WITH GREAT POWER ...

Comes this rambling.

Yes, it is I, Alcar, on the ye olde topic of super heroes and rpgs. Today I am going to begin with the evil known as tone and go from there. By tone I mean: the comics age a story is set in. The Golden Age (Superman's debut - the end of WWII) was the age of the classical super heroes fighting evil and injustice with their titanic powers. For example. Superman once brought Stalin and Hitler to the UN in some pre-WWII comics. The supervillain only showed up rather late. The Silver Age (aka the marvel age) changed heroes, and made them human, gave them flaws, but still saw them fighting the Good Fight (very few of them ever killed, and fewer died). After this (1970 ish), things get hazy. You get the Bronze Age (roughly the death of Gwen Stacey, introduction of the Wolverine type etc.) that lasts until the early 80s, where you get Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns, which basically deconstruct (or, perhaps, respect) the superhero and examine it in rather gritty, nasty terms. The result of THAT was the 80s Angst Shinola with lots of whining, anti-heroes etc.. The 90s were mostly flashy, image-driven comics with the substance of tissue paper as far as the super hero genre went. Then you get Astro City that sets super heroes in the real world, but keeps them heroic.
So, to sum up:
Golden Age - four-colour, Fight For Truth, Justice, And the American Way.
Silver Age - Heroes become Real People With Real Problems, but still do the above. (Some of that can be attributed to the comics code authority, iirc. Golden age heroes would incinerate nazi spies without a twinge of remorse. The silver age was filed with codes against taking life.)
Bronze Age - Angst Angst Angst, anti-heroes, angst, wolverine clones abound. Take self way too seriously.
The 90s - All Style, no Substance. (Incinerate innocent bystanders without remorse.)

What's this have to do with super hero games? Why, everything. For better or worse, most games are set to work in one (or more) periods of comic history. The key point in these games is hero. The characters are above the common man, and superior to them. Sometimes this is because they do the Right Thing, othertimes it is because they do the Right Thing in spite of Being Hated. (For example, a group of heroes sworn to protect the people who hate them. They are known as homo stupido.)

The problem inherent in super heroes as RPGs seems, to me, is both a question of tone and playability. Tone works if the players and GM understand what kind of game is being run. Games can have super-powered types and not be superhero games quite easily (i.e. the TV show Millenium): it's more a question of the how and why the powers are used. The super hero is above everyone else, superior to them, whereas someone with a cool trick may not be. Their powers are greater, and so too are their faults.

With that out of the way, the playability issue comes into games. One, no one is going to play Superman. For a few reasons. The biggest is that, frankly, who would want to? He's bland, and boring. The other is that he is way too powerful for a game to really be fun (Though a Smallville-style variant could work). This presents a problem: How can a game account for heroes that range from Batman the normal to Iron Man in armour to Superman, except to put them together, and then expect it to work. IMO, it can't.

So a superhero game needs to define the limitations it's putting on powers, but also keep in mind that they need to remain superhuman and yet, after all is dead and done, be able to be challenged by threats. But some players take offence to the idea of the PCs having limits, even of what powers they can acquire. To each his own, but no game has worked that can incorporate all the power levels to my knowledge. It simply doesn't work for starting characters.

So we need a focus in tone (and the next time I pick up a Dystopian America setting I may scream), power levels, and finally theme. Do you make a character first and build powers after, or powers and then character? Do they have family? Secret Identities? Work for governments? Take down dictators? Live in the "real" world? All these need to be addressed, if only from a setting perspective. What kind of weaknesses are allowed? phobias? Do we want heroes, or basketcases? How do you ensure the characters DO heroic things? And, most importantly, if you want to use comic-book style, how do you prevent them from dying?

I could go on. For various reasons the superhero RPG is probably the hardest to create (it's not that big for that reason more than most others, I think), and the problem of the powers is one not likely to be resolved in most games, not if they want a rules-light system .... so, any ideas? Thoughts? I am half-tempted to look on this as a challenge and try to design a workable rules light superhero system....