WHY SUPERHERO RPGS ARE SOME OF THE BEST RPGS YOU CAN PLAY

When it comes to TTRPGs there is always that moment when you sort of hit that invisible wall where you feel you are either out of material or maybe you are just tired of playing the game you are playing. This is perfectly natural and is generally a biproduct of simple creative burnout or feeling the constraints of the genre into which your game is placed. Superhero games really don't suffer this and offer an incredibly free environment in which to play and here are some reasons why?

1) Easy Transition Between Characters One of the biggest things to haunt players of TTRPGs is character burnout. We have all been there with that character that seemed like a great idea or was fun to begin with but is wearing thin. Comic books traditionally involve easy ins and out for characters without ever needing much in the way of plot or explanation. Between guest appearances, random team-ups, reserve team members, the seemingly flimsy barriers between realities, cosmic realms, and much much more, there are so many reasons a struggling player could swap out a character or take a break and divert to a different character for a bit.2) Guilt-free Character Death One of the staples of comic book stories is that nobody really ever dies. Death and dying are handled pretty fast and loose and while character may be presumed dead or even dead for a while, they eventually come back in some fashion. Even if the original character dies, their costume and mantle is often picked up by another and the hero persona continues even though it might be a new person under the mask. Long dead heroes can be returned through all manner of means from mystical reanimation, fake or false deaths (in any number of forms). A hero may not have died but been kidnapped and brainwashed by a victorious villain, only to be rehabilitated by his former teammates or some well-meaning bystander.

3) Good Fun Comic books, even at their darkest and grimmest (with a few exceptions) are still just great fun. There isn't much that doesn't feel right in a comic. Any character, any backstory, any event just feels right. Seldom is something objectively unfun in a comic book setting. The most mundane activities can easily be turned into amazing fun and adventure in the context of superheroes. A day at work, a trip to the mall, or a vacation can quickly turn into another action-packed issue.

4) Flexible Pacing The wide variety of comic book stories spans such a huge array of topics and styles of storytelling. This is true not just across different titles but within the same title. We frequently see the same characters in action-filled romps and going through emotional and heavy stories and everything in between. For a tabletop game, this means being able to tell so many different stories with the same characters.

5) A Weird and Wild Universe Superhero universes are generally huge, filled with all manner of exotic people and places. From fictional cities and countries to alien peoples and into god and cosmic entities a comic book universe is a vast, unending playground. Not only can you choose to start in any one of these amazing places, but you can freely transition from one to another without sacrificing the integrity of your characters and stories. The X-Men may have started in a posh mansion in New York but they have travelled the cosmos and visited lost worlds, travelled through time and dimensions. Characters from all over the multiverse can come together, interact, and even form up into the same teams. The Avengers have gods and aliens among them. The Justice League has several aliens as well as earthborn interstellar police officers.

6) Playing With, Outside, or Against the Conventions A lovely part of comic books and superheroes is that they are so widely known and have such established tropes that they provide easily accessible frameworks upon which to tell stories. Whether you adhere to the traditions of comic book stories, work outside of them or blatantly work against them your players are certain to get it and enjoy the met knowledge of what you are doing. Because comic books are traditionally told from a very omniscient point of view, it is easier for players to be comfortable with metaknowledge and playing off of it.

7) No Pretense of Balance Because the characters in comic books are traditionally depicted as have a very mixed bag of power sets and power levels operating alongside one another TTRPGs based around the genre do not suffer so much from the expectation that characters will or should be balanced nor is there an expectation that their enemies will be matched to them. This makes it quite easy for players to be happy with their characters regardless of their power level and for GMs to create stories that involve enemies with highly variable power levels. Part and parcel with this is the concept of teamwork and the struggle to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. Characters with wide-ranging power levels have an opportunity to find new ways that their individual powers can be used together and weaker characters are encourages and often rewarded for finding unique solutions to defeating enemies well outside their power level. Let's not forget that Spider-Man has defeated Juggernaut despite having no powers that can match the unstoppable mutant.

I hope that I have demonstrated to you why I think that superhero TTRPGs may be the ultimate in TTRPG fun and freedom, perfect for one-shorts, short campaigns, or an ongoing campaign in an ever-changing cast of characters and stories.