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Darkdire rpg4/20/2023 ![]() ![]() Personally, in a light hearted game, I'd prefer the next scene to be the heroes visiting the mugger(s) in jail and talking to them, because I kind of find the dehumanization of criminals very dark. Even darker if one or more are implied to have died outright. That's pretty light hearted.īut, if we cut to the muggers in the hospital with broken bones moaning in pain under police custody. Let's say we cut to the grateful victim talking on the news about how grateful they are and what a life affirming experience it was. A lot of that depends on the framing of the next scene. The pain of real world trauma is washed away by the shinning glory of a masked hero. The basic setup often implies that nastiness, which is already kind of dark when you think about it (effectively assuming that muggers will always go for the worst possible option, rather than just take the money and run).īut, in a superhero story? All that helplessness, all that negativity, is gone in a flash of brilliant fluttering capes and a heroic struggle. It's psychologically scarring at a minimum. They're made to feel helpless and like they have no control over their life, and will likely spend the next few weeks if not longer feeling that stress. The real result of them most of the time is that the mugee loses a lot of peace of mind. They don't normally end in anyone getting seriously hurt or dying, but it does happen. ![]() Now, in real life muggings happen all the time. ![]() which is fair enough if you take a look at violent crime statistics) with a gun from robbing some poor innocent. Superhero jumps in to stop a man (and it's always a man. This goes all the way back to the first issue of Superman (which, admittedly, gets a little dark when Superman threatens to kill a corrupt lobbyist).įor a practical example, let's talk about one of the most common standbys of superhero comics: the mugging. They can take that dark, dire, real situation and undo everything wrong with it. There's a long history of using real life dark subject matter in light hearted superhero stories, because one of the main points of a superhero story is that they can stop these things. However, I'm mostly here to say I think that having things close to reality or having things light hearted is a false dichotomy.Whether something is light or dark has a lot more to do with how such events are presented. Talking to the group is always a good idea. If they want a school adventure then we'll do that, but if not then we'll just have a scene of them skipping classes or getting an excused absence. My plan is to mention it to my players and tell them the adventure works at the school or away. I'm curious how other people running this and similiar games are dealing with it? Is it something people just ignore and have the fun adventures anyway? Do people pull the adventures away from the school to avoid the similarities? Heroes fighting villains in a school while the students and teachers run for cover feels very much like an active shooter situation. Some fighting and risking people knowing who the heroes really are and those type of complications and have it be lighthearted and fun.īut then the reality of violence in schools with the shootings and active shooter drills hit me. I was thinking of doing an adventure in school kind of in the way Buffy the Vampire or Smallville did it. I'm going to draw on Ferris Bueller and Breakfast club to create some interesting teachers and NPCs and to help give it that kind of feel. They might have secret identities or public ones which will be up to them but as teenagers they still have to go to school. To help emphasis their mundane lives verse the super ones I'm going to have all them attend the same high school. Later this week I'm going to introduce my friends to the Masks game of teenage superheroes. ![]()
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