SUPERHERO STORY

[Monika]

Posting this in Science Fiction rather than fantasy for the sole purpose of adding to this rather lackluster section.

Anyway, I was thinking about making a SUPERHERO STORY like the original Dynasty City (for those of you who were around back in the golden days of EHS Smash) was supposed to be, except not flail and not a thinly veiled travesty of City of Heroes. I'm not doing any planning, not posting a plot, none of that carp because I'd rather accept potential storylines and the like from you guys. Discuss the plausibility of such a story, probability of its success, what kind of plot you think it should have, et cetera.

GOGOGOGOGOGO

[Mizagium]

Superheroes have always existed, as far back as humanity has existed. However, they have been known under different names. Sorcerers, warlocks, pharaohs, witches, etc. But after reading some comic books, people with powers decided to come forth, and actually do stuff.

OR

A giant nuclear meteor smacks into earth giving some people superpowers

OR

There never were any superpowers ever. Recent mutations in human DNA have created genetic codes that result in the appearance of superpowers such as rapid cellular regeneration, increased muscle efficiency - leading to super strength, super speed, and pseudoflight - naturally occurring quantum entanglement (telepathy).

Some of the cooler abilites (flight, pyrokinesis, strombringing) would be harder to explin scientifically, but that would all depend on how realistic you want to go.


Superhero stories are almost always Science Fantasy, which allows for the inclusion of interesting abilities, instead of things that could easily be explained. Telekinesis, and some of the more extreme abilities would fall under the "Not explainable" category.

Personally, I would make this a science fantasy story, which allows for the bending of logic and physics, but to a point where natural laws aren't broken (Speed of light, conservation fo mass, etc). Marvel and DC go a little beyond this (they ignore distances. One time, a superhero (Iron Man, I believe) flew from earth to the moon, and back twice, in the span of a few hours) but are excellent examples of what I mean,

...what was the question?

[Mizagium]

Also, what do you mean by SUPERHERO exactly? Because I can think of two types off the top of my head: Traditional (a la Marvel, DC, and City of Heroes) and Urban (for lack of a better term.

Traditional would entail both superheroes and their supervillains to don costumes and fight crime (usually from the supervillains) whilst working a low paying day job (or being a rich, billionaire playboy) and keeping their identities a secret.

Urban would function more the TV show Heroes, where people just have abilities. They don't dress up in costumes and actively fight crime (although some may elect to; it's not a forbidden career).

An Urban Superhero story could transition into a Traditional Superhero story as the characters come to grips with their powers and have make a decision: to use their powers for their own gain, or to help other. Of course there is the Third Option of rejecting one's powers and attempting to lead a normal life, but this rarely works out. And if it did, why the hell did you create that character?

((God, I could have linked so many Tropes into that))

[Mizagium]

Of course, I'm completing ignoring a Kick-Ass style superhero story, where ordinary people dress up to fight crime, but neither has superpowers.

Some people actually do this, but they don't fight crime, they just bring awareness to issues, and do awesome community service stuff. Still pretty awesome.

I'm going to call this... a Mundane Superhero Story.

[Monika]

I swear I asked for a Science Fantasy section in the past...

As far as the types of superhero stories go, I was thinking of Tradurbanal, where there is a mix of people, some who go around fighting bad guys in costumes and others who just go kick multiple asses at random on the street with no regard for THE SANCTITY OF THE SECRET IDENTITIES.

kick-ass is just lol

[Mizagium]

How far are we willing to bend the laws of physics?

And will this be a free-form story?

[Monika]

What do you mean by free-form? And in terms of physics breaking, on a scale from 1 to Awesome Land it should probably be about a 3-4.

[Mizagium]

As in, flight, telekinesis, pyrokinesis. time travel is getting past 4, but as long as we don't overuse it (like heroes *shudder*)

And by free-form, I mean a "Go for it story." Or will we someone move the plot along?

[Monika]

That's a good question. I've actually been struggling with that concept. Awesome Land worked fine with no plot a flimsy half assed plot about taking over a restaurant no plot, but I think it was more of an exception than anything.

I think a style like Magecraft could work. I basically did whatever the hell I wanted to with Jin, with Adam's characters giving slight pushes to the plot whenever it needed to be. Sort of like...the illusion of a free form story, I suppose.

[Monika]

Well, for the villains and neutral characters, anyway. If there were a plot, naturally the good guys would have an agenda to follow.

[Mizagium]

The Massive Multi-Fandom RPG RP I'm doing on TVTropes works like that. Demo is actually driving the plot by throwing curses at us daily. But other than occasional appearances by the Big Bad, we basically have the fun of the story.

[Monika]

I quote "They were brought there by a giant reality warping monster thing called The Troper, who will play with them in the form of various 'curses' (for example, tomorrow in-game everyone will have go-karts) for, I don't know, a year or so before getting bored of them and sending its Mooks to capture them so it can eat them."

That sounds...perfect in some strange way. A similar method could be used in the implementation of this story, but we would either need a thousand posters or a thousand posts a day from the 4 people we have. I think a free-for-all works best when there are more than a few people involved.

For example, say every day/week some new mini-villain appeared to wreak havoc on INSERT CITY NAME-OPOLIS here with some ridiculous power, like summoning clowns from the nether regions or something. For this to work, we would need a bunch of people to deal with the problem of stopping the pseudo-antagonist at their leisure while simultaneously having enough to do whatever they felt like doing. Then, when Group A got tired of fighting a bad guy, they could go chill and Group B could step in. Or something.

[Razgat]

LEFT SHOE BANDIT!!!!!!!!!!! I think Costume Heroes would be fun. Imagine Awesome Land charcters in spandex. That's what I picture this idea as.

[Monika]

Case in point, if you were to take every single post from each of our RP sections, multiply it by 2, and then add posts to take into account all those that were deleted, we still could not cumulatively attain the post count the MMFRPG has. Simply not enough people.

[Monika]

Oct 15, 2010 23:10:27 GMT -5 Razgat said:

LEFT SHOE BANDIT!!!!!!!!!!!

...What?

[Razgat]

The Left Shoe Bandit is a villian who steals everyone's left shoe, but we don't have to have tons of people. We could all just make super heroes and take turns being the villain.

[Monika]

That was actually my second idea. Every week (or however long it took for the posters to defeat Dr. Clownsummoner) we would alternate being the villain. Still, with only 4 people posting or so, that leaves a potential problem. With 1 being a villain and 3 being heroes, 1 of 2 things would probably happen:

1) With so few characters, the posters are compelled to hurry up and defeat the villain the first day or so for the sake of the story, which ends up making it stale and repetitive.

2) The posters are so caught up in the free form format (alliteration bonus) doing as they please that there is no one around to actually fight the villain. This in turn leads to two problems.

2a) Story Realism: Unopposed, the Left Shoe Bandit succeeded in taking everyone's left shoe. Plan complete. Mission accomplished. GAME OVER.

2b) Real Life Realism: Everyone forgets about the villain. THE END.

[Mizagium]

That depends, are we writing a story, or a role-playing?

[Monika]

The latter, of course.

[Mizagium]

Oh, well in ROLE PLAYING maintaining a plot is less important that playing as your character.