Superhero stories have dominated the pop culture landscape for most of this millennium, both in visibility and sheer scale. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is massive: To watch just the core films across the various phases would take longer than a work week.
Yet for fans of actual play, the MCU’s run time is amateur hour. Whether listening to podcasts or bingeing streamed video, fans of these recorded role-playing games regularly sign on for hundreds of hours of stories told by nerdy-ass voice actors (Critical Role), improvisers (Dimension 20), comedy podcasters (The Adventure Zone, produced by former Polygon editors Justin and Griffin McElroy), or the tens of thousands of other livestreams, podcasts, and miniseries in dozens of languages around the globe. In many cases, an individual actual play episode can dwarf the run time of the longest MCU movie.
Superheroes have been found in many storytelling formats, and their rise to massive mainstream pop culture success was fueled by the same late-2000s nerd culture energy that fostered online actual play performances. In turn, actual plays like Critical Role and The Adventure Zone have found new audiences through graphic novel adaptations. And more than a few actual play performers have credits that include writing for comics or voicing superheroes in video games and animation. So you would think that there’s natural crossover potential, especially given the dozens of tabletop role-playing games that feature superheroes — Marvel alone has had five!
This week on Polygon, we’re exploring how superheroes are dominating not just comics and movies, but all media, in a special issue called Superculture.
But while there have been many attempts (including by Marvel) to translate the widespread appeal of superhero stories into actual plays that could rival the success of the most well-known shows, cracking the top tier of long-form actual play has proved a heavy lift even for the mightiest heroes. I recently asked a variety of performers, designers, creators, fans, and thinkers to get some ideas about the lack of attention given to both superhero TTRPGs and actual plays that play them.
First, it’s important to note that the general trend in actual plays is that many campaigns are becoming shorter as creators seek broader audiences. Dimension 20’s stand-alone seasons of four to 20 prerecorded and edited episodes are a compelling model because they can be recorded in a handful of days, making it possible to include cast members unavailable for weekly sessions for long runs.
That shift toward shorter runs could have been a boon for superhero role-playing games, which designers I spoke to noted are often designed for shorter campaigns. Game designer Kori Klinzing (Trapped in the Rubble) said “the superhero genre tends towards the episodic” and added that unlike fantasy novels, superhero comics have 10-to-12-issue runs that focus on a specific adversary, “then that’s done and over and you’re onto the next villain of the day. […] I think that had something to do with the way we play and structure superhero games: defeat the villain in front of you, don’t linger too much on it, onto the next one.”
Others I spoke to also noted that while superheroic abilities might seem very similar to the abilities of many TTRPG characters, superheroes don’t generally “level up” in the same way — and that causes challenges for long-term play. Game designer Jessica Marcrum (Uncaged Tarot) said, “Teams will have emotional arcs and growing pains, but a hero’s abilities tend to be stagnant.” Josh Simons, lead designer of superhero TTRPG Paragons, said “what makes tabletop games like D&D have such a lasting effect on players is that your character grows and levels up as you play.” Paragons is designed for longer-term play than many superhero TTRPGs, and if it manages to thread the needle between ease of pickup and satisfying depth in the way it aims to, it could be a strong contender. It’s notable that he also cites both superhero cartoons and anime as inspirations — longer storytelling forms that often focus on the honing of skills over time.
Even superhero miniseries have been few and far between for flagship actual plays. One rare example was The Adventure Zone’s first non-D&D season, Commitment (2017), which took advantage of patriarch Clint McElroy’s long career as a writer in comics. The miniseries was one of several short experiments designed to gauge audience interest, but aside from the recent Versus Dracula (2024) season, none have been extended past their initial run. Commitment was shelved due to lack of interest after just four episodes. While McElroy would take the GM’s seat for another superhero miniseries, Outre Space (2023), to celebrate the release of the latest Marvel TTRPG, it too was not extended past a short run.
“In order for it to be special to be faster than a speeding bullet, you need a system where everybody is extremely unable to go fast”
And The Adventure Zone is the only high-profile actual play to attempt superhero seasons. Dimension 20 hasn’t tried, said creator and DM Brennan Lee Mulligan, due to “superhero fatigue in the media space, lack of enthusiasm from core players, and lack of a great system to support them!” Mulligan’s style draws heavily from the structures of the live-action role-playing tradition of Wayfinder and his long history with Dungeons & Dragons. As he noted in prior interviews, when seeking or developing other systems — like the Never Stop system, Dimension 20’s adaptation of Kids on Bikes — he prefers styles of play where rules provide useful friction where it’s needed and get out of the way the rest of the time. When asked about the recent over-the-top season Never Stop Blowing Up, Mulligan affirmed that he didn’t think of it as counting as a “superhero” season precisely because it lacks the friction that a superhero story needs.
“To me, a superhero system needs a DECIDEDLY punishing rules system to OVERCOME. In order for it to be special to be faster than a speeding bullet, you need a system where everybody is extremely unable to go fast.” While Dimension 20 has used modified versions of Kids on Bikes/Kids on Brooms as the foundation of the Never Stop system used for some recent seasons, he said that in Kids on Bikes “the use of superpowers is something to be glided through and breezed over.”
Others were not quite so absolutist as Mulligan, but noted the ways that superhero systems are hampered by additional factors. For one, actual play tends to falter when using systems with complex rules, or “crunch,” regardless of the setting. Actual play fan Nyx Eldred said, “It makes sense that these systems trend toward detailed, minutia-focused, and crunchy, given the nature of superheroes as a whole.” Most superhero systems involve cataloging “dozens, if not hundreds, of options” when it comes to different powers and their origins, Eldred said, adding, “This can be daunting enough during character creation, let alone during play when you have to consider which of your options you can use and when.”
One exception that came up time and time again in interviews was Masks: A New Generation. Fiona Hopkins, co-host and GM of Team-Up Moves, a podcast that plays through and analyzes different superheroic role-playing systems, put it bluntly: “The best superhero game is Masks.” Hopkins and co-host Stephanie Burt pointed to the undersung Masks actual play podcast Protean City Comics (2017-21) as a long-form superhero actual play worth revisiting. Marcrum said, “It gets into the emotions of secret identities and the ties between a team without being tied to a preconceived IP like the Justice League or the X-Men.” Designer and current Paizo developer Michelle Y. Kim added that the system is not intended for the massive campaigns of a system like D&D, but could — and is — run in many shorter, punchier campaigns. Jeff Stormer, creator and host of Party of One, noted that the game inspired a “March Maskness” with a participant pool that he compared to that of D&D Live at its peak.
Stormer’s invocation of D&D Live, the multi-day events sponsored by Wizards of the Coast that once brought together actual play shows large and small for crossover gameplay, is a reminder of the dragon in the room. Many of those interviewed cited the overwhelming dominance of Dungeons & Dragons, the system that dominates so much of the TTRPG — and actual play — landscape that many streamers on Twitch use the “D&D” tags even when playing other games to help audiences find their shows. Klinzing argued for the narrative potential of games like Queerz!, but added, “The audience is just not showing up for anything else.”
In addition to its ubiquity, D&D offers another advantage: the freedom of the Open Gaming License, which allows for third-party creators of all kinds to develop derivative projects. As actual play has leaned into various forms of monetization, many creators avoid investing long-term into systems that focus on intellectual property owned by others. Professional GM Julia LaFond was one of many to note the problems with using a system that is very tied to existing intellectual property, noting the risks for DMCA takedowns or challenges in licensing. Anxiety about creative freedom was part of what fueled the loud pushback when Wizards of the Coast threatened to rescind Dungeons & Dragons’ Open Gaming License in 2022, when both actual play performers and their fans rallied to defend what they saw as an attack on the form.
“Superheroes are inherently a solo genre”
It’s a paradox: While superhero TTRPGs based on well-known IP like DC or Marvel might have the kind of name-brand recognition that can sell games (and just about everything else), that familiarity is also the greatest challenge when it comes to actual play. While we are familiar with superhero teams like the X-Men, Avengers, or Justice League, TTRPG writer and performer Lauren Urban said, “Superheroes are inherently a solo genre. The team-ups either show the power imbalances between archetypes (Hulk vs Hawkeye for example) which isn’t fun for a team performance, OR try to even out the powers to make it balance but then folks don’t feel…Super!”
Such systems are often hampered by the mechanics they have to use to balance very different canonical superheroes, and player-performers are burdened by the weight of cultural associations and expectations that come with characters that have been around for decades in a multiverse of versions.
On top of all that, aside from direct sponsorship, the ancillary forms of monetization like merchandise sales that tend to support long-form actual plays are off the table. These days, rights holders and publishers don’t generally invest in long-form actual play campaigns that might build an audience over time, preferring one-shots or miniseries that can be recorded in one block. Marvel has been no exception, commissioning single-episode one-shots from the Glass Cannon Network for the launch of the latest Marvel TTRPG. And viewership numbers, which are usually highest for the first episode of an actual play, don’t support further development, as the highest-viewed of these episodes reached less than 1% of Marvel’s over 20 million YouTube subscribers.
Meanwhile, the many superhero TTRPGs praised by players and performers don’t have the name-brand recognition that could help shows be found via easily recognizable search terms. That’s a continual frustration to those who highlighted systems like Galaxies in Peril and Masks of the Masks, which are both clear enough to use comic book layouts to teach new players, making them promising bases for engaging actual plays — if only people knew to look for them. Actual play in general has a challenge with discoverability that boosters of the form are trying to rectify. And while actual play search engine Series Seeker doesn’t have a superhero tag, you can search and find games of Masks (the most commonly praised superhero RPG) when searching by system. In addition to Team-Up Moves and Party of One, One-Shot is also a splendid venue to see new TTRPGs, including a lot of superpowered ones, in a handful of episodes. While it’s unclear if we will ever see a superpowered actual play cinematic universe to rival the footprint supers have left on other media, it may well be that actual play’s focus on short-form, slice-of-life-style play is exactly the kind of refreshment we need to cure superhero fatigue.
