Is anyone planning to use real-world physics?

[Strand0]

My conundrum: Is there a sub-genre of superhero comics that uses real physics? or is that just an oxymoron?

And, of course, real-world physics only apply to the comics when it's dramatically appropriate or makes for a cool-sounding effect.

Well, it depens on the sub-genre you are talking about.
Some take their physics more seriously then others.

More seriously... . They may break fewer rules, or they have to make a few "new" rules.
More serious! More serious! More serious! More serious! More serious!

_____________________________
Real physics is why TV heroes have been wimps until the last few years.

[Mal Malenkirk]

Well, a super hero game that takes its physics more seriously is simply concerned with ''verisimilitude''.

''If a hero have this kind of power, can he do that?''

For example, the charts may show that a PC is strong enough to lift an oil tanker but that doesn't mean it can be done. It will break in two if it isn't supported on its whole lenght.

The fact is, an oiltanker is impossible to lift just through strenght alone. You need to be able to support the whole structure or it will collapse due to its own weight. That's pretty basic physics.

Hence, in a ''serious'' game, the GM would require more than superstrenght to lift any large structure. Other powers such as telekinesis would have to be involved.

If you play in a more ''four color'' vein, then anything is possible.

Hey, I hear the Hulk once lifted a Carrier and one of the Great Pyramids in some of his past stories. Both feat are physically possible for a creature that is only super strong. But hey, if it's your kind of thing, go for it.

[Voneth]

An example of more "real" physics from a Supers RPG.

"It is assumed that most Aberrants enact some sort of quantaum field around themselves when they use their abilites. This could explain why they can fly at Mach 1 and not need eye protection or use their Mega Strength to lift an oil tanker that shouldn't be able to support it's own weight."

An example of real Physics from a real comic book "Marshall Law"

PANEL ONE: A Daredevil type charcter has fallen several stories and is rapidly approaching his doom

CHARACTER: "My super senses have picked up a flag pole mounted to the side of the building. I'll just grab it and then spin a couple of times to bleed off my excess velocity.

PANEL TWO: The reader sees the flag pole with only two arms hanging off of it. The rest of the charcter drops to his doom screaming.

Both examples are great for showing how fun the two extreames can be.

[Kirowan]

I've never heard of a comic using realistic physics, but Greg Porter (BTRC) says his CORPS system could model "realistic" superheroics, but wouldn't be very much fun. Heads would explode from super strong punches left and right and your marital artists would break their fists with blinding speed on bricks and power armor characters.

Nick

[Michael Heacock]

I've never heard of a comic using realistic physics, but Greg Porter (BTRC) says his CORPS system could model "realistic" superheroics, but wouldn't be very much fun. Heads would explode from super strong punches left and right and your marital artists would break their fists with blinding speed on bricks and power armor characters.

Nick

Didn't Marvel Comics try the "realistic" superhero thing in the mid 80's with their New Universe. I remember buying a couple of them when first released. Never bought anymore of them after that. Wasn't surprised to learn that the entire premise died after only a single year.

[Grym]

Yes, Marvel did do a 'realistic' series of books in the 80s (again, showing my age). I remember two of them, although their titles elude me. One dealt with a younger fellow who had the power to enter dreams (it was about two years after Dreamscape, so it was pretty apparent where they got the whole idea). He went around correcting people's nightmares. Interesting possibilities, but, at least in my opinion, fell flat on its face.

The other was about a group of young kids, each with a paranormal specialty. They came from, surprise-surprise, a greedy corporation that gave them their powers, and the kids were always on the hunt. The only thing I remember about this group was their van (nothing special, I can just picture them riding around in it and other interior shots) and the fact that their resident speedster had a voracious appetite, because his metabolism was as fast as he was.

Again, not a bad concept (although the teens with powers was just a throwback to the various X-series), and by far the better of the two titles, but still, in the short-run (I think within 12 issues), it floundered.

Serious, hard-core physics really just don't work well in a supers game. I mean, of course, if the flavor you are going for is serious and grim, that's one thing, but no game really takes into account 'real world' physics...and those that do...again, in my own opinion...just aren't any fun to play.

I live real world physics every day...I don't want to play what I live. I want to play what I dream...

But those're just my thoughts.

Grym

[Mal Malenkirk]

Look, gravity doesn't stop working because you wear spandex.

All that I mean by ''realistic'' (note the coma) is a superhero genre where some effort is made to make sure that the heroes' powers are coherent with their actions.

No one is arguing for perfect real word physics. The average action movie doesn't even respect that!

I'm just saying that if I'm playing in a game where a hero can fly at 700 mp/h, I'd like it if he also had Super Constitution or the ability to create a protective force field. I'm not saying that I don't want to hear about a ''flash'' kind of character. But if he's flying at near sonic speed with nothing to protect his average human skin, then no, I'm not going to ''buy'' it.

I'm saying that if a hero has the ability to use tactile telekinesis to maintain the integrity of a 2000 tons structure he's lifting (Superman does that), I would appreciate it if said superhero also demonstrated other telekinesis abilities beyond this extremely specialised yet powerful one. I always found Superman a highly dubious hero because he has no unifying theme. His powers are all over the place without rime nor reasons.

I'm saying that if hero A is able to punch through a steel door and that hero B is a normal human, then hero B shouldn't be able to take a beating for a few panels before finally coming up with a clever scheme to overpower the other character. What I want to see is character B coming up with his devious plan now, dodging the hell out of the way or else I want to see him get run through a wall and stay down for the count. (I'm thinking about a Punisher VS Venom battle, amongst other).

As a matter of fact, using rules and statistics to portray super powered individual will necessarily bring some consistency to your campaign whether you want it or not (unless you fudge, of course).

Some books stick closer to this kind of consistency than others.

[Michael Heacock]

Yes, Marvel did do a 'realistic' series of books in the 80s (again, showing my age). I remember two of them, although their titles elude me. One dealt with a younger fellow who had the power to enter dreams (it was about two years after Dreamscape, so it was pretty apparent where they got the whole idea). He went around correcting people's nightmares. Interesting possibilities, but, at least in my opinion, fell flat on its face.

Grym

Found a site devoted to the New Universe:

http://www.technohol.com/new-u/index.asp

For a good laugh, head over to see what all the fuss was about in 1986. And why that fuss faded to nothing within a few months.

I remember buying a couple of issues of Merc, Kickers Inc., and Starbrand.

Kickers Inc. was just plain goofy.

[Strand0]

I wont tell you that I liked the New Universe. But I did. I've been filling out my collection went possible.
The thing I liked least was the name. It showed that no one had taken the time to plan beyond the begining. If it had worked out than would they have continued calling it The New Universe for ten or twenty years?
But they only tryed to get closer to reality. Some stories worked better then others. The most realistic thing they did was follow real time. Other then that they only paid lip service to realistic supers. Mostly they maked the powers realistic by placing big limitations on them, caused pain to use, need to eat a lot, massive muscle for super strength, but not everyone had problems.
It ran for three years. then they did a cartoony rap-up mini-series. Left things hanging.
John Burn did a segment of Star Brand that was pretty cool, and part of which was ripped out for a recent Thunderbolts.

So. Real physics... I often have noticed that games will be slammed to a stop because someone wants to argue about reality! I also play with a nurse, and two gemalogists. (Q: "What gems are they?" A: "Blue." Q: list of possible blue stones roll out.)

[mouthymerc]

This is not directed at you, Mal. You just brought up some points I wanted to address.

I'm just saying that if I'm playing in a game where a hero can fly at 700 mp/h, I'd like it if he also had Super Constitution or the ability to create a protective force field. I'm not saying that I don't want to hear about a ''flash'' kind of character. But if he's flying at near sonic speed with nothing to protect his average human skin, then no, I'm not going to ''buy'' it.

No one's asking for mechanics for this kind of stuff, are they? This is really only semantics. If you want to start adding reasoning into your game, you don't need mechanics to do this. If you want your Speed Demon to have a Super-Con and force field, then give them those abilities. Nobody is saying that a character with only the Speed power doesn't have some type of protection when he runs at 1166 km/h. This could be implied. But, if you want your speedster to actually have a force field, give him the power. The same goes for Super-Con.

I'm saying that if a hero has the ability to use tactile telekinesis to maintain the integrity of a 2000 tons structure he's lifting (Superman does that), I would appreciate it if said superhero also demonstrated other telekinesis abilities beyond this extremely specialised yet powerful one. I always found Superman a highly dubious hero because he has no unifying theme. His powers are all over the place without rime nor reasons.

Actually, if I remember correctly, Superman's telekinesis also extends to his flight ability. But, as far as the tactile telekinesis, the writers came up with that to explain why he could pick up cruise liners without them breaking in half. Not a bad explanation. In comics, writers were always coming up with new or different ways of explaining powers. As each new writer took over, you could always expect a revamp of the character or a new take. Yes, Superman's abilities seem to be all over the place, but look how long he's been around. At one time, he could barely leap small buildings and then by the eighties he was flying through space without the use of any type of protection.

I'm saying that if hero A is able to punch through a steel door and that hero B is a normal human, then hero B shouldn't be able to take a beating for a few panels before finally coming up with a clever scheme to overpower the other character. What I want to see is character B coming up with his devious plan now, dodging the hell out of the way or else I want to see him get run through a wall and stay down for the count. (I'm thinking about a Punisher VS Venom battle, amongst other).

If you really want to play in a game where someone with super-strength can punch a normal and put his fist through them, then by all means, go right ahead. But what fun is that? At some point, especially in a game, you have to ignore realism in favor of fun. There was also the one-shot comic with the Punisher killing the Marvel Universe. Not too realistic, but it was a fun read though.

As a matter of fact, using rules and statistics to portray super powered individual will necessarily bring some consistency to your campaign whether you want it or not (unless you fudge, of course).

Some books stick closer to this kind of consistency than others.

As I said earlier, a lot of this is semantics. If you want to explain why your speedster doesn't go blind when he travels at high speed, then say he creates a force field around his body when he travels that fast. If you want o actually give hime the force field power then buy it during creation. If you want to explain why your super-strong character can lift cruise ships without them splitting in two, then say he has tactile telekinesis. If you want him to have telekinesis, then get the power. We don't need actual rules for this stuff.

[Mal Malenkirk]

Huh, Merc; I never argued for the inclusion of rules concerning this stuff.

Strand-o just quoted me from another thread and wondered if there was such a thing as a super-hero genre with real world physics.

I just explained that all I meant by that is a genre were you bother thinking about the ''realistics'' consequence of any given powers and designed heroes who either abided by these consequences or had other powers that compensated for these consequences. Of course you don't need additional rules! Who ever said you did? I'm talking about a genre, not mechanics.

Say you do a speedster and just assume that he's developping a force field for protection when flying at high speed. That's a good rationalization. But if you don't actually go ahead and buy him a protection field with your CP, he won't really be protcected, will he? And you'll get to the inevitable situation where one wonders how come the Speedster can be knocked out so easily by a punch if he truly has the ability to form a force field around his body. For if a hero can endure sonic speed, he should be able to shrug off a normal punch and ignore a lot of heat based attacks. If he can do the one thing and not the other, you'll have me scratching my head just as much as if you had the speedster fly at sonic speed without protection.

Oh, and if Protonik (Superstrong PC) hit Inferna (No toughness based powers), she is indeed going down on the first punch.

Protonik punches with a DC 32
Inferna has a dmage save of +2

So see, Inferna truly has to avoid being tagged even once because she's going down on the first successful blow (lest she rolls a lucky 20).

Therefore one would assume that if you designed stats for, say, Venom and the Punisher, this time around the Punisher would have to come up with his sonic trap sooner 'cause he ain't going to be able to tango with Venom fopr very long before getting mangled pretty good.

That's why I'm saying that using rules to portray superheroes will forcefully add some consistency. Heroes won't be able to change their level of resistance to various damage from issues to issues at the whims of the writers.

[Shard O'Glase]

Oh, and if Protonik (Superstrong PC) hit Inferna (No toughness based powers), she is indeed going down on the first punch.

Protonik punches with a DC 32
Inferna has a dmage save of +2

So see, Inferna truly has to avoid being tagged even once because she's going down on the first successful blow (lest she rolls a lucky 20).

Therefore one would assume that if you designed stats for, say, Venom and the Punisher, this time around the Punisher would have to come up with his sonic trap sooner 'cause he ain't going to be able to tango with Venom fopr very long before getting mangled pretty good.

That's why I'm saying that using rules to portray superheroes will forcefully add some consistency. Heroes won't be able to change their level of resistance to various damage from issues to issues at the whims of the writers.

I'm nitpicking a detail here, though I understand and somewhat agree with your main point. Venom is alot weaker than protinick, he probably has only 6-7 levels in super str so the damage save would be 25ish. The punisher is a really tough human so maybe an 18 con, he's highly trained so maybe a +3 to damage save from training(rolls with the blow or whatever), and he has body armor so maybe -2 from the DC of the save. Total result punisher may have a +7 to save and the modified Dc will be 23. He will usually fail, but not by enough to get knocked out, he will take hits reducing his save for the eventual KO. A few lucky rolls in the begining would keep him up even longer. Now then venom wuld still KO in one blow ordinary humans, and if he was using a deadly attack, they would be disabled in one blow.

[Voneth]

New Universe?

Justice was cool, until you found out it was all a dream.
Then again, I was a teenager at the time, things can cooler when your 15.

[Michael Heacock]

New Universe?

The problem with New Universe is that it was comicbook by committee. Comicbook heros are not successfully created by committee.

All the greatest comic book heros were derived from the imagination and genius of one or two individuals.

Six marketing suits sitting around a table does not a great comicbook make.

[Mal Malenkirk]

Six marketing suits sitting around a table does not a great comicbook make.

Nope. But apparently it can create a bestselling pop group. :rolleyes:

[Mal Malenkirk]

Six marketing suits sitting around a table does not a great comicbook make.

Nope. But apparently it can create a bestselling pop group.