way?" (which you may know better from its movie adaptation, Superman VS the Elite).
I like his boring personality. If he didn't have his fast-thinking power or his other powers then he would be a total normie with an average IQ and a strong work ethic. A more interesting personality would make him less interesting.
Then you'll have to come to terms with the fact that you're in the minority.
What? Anyone that tries to change him gets booed off stage. People hate Snyder's superman, and it's not like Snyder totally overhauled the character, he just made him slightly edgier and people hated it.
Superman could be an interesting character if handled without the intention of going on a power trip.
The 2013 reboot first part of the movie where he's just some weird wandering god was great. If the rest of the movie had been just that, perhaps with a lighter tone, it would have been nice. Like a more wholesome Hanwiener.
Lois could have been a respected journalist who gradually get's seen as a conspiracy nut as she follows this seemingly random dude across half the world, a man her co-workers are pretty sure isn't even real or one man and she's just seeing pictures in the clouds.
It ends with her admitting (lying) that she went off the rails. The newspaper company she works for agrees to pretend that she just took a year off to travel the world. She prepares to get back down to work and put it all behind her.
The new guy in the office is Clark Kent.
The evil Superman thing is played out and BORING at this point. It was a fresh idea 30 years ago, yet the writers keep pretending this is the best idea since sliced bread.
Supes wasn't even in a relationship with Lois when this happened, on top of that superman was dating Wonder Woman around this time in the new 52 continuity.
That's a good one.
Based.
You have to be 18 to post here
You have to be under 18 to like Superman.
Why does /tg/ get some upset when people discuss superheroes
who doesn't get upset when people discuss superheroes
If heroes are using superscience, try to come up with reasons why that superscience hasn't totally revolutionized the world. It's fine for the insane villain to turn people into dinosaurs instead of curing cancer, because he's an butthole, but there should be reasons why the heroes aren't curing cancer either.
My reasoning for this is that superscience (and by extension lots of superheroics) is more a curiosity for bored rich people to dabble in. Curing cancer is legitimately difficult and you wouldn't believe the overhead for producing even a single flying car or laser rifle, so that stuff is more a novelty for Elon Musk types to mess around with while civilians only have access to normal smartphones and fossil fuels.
The problem with asking these type of question on /tg/ is that most people here don't have knowledge about superhero comics outside clickbait and the movies so you'll have a bunch of people telling you how to "fix" superheroes without ever really understanding the appeal or the genre in of itself
Superman has no appeal outside of being very strong and maybe getting cucked by Lois every once in a while.
This. It's important to make an entertaining and compelling supers setting before you think about doing "what if Superman was evil"
Just limit high mobility powers. Yeah, Ultraguy might be the strongest thing on the planet and has an ability that automatically scales him up immediately to twice the power of the next most powerful thing as soon as it appears, but he's in New York and you're in Hong Kong, and Raxxor the Devourer is also in Hong Kong. Ultraguy flies business class and needs a whole row on account of his muscles taking up so much space, he's not getting here in time.
I think this is an underrated advice for when it comes to making the setting make sense. People wouldn't be asking why Superman can't solve everything if he wasn't fast enough to the other side of the planet or learn how to perform surgery by reading every medical book in the library in seconds.
That said, I wanna expand on this. It's not just about movement powers, it's also about limiting the range of powers in general. Kneecapping the speed and effective range of your speedsters and teleporters is a given, but you should also think about other supers. If you want to have telepaths, clairvoyants, telekinetics, reality warpers and so on, they should have limited areas of effect to not be too broken. If your telepath can look into a brain of anyone on the planet, why does crime still exist? If your reality warper can manipulate shit on the scale of the whole continent, why doesn't he make it a veritable paradise with his powers? And so on and so forth.
Also, it's not like there aren't creative ways to obstruct broken powers. Like if you want a speedster who is stupid fast, but can't solve everything, just make it so that the condition of him activating his power is that he loses it the second he leaves the area around the spot where he activated it (like, say, a kilometer) and that it needs time to recharge based on how long the guy was using his speed from his PoV. Giving individual limitations and conditions to powers would also allow every metahuman in your setting to be unique and have their own strategies and tactics to using them in optimal ways.
>or learn how to perform surgery by reading every medical book in the library in seconds.
I was thinking about mentioning how it would be hellish for a speedsters to travel any significantly large distances from their own PoV, this vid basically sums up everything I wanted to say. The fact that Flash in comics can evacuate a whole city in a nanosecond, which would probably take him years to accomplish from his PoV, without suffering any damage to his psyche makes no sense. What, does his power just switch his mind into autopilot mode when he hits a certain speed and turns off all parts of the brain that have anything to do with emotions, boredom and social interactions or something?
The part about "I don't just need to read it, I have to actually LEARN it" is what's also been annoying me about all the "Flash reads a bunch of books and becomes an expert in building bridges".
>Flash getting immediately ignored right after saying "I lost my sense of self"
Kek
Some points:
>Reasonable spread of power levels. Basically, you should avoid having characters whose powers break the setting with stuff like on demand time travel, mass reality warping, just being strong enough to punch out earthquakes, etc.
>PCs should have reasonably similar power levels and their own niches. Though playing as a smarter Wrecking Crew might have it's charm if everybody picks same powers.
>Don't create too many power sources. 1 is enough, 3 is plenty 4-5 is a lot.
>Avoid general "do everything" powers. Magic itself is ultra general and can justify everything. Wards (shields and traps), telekinesis and copious amount of skill ranks in arcane lore are much more concise and easier to design adventures around.
>Corollary to previous point - avoid single use powers as your main powers. If you can't name at least three different uses for power, it's probably too specialised. Sensory powers and defences are among exceptions, but they are rarely the main powers.
>What are the most important factors when trying to worldbuild a good Superhero setting?
1. Establishing the nature/origin of superpowers. For example, are all the supers mutants? (What causes mutants?) Renegade super soldiers? Alien gods? Is it an absolute free-for-all? This will help players narrow down concepts.
2. How does law enforcement view supers? Is there a registration schema? Do heroes have secret identities or are they publicly known celebrities? This will have a huge impact on the play of the game.
Don't speedrun a superhero setting and try to make it a shared universe with tons of superheroes. I see this mistake all the time with new comic book publishers trying to make an OC shared universe like DC or Marvel all in one go and it's cringe.
Pick a decade and start a timeline. Build your universe one superhero at a time over a period of time and give them a back story, origin and a series of short and quick background adventures that they have already done and accomplished in the past. Give each one a quick and dirty Rogues gallery for these past adventures, doesn't gotta be great. Fricking Captain Boomerang and The Prankster tier shit is fine, sweet and simple. Use some irl comics for inspiration if you want I guess, Golden Age and Silver Age might be good to look into for some quick summaries.
See the biggest problem with OC shared universes coming into existence at once is they feel cheap and lame and nothing has any actual history so it feels fake.
Now you do your big crossover which is the actual game itself, a meeting of the supers who come together session 1 and maybe after their first adventure form a team ala Justice League or Avengers.
That's how i'd do it anyway.
I'm going to jerk myself off here a little more.
I'm writing a superhero setting for a book and this universe is filled with all kinds of crazy powers and villains and other worlds but the earth technically only has four separate main superheroes, six if you can't two of the characters partners.
Before that there was a G.I. Joe like team that fought a terrorist group like Cobra a bit in the 80's and disbanded in the later half of that decade and before that there was a cowboy rogue like superhero in the 1890's. That's pretty much it for genuine superheroes in the setting. The main story and the current superhero era in this setting kicks off in 1998 where the first characters story begins. After that I want to do another characters story then another etc and do a crossover later if it works out.
9/11 doesn't happen in this universe if you were wondering.
>spoiler
So... who destroyed Israel to prevent it?
I have a race of seditious alien shapeshifters in the story, Israel is never mentioned explicitly. There's also a group of evil space demons that are essentially a bunch of galactic Molochs with horns that consume planets life force for power as Galactus stand ins. The shapeshifters prepare worlds for sacrifice to the Moloch villains somehow, i'm working it out.
There's a planetary invasion I have planned for a crossover story that takes place in Summer of 2001.
There's also a Street Fighter/Tekken/Dead or Alive style fighting tournament with wacky fighters happening in the background of the setting I might expand on later.
Original setting. Make your player group amongst the world's first supers.
Common superhero origin - mutation, magic, extraordinary training or whatever. Just make superpowers come from the same source.
Low-power, perhaps even to the point of making it normals with powers.
Death and injury to PCs have to be real possibilities. Feel free to veto invincible builds.
This is the only time I've had fun with a supers game.
I don't really like common origins but as I was world building my setting I realized a ton of origins are connected and can be traced to the same or a similar source.
Normal people having conflicting views of supers/Government trying to meddle into supers business. Both feel like marks you gotta hit to make it good.
>What should be avoided
Thinking too hard about it
Well, what powers are more common in heroes compared to villains and vice versa, along with the reasons for it in-setting, is something worth considering and talking about here. For instance, are people with light-based powers idolized while people with darkness powers reviled? What about heroes with mind control powers, like that purple hair guy from MHA? That kind of thing.
>For instance, are people with light-based powers idolized while people with darkness powers reviled?
if darkness power are based on black magic is make sense. nobody will like someone who can be possessed by a demon anytime.
>What about heroes with mind control powers, like that purple hair guy from MHA? That kind of thing.
Frick them! of course the are usefull, but nobody will like them.
Do you want your setting to be deeply effected by all the supers stuff or do you want your players to relate to your setting? In other words is Reed Richards useless? Generally big two superhero settings act like all the big heroes started appearing around 10 years ago or somewhere close to that.
>What are the most important factors when trying to worldbuild a good Superhero setting?
people to save
>What are things that should be avoided?
not saving people
The world need actually react to its new reality, and that's something most super-hero settings forget.
Often it's just "everyday society", but there are half-gods using it as playground and nothing else actually change.
Your worldbuilding need to answer the question about what non-super-powered do in a super-powered world.
The best examples I've seen about this was actually in City of Heroes:
You had a gang who decided to dive head deep into demonology to try and keep up with the general powercreep.
You had a gang made from people who abused a "become Hulk in a single sip" drug, and ended with the effects becoming permanent at the cost of most of their intellect.
You had a sect baiting non-powered people with easy access to magic, using them as cannon fodder or sacrificial lambs.
You had a gang made from people with really minor powers who decided to go full backyard sale cyborgs to either amplify their powers, or to use them as battery for their robots parts.
You had a "good" para-army made from all the people with mediocre powers that were resentful about never making it big and took pleasure being the dedicated "anti-super" enforcement force.
You had a bad para-army made from pseudo-Nazi going for the mad science angle trying to cram *all* methods of getting superpowers into one.
And you had cops in the middle, trying to fight all of that with pepper spray, hand-cuff, and the Robotcop-3000-exterminator-walker equipped with kryptonite and silver-coated warheads.
Plus a bunch of others I forgot.
The actual super heroes/villains were above all that rabble, but not *far* above, and said rabble was still constantly trying to catch up and was an actual threat to any inexperienced or careless super.
You know who would be really good at tying people in outhouses and lighting them on fire? Spiderman.
How costumes are handled is a big one. Especially if you want heroes and villains, particularly female ones, to sexy/revealing costumes for reasons that make sense. For instance, I remember in MHA that Mount Lady's costume has to be pretty tight to her skin to grow with her, and she can't wear shoes when using her Quirk. How do you handle that kind of thing?
Well , as far as costumes go, I’ve been thinking about creating an elemental themed superhero and wondered what kind of gods or magic systems should be used to represent them? Can anyone T-shirt with us what the correct abilities to give them would be? Thoughts?
So, like, the classic greek elements is his thing?
His powers should demonstrate (or seem to demonstrate) that reality really IS made of the four elements. So he can freeze one villain and burn another by simply transferring the fire element. He can make one object harder by making another object softer (transferring the earth element). His gimmick and worldview should be all about greek philosophy and platonic ideals (through a modern pop culture lens of course), so he should be a muscle wizard wearing a toga and sandals.
If it were me then it would be four muscle wizard wearing togas and sandals and they would never stop debating with each other. To the point where you can't even bring them on stealth missions because they just can't stop arguing. They argue politely but they never stop.
I think a big one that a lot of people skip is races/species, which is weird because other kinds of settings like fantasy or sci-fi don't hold back on details when it comes to their elves, aliens and creatures. So why not add different races like mutants, eternals, new gods etc. to your setting? Hell the players might even want to play as them so they could fit the character into the setting a bit more.
I guess this would be the thread to ask in. In a future session I plan on having my PCs getting kidnapped to participate as "contestants" on an intergalactic game show(think the Gamemaster of he was a game show host, or more specifically the duck dodgers episode I'm shamelessly ripping off) and looking for ideas for what kind of events they would do there besides just a straight fight. I already plan on swiping Save the Civilian from Sky High(26th whatever player's enemies getting brought in as guests to go against them) but looking for additional ideas
>Smash Bros sandbag launch game, but it's with a criminal/innocent/animal
>Pure luck event where two characters roll a die against each other, highest wins
>Wacky Races-style relay race with flying/swimming/cross-country, vehicles allowed
>Who's line is it anyway masquerading as a quiz show (where everything's made up and the points don't matter! it's all about audience engagement)
>Dodgeball
Not sure about pure luck(though could work depending how much of an ass I feel like making the host), but good ideas, definitely getting a good plan of what to do here.
I also plan on making it semi competitive, with the winner getting a Universal Remote that can be used to connect any TV to any channel in the galaxy, with him reminding them to tune in for future episodes.
Knowing my group it'll either be a gag item that will get brought up every so often for jokes, or they'll find a way to use it to completely break something
Look at those ridiculous japanese obstacle courses and/or the wipeout show.
Since this is the rare cape thread on /tg/ I wanna ask you bros Idea I had for a super campaign set in Marvel comics.(My own universe so I can ignore all of the gay shit I don't like) So the idea is this, the party will be somewhat experienced after sessions of doing normal super hero stuff and when the session is near its end I grab a player aside and tell him this. You sit in your room and in your room you see yourself with a strange alien gun, before you can react you are shot and knocked out, you have just been replaced by a Skrull and you now play that Skrull, do not tell any of the other players about this, lie if you have to and remember to roleplay slightly different from you normally do, after all you are not playing you! You are playing someone pretending to be you.
So Anons that is basically my idea of doing the Secret Invasion event for my campaign.
Sounds good to me, as long as the player is going to get to play their "real" character again at some point.
It's a good idea, honestly go for it. My only objection is that PCs should have a chance to resist getting replaced by scrolls, maybe a saving throw here and there, otherwise pretty good.
Well, I'd imagine that with woman who have superpowers being around, feminism would get a major boost. Keep things like that in mind.
Not really. Getting superpowered doesn't make you smarter, prettier, kinder or more reliable, and doesn't fix women's typical flaws - especially since the ones they tend to have in overwhelming situations / crisis would basically become their everyday situation.
If anything it just make it way harder to ignore the ovaries when SuperDuperWoman decide to not save someone because he gave her the ick, to collapse on the ground crying and waiting for another (male) hero to solve the problem for her, or to majorly frick up something after insisting she doesn't need help nor advice.
Same with any other group/class/whatever. Now everyone's reputation is bound to a very visible, very critical public representative that's still just a normal-ass member of said group, but now with the power of causing massive damage (or to fail to prevent it).
It's gonna make shit a lot worse actually.
Now the average's people opinion on feminism/racism/judaism/etc isn't going to be dictated by carefully crafted media and laws, but directly by how many people Karen from HR saved yesterday in the latest alien attack, compared to how many Bob from accounting did.
And if hero X or Y is pushed to the front for PR reasons and does a subpar job compared to what the "male, pale and stale" usual local hero would have achieved, the backlash would be humongous since people would literally fricking die for a PR stunt, instead of just some company delivering a mediocre product.
That doesn't fly. That's like saying because Luke Cage has bulletproof skin, black on black shooting deaths would go down. If anything, they'd go up.
Look at what existing supers settings have done well. Or botched. Like, for X-Men, how people hate mutants much more than other types of superhumans. MHA in particular has a lot of exploration of the consequences of widespread powers, though it’s been a while since I watched it enough to go too deeply into things. If you feel differently about MHA, that’s fine.
Honestly I think that's one of the things that Marvel fricked up. The public accepts wizards, super steroid users, aliens pretending to be pagan gods, gamma irradiated loose lawyers, mutated astronauts geniuses who refuse to cure cancer, etc. BUT, if their own kid is born with abilities superior to their own, they hate them? And nobody ever just assumes Spiderman or whoever is a mutant. It doesn't make sense.
It makes sense when the point is
>everyone knows who Captain America and Black Panther are, we have problems with Mutants the same way we have problems with Hulk or Spider-Man because they can be literally anyone blessed with the capacity to do insane levels of damage with no oversight or accountability; literally any troubled youth could develop the ability to fire cancer rays or level a city block and that scares us
But a lot of people make it
>eww we don't like the word Mutant, literally every other superhero is cool and has le Funko Pops made of them
and that shit's moronic.
I can see the level of paranoia about mutants if it was directed toward some of the other supers running around too. I just find it ridiculous when Wolverine saves a family and is pelted with rotten fruit, but nobody cares that fricking Ghost Rider is running around.
>Like, for X-Men, how people hate mutants much more than other types of superhumans
I actually had an idea to reverse this dynamic in my setting. Naturally born superhumans are largely excepted and admired as celebrities, mean while people who gain powers through super soldier formulas, or science experiments are seen as freaks of nature because they are associated with nazi eugenics programs and shady government and corporate entities. Anyone trying to gain powers through anything other than natural birth is treated with mistrust, and there are some "DIY" super serums that are heavily regulated and treated as schedule 1 narcotics.
You could just throw in a Syndrome type villain who tried to superfy everyone (maybe also adding that one Xman movie plot where Magneto was trying to do the same thing) and it mostly just sucked so bad that now the whole idea is tainted forever. It doesn't matter if modern super serums don't reduce the subject's lifespan to a matter of months and they're only administered to responsible volunteers, the very idea of it is tainted by some butthole who tested something similar but worse on babies and then dumped it into the water supply of a major city before ironing out the lethal kinks. Nobody's going to trust that shit.
This sounds like Deus Ex's political discourse over the ethics of cybernetic transhumanism, but it's superserums instead of robot arms. It could work.
This is off topic for the thread but I dont know where else to look for advice on the topic. Gonna be starting a Mutants and Masterminds 3e game soon as a fratboy dudebro womanizer who tries to get in the pants of every female character in sight. Whats the best advice for role playing this type of character? because while I've played confident or flirty characters before, its never been on this level.
Whenever you rescue a woman, be she 18 to 108, demand sexual favors afterward. If she says no, guilt her and tell her you're considering hanging up the cape and leaving victims to their fates.
Like if you see a woman about to be raped, Robocop the rapist, then when the woman rushes to thank you, be like "you're beautiful! Why don't you show me how grateful you are." If she is hesitant, be like "Wow. Maybe the innocent really aren't worth rescuing..." And walk away all gloomy.
Take notes from Duke Nukem.
Shoot strippers?
Duke Nukem would never. He may be an egotistical chauvinist who objectifies women but he pays strippers and prostitutes generously, and would kill anyone for abusing them. He's Earth's greatest hero even if he is a massive douchebag.
In the first one, level 3, the strip club. You go "shake it baby" they flash their breasts, then explode if you shoot them
Yeah but you're the one who shot them for no reason. That's like saying Gordon Freeman kills all his co-workers in Half-Life 1. You can as the player but obviously he didn't actually do that in canon.
How many members does an NPC superhero team need to feel respectable as "the big leagues?" Right now, I've got six characters. Should I extend it to seven, or drop one to make it five?
Six is good, it also depends on if it's one of the major teams like the Avengers or the X men, because those tend to have hundreds of members but around 5 0r 6 "founding members." Mean while teams like Fantastic Four do well with four (obviously) It depends on what role the NPCs have.
Okay, good. I'm trying to cover the bases. I have a flying brick, a pyrokinetic, a guy in an armored battlesuit, a speedster, a size-changer, and a cowl.
Dystopia. Pretty much any superhero setting is a dystopia that hovers around police states with extra judicial executions. I'd just make a dark world with little hope or light where everyone including the heroes are buttholes.
So basically City of Heroes. Super hero settings are often dystopian
>Dystopia. Pretty much any superhero setting is a dystopia that hovers around police states with extra judicial executions. I'd just make a dark world with little hope or light where everyone including the heroes are buttholes.
Sound kinda similar to the setting of Worm
I've been toying around with a Cape setting. The main thing is the Department of Metaperson Affairs (they changed it from Metahuman last week). It's kind of a BPRD type organization with agents and liaisons for various stuff. These guys run the prisons, they research weaknesses for villains slash how to "cure" villains, they handle clean up and all the other shit like that.
I'm a bit worried that they'll take away some of the Wild West feeling of being a cape, though. Is it possible to keep the DMA, or should I scrap it
Have them be villains. Villains infiltrated the government or department of corrections to normalize capes arresting villains instead of killing them. Now, they're trying to use the media to railroad heroes for "excessive force"
>I'm a bit worried that they'll take away some of the Wild West feeling of being a cape, though
It's up to individual characters as to how much they cooperate with DMA, so you could always have the "cowboy" supers who don't play by the rules vs the lawful "by the book" superhero as a conflict in your story. Also the DPMA is a government agency like any other so it could have flaws like bureaucratic red tape and corruption that prevent it from getting things done.
Avoid lasting consequences for fantastic tecnologies. Avoid gruesome or exploitative uses or consequences for cool powers.
Whenever you're thinking, cool should take precedence over "realism".
At the same time, keep a idealistic status quo, slightly anacronistic and bland. Cops are good but just humans, criminals want money and profit, villains want to prove some nonsense related to their theme. No drugs, no rape. There must be a corny innocence and sincerety to the setting that allow people to see a superhero in colorful costume and not be cynical about it.
Embrace all the cornyness of codenames, names for equipment and lairs, all clichés and an overall performatic vibe.
Also, try to make the real life situation of your characters matter just as much as the costumed adventures. A dinner with the boss that keeps getting interrupted by crimes you have to go, solve and be back before he notices that the steamed hams are just normal burguers, for example.
Think Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, think Richard Donner's Superman.
What are your favorite terms for people with powers? Do you use different terms for people with different origins? (i.e mutants for people born with the X gene, Mutate for people who develop powers later in life tec.)
Those are the only two real origins, though, right?
>Those are the only two real origins, though, right?
There's also the non powered crime fighters, magic users, aliens and members of alien races as well as various evolutionary tangents like the inhumans, deviants and eternals etc.
There's five origins for superpowers, when you get down to it.
1. Technology. You don't have powers at all, just wonderful toys (Batman, Iron Man).
2. Natural mutation. No one did anything to you, at least not intentionally. You're just a weirdo-freak (Killer Croc, all mutants in X-Men)
3. Enhanced person. Through some super-serum or weird event, you gained powers (The Flash, Spider-Man)
4. Magic. You're not really that special yourself, but you know magic stuff that lets you warp reality (Zatanna, Dr. Strange)
5. Nonhuman. You're not that special...for your species. But your species have powers and can do things that humans just plain can't (Superman, Groot).
There can be mixing and matching, of course.
> What are your favorite terms for people with powers?
Capes, Parahumans
>Do you use different terms for people with different origins? (i.e mutants for people born with the X gene, Mutate for people who develop powers later in life tec.)
Not sure if I’m much of a fan of a superhero setting with multiple different power systems, so not sure
Might as well ask here. How are Ascendant, Prowlers and Paragons, and Savage Worlds as Supers games? I want to run a Teen Titans game one day (and maybe have them grow into adult heroes)
>Prowlers and Paragons
Only one of the three I've played. Pretty good, not quite as detailed as something like Wild Talents or GURPS, but still has a system that allows you to build a good variety of powers/characters and is a lot simpler to run
Superheroes should embody any of the virtues. That's not to say they shouldn't be flawed and given to evil acts but ultimately they should be good because that's the point of the genre. Going against this idea will make your setting cringe.
Idk. I think, if used sparingly, the fallen hero can make a setting more interesting. But as a general rule, I do agree with you.
So each hero would be aligned with a specific virtue? Would the villains be aligned with a specific sin then?
You could do that, but it might be more fun if you instead construct a rogues' gallery around whatever your hero's "theme" is.
For example, Batman has a recurring theme of madness and insanity throughout his run. So I think you can probably describe almost all his rogues, or at leas the big ones, in terms of some kind of insanity or other mental condition.
>Joker - just insanity in general. All kinds
>Riddler - Obsessive-compulsive disorder
>Catwoman: Kleptomania
>Penguin: Sociopathy
>Two-Face: Dissociative identity disorder
>Mr. Freeze: Manic depression
>Poison Ivy: Misanthropy
>Scarecrow: Phobias in general
>Ra's al-Ghul: Megalomania
>Mad Hatter: Schizophrenia
>Firefly: Pyromania
>Bane: Egomania
>Maxie Zeus: Clinical narcissism
And so on.
Invincible has opened my eyes to the merits of having saiyan knock offs in your setting.
The best way to have a good power level is to do all superheroes at street level, with Spiderman being the maximum limit.
The origin of the abilities comes mainly from athletic ability and intense training, perhaps some characters have some strange characteristics such as "pheromones", a bionic arm or even hypnotic eyes.
A street level game that has goofy and weird villains instead of serious realistic ones would be amazing.
goofy and weird villains with serious realistc one, but happens that the first one are much much more dangerous and violent.
the goofy collerful villain obsessed with bug, wanna use children to carry insect mutant eggs inside them.
The ninja mercenary and boss crime join force with you.
You mean something like Brickbat?
Like Lord Death Man from Batman? Got any ideas for villains like that?
>The Quizzer
A supervillain who styles himself after a quiz show host. He abducts people and forces them to participate in a deadly trivia show where only the winner survives.
>Pixie Dust
A midget who is good at wrestling, he robs banks.
>Ice Scream
An ice themed villain who drives an ice cream truck, and uses liquid nitrogen and his freezer to attack his enemies.
>Insomnio
A psychic with the power to control peoples bodies but only when they are asleep. Uses various gimmicks to try and put people to sleep or just wait around awkwardly.
I had a villain called Crossword in a game I ran, once. He was such a pain in the ass for my players to track down -- it was great.
Sounds pretty awesome
Writing plots around him made me appreciate why we don't really see good Riddler storylines anymore, or really any stories where Batman does detective work: it's really, really hard to come up with clever puzzles that are also solvable by your players in a timely enough fashion that it's more fun than tedious.
Also, relying solely on crossword puzzles as a gimmick was limiting. I probably should have gone with a more generic "brain teaser" schtick and called him "the Puzzler!"
The Insomnio idea is cool, if you have any more ideas I'd love to hear them.
Stupid idea: a "superhero" team in the same vein as the Suicide Squad or the Thunderbolts, made up of a constantly shifting group of convicts granted temporary superpowers by technology pioneered by their leader, Dr. Cliff Yeager. The group's name? "Y's Guys."
I'm stealing this. It's a shame you posted it anonymously, anon; you could have been rich.
When crafting a superhero setting, remember that building a world with a consistent tone and a strong internal logic is crucial. This may seem obvious, but many superhero gamemasters make the mistake of creating "kitchen sink" settings where anything goes. Although this gives players a lot of creative freedom, it often leads to slapdash worldbuilding. It's also important to remember that "superhero" isn't a real genre, but a subgenre. Blade may technically be a superhero movie, but it's primarily an action-horror film. Guardians of the Galaxy is a superhero movie, but primarily sci-fi/comedy. You get the idea. Find out what genre you your game is in, and craft your setting appropriately.
>When crafting a superhero setting, remember that building a world with a consistent tone and a strong internal logic is crucial
Not even remotely. Neither in fiction nor especially in tabletop games.
Most superheroes at some point fight some sort of copy or doppelganger. How would you handle this other than "clone" or "multiversal version "?
A villain I run, Holoman, loves to make hard-light illusions of the heroes for them to fight.
Hyper-realistic robots or golems or your mirror reflection implanted in your mind for the "battle in the center of the mind" scenario. Shapeshifters are also a classic solution.
Expies of A list characters and teams are gonna be noticed and seem like a lack of effort unless your going for comedy
So you know maybe the leader of the greatest hero team doesn't need to be a alien flying brick or a super patriot
>Expies of A list characters and teams are gonna be noticed and seem like a lack of effort unless your going for comedy
I mean the big two create expies of each others characters all the time and don't seem to have this problem. In addition it's almost like a fun game where the players acknowledge it with a wink and a nudge.
>So you know maybe the leader of the greatest hero team doesn't need to be a alien flying brick or a super patriot
It doesn't but it can. Then again you could always burrow from different sources and have the greatest heroes of earth team be comprised of expies of the Phantom, doc Savage and Tarzan for example.
Well shit, seems like the thread has hit bump limit. See you in the next one lads!
Bump limit should be higher than that. Are we getting autosaged?
There's a 7-day limit now because of bumpgay.
That c**t is still shitting up the board to the point that measures like this are required?
They're not, the mods are just overreacting.