When Genres Collide

This is the first in my series of (hopefully) weekly columns talking about various design issues in different mediums. I have a certain aesthetic sense in how all things gaming and literary work, and I hope to share with you all some of my insights. I’ll also talk about various game designs, provided it doesn’t interfere with actually making money from them.

As I was making the internet rounds at work, I came across an excellent article: The Problem with the X-men. One of the author’s problems (he lists more than one Problem) is that there are too many things crammed in to the X-men: time-travel, aliens, clones, etc. In an effort to make new and exciting storytelling, creators often throw in other genres outside of the core themes as part of spicing it up. While I understand that this is now part of the continuity of these works, it offends my sense of design aesthetics, and not just in comics either.

I’m not talking about multiple genres being used together in weird ways- I myself have run a “D&D in space campaign.” Those can be fine, if the genres carry core themes that can work together. “D&D in space” can work if you essentially treat it like all the things that makes D&D fun: monsters (aliens) to fight, places (planets) to explore, etc. It’s when there’s a clash of themes that it becomes a problem, like if I were to run a “D&D in space” game that focused on more Star Treky stuff- dealing with alien cultures, and fixing the magic spell-ship with technical jargon. That wouldn’t work.

Let’s take the X-men for example. As the article states, the core themes of X-men are about civil rights and evolution being cast in a different light. Over the years, however, they have morphed from “outsiders in a world that hates and fears them” to “we’re another superhero team.” And as a superhero team, they do end up traveling in time and saving galaxies and whatnot. But that stuff ends up way far afield from what the X-men are really about.

That isn’t to say those storytelling devices can’t be used to make a point about the core themes: here’s what happens in the future if the X-men misstep in their quest for equal rights. Here’s an alien culture that has accepted mutants, and what issues they face as a result. Etc. But really, do you need both Cable and Bishop running around from the future to make that point?

The movie X-men 3: The Last Stand neatly took care of this in a couple ways. Instead of making Phoenix some alien being, they made it all mutant based. Same with the Juggernaut, bitch. I’m a die-hard comics fan, and even I don’t understand the Juggernaut. He’s Xavier’s half brother, with some magic crystal, who joins up with mutant causes sometimes? Huh?

The movies also take care of another big issue I have with the X-men in the comics: the existence of the rest of the Marvel Universe. X-men’s main premise is that humans are changing, and that’s scary. Being able to walk through walls, read minds, or shoot rays out of your eyes is weird.

But then… how about being able to turn invisible, or cover yourself in fire? How about the ability to use freakin’ MAGIC? Is Captain America really ok because the government gave him super-strength, but somebody born that way is not? To me, it’s a big disconnect, and the X-men’s premise would be a lot stronger without all those superheros running around. It even seems like Marvel is addressing part of this in the Civil War series: how is making everyone with superpowers register different than having a Mutant Registration Act (formerly a big plotline in X-men.)

Another example that has always dissapointed me is Mage: The Ascension (and its reboot, Mage: The Awakening.) The reason it’s so dissapointing is that it’s such a great and imaginative game. You have the rules of the universe being ruled by what people think. Instead of most games where character creation is “These are my collection of stats and a backstory” you are FORCED to come up with how your character views EVERYTHING, and thus how he has powers. Even though coming up with a paradigm could be difficult, there was no end to new character concepts. Want to be an old school Merlin-esque wizard? Fine, you’ll be teamed up with someone who inputs cheat codes into the universe, someone who talks to spirits, and a worshipper of Lady Luck. And you can all throw fireballs in COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WAYS.

Where it breaks down is the prescense of the rest of the World of Darkness. “You can mess with reality, but if it’s not believable, reality will mess with you back… unless you’re a Vampire, Werewolf, Ghost, Frankenstein, Mummy, Demon, Hunter, or magic Pixie. Then reality won’t fight back.” Huh? Don’t get me wrong, most of those games were fine in their own right, but they all had thier own vision of how things worked. And they weren’t really compatible. So now not only have you multiple types of creatures that, for whatever reason, co-existed in the same world and you had to figure out how they interacted story-wise… you also had to come up with pages of klugey rules to figure out how reality-altering magic worked against Vampire blood magic. Seems crazy to me. It kinda worked for all the “Supernatural creatures with strange powers” books, but not for Mage. To me, it always made the World of Darkness tough to swallow, and nudged Mage, my favorite rpg, into a disconnected world.

I’m sure I’ll come up with more examples the more I think about it. Anybody else ever gotten a bothered feeling when themes come into conflict?