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Monday, May 14, 2012

Comics to Game

The recent Avengers film has put superhero gaming into my mind, at least as idle consideration.  The new Journey into Mystery collections and the classic Avengers: Kree-Skrull War, got me to thinking about campaigns in superhero games.  Previously, I've done more "done in one" sort of games--though I have done a Secret Wars riff in the past. I think that you could pull off a comic book "epic," though.  Not one of the currently decompressed storylines with a lot of talking heads, but one of the more episodic, action-based stories of the Bronze Age and early Modern period. Something that would provide the room for the player's to make fairly divergent choices than the heroes did on the comics page.

One of the storylines that I think could form the underpinings of a great rpg campaign would be "Lost in Space-Time" in West Coast Avengers.  It's got Rama-Tut, Kang, a host of Old West Marvel heroes, and the Living Totem.  That's epic.

The Kree-Skrull War would be good, too.  Particular if player's could come close to the "hip" dialogue.  Surely extra points would have to be accorded to any character who could replicate the likes of Clint "Goliath" Barton's patter here:

"This is your ten-foot toreador talkin' at ya, crew. Just got a call from Janet Pym--Hank's own ever-loving spouse--otherwise known as the Wonderful Wasp. Don't get it all but seems there's trouble brewin' up in Alaska, where she and Hank are. So, I'm off for the Big Icebox--and hopin' the rest of you aren't too far behind. This sounds big."

Sounds big, indeed.

6 comments:

  1. That one looks like a blast. You've gone and done it Trey, I'm going to go dig out my old comics.

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  2. ...and plus one to the dice as well for something coming close to that!

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  3. One of my all-time favourite Champions campaigns revolved around a gang-war that had erupted in the city, with various contenders vying to become the 'kingpin' of crime, and the heroes were kept real busy trying to keep the city from descending into anarchy. They finally came to the conclusion that the city was safer and more secure under one crime lord who controlled everything and so they lent their support to the least objectionable alternative. They helped to enthrone the lesser of many evils, so to speak, for the greater good of the city. There was a lot of room in this campaign for players to struggle with moral dilemmas and to either make a big difference to the outcome, or none at all, depending on the choices they made.

    I also always wanted to try a campaign like the 'Brood War' saga from X-Men.

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  4. @Sean - That sounds like a great campaign. "The Brood War" is another good suggestion. For a more mystical team there's probably something to be mined from the "American Gothic" saga in Swamp Thing.

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  5. My gaming group was based out of bunch of us who hung out at the local comic shop and our mainstay was DC Heroes, which I still think is one of the best gaming systems of all time (even if the Gadget ruleset was never correctly fixed). We mainly played the official modules published by Mayfair and didn't do many campaigns. One of the guys did come up with this original campaign he ran over the series of several weeks where we played our own original heroes and the over all story was involved with dimension/time hopping in order to save the multiverse.

    It took us through many different genres that reflected different aspects of bronze age comics. There was stuff inspired by Ka-Zar, Arion, Killraven, Man-Thing, and Guardians of the Galaxy. It was pretty damn epic.

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  6. I too have a love of the Mayfair DC Heroes. It has its limitations, but it's a damn fun game.

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