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Interview - Len Pimentel
48 Plays1 year ago
Leonard Pimentel is a game designer responsible for several games including Black Star and By This Axe I Hack, but he came to our attention for a superhero game called Prowlers and Paragons that we had a lot of fun with. In this interview, get to know the Superhero genre, get some fresh insights on game design, and learn how to tune up your superhero adventures for longer campaigns. Check out Len's work under the Lakeside Games imprint and Prowlers and Paragons Ultimate Edition.
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Transcript
Introduction & Encouragement
00:00:00
Speaker
If there is something that you feel is good, something you want to do, something that means something to you, try to do it. Because I think you can only do your best work if you're doing what you want to do and if you're doing it the way you think it should be done. And if you can take pride in it after you've done it, no matter what it is, you can look at it and say, I did that and I think it's pretty damn good. That's a great feeling. So don't let idiots talk you out of something that you think is good.
Show Introduction & Episode Teaser
00:00:49
Speaker
Tune up, level up your fun. Tune up, your quest has now begun.
00:01:14
Speaker
Xcels here. Welcome back. True Believers to Tabletop. Tune up. My name is Mark and I'm here once again with my friend Ben and we have quite a show for you today. Oh, I'm looking forward to this. Couple things first. If you enjoy the music intro, please stick around to the end of the show and enjoy the full track. And if you love it, we want to know. And if you hate it, we want to know more.
Superhero Games Focus & Guest Introduction
00:01:37
Speaker
Leave a comment at our tabletop tune up channel or send an email to tabletop tune up at gmail.com. Hey, Ben, we got a great show lined up today. I am so excited for this one. Yeah. Why don't you tell the audience what we have in store for them?
00:01:51
Speaker
Today, everybody, we're going to get into genre games. And specifically, we're going to get into the superhero genre. And we have a special guest today. We want to introduce you to Leonard Pimentel. Len is somebody who has developed quite a few games, actually. He has developed a game called Buy This Axi Hack. It's a sword and sorcerer game, I think, kind of modeled on the sword and sorcery, Conan fiction, some of that great pulp fantasy stuff. He has lately released a game called Blackstar and it's a science fiction game and I'm hearing great things about it and it's on my short list of stuff I want to pick up. But the game we're most interested to talk to him about today is called Prowlers and Paragons. It is a superhero themed game and to get us started
00:02:38
Speaker
First of all, Lynn, welcome. And we wanted to start with this question. What is your favorite comic book story or storyline or title?
Leonard's Comic Book Influences
00:02:46
Speaker
Tell us about your tell us about your loves here. um First, thank you very much for having me on. And I apologize for having to clear my throat. but um I don't know that I have one specific, I mean based on how old I was when the comics came out, certainly Frank Miller's Daredevil run ah was significantly what was influential in terms of what I thought you could do with comics, and the John Byrne, Chris Claremont X-Men, of course essential, the George Perez Teen Titans,
00:03:21
Speaker
some heavy hitters there man you know so i mean all of those comics i think were influential i don't know if one particular specific storyline was my favorite i was very happy moving from one to the next to the next and i was one of those people who collected a lot of different comics I almost remember the stuff that angered me more than I remember the stuff that was my favorite.
Marvel vs. DC & Media Portrayals
00:03:43
Speaker
I'm looking at you, John Byrne, Alpha Flight issue 12. But the fact of the matter is I think, ah I can tell you the comics more than I can tell you an individual story arc.
00:03:57
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's OK. I think we've got the fact that you called out a specific artist on a specific comic means that, you know, you're you're definitely one of the tribe. Right. Do you remember how old you were when you got your first comics or what some of your first memories of comics were? My very first comic book was an X-Men comic and it was an X-Men comic. i I couldn't tell you what number it was, but it was an X-Men comic with the brood on the cover. um I think Wolverine and Cyclops were both on the cover. Cyclops was still wearing his sort of 1970s-esque outfit. Wolverine was wearing the brown and tan. That's my favorite. He probably was a member of the team. it was one of the It was during the brood situation because the movie Alien had just come out. Wolverine, at the end of that episode, we discover, has been impregnated with one of the
00:04:46
Speaker
brood aliens and is therefore doomed to die. And I was at an age where within those very few pages, I'm like, this guy with the claw with with the claws is the coolest character to have ever and been invented in the history of of the human race. So this isn't good. And I have to buy the next issue. And and that was that. That is fantastic. i I think we've all got these amazing moments if you're a comic book nerd. You know what though, I gotta call you out on that. I think it was kidding and think it was Kitty Pride that was impregnated. Sounds like a John Byrne kind of thing to do. you it It may well have been Kitty Pride. What I remember is that Wolverine's healing factor
00:05:33
Speaker
Oh, and I say remember in finger quotes because they don't, you know, they say that you actually, after a certain number of years, you're not remembering, you're remembering remembering. And it goes like that. So, um, But in any case, so I finger quote remember that it was Wolverine's healing factor that I think saves him from, that allows him to survive because I guess his immune system destroys the, the brood embryo before it does its thing on him. Beyond that, I don't remember. So are we all Marvel folks
Designing Superhero RPGs
00:06:09
Speaker
here? Or is it any DC fan? Ben, you're kind of a DC fan as well, right? I'm ecumenical, man. As long as it's a good story. I love Superman. I love Batman. I love that too. I love the Justice League comics and the Flash. And of course, I love Marvel characters, love Captain America, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the whole thing. I'm just, any of it's great. You've got to tell a great story with it. And the thing, it's funny, Len, you say about the things that made you angry. The stories where they misuse your favorite character or they give them the wrong moves or the wrong dialogue.
00:06:42
Speaker
Those are the ones that you really remember, and you're like, oh, how could they? That's not who this character is. Or they team them up with your, you know, to you know fight, which Marvel was often to do. Like, they're going to have their characters fight against each other. And you're like, there's no way he would beat my character, you know? So speaking of ah getting into conflicts and combats, let's actually start pivoting over to the ah to the game story here. So, Len, You as a game designer and as a GM, you've taken on the superhero genre with this Prowlers and Paragons game. Can you give me a sense of like what is it that excites you about the superhero genre? Why do you think that's a great opportunity for RPGs? So for me, I was designing a generic RPG for many years, many, many, many years. years um And it was the first edition of Savage Worlds that came out in the sort of Brown Tan book
00:07:37
Speaker
that I looked at in red and went, well, i I guess I'm done. I guess those 15-ish years I spent tinkering with my system were all for naught because this thing kind of does what I wanted to do. so um you know My idea was it was going to be Gerb Slight and Shane Hensley and Clint Black said, no, don't worry, sit down, I got this. so So after crying for a while, I'm like, all right. um But in the process of thinking through designing a generic slash universal system, the overlap on the Venn diagram between a truly generic universal system and a superhero system, those circles overlap fairly significantly because every superhero game is to some extent
00:08:22
Speaker
There's a lot of carve out here and there's a lot of caveats for sure. But to some extent is a generic system because the superhero genre covers such an enormous area. ah okay Everything from 1930s noir vigilantes to a Justice League Unlimited and to the Legion of Superheroes. Star spanning incredibly high power characters. so Yeah, I almost wouldn't use the word generic. I'd use the word, like, encyclopedic for all the reasons that you're saying. I mean, they've got to cover magic and technology, different time periods, and so on. Absolutely. Absolutely. Which makes it the absolutely worst type of game to design, and you're a fool for doing it. But ah there you go. um So I sort of stumbled backwards into designing a superhero game.
00:09:15
Speaker
falling off the heels of Shane and Clint basically took me into an alley and beat me up. And when I crawled out, I realized, well, I'm going to have to do something different. And lo and behold, I had the bones of the superhero game. I somehow see you as, you know, I could do this all day with this visual. yeah
00:09:37
Speaker
Well done. Well done. I can see the superhero references are going to come thick and fast here. Fantastic. fantastic So this is great. I mean, they're encyclopedic. I think that that's both a exciting opportunity because, you know, if the promise of role-playing games is that you can kind of do whatever you want, the promise of a superhero genre is you can make whatever you want in a way that's really open that you don't see in a lot of other genres. We're going to get to this, I think, with some of our questions later, but that also has some amazing challenges for the GM as
Empowerment Fantasy & Genre Challenges
00:10:08
Speaker
well. This is a podcast for people who are GMs, for people who are trying to figure out how to run these games. And so a lot of the questions we we're interested in are going to be those that might help new GMs.
00:10:20
Speaker
In this case, gems who might be into the superhero genre to consider whether or not they want to run a superhero game and whether or not what kind of challenges are associated with that game so with that kind of game specifically. So when you think about the the high points, right what are what are some of the great moments for you about a superhero game? Or what kinds of things, when you're thinking about running a superhero game, like what do you go, oh, man, I really want to have moments like this? Or what what kinds of things come to mind? at the end of the day the superhero what the superhero game offers both to the game master and to the players it is that it is the ultimate experience of that empowerment
00:10:59
Speaker
fantasy of the positive empowerment fantasy, even more so, more so than any other genre, more so than fantasy, more so than spies or e whether you're James Bond or whatever the case, because it is really untethered from reality intentionally. You have to be untethered from reality because every element of the superhero genre is absurd if you actually bring a serious lens to it, which is why most, in my opinion, um um The construction of the superhero genres are fairly mediocre because it's not impressive to Make the statement that boy would be dangerous if someone had those powers. Yeah, we we know that's not we were were past that that's not what the genre is actually about so the superhero genre really frees you from reality and A court I don't necessarily mean because you can fly I mean because the real dangerous problems in the world can be solved by punching them and You have the ability to do that
00:12:00
Speaker
That is really the ultimate, it's this ultimate power fantasy where you can make the world better. You have the time and the ability to make the world better and it will work. That is the ultimate power trip meant in the best way. The ultimate empowerment fantasy. It's the opposite of a horror. in that regard? One of the things we will find that like all the different players at the table have kind of a different conception of what that yeah fantasy is because it's kind of their fantasy. We all kind of individualize these characters to a certain extent into our own you know fantasy, what that hero means. So you get such ah an amazing variety of these types of characters that might inhabit that space.
00:12:49
Speaker
ah How do you as ah as a GM, like that's that's one of the big challenges we've we found is like as a GM managing that kind of like chaotic circus of characters um to be one of the big challenges. how do you What do you think about that? What are your thoughts on that? By the way, I just want to mark now that I'm officially reserving chaotic circus as the name of my next superhero group.
00:13:12
Speaker
um I actually don't think it's different from almost any other RPG. um We all appear to be folks who've played long enough that we've all had experiences where we sat down at a table where we thought the game was going to be one thing, and one or two people, at least at the table, it turns out thought the game was going to be something different. And that applies to fantasy, to espionage, to jet sci-fi, for sure. um At the end of the day, you can hit me with a genre. You can hit me with a setting. It doesn't matter. You can even hit me with the specific game you're playing. That still doesn't tell me what kind kind of game we're playing. And so with a superhero game, I wouldn't say more than any other. I would say the same as almost any other RPG. You've got to sit down around the table with the people playing.
00:14:03
Speaker
and tell them either what you have want to do or collectively come to an agreement about what you all want to do. You can't just say we're playing sci-fi. You have to say specifically, look what we're doing is basically Star Wars and the characters are going to be scoundrels but with a heart of gold and that's the kind of characters I want you to make. I want you to make characters who are scoundrels but You're not murderers. You're not psychos. You're scoundrels with a heart of gold because the campaign is going to move in a direction that that's what we're looking for. Is everybody on board
Game Design Philosophy & Player Experience
00:14:36
Speaker
with that? Yes or no? And for the supers, it's the same. You have to not only say, hey, we're going to be superheroes. OK, great. Let's talk about it.
00:14:45
Speaker
what What does that mean? And it doesn't just mean the power level. It also means even how realistic or not realistic are we looking for? Are we playing Frank Muller's Daredevil? Or are we playing Justice League, the cartoon that was on a number of years ago? And I think everyone needs to, so everyone needs to be on board with the theme, the not even, that maybe not the theme, but the tone. the reality level, the how divorced it is from really from from reality. All those elements need to be discussed. And I think they need to be discussed in supers. But I actually think that conversation needs to happen with just about any game you're going to play. I was going to say, you know when we started this episode, we started talking about how we' we're going to get into genre games. And as I'm reflecting on it, I think you're right. We're talking about that as though
00:15:40
Speaker
There's a normal to RPGs that is sort of by default the fantasy game. And then if you're going to play in other genres, right ah then you're going to have to have these conversations. But i mean to your point, you have to have that conversation in any kind of game you play. So I think it's ah that's a good catch. I was going to say that, though, one thing I find kind of unique to um superhero games, which maybe I don't see as much in, like say, particularly a fantasy game or even a lot of science fiction games, is that players kind of come in there with the vision of their superhero. And by definition, they're a superhero. When I start a game of, let's say, Dungeons and Dragons, and I have a first-level character, he's a first-level peon. you know like He can't do a whole lot.
00:16:24
Speaker
And I think with the superhero game, it it feels like the superhero is granted a ah little bit more a little bit more power, a little bit more agency to kind of do wondrous feats, whereas say like a first level Dungeons and Dragons character just doesn't have the that the capacity to do a whole lot other than, yeah, swing, take a hit, and and take a fall. Sure, absolutely. Although even there in the fantasy realm, right there's a significant difference if you're talking about a first level magic user, because you guys are playing BX or a BX clone, as opposed to i a first level sorcerer from 5E or Pathfinder second edition, who is arm who still fragile, but but armed with definitely a toolbox of things that they can do so that they're not casting their one spell and hiding behind
00:17:13
Speaker
the you know hiding behind the fighter for the rest of the adventure so you are definitely correct that there is some difference in terms of the expectation of what the characters can do and maybe to some extent their agency over the world but i think that's part of the initial conversation right when we're talking about again the kind of game you're talking about hey this is going to be like the daredevil netflix show which means it's going to be tough for you guys especially in the beginning Or, hey, this is going to be Legion of Superheroes. Life's awesome and you're going to make it awesomer. but Nice. It's fantastic. Len, I'd like to now drill a little further into the game design aspect of this. so Obviously, we've been giving a lot of GM advice and how to get started well. Can you tell us, for Prowlers and Paragons, as you were looking at
00:18:02
Speaker
the other RPGs in the world, right? And you said Savage Worlds kind of backed you out of this generic system idea. But nonetheless, you had this great system. And when you looked at how that was going to contribute to the superhero genre, I'm guessing you've probably played your share of all the other superhero games that have been out there. I think we've all had some historical favorites, the ones we first remember playing, some that we liked, some that we thought didn't hit the marks. So you're looking at all this, and what did you think, hey, I want this system to do differently, or this is where I think the system's got a unique thing to offer?
00:18:36
Speaker
Unfortunately, we're now going to use the rest of the podcast time, because you asked me a question about it. So sit down, rest your feet, grab a beverage. We're going to be here for a while. ah Because I can talk about design ideas and philosophies and stuff for hours. I will do my best to stop you. My mom has a strict curfew for her for bedtime. So We will definitely have you on again to talk about design if you're interested. please But to to answer your question, I wanted to design a game that I would enjoy playing. That doesn't mean it's better. That doesn't mean it does any one thing better than any other game does that one thing. Rather, it means it does that one thing the way I want that one thing done.
00:19:29
Speaker
and I don't mean to speak circularly, but rather, in other words, the different elements of the game in terms of what P and&P brings to the table um as a superhero game is just the different elements are the kind that I enjoy for a superhero game. so There's no one specific thing, but that's the umbrella. Now, if you want, there is one added detail, which is how do you figure out or try to guess what that umbrella means to me? How do you figure out, you know, what's the sort of stuff Len likes in terms of his superhero games? And I have this weird philosophy when I'm designing a game, which is, and this is going to sound strange, and I've tried to figure out the right way to say this, and I have yet to do so.
00:20:18
Speaker
um I would like the people sitting at the table, and I do design for face-to-face more than online, I would like the people sitting at the table to have some kind of tangible, tactile experience, even emotional experience, that is in some sense analogous to what is occurring within the context of the game. And so here's a very simple example of that. There are some games where you have like ah um a metacurrency that will improve your role, and you have to decide, are you going to use that metacurrency before you roll? so Just to make sure people are clear on what you mean by that, something like inspiration in like a D and&D game that lets you roll advantage or something like that. precise Precisely. Precisely. Let's say in D and&D, let's use the example, if you have inspiration, um I believe it lets you apply advantage or it lets you roll again.
00:21:15
Speaker
now Let's say it didn't let you roll again. Let's say it gave you advantage, but that's it. And you have to decide whether or not to use it before you roll. That means that that particular game mechanic creates a moment of tension in the player. And to me, the decision as to whether the mechanic should create tension, or rather should make you feel comfortable about doing something heroic. Those are two different things. And you have to Scale the mechanic to
Narrative Moments & Epic Scenes
00:21:41
Speaker
do that. So the choice of how resolve, which is my metacurrency, which is the PNP version of inspiration, the choice of how resolve works, when you get to choose whether or not to spend it, how you spend it, um the fact that you roll a pool of dice,
00:21:58
Speaker
um The fact that they resolve the idea of it is that it's meant to be spent with chips and you're throwing chips back and forth. There's a tactile physicality to the game that to me feels more like a superhero game because you've got all this stuff on the table. You're um um shaking a bunch of dice and throwing them down and rolling it. The only other superhero game that kind of, to me, did that was Champions, but not taking anything away from Champions. But I actually think Champions made you, rolling a bunch of dice makes you feel like a superhero.
00:22:34
Speaker
until they hit the table. Really think about it. When you roll a whole bunch of dice, how many times did they fall off the table? How many times were you picking them up and rolling them again? Then you were sitting there calculating them and adding them all. bit but All that accounting work after the roll, you lost that feeling of a superhero. so even for Again, this is just for me personally. A dice pull system is what you should use for supers, because that chuk chuk chuk feels like I'm more than human. But there can't be so many dice that you then have to feel like an accountant afterwards. and If your superpower is math, then yes, that empowers you. yeah So to answer your question,
00:23:17
Speaker
Every mechanic in the game, the way things work, are designed because I think they make you feel, again, as much as possible within reason, physically and or emotionally, something akin to what your character is feeling in the game world. What an amazing lens on game design. I think that's exactly right, too. ah Mark, you had An example here, I think. Yeah, i something really kind of touched on you. You were just saying I had written down ah a bit of a note for myself here. we Ben and I had played a game of powers and paragons, and we really had a good time of it. And oh one thing that i really stands out when playing it is that you've kind of captured the the trope of super how superheroes pushing themselves beyond their limits, which is kind of like something you see in the comics from time to time.
00:24:10
Speaker
And it's kind of baked into the game. um I recall I had this blaster I was playing, Tunguska. He was just, you know, this irradiated person from the Tunguska experiments and um he had all this power that he had to, you know, unleash from his body and And I remember there was a a scenario where I think he was flying up in the sky and he used resolve. I had this overload overload ability. And I just went full ham. Because I wanted like, we were just, we the game was getting long. we were We were getting a little tired. And I was like, let's just let's just end this. Let's just do this.
00:24:50
Speaker
So i i I rolled out those dice, and you're not wrong. it I felt like a superhero. But keep in mind, Len, we were playing online. So the math was done by the computer, and we got the instant results. But it was kind of cool, because he he got you know he' got this powerless feeling, and he fell from the sky, because he he had expended his thing, which created another adventure opportunity for the other players to save him.
Character Progression in Superhero Games
00:25:15
Speaker
And this was a tactile experience, if I ever experienced one. Even on a virtual table. Yeah, and here the mechanics played this like something straight out of the comic book. And that was design. That's fantastic. That makes me very happy. I will say, play it in person. um i like I wrote the game and made some design choices for the idea of sitting around a table and throwing poker chips at each other.
00:25:43
Speaker
and seeing and hearing a bunch of dice hit the table. And I think it plays fine online, but I think it plays better. Look, every RPG plays better in person. So this one plays better in person than it does online because of the intentional physical tactile elements that are that are brought to bear in the game by design. This seems like one of those games that would elicit a round of high fives. I've been blessed in that that's occurred typically when we
00:26:16
Speaker
when I've done convention games and stuff for people, I had, we had one game where, oh look, a gamer telling gamer stories, but but you know, you had me on, so you gotta go with it. But we had, there's something in the game called the defining one moment, and maybe, I don't know if that's, if you pull the defining moment in the situation you're describing, but it's one of those, everything kind of you know is up to you in this moment, and at the end of that, you're out of it. you're you're So we were playing a Justice League game, and the Justice League were in three different places, but the guy playing Green Arrow happened to be in the place where a building started collapsing.
00:26:51
Speaker
And Green Arrow, he's he's he's great, but he's not the guy to stop a building from collapsing. He just does not have the stats for it. So he pulled a defining moment and just described him like emptying everything in his queer world, like glue arrows and acid to melt whatever, and just sort of narrated some way all his collection of arrows. you know And of course, because it's Oliver Queen, at the end of the day, when he's out of arrows, he's literally physically leaning up against the building. um um just long enough for people to exit before the building collapsed on poor ollie and it was and the guy who played green arrow i'm like okay you're out of the event he looks at me when i'm told him okay so you're you're out of the rest of the inventory he's like i don't care that was awesome that's fantastic and i won't lie i love it i thought that was pretty cool i mean the defining moment could have been he could have speeded out superman and it could have been
00:27:45
Speaker
Superman was busy fighting somebody near the moon. That sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, we've had a lot of fun in this game. And so now I want to switch gears a little bit. I know we want to keep our eyes on the clock here, unfortunately. um But of course, we'd love to have you back sometime. ah One of the things that we've found challenging is something that's not so much a matter of how Prowlers and Paragons works as a system, but rather how the superhero genre works as an RPG medium. One thing we found is that character progression is a little challenging. um I had this conversation with somebody who I was trying to pitch superhero games to and they said, look, I know when I'm doing D and&D, I've got level progressions. I know what it means to be pursue doing that stuff. I get better treasure as I go. I get more capability and stuff like that. ah When I play a superhero game, Superman is the same in
00:28:38
Speaker
2024, more or less, as he was in 1986, in 1966, and so on. So where's the growth potential? Len, tell all of our GMs in the audience, what exactly do we do to build our characters up over time? What does it look like for a character to progress in a superhero game? So this actually ties into another question that I think we're going to be talking about later, or at least it potentially does. So let me put the real answer aside because the real answer is the one that's actually going to tie in later and I'll maybe hit it at the very end alternative answers to what I think is the real answer though is
00:29:19
Speaker
Like everything else you talk about at the beginning, you've got to talk to your players about advancement and what do they want in terms of advancement. You can have no advancement. Meaning, by no advancement, I don't mean nothing changes with the character. But at the very least, you can have a situation where your character's powers and abilities, their stats, if you will, remain fairly constant. Okay? In something like P and&P, you could literally do that and just say the characters gain more resolve, more narrative meta-currency. If you're playing a game that has meta-currency and your oak, not everybody, some people absolutely detest that mechanic. So assuming you don't, you could literally keep static characters and just increase that and there you go. That's that's and some kind of advancement. Or you're not, at the end of the day, playing a comic book. You're playing a game. It's not a story.
00:30:15
Speaker
It's a game based on stories, but it's still a game. And the game always trumps everything else. Because at the end of the day, it's a game. And so if everyone playing this game wants their characters to level up over time, which is what I want when I play. So um um then you want to make sure that there's a mechanic. for that to occur, whether it's increasing specific abilities or maybe you're playing a superhero game that actually has levels. There are some that work that way. So most superhero games do have some advancement mechanic, because it's true, iconic characters don't generally do that. But we're not playing iconic characters. Even though the characters may be iconic within the game world, we're playing a game. And part of the fun of the game is getting more powerful.
00:31:05
Speaker
so You disregard the fact that the Iconics don't work that way. And you just concede, we're playing a game. This is a fun part of the RPG game experience. And therefore, we're going to participate in that fun. And by the way, the fact of the matter is that you can actually look at the evolution of heroes over time and see them evolve in power. Not necessarily because they technically got stronger, but because our expectations of them you know, at first Superman could only jump buildings. Then eventually he could, you know, fly to Mars and other planets and whatever. And so heroes have actually increased in power and ability over time, just because kind of what we've expected of them, you know, has changed. So you could sort of justify that if you needed to, but you don't need to. We're playing a game. This is fun. Rock on. Let me let me ask a quick follow-up question ah related to that. And it might seem a little tangential, but
00:32:03
Speaker
Did you see X-Men 97 when that came out? Yeah. So this I think is a really good example of what you're talking about, right? When you watch Cyclops as he is in those first couple episodes, he's using these optical beams in ways that simply didn't exist when you're watching the original X-Men series. Or frankly, when you go back and look at the early comics, right? And all he's doing is blasting people, you know? Now he's using it to blunt the falling velocity from ah after he comes out of a plane or he's using it to zip around the battlefield as he uses it like a thruster. There's so many interesting things he can do laterally with this power. So even though the power is consistent, his facility with it is higher. And I think the X-Men model it gives us a lot of really interesting stuff to explore there.
00:32:51
Speaker
and the Marvel Super Heroes game did that. The old TSR Marvel Super Heroes game had something called Power Stunts, which, if you were running a game and you didn't want the characters to get more powerful, you could say, hey, you're only allowed to ah build a Karma, which was their metacurrency. Or you could spend Karma on Power Stunts, showing that your growth is lateral um as you expand. you know And you could certainly limit that kind of development in almost any game you play. you know if that's what everybody at the table thinks is cool, 100%. The real answer in terms of advancement is part of the beginning conversation is talking to the kept players about where we're going to go and where the heroes are going to go. And that, whether you do level up or whether the characters remain entirely static and entirely free of any kind of narrative meta-currency, that is really the advancement that you have to talk to the players about.
Managing Long-term Superhero Campaigns
00:33:50
Speaker
Where are we these characters going? So are we going into space? Are we going on globetrotting adventures? And what's going to happen with these characters over the over the campaign? See if you think this is right. It sounds like there's a little bit more agency, as it were, in the way that players contribute to a superhero story than you might find in a fantasy game where we're going, well, we're going to get to level such and such at some point, we hope, or we're going to set up this villain. And everybody's kind of following along, but they already have their progression kind of scripted out by levels or fantasy tropes generally. Here in a superhero game, it sounds like because there's so many more places you could go with characters given the breadth of the genres that it plays in, you probably want to have that conversation with the players and be a little bit more prescriptive early on. A superhero game is a soap opera. And if you're not aware of that walking in, the game's probably not going to go any
00:34:46
Speaker
You may have fun punching bad guys week after week, but eventually it's going to get real dry. It's a it's a soap opera. Well, there's also, I will say that one thing I noticed too, is myself as a long time comic book collector and reader and enjoyer of the genre. Some of the people who maybe were a little less into that genre or didn't know as much about it, not that they didn't like superheroes, but maybe they don't have the the kind of the knowledge base of it, if that could be a thing. um I felt like they were a little at a disadvantage and because maybe they couldn't visualize what a superhero could do in some situations. And that was one of the challenges that you know maybe Ben or myself who had you know read a lot of comics would try to draw creativity out of them to kind of like, you got to think bigger. you got you know like You can do amazing things in this game. like we tried We had to try to coax it out of some of the players.
00:35:41
Speaker
is that Was that recent? Because that surprises me only in that the Marvel and DC Cinematic Universes have been so ever-present that I would be surprised that there's you know people who are within our RPG Nerdosphere would be there and yet not be to at least some at least have a foot in the Superhero Cinematic Universe Nerdosphere. You might think that and that might be the case, but so some people have a difficult time conceptualizing, you know, they can see it on screen and they're amazed by it. But somebody else is kind of controlling that narrative and they're looking at it going, wow. You know, when you're playing a role playing game, you're the one who gets to make the audience go, wow. And sometimes if if people aren't experienced with that genre as much as maybe others,
00:36:33
Speaker
getting them to get there, getting them to do that that wow moment can take a little coaxing. That's what we found anyway. I could see that. I could see that as being, I don't know if this is the case, but I could see that also being particularly endemic to individuals who were coming from a game or from games that had had more complex, yeah not even more complex rules. That's incorrect. Games where, by their nature, they're designed that the character sheet has buttons to push and levers to pull. And if you look at your character sheet and you're like, oh, I don't have a lever to pull here and I don't have a button to push here, and they're moving into a game where it's more about, my dude, you can fly. um That's what you can do. What are you going to do ah without the levers and buttons? That transition can be equally difficult for someone moving from 5E to BX.
00:37:24
Speaker
I'm a fighter. All I can do is swing my sword. Oh, no, my child. There's so much more that you can do than just swing your sword. But it's not written on your sheet. There's no buttons or levers. What are you actually going to do right now? Look around. That might be a game mechanic thing or a game familiarity thing, gameplay style thing. But I could also see it, you know, if there are really folks who just don't have any kind of grounding in that. Yeah, I could certainly see it being difficult. Len, we have a tradition around here. When we are fortunate enough to have a guest on, normally, we are tuning up other people's games and giving out all kinds of advice as GMs. ah But when we have a guest on like you, when we have a great interview, we like to have them tune our ideas up. And so we're going to invite you to tune up our question about superhero campaigning. So Mark, why don't you tee up our questions here for for Len?
00:38:18
Speaker
Yeah, this is kind of ah a bit of a two-part question, and you've answered some of this, so you could just answer what what you feel it calls to you. Kind of been a two-part question. ah We've had a great, shorter campaign of prowlers and paragons, and Ben has been running us through a fun adventure. The last, gosh, Ben, I want to say about maybe seven sessions? Yeah, something like that. About seven sessions, about three hours each. We've been kind of running through a little bit of an X-Men type kind of adventure type thing. But we've been struggling a little bit, extending this into a longer campaign. um Do you feel that there's something inherent about the genre that makes longer campaigns more challenging? and And what are your suggestions for helping us pull off a bit of a longer campaign?
00:39:09
Speaker
by Aaron Alston's strike force, because there's not a single thing I can think of probably that that Aaron Alston would not have said better, more cleanly, more coherently, more cogently, and probably with fewer words. Aaron's not here, dammit. That's really sad actually. Having said that, if you're playing in a fantasy game, there's usually something going on in the fantasy world, and based on who your characters are, your characters are going to tackle that challenge. And typically, it's over a long period of time, and the campaign almost defines itself. And unless you're playing the superhero game that has that kind of structure,
00:39:51
Speaker
Or, you know, if you're playing a superhero game where the entire campaign is Doom World, Dr. Doom has taken over, you're now living in the Doomverse, and the entire campaign is gonna be about the rebellion against Doom. I bet that campaign could go a long time, but if you're doing a more plain vanilla supers campaign that is more like your typical superhero show or comic book, you don't have that. I circle back then to what I mentioned before, which is comic books are soap opera. But here's the other part. They are reactive. Heroes react to what happens. The heroes don't tend to have fantasy heroes, don't like their long-term goals are tied into the larger campaign. Not always, but they easily can be. That doesn't apply at all to superheroes. So if you want to run a long superhero campaign, my thoughts are you really need to know who the character is and what they want.
00:40:50
Speaker
and what they're going to want as they move through the campaign. This is part of that initial conversation. This is part of that even character growth conversation, like do you get experience points or not? That I think is secondary. But you have to have a conversation with each player about their character. You have to have the conversation going, what do you want for your character? So your super patriot is going to be working for the government for the first part of the campaign. And it's going to be on loan to whatever. Then your super patriot is going to discover things are not the way they should be. And in fact, that the department that's sending them out has actually been bi been riddled with double agents. And the super patriot is actually going to be going directly against the United States government. And we'll end up being on the run from the government.
00:41:39
Speaker
The player is telling you this? Yes. The player is telling you what they want. They're not going to tell you how. You're going to do that as the game master. But basically the player says, here's the deal. I want to be Captain America. Then I want to be Captain America Winter Soldier. And then I want to be back having fixed everything at the end. Another player is going to tell you, I'm going to be selfish and a jerk. And at the end of this campaign, I'm going to sacrifice my life for everybody else. Another player's gonna tell you whatever they, and some, obviously, some players like, I don't know. Give them time. Give them a little bit. Give them something short. Give them, all right, look, for the first part, maybe your character's the kitty prize. Maybe your character doesn't know. Maybe they play a little while and see, and then they start getting ideas for, that's fine too. But, so if you want a long supers campaign, superheroes and superhero characters should do a whole lot besides punch villains.
00:42:33
Speaker
They should have to deal with Aunt May. They should be on a date when things go south and then have to deal with the fallout of that after they've saved the world. That interstitial tissue that sticks the supervillain fights together is what makes long campaigns
Episode Conclusion & Guest Gratitude
00:42:52
Speaker
work. And without it, the game gets kind of dull because it's Punch a Villain of the Week. That's some great advice, Len. um I think we'll take that to our to our game, Ben. What do you think? That sounds like great advice to take to our game. So, Len, we're going to wrap up. Thank you so much for joining us this week.
00:43:10
Speaker
For listeners who are interested in trying out Prowlers and Paragons, as well as your other offerings, like Blackstar, or Buy This Axi Hack, ah where can they find you? Pretty much all my stuff is on DriveThru RPG. So if you go there, Prowlers and Paragons there, Blackstar, as you mentioned, Buy This Axi Hack there, and Hack Again, and you know a bunch of other goodies. We will be sure to include a link for that. Well, everybody, that is our first foray, certainly not our last foray, into superhero gaming And I hope it's not our last opportunity to talk to Len, who is a fountain of fascinating design insight and game master advice. And until we do those things, keep those dice rolling.
00:43:59
Speaker
Tune up, level up your fun. Tune up, your quest has now begun.
00:44:10
Speaker
Tune up, we'll show you how it's done Tune up, tune up Tune up, tune up Tune up, level up your fun Tune up, your quest has now begun
00:44:41
Speaker
Tune up, we'll show you how it's done Tune up, tune up Tune up, level up your fun Tune up, your quest has now begun
00:45:13
Speaker
tune up, we'll show you how it's done tune up, tune up, tune up
00:45:33
Speaker
Come get your tune up It's time for your tune up Your game needs a tune up Come get your tune up It's time for your tune up Your game needs a tune up Tune up, tune up