WHAPing Bats

 So the RPG sessions continue. 

I am only doing my straight up Red Bat campaign "Killing Hitler" which is pretty much Wobble Lite these days. I am toning things down with 60s-style spy motifs, werewolves, and space stations in orbit in 1966. Totally old hat, I say to you "sheesh." See how I avoided a sentence fragment there? I've outlined about seven scenarios in what I call the SEWA '66 milieu. The Society of Extraordinarily Weird Affairs, first appeared in a steampunk couple adventures written by Mike Larsen, Monk, which he'd submit for me to publish. Precocious much? So I had to develop a game system for them, namely the forerunner to my current Batty one. It was TAG: WHAP (Tom's Adventure Gaming: Wildly Heroic Action Pulp). So far the Steam-60s are proving to be a lot of fun, let's see how many of the scenarios we get through as this group gels. Might be a campaign book or a 13-Page World by the end of things.

At the same time, an iteration of our superhero campaign has started gaining steam after a couple introduction scenarios. The GM, Iron Curtis, has been indulging in some of very personal fancies which we as players have been sidestepping for the most part. A group favorite, Baron Karza' is turning into Scorpious from Farscape, giving romantic advice to one of the PCs. Cage Fight Night? My PC, Clone (Batman/Manhunter homage), turns on the fire sprinklers. By the way I've grown to hate cage fighting in Canadian-produced TV sci-fi/fantasy shows almost as much as the obligatory torture episodes since 9/11. Ten-story monster, approximately the height of the "70s 'Zilla," versus giant robots, we come up with plans to do it without the mecha-suits. One player quit the session when it became obvious we had to have at least one giant robot to win the fight, He came back to watch the saga unfold though-- there is a lot of... emotionality(?), well at least comfort in the years-old club that we have going.

This is usually the time where I focus on new products not role-playing, but with GenCon's cancellation it has needed to happen. Keeping up on the skill keeps the product release in perspective.

Why Super-Heroing

A lot of people don't do superhero RPGs. This has always struck me as odd, as most RPG devotees that I know are avid comic book readers regardless of age. Maybe it's because of the loss of glitter as players have to sort through the rules in the various systems as they construct their own super-powered personas? There they are shifting through the pages as the process probably starts to feel like the homework that they were were trying to avoid by reading the escapist literature in the first place. Never forget the fact that the other role-playing settings can already fulfill the wonder of the basic adventurer having special abilities to the average person that are awesome in comparison. Along those lines being a murder-hobo is not a sign of villainy, surely that last fact can't hurt. Maybe they just don't think that they would look good in spandex and the cape looks clumsy.

But there are some perks for those that do the superhero thing.

Being that superhero
There's the version where the players get to be their special picks from a comic book line. Using whatever RPG rules system that is preferred the players get to be big name figures, such as Spider-Man, Jessica Jones, Blue Beetle, or say E-Man. Alternately the GMs get to write a comic book series that is usually the purview of billionaire nephews and publisher's favorite nieces. Note: to the one day big business comic book writer and illustrator; if you want to break into the business, have your dad buy the company.

For the more creative types, there is also the chance just to live in same world as Superman or Thor without being drawn by Jack Kirby. Clever GMs, like myself, will fill up double tables at big conventions letting people roleplay flatfoots in the world of Capes. That is especially true of Gotham City. While street level superhero drama is iffy for TV and big movie productions for RPG sessions these are blockbuster events.

The story that must be told
A lot of my fellow ICONS players and GM come from a group  that used to buy, read, and then try to write their own comic books as teenagers. Using their own takes on a superhero, sometimes a villain, they expand upon the experiences of the early days using an RPG campaign as the basis for that. I have used filling in the blanks of my online RPG experiences with City of Heroes in the Aughts to write up mini-campaigns for the same group.

The casual observer seeing the characters mentioned, often illustrated, may indeed be like, "That's a copy of..." but to the Player, it's probably a heartfelt homage. That is if it's not a totally different character that just looks similar to whomever the other person is thinking of.

The hangups are not really a hangup
The biggest drawback that I can think of for the superhero RPG genre is the writing of it. If the author-GM goes deep it becomes a lot of paragraphs in between fist fights. And to keep the fist fights interesting, there needs to be goofy NPCs with powers often based on puns.  Then as the GM, you just can't help but start writing background material again. 

Suddenly within every climax there is about four to six minutes of expository dialogue between kicks and punches as the heroes and villains are doing the twists, dancing with toys. Everyone around the table is paying attention and having to remember to swing when their turn comes around. The GM is suddenly Jack Kirby crafting an epic. 

For some reason, I am getting the feeling that other people feel somewhat similar to the way I feel about the Comic RPG. It could just be a fad around the corner waiting for GM-authors to make some fat stacks (up to 30$ a bundle) to get into. I know I have about thirty-fours years of notes to start typing up.

The Expanse and My Near Space

No. Spacers: Near Space is not a homage to The Expanse TV series or the books that it is based upon. While I've responded to the emails specifically, I think the three out of fourteen that posited that assumption indicate a trend that I want to address. Besides the content being written up mostly in the early Aughts (2000-'10), I have tried for a much more fantastic look and feel to the universe of a solar system filling up with people and drama. My buddy Smiles in Austin Texas and his "Iska Dawn" campaign setting, unpublished, back in the late 80s and Robert Zubrin's The Case for Mars has a lot of influence on the background science mentioned but no. No Expanse.

While I love the watching the show, well except for the fourth season, it's actually a little too simplistic SF to be classic nuts and bolts space. Imagine me, the guy that does rocketships versus little green men, calling a well-budgeted show and paperback series by an established writer too simplistic to be called hard sci-fi (err SF, since the inception of FM radio). It's not out of character for me so take that for what it's worth.

I have some definite ideas what constitutes hard sci-fi versus pulp. I love both and Near Space, while being pulpy, it had a lot of reading of science while it was being conceived and roleplayed in. The science of the show while incorporating bits of real life, like pharmacology and astrophysics, is like reading a magazine in a office waiting area. The politics of the worlds are comic book at best. But it it's space battles sure make you the viewer want to join the military though doesn't it?

Sorry guys, but Mars will always be a white elephant. The population will always be too small to be a real power regardless of its status with Earth.  The Belters will be more likely to be running officious shake downs on private spacefarers than be a coming together as a randy band of pirates. Ships won't have to "flip and burn" because the energy source which provides propulsion can be vented to different engine ports. And ship engineers will know how to create centrifuge in all but the smallest vessels. That is at least in my estimation of things.

 

How Did This Chicken Leg Get on My Plate?

The mysterious so far...

Our recurring waitress, Matilda, name changed to protect the innocent, is pregnant with her first. She is an attractive woman with honey-blond hair and angular features, works too many hours. Some time before noon Caed and Rodney has lost two tubes of toothpaste. They were even in a different bag than where the former swears that she packed them. She being an honest upstanding person, I have to believe her. Then at 4;14pm, the power went out for up to thirty seconds, in the entire hotel. This was after we had been to see the Point Pleasant downtown area, which I will refer to as Mothman Plaza.

That out of the way...
Peryton was finally corralled into starting to run the Middle Earth Adventures for Cubicle 7. It took her two hours get over her avoidance complex and things really got going. The D&D-heds assembled got their D&D on and Robin schooled them on Tolkien baby. I was impressed with the game mechanics and how it reflected the tone of the books myself.