This month, I am the custodian of the RPGbloggers Monthly Carnival which is about Super Heroes.
I thought it would be a perfect occasion to do a new Trope post about mixing some Super Heroes in my D&D Kool Aid!
Trope: A narrative shortcut taken in a story that the audience will recognize and have expectations about. See this site if you have never heard about them.
Some of the critics on D&D 4e revolve around the fact that the PCs are too heroic and too competent, robbing the genre of its historical Zero to Hero vibe. That’s a perfectly valid critic and is part of the Old School revival we see on the net.
My stance on this is to embrace the new design philosophies and turn the volume to 11.
By default, D&D 4e is be about:
- Exceptional Heroes equipped with powers few mortals share
- A world filled with Evil and Danger
- Combat in dynamic and challenging environments
- Teamwork to surmount difficult odds
I don’t know about you but that really does sound familiar…
A series where the main character has powers and/or abilities that set him aside from other people. Usually (unless he’s Not Wearing Tights) he is a costumed do-gooder with a colorful outfit (which likely sports a Chest Insignia), a Secret Identity and often unusual and useful superpowers or equipment (Snip)
Sometimes the show focuses on a team or other grouping of powered individuals.
So basically, most of the work has been already done to make a D&D 4e campaign into a fusion of Fantasy Super Heroes. Let’s explore this a bit:
Powers and Origins
That one is the easiest. All D&D classes come packed with powers who are derived from a specific Power Source. You can therefore tweak the fluff behind each source to make it more inline with Super Powers.
Martial Power Source: PCs are Batman-style super normals. They learned the secrets of killing people with dull spoons and 3 headed flails through secret Monastic Orders and long lost martial lore. You need to describe moves with silly Anime names like ‘Avalanche of Monkey Thunder’ (Thanks Bobzilla) and ‘Wall of Raging Steel Elephants’.
Divine Power Source: Fearless Leaders, these characters can call both destruction and healing from the Powers of the Planes. From the Tankish Paladin to the Buffing Cleric you need to play these guys like Avatars of Divine Powers, exuding Glowing Holy Energies like a Leaking Plutonium Reactor Core.
Arcane Power Source: The Blasters of the campaign. These guys laugh at the rigidity of physical laws. Need a light? Ding, here’s one! Need these mooks to be fried? Boom there it is!. Oh noes, I’m being cornered by orcs! Poof! Suckers, I’m over here now!
If I was to make a Super Arcanist, I’d make him into a Teleporting Warlock and I’d make him as Chatty as Spiderman
In fact, a key point of doing a Super Fantasy game is to encourage players to come up with an origins story to explain, in their own ways, how they got thier powers. It would also increase the feel of the story to have players come up with reasons why they would learn new powers upon leveling up. They can visit their old mentors, study old scrolls during adventuring or practice new moves during rest periods.
Costume and Secret Identity
I find it hard to imagine why a Fantasy Hero would want his identity to remain a secret. It is however one of the key difference between the genres (apart from the whole medieval vs Modern theme of course).
Here’s how I’d envision it:
The world has fallen through dark times, hordes of monsters and marauding barbarians have overtaken the old kingdom and the self-contained Free City is the only standing bastion of safety. This safety has been brought at the cost of ever increasing power to the civic leaders and severe limitations on freedom.
“We control your life so that others don’t try to take it from you!”
Much like Feudal Japan, all non military citizen are prevented from bearing arms and all must toil in the City’s Gardens, merchant Navies and Services under the watchful eyes of the the City’s Blackcloaks, the Secret Police arm of the government.
Enter the PCs. They have learned thier (Illegal) powers in secret and are motivated to fight both the encroaching danger of the wilderness but also the choking tyranny of a state that has had power for too long and now clings to it.
Being all citizens of the city, with family and loved ones, they must hide thier identities to perform thier deeds, for fear of reprisal.
Of course, at a certain point they become stronger than all Civic Forces and need to decide how to restore freedom and still protect the city… Fun Times!
Alternative to Secret Identities
Have all PCs be part of an adventuring group, complete with tabards and a name.
Then thier costumed identity makes them more recognizable and more likely to be invited by the leaders of your campaign world for request of help. It becomes a marketing thing to wear the Blue Cloaks or to proudly wear the Tabard of the Order of The Soup Bowl… don’t laugh, its a very very respected all Halfling adventuring group.
Campaign Models
One thing a Super Heroic Fantasy campaign does not do very well is ‘Kill them and take their stuff’.
Super Heroics is about saving people, facing world-destroying threats and dealing with one’s inner vulnerabilities, making the genre perfect for Psychodrama seeking players.
The campaign should be under the theme of our heroes being asked for help by different organization to face dangers no average mortals can deal with. That model can then be made more complex by having each organization’s agenda become incompatible with other’s and have the PCs find out how they are being used and abused.
So here’s a few campaign ideas:
PCs are Rangers (in the Tolkien sense) protecting a region from encroaching hordes of baddies… and a rift to both the Abyss and Hell opened and things are pouring out… and fighting each other!
There’s a crazy Wizard-Alchemist that developed a serum to “unlock” to true potential. By a stroke of sheer luck he managed to do one ‘good’ batch. The PCs (all orphans) were exposed to developping their current power. Since, the mad man has been trying to re-create his early success but has only managed to create and release psychotically savage monsters in the city. The PCs must trace him back in the depth of the dungeons under the city and put a stop to his activities.
Magic Items as Powers
Since money more or less becomes irrelevant in such a campaign, I suggest that Magic Items (the main reason to keep track of money in 4e) be unavailable for purchase per say. Instead have Magic items become part of the PCs’s Powers as Super Equipment! Then have this crazy allied gadgeteering Gnome or Dwarf NPC make Magic Items out of whatever pieces of strange doohickeys the PCs find in their quests.
So Magic Items then become the Bat-gadgets of our heroes.
of course, PCs will still find magic items in their quests, but then they players will need to work together to weave them in thier stories.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to don my Flanged Plate mail and Full Face visor for I must foil the latest plans of the Evil Eye, Mastermind Beholder of the Underworld and his Death Gnoll Minions!
What more? Check Out Ninetail’s take on the same subject!
Credit: Nice One Entertainment (Image)
You know, I have a post on this same topic scheduled for five hours from now. Although I come at it from the other end.
Weird, the way things work out.
I think you might particularly like the section about names and symbols.
Nice observation on the secret IDs.
Until this month I’d never thought of my normal fantasy games being based on established superhero stories. Now when I look back I can’t help but see the evil overlord bent on world domination with his evil army of evil or the PC that flies a lot whilst rescuing fair maidens or using their helm of fiery vision to beat off the swarms of undead around them.
It makes sense.
Bobs last blog post..Netbooks
For a while, I have been contemplating using some aspects of this trope. I really like giving characters their iconic imagery, and giving the group a name and identity.
I actually once tried to run a superhero fantasy game using D&D 3.5!
I nearly lost a leg, and I have nightmares still. A dark voice whispers the grappling rules and the wild shape errata into my ears every night, so that I can’t sleep. I don’t recommend it.
In 4e though, I’ve done loads of games just by changing the fluff on the powers, or hell, even shifting their levels around. From mecha, to “everything is magic, even your sword swing” to mecha musume (though I have Dive Into The Sky/Lesbo Jet Fighters for that now). I love 4e fluff conversions a lot, and this is a great post for going about them!
Wyatts last blog post..I Belieeeeeve I Can Fly… (Lesbo Jet Fighters Review)
@Ninetail: I saw your post and I’m happy we mostly touched on different things and your suggestions on names and costumes were very good. It’s also funny that we both said that Kill and Loot was not the way to go. I will link to your article in my post as soon as I’m done going over the comments.
@Bob: As I said, lets embrace the tropes that fit Heroic Fantasy the best… Super Hero tropes have been around since the 1930’s so there’s a lot of material to steal from.
@Ian: The name and identity of a group is a large piece of fostering players to see their party as a team rather than as individuals forced to work together by the game’s assumptions.
@Wyatt: I sooooo agree with you. In fact at one point I wanted to edit out all 4e references from the post. However as you say, the flexibility of powers in 4e really allow for easy adaptation to super heroes (and related genres) goodness.
When’s the first 4e Steampunk attempt?
Good to see you’re on board with the whole “4e is superheroes in Fantasy” thing. It’s a heckovva mindswitch, but chock full of exciting possibilities 😀
Now all I’ve got to do is convince you that Mutants & Masterminds is the One True Path, and my work is done……..
@Greywulf: Not sure I told you yet but I bought M&M 2nd ED at Gen COn and I’m slowly reading it.
@ChattyDM Read faster 😀 I’d be interested to hear your opinions.
Nice post 😀
Batman is awesome.
I’ve tried to incorporate some similar ideas into my campaigns, but somehow they never really take on that epic feel… perhaps I’m just doing it wrong 😉
SeiferTims last blog post..I thought it could never happen…
Tuesday evening is our next game session. I’m planning to have the characters name the group as the close of the adventure that night, and then post the entire story of the adventure to my blog. The Cursed Shipwreck at Port Cod is the first adventure of a long campaign. It’s seeing the PCs possibly gain level 3 after the final climactic encounter of this adventure, while the campaign as a whole will be taking them to level 30, then giving them one final adventure to flex their fully-realized powers. Each adventure will be run mostly self-contained, as this one has been, because I’m taking turns using Tuesday nights. We’ve set up a GM rotation for that night, so our group can try out many different things and avoid boredom.
@Chatty: Yeah… I’ve said this before, but it amazes me how the echo chamber effect can occur even accidentally. I guess with something like the blog carnival out there, it’s bound to happen.
As far as steampunk goes, I’m eager to try that one… I think 4e offers a basic core system as good as 3e’s, and perhaps even more flexible. I was thinking for NaNoWriMo, I might try my hand at a worldbook, in fact.
@Ninetail: Lol, just as you were posting the comment, I was editing my post to lead to yours. Tackling a worldbook for NaNoWriMo is an excellent idea!
As you say the Echo Chamber is to be expected for a Blog Carnival… it’s just strange to see some things still being written after one full month.
Not sure what this says about me but one of my first thoughts after reading (and getting over the initial “ooh, cool idea!” effect) was antiheroes. A normal D&D game that “goes over to the dark side” runs a significant risk of wandering off course. Modeling it after an anti-superheroes story would probably work out rather well. It’s probably the only way you could use this style of trope and end up with a body count.
The idea has a few quirks though. You’d need an even more solid reason for people to work together. Your normal group can handle one antihero but two or more would clash with each other. They could be mystically bound, share some ideology, or some of them might even be one of those overly competent henchmen types that the bad guys occasionally pop up with. A black knight of sorts.
I think running for a game like this would probably be a lot of fun. If your players get sloppy (or even if they don’t you can set them up for it now and then), “good guys” can wander into the fray as opposition the characters won’t want to seriously harm.
This message brought to you by the horribly cheesy vision I had of an emo drow ranger/thief in costume saying “I’m the Batman.” and leaping off a tower to glide away using his cloak of the bat.
@Lanir: An Anti Hero game can definitively work… putting scoundrels together is a challenge but of you make the threat they face big enough, cohesion will probably prevail for some time…
…although eventual party collapse is somewhat to be assumed
In fact some argue that the roots of of D&D go back to Pulp fantasy where all main protagonist were rogues and somewhat outside the law.
See this excellent blog article on teh subject:
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/10/picaro-and-story-of-d.html
My experiences have been that paladins are very difficult to justify as vigilantes (though I thought the idea would be so cool!), but that monks are perfectly suited to being superheroes.
Scott Caspers last blog post..Century Man 1901
I actually tackled this same subject not too long ago in [url=http://www.encounteraday.com/2008/06/11/setting-seeds-rise-of-the-godlings/]Rise of the Godlings[/url], which is sort of an X-men-meets-Highlander-meets-D&D setting.
There are many different kinds of superheroes, and secret identities are not necessarily a part of the genre (though they certainly are a staple). Off the top of my head, I don’t think any of the X-men have ever had secret identities per se, though the Xavier institute itself has not always been so forthcoming about the activities of its students.
@Scott: If you are willing to allow a larger range of actions for your paladin, he can make a great Super Hero. I guess you would need to downplay the religious angle but focus more on the “Helping the Weak” one.
I’d argue that Superman was quite the Paladin.