Why are superhero comics so popular yet superhero RPGs are a tiny little niche?

Superhero comics aren't popular. Superhero movies are.

D&D is a superhero RPG in a fantasy setting.
Superhero RPGs also wouldn't work because players generally like to do whatever they like, not constantly save people from super villains.

why are superhero movies so successful when nobody hates superhero comics more than superhero movie-goers?

RPGs require abstract thinking, math, imagination, planning...witch are linked to IQ and mental power, thus average capeshit eater wont engage with.

Partly because RPGs are a niche to begin with, and the mainstream games in the niche devour the attention of practically everyone looking to get some play done.

All the systems/themes that aren't those established brands tend to be niches.

The same logic can pretty much be applied to western Comics.

HERE IS THE ANSWER
superheroes are not a power fantasy

they're soap opera characters whose role is to provide emotional drama and petty interpersonal conflicts

their adventures don't revolve around fighting and outsmarting people so much as they revolve around bickering with their supposed teammates and indulging in flimsy vigilante politics.

this isn't something that can happen easily in a RPG

You're free to go back to Africa.

We did. People called it "colonialism" and generally disliked the idea.

Sounds like a personal failing.

>It's hard to make a fun superhero system
It isn't. Hero System has been around for decades.

The problem is that if you want to simulate super heroes, you need quite a bit of math and granularity which makes for systems more complex than a lot of people are willing to try.

Superhero comics aren't popular, the capeshit movies are. Comics have to resort to either shock value or pandering to retarded tumblrfags with shoehorned grrrll power shit to even break even, otherwise they're in the negative and the comic book industry is overall a dying one.

Stop reading Marvel

Superhero comics have a built up continuity and lore. They are an immersive world that rewards exploration, because the more you read, the more the pieces fit together. It's examines most elements of its own story very thoroughly from every angle.

This rewards a narrative experience, like a comic format (or film)

However, power scales on comics don't balance well. Plot holes develop, that would be easily exploited by PCs without excessive cleverness. The "game" nature would break down into "Do X and Win" and that's NOT FUN. If the game holds true to the lore, the plot holes and mechanics make for a dull game. If the game fails to hold to the lore, then disappoints fans, and is rejected.

Now, fantasy RPGs. Fantasy RPGs are by nature huge sandboxes, even when they run a linear plot. They also have huge constructed lores, and while exploring them can be rewarding, depending on your GM, they can also be safely ignored. The game mechanics tend to be 'balanced', they tend to scale well (for the scope of the game you're in), and the rewarding aspects of play are the narratives created by the course of play. "Oh man, remember when my thief tricked the giant into fighting that Ogre, then backstabbed both of them?"

These narratives are interesting to the people who played them, because of the "you had to be there factor". But they are dull to audiences at large. Why should anyone care what your thief did, it's a story without much external merit. Because the game's mechanics balance things, you don't get high drama universally relatable narratives that you would get in Superhero stories. The built up lore, that people like learning about through character development in Superhero stories, is instead presented as background details prior to character creation, and in small bits as background during RPG fights or plot events. The lore is background, and often not character related.

You're right, the locals took it very personally.

>superheroes are not a power fantasy
But that's WRONG you fucking retard. God I wish you subhumans stopped trying to reinvent and overthink everything.

Not just superhero comics, normies just don't give a shit about comics in general and think all of it is kiddy shit

Yes they are the classic comic book hero is a male power fantasy. Just look at these overbulked, oversexualized figures that no female would ever be attracted to

you're free to go kill yourself and return to non-existence

The comics suffer from generally having a bunch of people who couldn't pull their weight as "proper" authors write scripts, month after month after month after month long after anyone had any ideas, inspiration or fucks to give left.

The movies don't have to sustain the plotlines beyond all sense, instead no matter what degree of continuity there may be between them, the iron clad commandment is that every movie must tell a story on its own from start to finish. This doesn't just mean they won't have to go to the lengths that result in nothing but tired bullshit, it means they outright cannot do that.

And whether Hollywood is creatively drained or not, they can do some nifty scenes and special effects at times through sheer budget muscle if nothign else. Instead of having some hack artist spitting out issues on the clock.

Not that this means every movie is good, they can fuck up both story and visuals really bad at times. But they have a much better chance than the comic,s and deliver accordingly.

i'm having trouble wrapping my head around your point. just to be clear, you don't think superheroes were intended as a power fantasy? you don't these characters were originally designed so that young boys would think "gee whiz, wouldn't it be cool if i could fly around and beat up the bad guys"?

maybe back in the 1940s they were. But they very quickly became soap opera characters and haven't recovered in over half a century

Power fantasy soap characters.

You are making things very mutually exclusive for no real reason

I fondly remember the moment my.players realised this.

They're around level 4 and had been fighting through a dungeon and came across the end boss of sorts an Otyugh behind an iron viewing cage.

It's normally been pretty docile as the dungeon denizens keep it well fed but the players decided to anger it so a combat ensues where it smashed through the iron bars and came at them.

The barbarian player pipes up and says 'wow that's bullshit it could just bludgeon through prison bars, you're always shitting on us GM'

So I explain to him that by the rules his character can do the same and better since his character is stronger than this thing.

Minds blown.

Soap opera doesn't mean that they're not still power fantasy. Kids still want to be Superman or Batman or Wolverine.

But high fantasy PC's are basically superheroes in their own right. They (sometimes) just lack the names

>Why are superhero comics so popular yet superhero RPGs are a tiny little niche?
>Conversely, why are fantasy RPGs so popular but fantasy comics are a tiny little niche?

>Why is visual humor not more previllate in books?
>Why is word play not appreciated more in movies?

A lot of not-so-straight-forward reasons, but all power super people are best written in stories where villians and unfortunate timing is all at the whim of the writer.

Most of the problem with the genre is that it is a power fantasy. It leads to stop over the top stuff like Superman, or low level heroes like Spiderman/squirrel girl one punching Galactus because.

That on top of the companies being too invested in the IP to tell a good story.

>comics
>one piece

kys

>soap opera characters
That has now to do with being the company having to much intangible capital invested in chracters.

They can't die, grow, or change in any meaningful way outside of a one off/alternate time line. So all you get is angst without meaningful conflict.

None of which has anything to do with whether they're power fantasy or not.

>Sequential panels of art and text (usually presented in text bubbles or narration boxes) used to tell a story not being a comic

It's MANGA, dad! Gawd!

Seeing Dr. Strange really makes me want to get back into tabletop and play a magic user instead of basic fighters and rogues like I usually do.

>Why are superhero comics so popular
Are they? Last time I checked they're a dying genre. Due to their infinite and downright incomprehensible reboots, universe resets, parallel timelines and alternate histories comic book continuity has become incomprehensible to all but the most diehard readers, and said diehards are now being directly insulted by the comicbook industry through pandering to SJWs.

Marvel and D.C. now mostly try to make big bucks through blockbuster films that happen to feature superheroes.

Uhm, akshuarly it's Bandes Dessinées Japonaises!

Aren't they dying slower than the rest of comic books?
I mean even Heavy Metal has been dead for a while