The funny thing is, the things you've pointed out about problems (and possibilities) with comics in some ways are very similar to running RP on a shared-universe MUCK like Sinai.
Oh, yes. Believe me, I was thinking of that while I was writing it. These are the exact problems you can run into as a GM: continuity you wish didn't exist, characters who feel like they've reached the end of their "story" but still get played, ideas from other GMs that don't fit what you want to do ...
Yet, at the same time, all that material to mine through, all those ideas you can bring back to life, all those in-jokes, and personalities, and the ideas of other GMs that were just amazing, and the PCs that have becomes so complex and lifelike -- oh yeah. It's very similar, yupyup. :)
I can't blame the comics guys for reinventing their super heroes now and again - blatantly starting over, rather than trying to just slyly FORGET certain older plot points along the way. There are some core bits, some really interesting parts that are worth keeping and remembering. It'd be nice to just do a bit of editing, start over, and just keep the good parts.
DC comics, I gather, does exactly this, every ten or fifteen years. They scrap everything and start over. It keeps the characters contemporary without forcing them to grow old.
This is a problem Marvel has: for example, Magneto was a married man with two young children at the start of WWII. He's gone through, I think, two total rejuvenations to keep himself "young" -- he'd be, what, 90, in real terms? But Marvel time is just weird -- it runs at approximately 1 Marvel year to 3 real years, but technology and everything else advances at a real-world pace. It gets ... distorted.
As far as reading them goes -- yeah, I'd rather read them in story-arc chunks than one 20- or 30-page issue at a time. One of the things CrossGen has going for it is a commitment to graphic novels, which are much easier to collect and track. The local bookstore doesn't mark it up by 200%, or run out, if you miss it for a few months. :/
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2003-06-26 11:29 am (UTC)Oh, yes. Believe me, I was thinking of that while I was writing it. These are the exact problems you can run into as a GM: continuity you wish didn't exist, characters who feel like they've reached the end of their "story" but still get played, ideas from other GMs that don't fit what you want to do ...
Yet, at the same time, all that material to mine through, all those ideas you can bring back to life, all those in-jokes, and personalities, and the ideas of other GMs that were just amazing, and the PCs that have becomes so complex and lifelike -- oh yeah. It's very similar, yupyup. :)
I can't blame the comics guys for reinventing their super heroes now and again - blatantly starting over, rather than trying to just slyly FORGET certain older plot points along the way. There are some core bits, some really interesting parts that are worth keeping and remembering. It'd be nice to just do a bit of editing, start over, and just keep the good parts.
DC comics, I gather, does exactly this, every ten or fifteen years. They scrap everything and start over. It keeps the characters contemporary without forcing them to grow old.
This is a problem Marvel has: for example, Magneto was a married man with two young children at the start of WWII. He's gone through, I think, two total rejuvenations to keep himself "young" -- he'd be, what, 90, in real terms? But Marvel time is just weird -- it runs at approximately 1 Marvel year to 3 real years, but technology and everything else advances at a real-world pace. It gets ... distorted.
As far as reading them goes -- yeah, I'd rather read them in story-arc chunks than one 20- or 30-page issue at a time. One of the things CrossGen has going for it is a commitment to graphic novels, which are much easier to collect and track. The local bookstore doesn't mark it up by 200%, or run out, if you miss it for a few months. :/