GURPS Supers: what's the appeal?

[vicky_molokh]

Greetings, all!

Okay, this might sound as a weird question from a person who enjoys parts of the PDF. I mean, yeah, I enjoy the crunchy bits of the PDF. And I kinda like the prospect of playing in a world where permanent death is not gonna happen (which describes some supers worlds). And I watched and kinda enjoyed Batman, both the good (Returns, Dark Knight) and the bad (Robin, Beginning). And X-Men (*sigh*, a Supers take on 'humans discriminate against psis'). And Doctor Horrible, which I really enjoyed, but as a tragicomedy;same with the Megamind movie as a comedy. Watchmen had the cool transhumanistic Manhattan. Condorman was a good laugh. Thor was . . . weird, somewhat blandly, somewhat funnily watchable. Captain Planet was a surprisingly effective, even though crude, propaganda medium. I keep suspecting that SuperForce (with Zach Stone) was a case of gritty Supers creeping into an action series. I've seen Superman and Supergirl when I was a kid, and it was okay for the time. I have very vague memory of once seeing something which is most likely the Lensemen animé. I've read a dozen or so chapters of Interviewing Leather, and it was . . . weird, but somewhat interesting.
I'm playing City of Heroes/Villains (the MMO), and I find the gameplay enjoyable and the kitchen-sink of Power Sources and available powers to be both refreshing and confusing. And I even once borrowed some issue of Spawn (the one where he is resurrected during some sort of apocalypse), though I found it kinda meh and didn't finish reading it.

And despite all this, I'm not quite sure what the appeal of the Supers Genre (and thus the genrebook) is supposed to be, as opposed to some bits and pieces that can be used in other genres? To me, it's a somewhat weird group of not quite related setting features, some of them violently demolishing my suspension of disbelief, and I'm not sure what makes them grouped, and what makes people attracted to the specific group as opposed to some bits.

Thanks in advance!

[LordOfDorkness]

I hope I understood your question.

Isn't the super hero genre as old as the ancient Greeks?

The epic stories of Hercules, Zeus and their fellow gods are not only explanatory in nature, but also seem to tell us stories of people who are bigger than us. People who are better, who will take care of us but meanwhile have to deal with problems both mundane and supernatural. Why did the greeks tell these stories? Not just to explain things, but also to inspire and to evoke emotion.

I personally think that superheroes are just a new version of these stories. They lost their explanatory purpose, but they have the purpose of inspiring us to be better than ourselves.

You might notice that despite their powers, superheroes still have problems. No powerset makes all your problems go away. And that makes them relateable.

So what the genre comes down to:
Stories about people who have powers, who are better than us, not only physically, but also often on a moral level (With great power...). But despite sometimes being completely alien to us (often literally), we can still relate to them.

All the other bits and pieces are just decor. They are there to give context to the story. That is why we end up with a lot of suspension of disbelief, but also with many ways to interpret the same story.

[panton41]

I think the scene in Unbreakable where Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) says "I believe comics are a piece of history" about half an hour in explains it quite well. I'd have put a YouTube video of it up but I couldn't find one.

The essence of it is like LordOfDorkness said. People have always looked up to superhuman powers, but in our increasingly secular age those have shifted from the gods and their demi-human children to fictional constructions that are more grounded in the "new religion" of science. (Not to say X-Men are in any way grounded in "science" but they at least pay lip-service to it.)

[Figleaf23]

The world you know (mostly) but with vast and exciting possibilities.

Punches that go KAPOW!, instead of thud.

Awesome bodies in tight spandex.

What's not to love?

[towishimp]

I somewhat buy into both of the above arguments. Supers can be used to tell human stories by portraying those striving to be better (The X-Men Dark Pheonix Saga has always stuck with me as an allegory, for example).

There's also the "uh, wouldn't it be neat if you could fly around, shoot lasers, punch folks through walls, and mostly no one would ever die from said things? For people who like over-the-top action, supers are prefect. I think that's the reason for the proliferation of supers movies these days (you get a built-in audience, and the genre is perfect for CGI explosions and such).

Those two points made, I'm with the OP...my only supers game made it one session before I, as the GM, had to say "sorry, this is not inspiring me at all...it ok if we dump this?" I felt bad, but it turned out that most of the players felt the same way.

[Jürgen Hubert]

The comic book universes are the mythologies of modern times - universally, recognizable with archetypal heroes and villains, retold time and again by different storytellers. Seen through that lens, they can be every bit as rich as gaming inspired by classical mythologies.

Personally, I also like another approach, one that I've used in my Exalted game (not quite Supers gaming, but very close). It asks the question:

"If you had the power to change the world, for good or for ill, what would you do with it?"

Suppose you had vast powers, and ordinary "mortals" couldn't stop you - only your peers. You could topple governments and build up new ones. You could solve the world's problems, or use your powers to enslave others to your whims. There is no "Higher Authority" to judge what you do, or don't do - only your conscience, and the opinion of your peers.

So, what would you do with such powers? In a Supers game, you might find out - and that holds tremendous potential for role-playing!

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

The comic book universes are the mythologies of modern times - universally, recognizable with archetypal heroes and villains, retold time and again by different storytellers. Seen through that lens, they can be every bit as rich as gaming inspired by classical mythologies.

Personally, I also like another approach, one that I've used in my Exalted game (not quite Supers gaming, but very close). It asks the question:

"If you had the power to change the world, for good or for ill, what would you do with it?"

Suppose you had vast powers, and ordinary "mortals" couldn't stop you - only your peers. You could topple governments and build up new ones. You could solve the world's problems, or use your powers to enslave others to your whims. There is no "Higher Authority" to judge what you do, or don't do - only your conscience, and the opinion of your peers.

So, what would you do with such powers? In a Supers game, you might find out - and that holds tremendous potential for role-playing!

That's weird. I thought that the Supers genre implies that even if you're the villain, you are extremely limited in terms of what evils you will commit.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

That's weird. I thought that the Supers genre implies that even if you're the villain, you are extremely limited in terms of what evils you will commit.

Traditionally this was the case, primarily thanks to the Comics Code. But comics have been moving away from this for some time.

Of course, a distinction should be made between Supers comics and Supers gaming. In the former, authors usually operate under certain constraints (such as not upsetting the status quo too much). Gamers, on the other hand, are far freer to explore the consequences of Supers on the world...

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

That's weird. I thought that the Supers genre implies that even if you're the villain, you are extremely limited in terms of what evils you will commit.

Villain just means an antagonist that the protagonist can openly oppose, and can usually expect popular support to do so. Generally a villain is willing to break one or more rules that the protagonist won't; this allows you to have pure-hearted role models who will ask to borrow the expensive gadget needed to stop villains who are ciminal but not evil as well as anti-heroes who nevertheless fight people who are even worse.

There are plenty of villains who are willing to do just about anything to further their ends, this includes insane monsters like the Joker and the Red Skull who revel in their evil as well as people with fairly strong principles but who are blind to their own grievous faults, like Magneto and Lex Luthor.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I'm not quite sure what the appeal of the Supers Genre (and thus the genrebook) is supposed to be

I suspect the answer may be found in a cultural gap. It would appear that almost all of the sources you cite are movies or video games. However, those aren't even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the supers genre. Am I to understand that you don't see a lot of superhero comic books there? I suspect that comic book readers are swimming in a sea of tropes which they've been in all their lives (and therefore accept those tropes implicitly and without thinking about it) but which also wouldn't make sense to an outsider coming into it.