Greywind

Shenanigans!

Honestly, depending on the person and the group they game with, adventure modules tend to have a one-use lifespan. Characters and information within might stick around, but the adventure itself is one-and-done.

You're the reason adventure modules don't sell 😛

Taken to the extreme (the same extreme, I suggest, as "if we have Hero Points, the players can auto-succeed at anything and override the entire game"), this says "your characters live or die at the whims of the GM - maybe he spares you a TPK you earned, or maybe your hard-won victory turns into a TPK". At one extreme, we have a story written by one or more players. At the other, we have a story written by the GM, in which each PC is expected to play their scripted part (but you can ad lib in non-crucial elements of your role). Between those polar opposites rests a lot of possible divisions of authority and agency. The GM lays the plot, sets the scenes. He is not the "first among equals" at the table. It is his game/world. The characters parts are completely ad-libbed. Tell me you've never been in a game where the players went so far afield that they weren't even remotely close to whatever rails the GM may have laid. Now, as an experiment, get 9 friends around a table and give each a pad of paper. Each person writes one sentence and passes the pad to the right. They read what is written and write another sentence. And so on and so on, until the exercise is complete. When you're done see how many of those "stories" make any kind of coherent sense from start to finish.

Hence, the basis for my response.

Judging by that I now have to wonder if you've seen either.

Not anymore.

It isn't a failure if you use Wonder Woman and Aquaman as the leading metric.

GM's control issue or the player's control issue having to exert agency above a player's chair?

Very much so. Player reads a bit about a museum display. Doesn't register to them, doesn't interest them. Villain reads the same piece an realizes it is the McGuffin he's spent the last 2 years trying to find. Hero goes on about his business. Villain goes about planning his business. Later on, the hero hears about something else related to the villain, and files it away. Further on, the hero runs into part of the villain's crew and stops them. The hero for some reason still doesn't decide to pursue the villain. That doesn't mean that the villain is going to stop doing his business simply because the player/hero didn't happen to want to ride that ride.

Been there. Suffered that. Had an individual who loved being a spoiler for the other players. Ended up where he was shut out.

But not by the players. If the players want to be doing that then they'd be running the game.

From the scene in the book I was referring to.

Same Bat-time. Same Bat-channel.

A lot different. As a GM I run the villain. If I wrongly evaluated the opposition level of my villain to the point where the players have no chance, then I do have an obligation to make necessary adjustments. Unless I want the campaign to end and the players to lose any interest in continuing. It is one thing to adjust a villain on the fly or have something happen randomly in the game that gives the heroes a chance or a necessary breather. It is entirely another to influence a die roll or out-and-out altering the result to suit someone else's agenda. All my die rolls to-hit and damage have long been done in the open where the players can see.

Going out on a limb here, but honestly, if a GM creates a situation/scenario where the only possible success relies on a crap shoot to win, then that GM is an f'n idiot. And no amount of dice "adjustments" through HAPs or any other means will ever change that.

Batman wearing armor goes back at least as far as The Dark Knight Returns. And I'm not talking about Iron Bat. "Why do you think I wear a target on my chest? I can't armor my head."

Following both rules, I'd say, particularly as the GM, that a villain could/would only push when trying to save their own life.

Vulcan's feel emotions. They don't act on their emotions.

Duplication or Images. All depends on SFX, like Doc said.

No, they don't. They get their clocks cleaned. The villain gets away. The heroes have to deal with their injuries, whether physical or to their egos, figure out what they did wrong and what they can do in the rematch to make sure they do win.

Superman can (and has) gone 1-on-1 with Darkseid and won. There was a tendency in DC Heroes to dilute the value of Superman when he was working with the League. The argument was that his attention was divided between the bad guys and the other Leaguers to make sure they didn't get killed/seriously injured. When no one else was around his full attention was on the villain and therefore able to bring all his powers to bear on that one objective.

Why do the good guys consistently have to win? And by what metric does losing inherently mean dead?

But I'm sure you can burn a hero point and ignore that.

Character creation has nothing to do with characters in play. And for the most part I don't do homages.