Lost in Neotropolis: The Hidden Perils and Pitfalls or Superhero Tabletop RPGs

(This post is dedicated to John Lamb, and the members of the World of Supers RPGs Facebook group who inspired it)

Part 1. Problem Players?

    Two of my favourite things in the world are superheroes and tabletop role-playing games (ttrpgs). Put them together and I am in hog-heaven. On a Facebook group I'm a member of, there's a discussion about problem players in superhero rpgs, and what sort of stuff you as a Gamemaster (GM) will either restrict or simply won't allow at a table. I'm finding a lot of these are familiar to me. The classic one in my experience is the following exchange

    "You should run a game for us."
    "If I do, I'll be running superheroes. Are you all cool with that?" Everyone is.
    Come the day of the game where everyone's creating their characters...
    "Do I have to have some sort of stupid codename? Can't I just use my normal name?"
    "Do I have to have weird stupid powers? Can't I just use guns and swords and martial arts?"
    "Can I play a character who kills people?"
    "Do I have to be a good guy, or can I be more like a vigilante?"

    My answer to these questions is almost always, "Sure, but not in my game. I'm not interested in that sort of character or game, and it won't be any fun for me." I struggle with anxiety and even without that factored in, GMing can already be a difficult and demanding role. If I'm going to put myself in that position, the last thing I want is for it to feel like a chore or an imposition.

    One of my other gripes is the 'mutant' origin. 
    In the Marvel Universe, mutants are an offshoot of Homo Sapiens who are born with strange abilities which usually manifest during puberty. They can pretty much be anything, from relatively minor and trivial (generating a fireworks display) to potentially world-ending (the ability to re-shape reality). In game terms, it's a character who has no special origin or backstory, they were just born with powers or woke up one day and there they were.
    I will almost always veto this origin because, to me, origin stories are a prime source of plot hooks for me as a GM, and one of the ways where a player can tell me, "This is a plot point that I want to explore" or "These are the kind of adventures I'd like you to run". 
    For instance...

• If your character was the subject of a mysterious experiment, then who ran the experiment? What were they trying to do? What's their relationship to the character? Are they a potential enemy or ally, or both?
  A player with this origin is telling me that they might want to investigate the mystery of where their powers came from. They might want to dive into the conspiracy of who did this to them, and why. Maybe they want an enemy who's coming after them, or maybe they want a potential ally or resources that they can draw on.
• If you were exposed to mysterious energy in outer space, then how did you end up in outer space? Where did the energy come from? Was this supposed to happen, or was it an accident?
  Again, this tells me you want to investigate a mystery. It also tells me that you're interested in stories that do with space, with weird cosmic energies, alien beings or extraterrestrial technology. It also lets me know that your character has contacts and experience in space exploration and space sciences that I can draw on for inspiration.

    These questions give me as a GM ideas about the sort of stories you want me to tell and the sort of things you as a player are interested in exploring further.
    "Just born with it," on the other hand, gives me nothing.

    There are other two archetypes which came up a lot, though they're not ones I've seen often.

    The first is the character who can effectively do anything they want. These usually take the form of powerful magicians and sorcerers, highly-advanced scientists and engineers, or characters who are able to access and control some sort of powerful cosmic energy. Whatever the case, these characters will inevitably be able to produce exactly the right spell, gizmo or anomalous energy signature to solve whatever problem comes their way with a snap of their fingers, leaving the GM five minutes into a four hour gaming session suddenly having to scramble for time.

    The second is the player who wants to bring in a character from outside the genre. Because superheroes is such an eclectic genre, it's easy to have almost any kind of character and run them as a superhero. The problem arrives when the genre the character comes from conflicts with the superhero genre (e.g., basing your character on Luke Skywalker, a space monk with a bunch of mental abilities and an energy blade, should be fine. Having him fatally stab people or slashing their limbs off with his energy blade, or using telekinesis to hurl them to their deaths... enh, not so much). The other big problem is expecting the same level of infallible competence as the character displays to carry over (i.e. if you wanna base your character on Drizzt do'Urden, fine, but don't expect that, just because he's the star of his own stories, you'll automatically be the star of the game). 

Part 2. The Pitfalls of Genre

    The longer this discussion went on, the more I started thinking. I've met genuinely inconsiderate players before. Sometimes, they're the ones who think you can "win" at tabletop role-playing and take an adversarial approach to the GM and other players. Sometimes, they're not really invested in the game but just want to spend time with friends, so they don't care if they deliberately sabotage the GMs plans and ruin it for everyone else... after all, it's just a game, isn't it? And sometimes, they just don't care about anyone's fun but their own... 

    But most people aren't like that. If they've joined a game, they want to play and have fun, and most players want the experience to be fun for the other players and the GM too... so where's the problem? 

    At the heart of these problems, it isn't the powers or the characters, but the players... at most of the time, it's not even an adversarial thing. The problem is with the Genre.

    The nature of fictional genres is that each comes with their own set of rules, tropes, conventions and unspoken customs and culture, and superheroes, being a vexacious, chimerical mess forged out of bits and pieces of heroic mythology, two-fisted pulp action, planetary romance, horror, science fiction and more with each being given its own unique spin, is worse than most. I've been a fan of funnybook superheroes for five decades. I speak the language fluently, but there are a lot of folks out there who don't*. 

    For folks like me, the world of signal watches, unstable molecules, superpets, Kirby dots and danger rooms is a familiar one. We know our way around. We speak the language.

    A lot of potential players don't. It's easy to think that, between animated cartoons, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, half a dozen different big-screen Batmen, and countless different films, TV series, cartoons, comic books, action figures, t-shirts and lunchboxes, most folks would have a pretty firm grasp on the superhero concept, but they don't. For them, the world of superheroes is something they've taken occasional glimpses into, and even then, there were elements that went right over their head or didn't even register. 
    There's a reason why, when you as a superhero fan, watch a movie or cartoon series, you spot so many Easter Eggs. That's because a whole bunch of the language of superheroes is invisible unless you know what you're looking for. When Cyclops quips that Wolverine might feel more at home in yellow spandex, there are people out there you just imagine Hugh Jackman in a bright, canary yellow leotard and think that that's the joke. 
    They don't speak funnybook. And that's not their fault.

    For them, it can be like being lost and overwhelmed in a strange country.

    They're not trying to mess with us, or wreck our game, or be disruptive. They just don't know the rules. Over the years, I've played every sort of "troublesome" character in superhero rpgs. Gadgeteers are a particular favourite of mine. But I know all the unwritten rules of how to play like I'm in a comic, and for a lot of folks, they just don't have that frame of reference.

    Some will revert to tropes or genres where they DO know the lingo, whether it's action movies, video games or other RPGs. They might hit you up to let them play a version of a 40K Space Marine, Gerald of Rivia, John Wick, Prince Zuko or their 15th Level D&D Sorcerer.

    Let's go back to the example at the beginning of the guy who doesn't want the silly name, the powers and costume. It might seem like they're deliberately messing with you. But they might've seen people in superhero stories who don't have superhero names (Luke Cage, John Constantine, Nick Fury), who don't have superpowers (Batman, Kickass, Green Arrow) and who don't have any compunctions about killing their enemies (The Punisher, Deadpool, Peacemaker). 

    They're not trying to be a pain in your ass, they're just retreating to somewhere familiar. They're thinking, "What's something in this weird Superhero World that's similar to something I recognize?" Like when you're lost and hungry in a strange city where you can't order food and don't know what it is even if you could, and you suddenly spot a pair of golden arches glowing in the distance.

    Sure, there are some genuine assclowns out there. They don't understand comics and don't want to. They just want to steamroll everyone and have a good time at your expense and everyone else's around the table... but for a lot of these people, this is strange, foreign and terrifying new territory, and you gotta help acclimatise them slowly.

* - This isn't even a problem that's restricted to the Superhero genre. I do not grok hard sci-fi. If you hit me with anything harder than Star Trek, I will fold like a napkin. 
And with so many indie games based on increasingly obscure or niche genres (Jonathan Tweet's 'Over the Edge', Robin Laws' 'Feng Shui', The Storybrewers' 'Alas, For The Awful Sea' or 'Good Society', and so many more...) this has the potential to be a much wider issue.