Magic & Superpowers

A common theme in RPs is the existence of more than natural powers granted to the player. Characters posses all kinds of superpower and abilities. Do you enjoy the spellslinging, superpowered setting, or do you rather play as unpowered, human, characters?

When it comes to creating characters that have superpowers, I find them quite enjoyable. Be they hero or villain.

I think special abilities are a part of the fun of RPing and exploring these fantastical worlds but are by no means a necessity for enjoying every RP.

I love magic and superpowers and all that *-* especially if there's a unique take on them rather than just an open field. Gunpowder does well for that but I've always been too lazy to join.

Yes, there is something fun about writing characters that have special abilities, because hey, who wouldn't want to be able to shoot fire from their hands, or stop time with on command?

The gunpowder conversion is still happening :0

I find it very, _very_ difficult to enjoy a RP with characters which don't have superpowers. A lot of the time a character's powers determine their personality, so unless they're a very special/quirky person (for example, my regular 5-year-old Elliott from Railways) it's hard for me to find the RP fun.

I do enjoy unpowered characters but mix them with superpeeps/Mary Sues and they pale in comparison.

Personally, I love magic and superpowers. But I have issues with power levels (no, not like in DBZ). My characters often seem to be less powerful, so I have to either get creative or take a backseat. It happens to me more often than not, and I'm not sure why, which makes me reluctant to join, knowing in my mind I will eventually be overshadowed.

If everyone is a regular human, this doesn't happen nearly as often. My characters remain relevant and interesting as long as I can write my interactions well. The story is less dependent on cool powers, and more on good role-playing and storytelling.

Godzil said:

Personally, I love magic and superpowers. But I have issues with power levels (no, not like in DBZ). My characters often seem to be less powerful, so I have to either get creative or take a backseat. It happens to me more often than not, and I'm not sure why, which makes me reluctant to join, knowing in my mind I will eventually be overshadowed.

If everyone is a regular human, this doesn't happen nearly as often. My characters remain relevant and interesting as long as I can write my interactions well. The story is less dependent on cool powers, and more on good role-playing and storytelling.

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I find that level systems and the like can easily mitigate this, but in a lot of cases this does limit creativity.

I think that in general its hard to find a good balance with super power RPs. After all, if someone has the ability of stopping time or something, it becomes easy for that RPer to just write up "Oh, he stopped time and knocked everybody out and won. Yay."

It either requires everybody to be overpowered together or for everyone to work in drawbacks for their powers. Also superpowers seem to lead to very stereotypical characters, their entire personality being defined by their powers sometimes leading to lazy character writing.

Not that I don't like superpower RPs, I love them. I just think it takes some good writers with a respect for balance and each other when it comes to fights and character creation.