“And of course, since then, the people of Halcyon have realized that, sure, the Golden Generation was pretty sexist.

“And of course, since then, the people of Halcyon have realized that, sure, the Golden Generation was pretty sexist.

“And of course, since then, the people of Halcyon have realized that, sure, the Golden Generation was pretty sexist. And racist.” 

Why exactly have you decided on this? Is it just to closely mirror how comics actually were? It is a good way to engage with that part of history but I still wonder. 

On a Supers Actual Play podcast I listened to they made the conscious decision that their first Superhero/Superman analogue was black. I like that alternative of a comic world that is a bit more bright.

We have all that cynical stuff with the Bronze generation anyway and the art of the game makes it feel so much like a lighter and more fun world. 

This is not a complaint, I just want to know. 

19 thoughts on ““And of course, since then, the people of Halcyon have realized that, sure, the Golden Generation was pretty sexist.”

  8. Mike Pureka I know that of course. The question was why this world is like that and not different. Pure curiosity. 

    When playing with female or non-white characters they will most likely deal with that stuff and it might make people uncomfortable. Halycron City could be a place where this doesn’t matter anymore because everyone can be a hero. Having to deal with former big heroes complaining about all these women running around might not be fun. These characters also then don’t have role models from that generation. The first black superhero is a thing then. That can be interesting to play with depending on how they embrace that role now but still… 

  9. I think I get what Tim’s saying; just because characters in the golden age comics were racist and sexist, doesn’t mean they have to be in Halcyon City.  It is a deliberate choice of the authors to include that in the game.

    I would love to hear the discussion on why it is there, and what it adds to the game that goes beyond “We just wanted to model the way real comics were…”

  12. I assume that since the objective here is to be “young superheroes reacting to unpleasant stuff” – and “finding out that the famed heroes of the Golden Age weren’t as absurdly impossibly heroic as people think” fits that category pretty well, that it’s there to provide something for the young heroes to push back against

  13. You could take the whole thing on a more meta level too. Have a game where your characters represent whatever new trend you like or would like to see in the comic book industry. And the older Generations have to represent the flaws of former Ages of Comics. That way your characters in the gamecan deal wiht the flawed past and find their own path, the way a creator of a modern Comic would have to deal with the past of a Franchise or the genre.In that case the closer the flaws of characters from a Generation resemble the flaws of that Age in Comic history the better it should work. Since they are all symbols for fictional Trends.

    Not sure how much fun I would have with a campaign where it is made that obvious, but I am also sure that in a way this is a theme that can be there in every Masks game.

    That said, Teenagers struggling against seemingly perfect predecessors could work too. Them having to come to Terms with being more human and flawed than what the old guard appears to be. Finding a new identity in spite of what allready is there being pretty good.

  15. It creates drama, especially given the cognitive agenda of a lot of PbtA games being quite inclusive. It feels almost like the, “make the humans seem like monsters” attitude from Monsterhearts.

    It’s just words so you can change them to fit the flavour of your game and especially with potential X-card-worthy things, but if you’re playing a bunch of super youths, maybe you’re trying to be better than the previous heroes either to lead by example or to show up how you’re the superior generation.

  16. A lot of you have been hitting the reasons why I made this choice, but I’m going to bring them up again.

    One piece of this is that, yes, I want to reflect the history of comics and the real world because it gives me a better starting point to understand Halcyon City. This place isn’t perfect, not by a long shot, and many of the issues it faces (outside of the radioactive lizards and whatnot) are actually totally recognizable to us. Racism, sexism, government surveillance, free speech rights, disempowerment of the poor, corporate monopolies—these things all exist in Halcyon City. The way they express themselves will often take a more over the top form—a Lex Luthor type and a company that builds giant robots stands in for the threat of corporate monopoly—but they’re there. I wanted to make clear that these issues still exist, and that the young protagonists of our story have to grapple with them.

    Another piece is personal. I’m a straight white cisgender male, and it would be all too easy for me to run roughshod over diversity, representation, and equality. Not least in ignoring the issues endemic to the medium I love so much. I adore comics! I do! I love them to death. But they have problems, big ones, especially in these areas. Making Halcyon City include a Gold Generation that was racist and sexist is my attempt to include and flag the truth—those stories were often highly problematic. And as much as I can love Superman, I have to acknowledge how sexist some of those early (and even modern!) tales were. It’s an important cognitive dissonance that I feel, and I wanted to express that in Masks somehow. The young heroes learn about their heroes, and find out that truth we all learn as we grow up: they’re still just people, flawed and broken as ever.  

    Lastly—and this could not be more crucial—the idea of these generations is inherently another label that may or may not fit everyone. There absolutely were amazing black and women superheroes in the Gold Generation! There were heroes who stood against the racism or sexism of their time, definitely. Just as in the Silver Generation, there were heroes with more nuanced worldviews than “good vs evil”, or heroes with no powers at all, in contrast to their generation’s tone. And in the Bronze Generation, there were hopeful heroes and noble heroes, too.

    The same way that an older character is painting an entire generation with the same useless brush when they say “Kids these days! They’re so lazy!”, or what have you, the Gold Generation wasn’t all bad, and the Silver Generation wasn’t all powerful, and so on.  

    I’m really glad you brought this up, Tim Franzke—it’s absolutely worth discussing, and reading this thread gave me a lot to chew on. Thank you so much, sir.

Comments are closed.