For some time I have had a passion for superheroes and it is inexplicable to me, since I have neglected them for a good part of my life. Even when the Marvel Film phenomenon exploded, I didn't give a damn, almost as if I felt cut off from a world that I didn't feel belonged to me anyway.
This is not to say that he does not know the world of superheroes; I have always documented about them but they have never made me mad with joy and so when two of my dear friends told me about this role-playing game with superheroes, #Urban Heroes, I received coldly this all-española novelty.
Let's make a premise: #Urban Heroes is a product published by Tin Hat the company Alessandro Rivaroli e Matteo Botti and, if you haven't guessed yet, talk about humans-with-powers. Only now, writing these lines, do I realize it is wrong to use superhero terminology because the characters that are played were not meant to be: they are something else, something different, something new.
I explain: a superhero, to be a superhero, must respect precise canons including the possession of superpowers. It is also true that superheroes embody with their actions, thoughts, philosophies, positive ideals; they are - to go very briefly - supermen with powers and from here they become Super heroes. If you think about it for a moment you will understand that term hero, placed there at the end of Great, is not exactly inserted by chance but has its own precise motivation that refers to an archaic Kalos Kai Agathos of Gilgameshian memory.
After the literature-psychology-moral lesson I can go back to the point of the speech: to me #Urban Heroes the moment I met him he was not convinced. I considered it a product copied to the canons of Silver Age comics, smeared with another product that has long been present on the RPG stage: Mutants&Mastermind.
That's why I took it lightly, because I saw absolutely nothing new in it.
Then something happened. Matteo - one of the authors - contacted me saying “hey, I like your style. Would you like to review our product ". In my mind I replied "but come on, it will be fun" and so I found a way to get the basic manual. I took some time, combed through the facebook community that orbits around you and read the manual making it settle in my psyche, in the meantime trying my hand at a Impossible interview with the authors.
There I understood that the article I was going to write would not be devoted to Anger to have wasted time but rather to Surprise to have known an edgy but still enjoyable product, not focused on Superheroes as I thought at the beginning but on the society created by their appearance.
An inattentive look - like the one that was mine, perhaps thanks to having made it to me initially explained by third parties - inevitably leads to believe that this is the classic game in which you play the classic guy with the classic spandex costume who classically abuses his powers, clashing with the most classic of villains.
Well that's not the case. The narratives present in the basic manual - which are then parts of the setting - immerse and involve the reader slowly, but inexorably, in a world profoundly changed by a cataclysmic event generated in the CERN laboratories in Geneva which preceded the worldwide manifestation of powers in the inhabitants of the earth, initiating the civil society revolution of Earth Z, world name of #Urban Heroes.
We will then find out how Europe found itself again troops American at home, necessary to ensure the survival of the Old World victim of the tragedy.
We will learn how Obama has decided to entrust the protection of democracy to a group of men with powers known as Amazing Men of the America.
We will see how i social networks they will become a fundamental part of being a "superhero", generating exasperated cases of hipsterism.
And we will be disconcerted when we learn how empty all those facebook profiles of that platinum starlet lineage were, too busy shooting themselves a selfie and showing off rather than worrying about those screaming for help.
And it is precisely at that moment, reading the narration dedicated to telling about when the world was without electricity for months, that I understood how this game is not talking about superheroes at all but rather about the sick society that has been created with their manifestation. A company stuck in the need for to appear because otherwise you are cut off from the game. Imagine living in a world where everyone has a power: you have to know how to sell yourself otherwise you are just one in the bunch. And here is that armies of individuals all appearance and zero substance are generated, committed to receiving thousands of likes of appreciation rather than doing what their profile praises. This thing is brilliant and I very much loved this new way of seeing and proposing a world in which superpowers exist, thus altering my initial critical position regarding this title.
So I take as the theme of this game the confrontation and fight the inner demons that each of us has inside, because this game is about why we do what we do and not absurd deeds to be carried out thanks to phantasmagoric powers, that is just a pleasant pastime between one reflection and another.
No, no, it's about what superheroes feel inside, how they experience their new identity. How they deal with others and how - and above all if - they want to put themselves at the service of the community or of themselves.
We will therefore interpret cover superheroes because we want with all our strength to be someone and hope for stratospheric engagements from a multinational record company that knows how to exploit our psychedelic qualities and therefore sell ourselves as much as possible on a social network, or we want to be at the service of others in the hope of to ensure a better future for our children? The drama as Pirandello says is all here.
From regulation I have absolutely no desire to talk about this game.
I'll just say I don't like them tables, calculations e schematization powers, because I believe in freer and more interpretative systems, adaptable to any situation.
However, I remain of the idea that the solution adopted is still satisfactory for those who love this kind of rules. However, I believe one is necessary honorable mention: Much of the beauty of the game revolves around owning defects and trust me when I tell you that I consider this the real engine of the game, because it will allow you to immerse yourself perfectly in your own personal drama.
Basically I find #Urban Heroes a highly introspective game - or at least I caught it that way - that speaks little of great world feats and a lot of small daily feats.
With regard to the graphics of the product, when I found it in my hands I was very impressed by the layout adopted. Leafing through it you have, in fact, the very strong sensation of having a comic in your hands and to be reading a precise story that has them as protagonists.
On the other hand while reading I always had a feeling of preset. That is, the feeling that I had with manual closure and that any character I decide to play will at most be a supporting actor of the great protagonists of the world. In the manual, in fact, the usual names of the usual superheroes constantly emerge: Tizio does this, Caio does that. Dude does this one. Gaius saves the world. Sempronio has left the group and is now the lone avenger. In short, if you want to play the saviors of the world you will have to compete with these bulky figures. If, on the other hand, you want to live the small and the everyday, well, the effect will be the opposite, representing them as the beacon, the light, in the darkness of your life.
So never again were the words of Uncle Ben that say "With great powers comes great responsibilities“Because here, on Terra Z, you can be whatever you want: a superhero or a human-with-powers.
The choice is yours alone.
