That's Just Super.

So I've been thinking about trying a supers game out for awhile now. For a long while actually. Since I started reading Invincible and got really back into super-heroics. I read a lot about how supers were different kinds of games and how some people just can't get into them. Over the course of the next couple of posts I'll be taking a real close look at how these questions can be answered. There's two things here that are hardly related at all (or are they?!):

1. What makes a supers game so different from other traditional genres of role-playing?

2. What makes someone not want to role play in a specific genre?

Let's tackle number one first because that's the way God intended chronology to work! First we have to think of what common themes are shared amongst most games. Nuts and bolts of every game is players, a GM, plot hooks, and action. So far so good, we could say a supers game was just like a game of D&D or Call of Cthulhu or YourFavoriteGame. I think I would be hard-pressed to find a single game, excluding indie darlings, that didn't include these elements. We must dig deeper! What makes fantasy different from horror different from supers, and why do supers get the bad rap out of the big genres?

If we can acknowledge that each aspect of the basic role playing recipe (player, GM, hook, action) can be tweaked and twisted until we reach the next genre, a spectrum might emerge. In my next post I'll take a look at the player factor and see how the supers genre impacts, for the better or worse, how a player character looks and plays.