[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

JLA didn't compress things much. Especially once you

I can't agree; the difference in power between, say, Superman or Green Lantern and the other founding members in the comics is quite a bit more pronounced than it is in the cartoon; I'll give you there's a bigger gap with the expanded roster members, but its not a coincidence that most of those signficiantly weaker than the founders don't appear in episondes with them very often; when you see them, its normally with each other (other than a few like Captain Atom who are clearly in the same weight class as the originals)

got to the expanded roster with different heroes guest starring every other episode. The major "compression" of power in the DC universe was Crisis. Compared to that, everything else is minor.

While I won't disagree that Crises lopped off the top of the power curve, I stand by my opinon above about the cartoon. You see the cartoon Superman bothered by things that no version of Superman since the 50's would be.

Where comics and comics RPGs work is in enfircung the reality of comics. For instance,m when superstrong character hits human strength character he sends him flying or unconscious rather than snapping his neck, spine, crushing his skull, collasing a ribcage, or any of the more realstic effects that go with it.

Well, yes, but that's a genre convention, not an issue of power per se; superhero comics are intrinsically unrealistic in their handling of physics and biology.

Really. I've see a lot of it. I've also seen a lot of bad players who bite off more than they can chew. The typical adventuring group tends to hanve a couple of tough melee fighters, a support fighter or two, and some characters whose strengths are elsewhere. Typically take out the two frontline fighters and the group becomes vulnerable.

Vulnerable perhaps, but not hopeless. That's not true in most other areas of specialty. And it doesn't change the fact that the specialists in combat can't handle the problem by themselves in the majority of cases, while the specialists in intrusion don't usually need anyone else (in fact, you usually don't even need more than one).

This is no different than most other adventure-fiction genres; in almost all of them, whatever else anyone can do, they're at least competent fighters. Barring specialized subgenres (mecha or fighter jock environments for example) you can't say that about virtually any other field of endevor; some will be completely hopeless, and its unusual for more than one or two to be more than at best competent. Even the occasional exception tends to change over time when it comes to the random noncombatant.

I'd like to see some of your groups. It sounds like you are doing a lot of fighting (hard to pull off with RQ/BRP) or you have a unsual group.

Given I've seen the same pattern in a dozen groups, some with no overlapping members over the years, I don't have any sign its unsual. And _all_ the local RQ groups did this back when RQ was a going concern. Its not at all hard to pull off with BRP or RQ; you just take a fair bit of casualties until characters get to a certain level of competence, and then you take the occasional one thereafter.

I've probably been gaming as long as you have, so we can take "time in hobby" out of the picture. It just seems that we have different experiences in

No, we really can't. Even if we'd done it the same time, what that does is eliminate the idea that my experience is aberrational. That's why I brought it up, not as an appeal to authority. Short durations in the hobby can sometimes lead to insular experiences; longer periods with a variety of other players makes it a much less convincing explanation.

gaming. I'll disagree with you, and there are many RPGs that can back up the non-combat approach, since it has been done, and it does work. I ran a Star

No, it works for some people. My claim is that those people are in the minority, and I'm afraid its going to be next to impossible to convince me otherwise, for reasons I indicate above; it goes against more than 30 years of experience in the hobby. You're welcome to disagree, but at that point I think we have a fundamentally irreconcilable difference of premise.