Interesting session title! I’m sure all will become clear on listening… 
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I have no memory of saying this, but let’s face it, it was probably me.
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Yes, I agree with this. I find it much easier to get my head round someone who can also do some extraordinary things, but is still basically human.
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I heard a similar description by Stephen King about the difference between horror and literary fiction - literary fiction generally involves stories of extraordinary people reacting to ordinary circumstances, whereas horror involves ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances.
While I’m sure there are many arguments and disagreements with the statement (and I don’t want to open up a whole genre can of worms), I certainly think he was on to something, and it helped me understand the sort of fiction I prefer. I have no clue how to play a Hero. I have some idea how to play a flawed person pretending that they know how to be a Hero.
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That really seems like an odd way to describe literary fiction. At least since the emergence of naturalism in the 19th century, it seems to me that it’s tended to portray ordinary people who are the products of their societies and their circumstances: a bored wife having an affair (Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary), an advertising salesman wandering about Dublin (Leopold Bloom), a real estate agent carrying on his business and having an affair (George Babbitt), a neurotic young Jewish man who masturbates a lot (Alexander Portnoy), and their ilk. I wouldn’t call any of them extraordinary.
Well, I agree, and I knew Mr. King’s statement would be somewhat contentious, as I mentioned. Definitions of ‘extraordinary’ are broad and subjective. I thought it was interesting for the discussion, though.
My feeling for a long time is that Champions isn’t a superhero game, but I wouldn’t call it a game about people with superhuman powers either. I’d call it a game of tactical combat among combat units with superhuman powers. To be sure, that’s an element of the genre—the climactic battle in The Avengers has what amount to artillery, air cavalry, armor, sniper/observer, infantry/command, and covert ops each personified as a single hero. But Champions emphasizes it to a degree that makes its origins in wargaming stand out.
Of the supers campaigns I’ve run, the one that felt most like it was about “people with superpowers” used FUDGE as its engine. Though that may have been influenced by the subgenre; I set it up after I asked how to define the genre of Planetary, and Ken Hite answered “pulp.”
I’d say literary fiction is about ordinary people reacting to ordinary circumstances, while adventure fiction (of which superhero fiction is usually a subset) is about extraordinary people reacting to extraordinary circumstances. Not sure what qualifies as extraordinary people reacting to ordinary circumstances, though.
I’d say that the difference between superheroes and people with powers mostly comes down to play style. Unfortunately, it only seems to take one person playing “people with powers” to drag the whole group in that direction.
Now what can be fun, and what Roger and Nick seem to be doing slightly different variants of, is playing superheroes in a people with powers game. It’s even possible to play it largely straight, although that would enhance the opportunity for some serious tragedy.
Incidentally, has anyone actually twigged to the “kirbium” reference? The discussion during the recap makes me think not. Was that original to John, or did he crib it from somewhere?
I assumed it’s a Jack Kirby reference but I don’t think we’ve said it explicitly.
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It seemed like you hadn’t picked up on that. Either that, or you thought his name was Jack Cobain
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It’s in the published adventure, not an invention of mine.
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I assumed it was Kerbium, and somehow related to road construction.
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Presumably it’s a rare earth metal. Yttrium, ytterbium, terbium, erbium, kirbium . . .
I think Roger can relax a bit more on his CVK concerns.
My memory from hero 5th is that body damage from normal attacks like his mind fist is stopped 1 for 1 by normal defenses.
Resistant defenses are required to stop body damage from killing attacks.
Which I am assuming no one took. But if you ever have to fight automata maybe bring some killing attacks along. We once built an automaton speedster to go up against the party speedster for his birthday. Stretched hex paper across the entire bottom floor of the apartment to let movement actually occur. He was deeply nonplussed when he realized his opponent didn’t have really high defenses. His opponent just didn’t have a stun statistic.
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Not to mention, you’re not dead at 0 BODY, you just start bleeding out.
A quick note and apology to listeners: due to a flare-up of some ongoing health issues I had to abruptly miss a week of running the game. Which then became two weeks… then a short break.
We should be returning to the adventure quite soon but there will be a rescheduling of which recordings get posted when in the meantime.
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Take care of yourself and get better. We’ll all be here when you get back, waiting with bated breath. I can’t wait for the party to meet the good (sic) Doctor himself!
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Without looking at the books, the damage resistance issue in 5e was as follows:
Normal attacks: Both Resistant and Non-Resistant defenses stop both Stun and Body on a 1:1 basis
Killing attacks: If you have no Resistant defenses, then no defense is applied against the attack. If you DO have resistant attacks, then your rPD applies to the Body and BOTH rPD and PD apply to the Stun, which means you can resist getting stunned by killing attacks potentially longer than you can normal attacks. IIRC though you do always take a minimum of 1 Stun per Body that gets past your rPD.