We are absolutely swimming in superhero movies and Netflix shows these days

Mostly because D&D is superhero trash shit, just in fantasy worlds that are generally not modern.

Modern day environments are, in my experience, difficult to run. The world is very interconnected (cell phones and the internet can make it difficult to run an isolated mission), and it tends to really stand out when you do something unconvincingly or wrong. In fantasy land or distant-galaxy land, it's comparatively easy to rationalize away apparent faults, because the societies and technologies are radically different from our own. There are probably plenty of reasons why shit works differently than you would expect it to. But when something takes place on modern day, or even near-future Earth, shit that doesn't make sense is much more likely to ruin immersion.

Now, this may be mitigated a bit by the fact that superheroes and the way they interact with the world tends to be kind of a stretch anyway, but the flip-side of this is that it can be difficult to get a grasp on what makes sense for the reality of the world. On top of this, superhero powers are all over the place (in terms of both power level and what they actually do), and trying to balance them and not have anything break the game is a truly daunting task.

Why is Wonder Woman threatening that child with a car. You silly, you don't need a car to squish him.

are you suggesting she should squish him with her thighs?

Welp. This is a character idea now. Superhero parent that constantly embarrasses their kid. I'm taking this idea and you can't stop me, Veeky Forums.

RPGs are about character growth. Superheroes are about characters being born strong enough or lucky enough to do whatever they want and the consequences that follow.

It's not dubbed "Capeshit" for nothing.

Because D20 supers is not called that.

I've playeed Mutants & masterminds and I don't know, just didn't click for me. I want a sense of realism in my games, even if I am a fucking werewolf bashing spirits in WtF there's still some sense of realism, that it is supposed to be our world but these things exist. When playing a superhero it's just shenanigans to the max, impossible to take seriously, and why even bother? I could just watch a movie or play a game then. The only sliver of enjoyment I could find was to try and make as broken a character as possible, I managed to make a speed-freak that basically could be miles away in a few seconds, but that novelty wore off fast.

Because of the number crunching. People would rather play games like risus where you would add rules based on M&M, rather than play M&M.

They have, you just were never paying attention.
I hate to break it to you, but you aren’t even half as aware of the shit that happens in even your own hobby as you think you are, and unless you constantly and actively go out and search for information like this it will literally never come to you.

Because anything that isn't D&D has very, very limited presence in the public consciousness. Apparently The Adventure Zone just started a Fate superhero game, though, so we could see a lot of normies jumping on that bandwagon soon.

Most people I know who are into Superhero movies and whatnot either saw some 80/90s cartoons or looked up things on Wikipedia so that they can seem knowledgeable on the topic in front of other friends. Those kinds of people don't play games but just hvae more inteest in the fandom than the actual subject.

>Male superhero
>A mass of muscle and protein shakes

>Female superhero
>Dainty, conventionally attractive

This sounds like a pretty easy problem to solve, though. Put it in a historical, sci-fi, or fantasy setting. Throw superheroes into steampunk, or wild west, or fantastical medieval Japan.

Guardians of the Galaxy or Captain America should be somewhat easier to run than Batman or Ironman.

This.

Also,"solving" real world problems with magical powers feels awkward and dismissive of those problems, which means that the best superhero arcs need to be small scale, dealing with local problems. The problem that arises is that compelling small scale drama is the hardest to write, because it requires investment in characters and the ethos of a specific place.

This.
Super hero stories tend to be very strait foward and have low amounts of plot and character development. Some are good but the majority are bland.

Considering they both lift far beyond whatever muscle mass they have should let them lift, is that really the biggest issue?
Yes, I know it's b8
How bulky should male superheroes be, anyway? Muscles upon muscles to a grossly disproportionate degree? Or simply bigger-than-Mr.Universe Superman?

>Considering they both lift far beyond whatever muscle mass they have should let them lift, is that really the biggest issue?
It's a big, persistent issue that kind of breaks my immersion. Unless you're supposed to be intentionally trucked, I like my strong guys and gals to look strong.

>How bulky should male superheroes be, anyway?
Bulky enough to look strong without looking ridiculous. Unless their source of power is something other than physical strength like some suit of power or magic or whatever. In that case they can be skinnyfat and I don't care.

I'm just one of those idiots who thinks some modicum of thought should be put into character design.

I agree with the looking strong, as long as it doesn't look steroids-strong. I reckon having an external power boost granting super strength should just give them a "this is SUPER-natural" look.
Although I feel a magical power boost should only let them be skinnyfat at the start, if they're heroing/villaining, due to the rather active lifestyle it entails.

rpgs don't make that much money given the time invested.

That depends on how their strength works, are their powers additive, or a multiplier?

Thoughts about each case?

Supers RPG were a thing in the 90es and also briefly in the late d20 boom. There's more than enough.

To be honest I wouldn't mind a super strong male character who looks like a twink, just for diversity's sake.

This is one of those issues with a bad rap due to tumblrPolitics, but it's true that the wast majority of male characters are Schwarzeneggers and the wast majority of females are swimsuit models. It'd be interesting to have more heroes who are lean or skinny or strongfat just for the sake of breaking up the cliche.

Spider-man is a pretty lean dude, for what it's worth.

My group prefers superheroes, but we don't really see it as superhero genre

We just play it as modern fantasy

If you're a half decent writer you can create a fascinating backstory to build from

Additive mean muscle mass means nothing, a few dozen pounds more or less mass has no effect when your power is "I can lift 10 tons." This is typically how kryptonians operate.

A multiplier means muscle mass is extremely relevant. If your power is muscle tissue ten times more powerful than normal, then having more mass makes your power better. A lot of anime characters work like this.

>dainty and conventionally attractive
>bad
Marvel please go

>It's a big, persistent issue that kind of breaks my immersion. Unless you're supposed to be intentionally trucked, I like my strong guys and gals to look strong.
But you don't complain about Superman being able to fly without wings?

How Does Superman fly? Psychic propulsion?

Superhero Xcom would be fun. You could take control over some Avengers organizations and customize your own heroes by giving them different abilities.
You could fight with criminals, terrorists, supernatural threat, extraterrestrial threat and stuff

Then again, xcom would made good game in every setting.
Shit I think that I even played something similar when I was child. It was in real time though, something commandos based. It was fun. I remeber fighting some nazis, who were burning books.

That's how superheroes work in general, so I see no problem with their RPGs being like that

Children can't into RPG.

>Squirrel Girl (tumblr edition)
Please leave.

That's different though, and not something that holds a direct relationship to something we can observe.
>Inb4 same with superstrength
Yet in the grand, grand majority of his depictions Superman has always been big and buff. If this was something applied across the board this wouldn't be a problem, but even male characters who can get away with not being buff are often buff, and even melee oriented female heroines have pencil thin arms. If Superman was consistently depicted like a fuccboi, it'd be a lot less irksome.

Yes, or at least threaten to

That could help, though at that point, you're straying from the main current of superhero drama and might be losing the interest of some people in the process. My tendency would be to adapt the feel of things for the setting (like psi powers = space magic), and at that point you may have lost much of the superhero feel. I mean, if we just boil superheroes down to folks with thematic powers, then a lot of characters in my homebrew fantasy campaigns would qualify. So I guess that leaves me to ask the question: "what defines superheroes?"

This. I put together an M&M campaign for some friends but it fell apart before we started. Just as well, I wanted to run a WWII street-level "mystery men" story and the PCs ended up super contemporary though within the PL limitations we agreed on.

>teeny tiny feet
SergeantHatred.jpeg

Not Veeky Forums but I just completed Fractured But Whole.

Was pretty good game.

...

That's The Question right? Hub City being by far the worst city in the DC-universe USA?

Gotham or Bludhaven are safehavens in comparison.

Yeah they've really taken off, the most popular one has almost half a percent of the games on roll20!

We've somehow ended up in a timeline where superheroes are much more popular with normies than with nerds.

Interesting idea, I think the best time would be 1930s-1970s where you could base it on old comics and have superscience and aliens and stuff without it being out of place.

>that picture
Does the original dialogue exist somewhere?

>still using Roll20 as a valid measurement for anything

How is it not?

Superheroes are pretty normalfag friendly. Familiar modern environment and society, handwaved powers, soap opera drama.

Thank you, for fuck's sake. Superheroes are terrible and boring. Why would anyone play an RPG about them? This shy is for normies and normies don't play RPGs.

I'm waiting for aberrant 2e

Looks like one of those 70s Italian erotic comics. Jacula or Cimiteria most likely.

youtube.com/watch?v=6jJIVK-daGk

Thanks for you input, mobileposter.

A problem with superhero adventures is that they can easily feel railroady. As a hero, you don't have a lot to do when there are no villains around - and when there is a villain, you really have no choice but to go and stop them, because that's what heroes do.

Then there's character advancement. Getting new powers or finding loot doesn't really fit the superhero genre. Sure, you can increase the numbers on your character sheet, but that's not very exciting.

A good GM can work around these problems, but a superhero can be tough to run for an unexperienced GM.

/thread
It's the same answer as every other time questions like this get asked: premodern fantasy dominates in most places because it's simply the easiest to run.

>normies
You mean the most depraved and delusional Tumblrbums out there, right? If normies McElroy, they MBMBAM.

Simply put: Nobody knows how to run a superhero RPG very well.

D&D/Pathfinder is easy: If the GM is strapped for ideas, all he has to do is send the PCs down some monster-filled hole for a very simple reason (retrieve something, kill a specific thing, etc).

Are superheroes supposed to have classes?
I know people like to mention stuff like a "speedster" or a "brute", but it's not like those things are very indicative of their role and challenges, plus, they don't have any synergy for team ups.
I really think superheroes are about zany creative ideas that dodge existing conventions. That comes into conflict with and RPG where the conventions are supposed jotted down into rules. The best an RPG can do is give you a list of abilities to buy from and rely on you to connect them together somehow.
Spiderman has all kinds of powers derived from spider associated traits, if you were to stat up something like that you'd need to list every power associated with every animal depending on the chosen origin. Adn that's just for animal motifs. There's all sorts of inventions floatin around in popular superhero fiction, powers dinspired by mythology, colour wheels, specific weapon or fighting styles... The genre is a contest on who can invent the most out-there idea. Or it used to be, now it's all about legacy heroes constantly being praised by their predecessors and the plot.

Comics are also pretty easy. Don't have any ideas? Doctor Evil is attacking all the banks in the city with his army of crime-bots. What do you mean he's in prison because the party brought him in two sessions ago? Shut up, crime-bots.

Because people who play tabletop RPGs don't want to be heroes.

They want self indulgent, inoffensive, non-compromising power fantasies and fantasy world simulators. They want to retreat to the security of their character sheets and alignment systems- Why do you think point buy is so popular? Players can't stand having any negative numbers on their sheets. Do you think any of these nerds would tolerate their character having a 'weakness' like kryptonite? They want to be 'Lawful Good' while still killing unarmed captives and killing monsters for their treasure. Why do you think there are so many posts about Paladins le cleave and smite I AM the lawful authority xd shitposting? They don't want to play heroes, they just give lip service to heroics to justify what they do in game.

Actual super HERO games are superb. Actually having your characters forcing themselves to do the right thing, and defeat evil, and actually be GOOD people is a great roleplaying experience. It can still be a great power fantasy and fun game, but very few neckbears and especially nobody on this contrarian website wants to play good people with super powers that help them to do good. Not "shoot the villain with a sniper rifle from a mile away after leading him into a trap", not "mind control a crowd of people to fight for you", not edgy anti heroes who want to be the 'good guy' but yet still kill people, torture for information, or take rewards for their actions. But actual, real, legit super HEROES.

There's nothing boring about Super Heroes. It's just that none of you want to play them.

(You)

you explained exactly why in the same post. I am fucking sick of superheros.

This:
I've run both DnD and M&M. DnD was signifcantly easier, especially to improv. All I need is a few choice picks from the monster manual and three or four npcs and we're good to go.

For a game like M&M making enemies is much more intricate. I need to give them cool powers with interesting weaknesses etc, come up with a reason for the heroes to fight them, etc. Not only that, but character creation is more intricate and intensive, juggling points, building arrays, getting approval from the DM. Whereas for DnD its just Class Race Background Go.

>hacking the baron munchausen parlor game for use as a superhero rpg
y or n?

Superman tends to be a multiplier, I think. Relatively speaking he is as far above Supergirl in strength as two humans of their build/height/weight would be in relation to one another.

That said, there is a certain degree of strength regardless, since in the Flashpoint event Kal had strength, speed etc. but on a malnourished frame.

Squirrel girl is good though

There are tons. They've been in steady production since the early 80's man. Marvel and DC have multiple rpg's based on their heroes, some books only consisting of stats for iconic heroes.

And yet you just can't make it compelling.

There's a difference between the number of RPGs created and how often any of them are actually played.

The latter is what I actually meant.

>Squirrel girl is good though

I can't deal with the art. It looks like a webcomic. I want to give it a shot, but it melts my eyes every time I try.

I'm not the person you're replying to, and I don't necessarily discount Roll20, but it's just one niche, and stats vary significantly even between online gaming sites. Notice how Savage Worlds has a 6x bigger piece of the pie here. Not that this undermines anything that was being said about superhero games (where you have to believe that such a small percentage is indicative of something, even if you grant that statistics from other places could vary widely).

Because few make them fun. Same reason god mode is boring in games. If you're super powerful and don't have many threats, then there is no tension and it gets boring.

On the other hand, if you do make it tough as a superhero, then you don't feel like that much of a hero and there are better games for it.

It's a tough balancing act for a game. You have to make it challenging enough to not get bored, but also not so challenging that you feel like your powers mean fuck all. And a lot of games just suck ass at finding that balance.

What's CoreRPG?

>On the other hand, if you do make it tough as a superhero, then you don't feel like that much of a hero and there are better games for it.
Honestly, that was my problem with Godlike. You're a superhero in WW2! Except you're flimsy as fuck and can't really go around superheroing unless you dump a whole shitload into Heavy Armour.

Squirrel girl is just the other side of drawing like liefeld

>Getting new powers
>doesn't really fit the superhero genre.

Anyone have experience running this? It's more Teen Titan level from what I understand, which sounds like it solves a lot of issues anons seem to be having powerlevel wise.

It's not that bad, it's not that great but there's definitely been some worse art in marvel books.

I came here to mention this. PbtA games and/or teen drama aren't for everyone, but both are in my wheelhouse and this might be one of the best games I've run and played in.

I am also of the opinion that super hero movies are good despite being super hero movies.

The power classification system in Worm was pretty good for that, and Brennus does something similar; Categorize the effect a power has, regardless of origin, and rank its power level

Mover Has a power enhancing mobility
Shaker Has a power with an area of effect
Brute Has enhanced strength or durability
Breaker Can shift into another state
Master Can control others or create minions
Tinker Can create or alter devices with futuristic technology
Blaster Is a ranged, offensive threat
Thinker Focuses on information gathering
Striker Has a power that is melee-ranged or touch-based
Changer Can alter their form or appearance
Trump Can manipulate powers in some capacity
Stranger Focuses on stealth or infiltration

Knowing a character has a high Mover rating, like a speeder or teleporter, means knowing to counter with area-of-effect Shaker powers and knowing someone's high in Striker means keeping your distance.

So Spiderman's powers could be quantified as mainly a Mover/Brute, but his spider powers give him low ranks in Thinker (spider-sense), Striker (wall-crawling and the 'Mark of Kaine'), and Shaker and Blaster because of his web. Oh, also Thinker for making the web and spider tracers and whatnot. Honestly, the system works better with someone who hasn't been around long enough for their powers to change and get rebooted. He has wrist stingers now, apparently?

On the site it says: "The CoreRPG ruleset is designed as a general framework to play any role-playing game system on the Fantasy Grounds tabletop, especially for game systems that are not specifically supported."

So I guess it's a collective "other".

>saves a guy cause he sees he's in danger
>cold clocks him when he turns out to be a cunt

Is the Question the best paladin?

Maybe some sort of narrative system would work best, where it's less about defining the physics of a superhero's abilities, and more about how they influence the story. I'm not a big fan of that sort of narrative game, because it ruins my sense of immersion, but maybe it would better represent the amorphous powers at play.

>thinks some modicum of thought should be put into character design.
How would you even determine such a thing unless the artist gave an interview?

>To be honest I wouldn't mind a super strong male character who looks like a twink, just for diversity's sake.

>how to run a superhero RPG very well.
>If the GM is strapped for ideas, all he has to do is send the PCs down some [EVIL LAIR] for a very simple reason (retrieve something, destroy a specific thing, etc).

Aren't you late for another deal with Mephisto Parker?

Half the Titans are broken as fuck, they just hold the idiot ball far more often than their elders because they rarely get solo comics.

>Are superheroes supposed to have classes?
No. That's why the best supers systems are point buy, like Mutants and Masterminds and Hero System, giving you lists of effects you can flavor as you wish.