# What's your favorite superhero TTRPG and why?



## Morrus (Jun 18, 2021)

I have a fondness for DC Heroes' exponential system, and an appreciation for M&M's sheer weight and support. What does it for you, and why?


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## Davies (Jun 19, 2021)

Morrus said:


> I have a fondness for DC Heroes' exponential system, and an appreciation for M&M's sheer weight and support. What does it for you, and why?



Marvel Super Heroes (aka FASERIP.) I've done more with the Hero System and Mutants and Masterminds, but that first system will always have the higher place in my heart.


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## aramis erak (Jun 19, 2021)

Morrus said:


> I have a fondness for DC Heroes' exponential system, and an appreciation for M&M's sheer weight and support. What does it for you, and why?



I love the concept, but hated the game...

All the supers games I've run or played, favorite to least:

Sentinel Comics - love the way it works, the presumptions of success, and the fail forward advice is worded particularly usefully. 
Marvel Heroic Roleplay (MHRP) Best Marvel Yet. Much the same reasons as Sentinels
Advanced Marvel Super Heroes (AMSH) - About as narrativist as Trad Games from the 80's get. Lots of forward looking elements. The color table is brilliant. First game with a resources roll mechanic I liked. Note that "advanced" is a misnomer; it's really "2nd edition"
(basic) Marvel Super Heroes - the resource point mechanic and fixed numbers per category are why this isn't above Advanced.  
Champions (but note: I've only used it in the fantasy hero mode as a GM, and only done supers mode as a player) The most flexible trad game ever.
Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game - Fun for one-offs, easy to run, but lacks meat for campaigns.
Spirit of the Century (the way we played, it turned into a pulps supers game, influenced by the _Watchmen_ movie) Once was a hoot. We enjoyed it, but none of us wanted to run that setting again. All of us were willing to play it again.
Car Wars (using Autoduel Champions section 3) - Car Wars in RPG mode is brilliant.  Adding Supers (and the magic and dragons rules) is a lot of fun.
Villains and Vigilantes - too much of the "incomplete due to early design standards" for me when I found it. Great adventures, mediocre system.
TMNT (palladium) Not a good system, but a great adpatation of the setting to that mediocre system
Heroes Unlimited (Palladium)
The Fantasy Trip (original) with the supers article. unfun++
GURPS Supers 1e Unfun and math-intensive
Mayfair DC Super Heroes - unfun, unintuitive, math intensive, too abstract
Mutazoids - My god, the formulae.
Marvel Universe - I hate point pushers.
Superhero Adjacent games (where they'd fit if I considered them true supers):

(NR) John Carter of Mars (John is a super, as would be any other Earthperson present on Barsoom) (not run yet)
(3.5) GW Judge Dredd.
(4.2) Battle Born, G/Sol, and IoS&RG (Better Games - Everyone's in battlesuits.)
(4.5) Tails of Equestria (I've run multiple 1-shots. Everypony is a super to some degree. But it's not in the Supers Genre)
(5.5) Deathwatch (FFG 40K) (all the powered suits)
(5.6) other FFG 40K RPGs
(7.1) CP 2013 (many PC's are street level supers for power levels)
(7.2) CP 2020 (ibid)
(7.3) Shadowrun 1E (ibid) More supers than Cyberpunk, but not as good a game engine.
(7.4) Shadowrun 3E (ibid)
(10.5) Judge Dredd Traveller
(15.5) Judge Dredd D20
The ones I could be convinced to run again as multi-adventure or extended adventure campaigns:

Sentinel Comics (am about to restart my pre-Covid campaign)
MHRP
AMSH
Car Wars w/ADC
One Shots only down the road:

MSHAG
Original MSH
Undecided (games I have but haven't used for supers despite rules for supers, or supers games I've never tried but would someday like to):

CORPS (2e, generic engine, has a robust powers system I've used for fantasy.) Would be interesting to try as a "street level" game.
EABA 1e (I playtested it, and used the powers system for alien abilities, but it supports much higher levels of power than I used)
WEG Batman
D6 Supers
TORG (fan expansion for supers built upon the Nile Empire mechanics for pulp supers)
Genesys (if it gets a supers expansion, which I do expect)
To some extent, I consider D&D and Pathfunder to be "medieval super heroes", all the way back to AD&D 1 and BX. Especially before the idea of NPC Classes with levels. (Which goes back to the 1970's... in Dragon... it didn't hit core rules until D&D 3E, but it was present for late 0E and AD&D 1E in magazines, and in 2E in an expansion book.)

Edit note: I got distracted  by nature, so saved, and came back to complete the answer.


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## timbannock (Jun 19, 2021)

Morrus said:


> I have a fondness for DC Heroes' exponential system, and an appreciation for M&M's sheer weight and support. What does it for you, and why?



Marvel Heroic (Cortex) by miles. It makes it equally fun to play Punisher, Thor, and Jubilee in the same scenario. The streamlining in Cortex Prime makes it even better.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Jun 19, 2021)

Masks: A New Generation does a really great job with abstracting and mechanizing character arcs through its playbooks, and I love the teenage super hero team genre, though I prefer a few years older (early 20s) as the classic New Teen Titans stuff.


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## Jay Murphy1 (Jun 19, 2021)

Way dig DC Heroes system, I use the retro clone The Blood of Heroes 2nd Edition. Spent years banging my head against the wall with Champions. You spend more time discussing the rules then actually playing a roleplaying game. Actually I should say if you want to play a tactical game of superheroes of your own design bashing hell out of each other it is great, but it will be four hours of your game time. 

MEGS gives a resolution system I find very much in tune with FASERIP. It has Hero Points, FASERIP has karma, both use charts to give you degrees of success or failure. The important thing, to me, both these games give you spectacular supers action but it doesn't gobble up the entire session so you may do all those other crazy roleplaying and subplot activities. In other words, the story moves along. Players get to do more in less time. And then have a good punch up with knockback and LAW rockets to the chest and magic portals and whatever


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## billd91 (Jun 19, 2021)

Mutants and Masterminds and Villains and Vigilantes have been my favorites.


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## Arilyn (Jun 19, 2021)

Icons. Has a dose of Fate with a nice list of powers and a great random system

Sentinels. Haven't played it yet but I will be soon and I love the light narrative rules system with a dose of crunch. It looks like it's going to be a lot of fun. 

Marvel Heroic. (Cortex) This one has rules I love and the ability to mix up characters from street level to God like appeals to me. A super hero game should mimic comics or it cannot be a complete success.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 19, 2021)

I finished a Galaxies in Peril campaign not too long ago and that was a lot of fun. It’s a Forged in the Dark game.  

Beside that, I still like Marvel Super Heroes by TSR abd DC Heroes by Mayfair. Both are solid games. Play Marvel occasionally, but not DC.


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## MGibster (Jun 19, 2021)

Davies said:


> Marvel Super Heroes (aka FASERIP.) I've done more with the Hero System and Mutants and Masterminds, but that first system will always have the higher place in my heart.



Ditto.  I had more fun with MSH than I have with any other super hero game I've played since then.


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## ss2art (Jun 19, 2021)

Anyone try Golden Heroes.  You rolled up random powers, then had to design your origin to make sense of how they fit together. If you could not, you loss power.  Your action in a round was what you could do in a comic panel.  Never played, but rolled up a lot of characters.

I have read Savage World Supers, but not played. Any feedback?


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## ss2art (Jun 19, 2021)

Anyone try Golden Heroes.  You rolled up random powers, then had to design your origin to make sense of how they fit together. If you could not, you loss power.  Your action in a round was what you could do in a comic panel.  Never played, but rolled up a lot of characters.

I have read Savage World Supers, but not played. Any feedback?


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## pming (Jun 19, 2021)

Hiya!

Tie between MSHAS ( Classic Marvel Forever - MSH Classic RPG | Home Page ) and SUPERS! ( SUPERS! Revised Edition | hazardstudio )

*Marvel Super Hero Advanced Set* (re: the "FACERIP" version of 1986) is my go-to for anytime I want to run a Marvel game, obviously. Being able to run games down at the Punisher and Daredevil level, up to X-Men, and even beyond, like Silver Surfer level cosmic games can be done...and done well! Absolutely _amazing_ RPG! Almost no complaints over the last 35 years of running it. 

*SUPERS!* I only 'recently' (maybe 5 years ago? bought his as a PDF. Gave it a skin, then it sat there for a year. Found it when board one day, started digging into it more...and was blown away! WHY didn't I read it when I first bought the dang thing?!? (stupid brain doing stupid brain stuff!  ). This system handles the low to upper-mid range of Super Hero'ing _better_ than MSHAS (FASERIP), IMNSHO (take that, acronyms!). I ran my brother, his wife, and one of his friends through a quick game using Tabletop Simulator. He/they were, at first, only luke-warm with the system as they made characters and made simple checks. But once they got into combat against a group of about 30 'mooks' (just some fish-guy fin-soldiers), the magic happened!  My bro's "ninja-punisher dude" was attacked by six of them. With one single "action roll", he leveled ALL of them and still had an attack left! He though the might only be able to take out 2 of them (one for each attack), but that's not how it works in SUPERS! You have to read the rules to appreciate the genius of how the system works for this. Seriously. Go buy the PDF. Now!

*Honorable Mentions:* 
DC Heroes (the Mayfair version, using the ... 'Action' system? The one where a score of 4 is twice as good as a 3, or half as good as a 5; the 'original' one?). We used this for, well, DC heroes games. We only played a handful of them...we were all more of Marvel fans...and the system was "odd feeling" when playing. I mean, "I can do it, I can lift 200 lb...well, more like 3200 lb if I REALLY try!" O_O But when you want the ridiculous power levels of DC heroes, it's a nice system. 
Heroes & Heroines. Wow...this is a ...system. Uses dice as it's main thing...where you're rolling all manner and number of them. Might be 1d20 to hit, then 3d6 + 2d8 for damage...or 1d20 to hit, then 9d10 + 40 for damage, etc. One thing you will do a lot of...roll dice! It is 'world agnostic', but it DID put out two (?) supplements; one was for using "The Maxx" as a setting (brownie points for anyone who knows who The Maxx is/was), and one for...some other offshoot comic. Heroes & Heroines was going to, supposedly, get licenses for various Image Comics, Dark Horse Comics, etc (all the "underground" or "non-main stream" comic book companies that were all the rage in the early/mid 90's)...but then, well, yeah. Crash! The system was nothing to write home about, but it did have a certain "charm" to it...it's own "feeling", which was nice.
^_^

Paul L. Ming


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## Morrus (Jun 19, 2021)

ss2art said:


> Anyone try Golden Heroes.  You rolled up random powers, then had to design your origin to make sense of how they fit together. If you could not, you loss power.  Your action in a round was what you could do in a comic panel.  Never played, but rolled up a lot of characters.



Golden Heroes was my first supers game! Haven't played that in a loooooooong time! I can barely remember it, but I do recall rolling randomly for powers.


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## Marc_C (Jun 19, 2021)

Only played one. Villains & Vigilantes in the mid 90s. Quirky.

I've looked at Mutants & Masterminds but never pulled the trigger to buy it. Is it any good?


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## Jay Murphy1 (Jun 19, 2021)

The Maxx was my favorite in my first year of college back in 92-93. Smoke a bunch of weed, listen to Bowie, read the latest Maxx, and tried to stay awake long enough for some of the cute girls to come crawling through my window. It paid to have your own pad as a freshman. Just bought the first issue again at the local comic store out of mad respect for the good old days.

It was the only comic which reminded me of all the Heavy Metal mags I read in the 80's.


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## ccs (Jun 19, 2021)

I guess the closest it'd come would be Marvel Superheroes  (advanced) by TSR.
At least that's the one I've had the most fun with over the years.
But honestly  I don't think I've found a favorite yet.


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## Umbran (Jun 19, 2021)

MGibster said:


> Ditto.  I had more fun with MSH than I have with any other super hero game I've played since then.




I have to agree.  The system isn't perfect, but it is a lot of fun.


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## John Dallman (Jun 19, 2021)

ss2art said:


> Anyone try Golden Heroes.  You rolled up random powers, then had to design your origin to make sense of how they fit together. If you could not, you lost the power.



A friend showed me the system, and I got half-way through a character, but was not developing an interest. I have never been into superhero comics. 

The only superhero campaign I played was Champions, starting as 3e and converting to 4e part-way through. The characters definitely weren't mutants with random-looking powers: we had super-advanced scientists, magicians, the current Lord Greystoke, a member of a Russian vampire family, a half-Frost Giant who'd got frozen in a glacier for thousands of years and children of various pantheons.


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## Aldarc (Jun 19, 2021)

My preference is for systems that are good at having the Hulk and Hawkeye play at the same table without much worry about power levels because it's generally more about narrative power. So generally systems like Fate (e.g., Venture City, Wearing the Cape, etc.), Cortex Plus/Prime (e.g., Marvel Heroic Roleplay, etc.), or even PbtA (e.g., Masks, etc.).


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## DammitVictor (Jun 19, 2021)

For now, I'm going to say MHR but I'm going to preemptively say it'll probably be _Legends of Greyskull_ when that comes out. Already looking forward to playing Marlena the First, the Rebel Queen, _She-Ra_ at first opportunity.

Also rans here are _Street Fighter_ and Palladium's TMNT.


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## Tonguez (Jun 19, 2021)

Although its Pulp rather than pure Supers I really like *Spirit of the Century* and the way it uses Background Phases to build the characters Aspects - in particulae First Pulp Novel and Guest Star help generate in game bonds and hooks.

I like most of the Fate Supers versions and Fate Accelerated's Approaches + Stunts works really well for Supers, since the system is about what the character can achieve, it allows for vastly different power levels interacting, overcoming obstacles in their own way.

for the more complex systems I like M&M


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## Grendel_Khan (Jun 19, 2021)

Wow, so little love for Champions here.


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## ShinHakkaider (Jun 19, 2021)

My favorites MEGS DC, HERO SYSTEM and Mutants and Masterminds.

I've never been interested in playing established characters in established universes. I like playing original characters in established universes or original characters in original universes.

I REALLY like characters at the table all built with the same point allocation but have them be very different. A lot of the narrative games don't do it for me because they're trying very hard to emulate the comics and I get it.
I want to play in and or run a super hero game, which is a very different beast in a lot of ways, so HERO SYSTEM, M&M and DC MEGS actually work better for that.


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## ShinHakkaider (Jun 19, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Wow, so little love for Champions here.



It has math and is a little crunchier so I'm not surprised that we dont see alot of love for it here. I LOOOOOOOOVE it and have run some amazing supers games with it but it think that a lot of gamers have a really bad impression of any game that has crunch and involves some math. _SHRUG_


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## pming (Jun 19, 2021)

Hiya!


Grendel_Khan said:


> Wow, so little love for Champions here.




I _love_ the concept/idea behind the HERO system (the one Champions uses). I own them all...multiple copies...a stack of books about, oh, 3' tall (not kidding!). BUT...I've never actually _run_ it. Character creation is just SOOOO daunting for the majority of players that the only people that seem to be really interested in the game are those who are "into the world building aspect and getting into the nitty gritty of all the points and options and stuff". In other words: GM's.

What the HERO system needs to do is come out with a "HERO Basic Set". Make it a box. Make it two or three booklets of about 30 pages each, and have it all be very much 'basic HERO system'; limited _everything_...but the core system should be there along with "packages" that people could just choose, plug in, and play. Once you get into the system (it's a really simple one; roll 3d6, get under a target number), I think people would naturally branch out into more detailed/complex choices.

I'd give Champions a shot...but watching a Champions game at a con back in the late 90's required TWO GM's for the 5 players; at 10am they started a fight, round 1. When I left that day I checked in with them; it was about 8pm, and they were just wrapping up...that fight! O_O Sorry, but 10 hours to play ONE battle with only 5 heroes and a roughly equal amount of bad guys? No Thank You, Evil! 

(PS: Just another plug for SUPERS! rpg...seriously people...go check it out! Now!  ).

^_^

Paul L. Ming


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## Mallus (Jun 20, 2021)

Mutants and Masterminds 2e. It’s like Champions, only more streamlined and modern. It’s the system I used to create my favorite PC — Joseirus, the Egyptian God of  Mexican Wrestling. In a mechanically satisfying way. Damn fine game…


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## pemerton (Jun 20, 2021)

Marvel Heroic RP (Cortex+). I've read a lot of superhero comics, but it was the first Supers game that made me interested. It plays well, though on the GM side it can take a little while to get the hang of Doom Pool management.


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## aramis erak (Jun 20, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Wow, so little love for Champions here.



Like Paul, I love the concept of Champions.
I've run a number of successful Fantasy Hero campaigns.
But... it's just too much work.


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## RangerWickett (Jun 20, 2021)

Weirdly, aside from the D20-Modern-compatible "Four Color to Fantasy" I wrote (and as such, needed to playtest), the only 'superhero' game I've ever played used the new World of Darkness rules, and had a vibe a lot like the TV show Heroes, with characters being normal folks with screwed up issues whose lives get even more frustrating as they develop super-powers. 

We didn't really have mechanics for the powers. The flashiest power anyone had was the ability to create forcefields. Then there was the reporter who could read minds, the grad student who could understand any language, the electrician who could sense and understand broadcasts and electromagnetic currents, and the (super-overpowered) unemployed guy who had a radius around him within which reality operated on Hollywood blockbuster logic.


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## billd91 (Jun 20, 2021)

Champions is good, but we liked V&V better back in the 1980s. And, for me, M&M has eclipsed Champions when it comes to point-buy superhero games. I would still play Champions if the opportunity came up, it’s just not my first choice for superhero gaming.


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## Lord Mhoram (Jun 20, 2021)

Champions/Hero - I've been playing it for 35 years plus. It just fits my approach and preferences for RPGs in general, and superheroes in particular. My avatar is my longest played character in that system (something like 12 years).

I've looked at others, currently Sentinel comics (for a really different kind of experience than HERO) and looking forward to the supers supplement for Cypher.  All other superhero systems I've tried just didn't hit the sweet spot for me - so I never played them long term.


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## DammitVictor (Jun 20, 2021)

RangerWickett said:


> Weirdly, aside from the D20-Modern-compatible "Four Color to Fantasy" I wrote (and as such, needed to playtest)...




I loved that, by the way. Bought both versions, had the Revised version printed out and bound and carried it with me for years. I even repurchased (I think) both versions a couple of months ago.


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## Randomthoughts (Jun 26, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Wow, so little love for Champions here.



I have a love/hate view of Champions. It’s the system that I’ve ran my longest superhero campaign, and it really support progress - power increases, buying off disads and vehicles and bases. But combat can take long. So, looking for shortcuts. Bought Champions Now, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. Toying with dice roller apps to quickly tally BODY and Stun. Prep is major concern (who has the time), but there is a lot of pre-made stuff out there now. Would run it in a heartbeat with the right group - finding that is the hard part.

Otherwise, Cortex+/Prime is my go to, but it does scratch a different itch than Champions.
And I’m a fan of FASERIP so I’m seriously considering ICONS.

EDIT: Another note for Champions: I find HERO to be perfect for Dark Champions (street level heroes).  There’s enough “crunchy bits” you can use for character creation - and vehicle and base rules - that made my part DC campaign shine. This is what I’d like to run if I found that perfect group.


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## Grendel_Khan (Jun 26, 2021)

Randomthoughts said:


> EDIT: Another note for Champions: I find HERO to be perfect for Dark Champions (street level heroes).  There’s enough “crunchy bits” you can use for character creation - and vehicle and base rules - that made my part DC campaign shine. This is what I’d like to run if I found that perfect group.



I used Fuzion for a relatively street-level, but very gritty supers game, and it worked beautifully. Way less crunch, and almost none of the fiddly tweaking of powers and cosmic-level stuff. I get why that didn't take off--the presentation was weird, esp. if you weren't already super familiar with Champions/Hero--but it's a bit of a shame.


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## zarionofarabel (Jun 26, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Marvel Heroic RP (Cortex+). I've read a lot of superhero comics, but it was the first Supers game that made me interested. It plays well, though on the GM side it can take a little while to get the hang of Doom Pool management.



Agreed.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 27, 2021)

pming said:


> Hiya!
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Just a comment; while Hero isn't the fastest moving system in the world (its got a fair number of moving parts, and a lot of meaningful decisions) this is either the sign of a group with some serious decision paralysis, a large number of people who didn't understand the mechanics at all, or GMs who, in one fashion or another, didn't know what they were doing.  Or combinations of the above.  I've run combats for 8 players in less than a third of that time. by myself.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 27, 2021)

As to the question--well, I have a problem.  I've probably run more supers games than, well, anything else over the last 40 years.  I've run Champions, DCH, Superworld, M&M, V&V and probably one or two I've forgotten.

And these days nothing _quite_ works for me.  Though I respect the people that heavily narrative style systems work for, I'm just a bit too much of a trad guy not to want a heavy dose of that, even in my supers games.

These days, if I were to start another, it'd probably be Champions Complete, Mighty Protectors (V&V 3e), Supers! RED, BASH UE, or the new version of Prowlers and Paragons--but _all_ of them have some issues or another to go with their virtues. And they're not issues I can entirely ignore.


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## Richards (Jun 27, 2021)

My favorite has to be Champions, but that's because it's the only superhero RPG I've ever played.  We played first edition back when I was in high school and early college, and then I picked up the 4th Edition book some 15 years or so ago and I ran my son through about a dozen adventures of a solo campaign before we started up our current D&D 3.5 group.  Yeah, the combats are really slow, but it's not so bad with one hero fighting one villain.

Johnathan


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 27, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Just a comment; while Hero isn't the fastest moving system in the world (its got a fair number of moving parts, and a lot of meaningful decisions) this is either the sign of a group with some serious decision paralysis, a large number of people who didn't understand the mechanics at all, or GMs who, in one fashion or another, didn't know what they were doing.  Or combinations of the above.  I've run combats for 8 players in less than a third of that time. by myself.



That may be - but as a 4e fan three hours seems like far far too long for me.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 27, 2021)

Neonchameleon said:


> That may be - but as a 4e fan three hours seems like far far too long for me.




At a certain point, paying attention to more things is going to have more handling time.  Hero has at least three things to track somewhat regularly (Stun, Endurance, how Recovery interacts with those), a lot of meaningful options in terms of manuevers, and many characters have additional options of their own (power options in multipowers or martial manuevers).  Since its also not a sudden-death system (barring the old broken Killing Attack "stun explosion") so you're going to have to do more than one hit to put an opponent down--probably at least three assuming an opponent super (this is the flip side of getting at least a little time to figure out things aren't working for you before you go down yourself).  With the eight people I quoted, the fact each of them might use 25 minutes each across the course of a combat just can't seem that excessive to me.

Not all of those things might be considered valuable (there's persistent discussion of whether Endurance is really necessary), but the more of the others you strip off, I can't think makes the game play worse; I don't think too many of the others on my list would cut that down by more than 20% per person; people still need to make decisions and people still have a certain number of hits they take before going down.  The only difference, really, is a bit of bookkeeping.

(It should be noted that you could like reduce that time further with really simple characters and/or really decisive players, but I'm not going to assume those--its certainly not what I'd expect in my games no matter _what_ system was used.)


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## MidnightBlue (Jun 27, 2021)

I own/play/run lots of RPG genres, but there is definitely a special place in my heart for Supers games.  TSR Marvel Superheroes was the first game I bought after D&D red box.  While there is something I like about all of many RPGs I own...if I had to pick...let's say three of them:

Tied for first would be Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (Cortex Plus) and City of Mist.  Both offer EXACTLY the freedom I want in character creation as a player and ease of threat creation/mechanics as a GM.  The Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game book is by far, hands down, the best $20 I ever spent on gaming in my 36-ish years of RPG gaming.  I feel like I can play any character or run any game with that little red book.

In 3rd place I think I'd put the Smallville RPG (Cortex Plus Drama System).  Using Relationships and Drives as your major attributes is an interesting conflict resolution system and makes the greatest of Gods on the same level as the meekest of sidekicks when it comes to dramatic roleplaying.  The other major draw for me is the Pathways character creation system.  This is one of the most fun and enjoyable Session Zero drives I've encountered.  As the players take turns going through the stages of the Pathways' process, they are fleshing out their characters sheets, but also adding locations and NPCs to the "Pathways Map" of the world surrounding those characters.  They also add statements that tie the PCs, NPCs, and locations together.  Once the creation process is done, the GM (or Watchtower, to use Smallville's terminology) has a pretty great setting and NPC base to build adventures on that are already tied to the PCs with backstory and significance, she/he knows what drives the PCs, and what relationships are important to those PCs.  It makes developing scenarios that will speak to the characters much easier right off the bat.

As I said, there are many out there I love for various reasons (setting, concept, system mechanics, license, etc.), but these three scratch most of my supers itches the best.

Honorable mentions: Godlike & This Favored Land (gritty WWII & American Civil War supers respectively), Better Angels (over the top cheesy villains as actual superheroes as they distract their possessing and power granting demons with flash instead of giving them true horrific villainy), Aberrant and Adventure!, and, of course, TSR Marvel Superheroes and Mayfair DC Super Heroes will always hold special places in my heart and on my book shelves.  I could go on and on and on praising my choices or listing other amazing selections from my shelves...so I'll just stop there...grudgingly...


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## pemerton (Jun 27, 2021)

MidnightBlue said:


> Tied for first would be Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (Cortex Plus) and City of Mist.  Both offer EXACTLY the freedom I want in character creation as a player and ease of threat creation/mechanics as a GM.



It's great to see someone praising the PC gen in MHRP. I agree - and when I've adapted the system to fantasy/LotR RPGing have likewise found it straightforward to create PCs like Gandalf, a Dunadan ranger, Dwarf adventurer, etc.

I've never understood this attack on MHRP that it doesn't have a PC gen system.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 28, 2021)

pemerton said:


> It's great to see someone praising the PC gen in MHRP. I agree - and when I've adapted the system to fantasy/LotR RPGing have likewise found it straightforward to create PCs like Gandalf, a Dunadan ranger, Dwarf adventurer, etc.
> 
> I've never understood this attack on MHRP that it doesn't have a PC gen system.



I think what MHRP doesn't have is a _balanced _PC gen system. It doesn't put some things in bounds and others out and try to make the characters roughly even mechanically.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2021)

pemerton said:


> It's great to see someone praising the PC gen in MHRP. I agree - and when I've adapted the system to fantasy/LotR RPGing have likewise found it straightforward to create PCs like Gandalf, a Dunadan ranger, Dwarf adventurer, etc.
> 
> I've never understood this attack on MHRP that it doesn't have a PC gen system.




Some of us want--or in some cases outright need--more structure than modelling provides.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2021)

Neonchameleon said:


> I think what MHRP doesn't have is a _balanced _PC gen system. It doesn't put some things in bounds and others out and try to make the characters roughly even mechanically.




The argument is that it doesn't make those differences pronounced enough that's a big deal.  I'm not really sold on that (and of course, the system not easily handling pronounced differences is only a virtue from a certain POV).


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## CleverNickName (Jun 28, 2021)

I don't have a lot of experience with superhero TTRPGs, but I really liked the X-Men clone that I ran with D20 Modern back in the day.  It's the only one I can vouch for.


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## Sithlord (Jun 28, 2021)

Mutants and masterminds hands down. But great times with FASERIP and MEGS


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## Blue (Jun 28, 2021)

Champions was my #1 hands down favorite.  But frankly it was because I was in some really superlative campaigns of it, and the first superhero sysem I ran.  Started with 2nd ed, all the softcovers, but the BBB (Big Blue Book, a/k/a 3rd) was my favorite edition.  I've heard good things about FREd (Fifth Revised Edition).  Yes, it's combat can be long - I put it around 4e paragon levels in terms of time needed once you get past the learning curve.  We used to do a yearly crossover even between different campaigns but with a single DM, and with 18-22 PCs plus villains (often on different battlefields but using the same phase count) it could last for three and a half to four hours.  But with a normal group it was 45-60 minutes for a good combat, or quicker dealing with agents and mooks.  Recently went to play 6th Ed and found it missing nostalgia that I was expecting that left me cold.

I haven't played Champions for over a decade.  Several times a year I make characters.  That's the staying power of it for me.

Marvel Heroic Roleplay (and now Cortex Prime) - Thor and Hawkeye go out on a drinking buddy night and fall into adventure and the system doesn't blink an eyelash at the differences in power level.  Also that XP was not about growing more powerful, but character growth and unlocking options.

Various Fate.  Venture City I did the most with.  Read Wearing the Cape because I like the novel series but never got a chance to play it.  Ran just freeform Fate with aspects for pwoers for non-TTRPG people with no notice and they loved it.  I've read Spirit of the Century and Shadows of the Century but haven't run them.

Played both V&V and M&M back in the 1900s.  (Heh, I liked writing that.)  Didn't work for me as much.  Probably the first edition of both and never revisited.

TMNT and other Strangeness was the Palladium system which I was never a fan of.  Still, loved the source material.  Heroes Unlimited, also Palladium, didn't even have that going for it.

Read FASERIP but played very little.

Modern ones I haven't tried but have been told to give a try include Sentinel Comics, Masks (young supers coming into their own), Worlds in Peril (PbtA), Galaxies in PEril (Forged in the Dark successor)

Really, really want to get into a good supers game with a lot of inter-party drama and RP, like a Young Justice or Teen Titans, though it doesn't need to be young heroes.


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 28, 2021)

Favourite is Champions. I like the depth to which you can fiddle with character creation. Also love the flexibility of the combat system. I haven't gotten to play it in... oh maybe 5 years. <sigh>

Lotta love for Marvel FASERIP. It's quick and fun. The karma mechanic allows for very superhero-ey style.

I have the Sentinels CCG and love the heck out of it. I dare say I will get the RPG at some point just to show the love.


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## Grendel_Khan (Jun 28, 2021)

Blue said:


> I haven't played Champions for over a decade.  Several times a year I make characters.  That's the staying power of it for me.




I'm sure making Champions characters is a huge slog for some, but I'm right there with you. It's like the TTRPG equivalent of working on a jigsaw puzzle. If you can commit to the crunch it's one of the most rewarding systems for making someone, whether you actually play them or not.


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## pemerton (Jun 28, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Some of us want--or in some cases outright need--more structure than modelling provides.



Fair enough.

There's an approach to PC build which I associate with Rolemaster, more so 3E D&D, and yet more so points-buy games. Optimisation of the build given the points/elements available is an aspect of this. MHRP certainly doesn't offer this, because the whole idea is to start from the outcome and then establish the build elements that will support that.



Neonchameleon said:


> I think what MHRP doesn't have is a _balanced _PC gen system. It doesn't put some things in bounds and others out and try to make the characters roughly even mechanically.



One might reply to your first sentence that neither does 3E or 5e D&D! In relation to the second, it's easy enough to say _no d12 power traits_ or _no more than 4 specialties_ or similar.


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 28, 2021)

Controversial opinion coming here... I don't get why people want to to have Hulk and Hawkeye operating at the same power level. I'm *not *saying I don't understand why a person or persons would want to play such disparate characters. That I totally get. Even playing them on the same team is fine - it'll just require some good judgement by the GM to make sure everyone gets their time to shine . And some adjustment of expectations by the players; sometimes Hawkeye ain't gonna do squat, and sometimes Hulk is gonna be sitting on his big, dumb, green hands.

Let me give you an example from a game I ran for some friends earlier this year. (Hey! I just remembered - I played some Champions earlier this year! Woohoo!) It was a playtest for a con game (assuming cons ever happen again) and the team is basically the Avengers. We had (similar but legally distinct!) Ironman, Hulk, and Wasp. And Black Widow. Widow was much lower power than the others (yep, even Wasp) but had plenty of utility. The player didn't try going one on one with the enemy bricks, or to out-shoot the enemy power armour dude. But they had a great time. They infiltrated, tracked, found clues, completely circumvented my big set-piece final fight, and occasionally dropped knock out gas on bad guys. Everyone else did their own schtick. Hulk smashed, Wasp flipped between super stealth and zapping, and Ironman flew around zorching people.


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 28, 2021)

Another bee in my bonnet: Champions ain't that complicated to play.

There's what - 3 numbers to track? Compare that to the number of damn conditions DnD or PF have.

Character design can get very complex _if you want it to be._ But it's easy enough to build a Thing or Johnny Storm lookalike.

Anyway, I'll stop myself here or else I'll rant on for ages.


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## pemerton (Jun 28, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Controversial opinion coming here... I don't get why people want to to have Hulk and Hawkeye operating at the same power level.



I think a supers RPG, if it is to emulate comics has to allow a variety of characters to occupy the same narrative weight.


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 28, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I think a supers RPG, if it is to emulate comics has to allow a variety of characters to occupy the same narrative weight.



Equal narrative weight - sure. But that doesn't mean everyone has to kick arse to the same level. There's other fields in which characters can shine.


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## pemerton (Jun 28, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Equal narrative weight - sure. But that doesn't mean everyone has to kick arse to the same level. There's other fields in which characters can shine.



What RPG has Hawkeye and Hulk "kicking arse" at the same level? In MHRP, for instance, The Hulk is most potent by punching things. Hawkeye is most potent using his acrobatics and trick arrows.

Either has a good chance at being the one to take down Titanium Man - The Hulk by punching, Hawkeye by using one of his Adamantium Arrows to puncture Titanium Man's armour.


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## Imaculata (Jun 28, 2021)

I've never ran or played in a supers game, but I would like to. What would be the best system, if I'm looking for good character creation options, an exciting combat system (with a bit of strategy) and a bit of crunch? Mind you, I've played D&D 3.5 all my life, so is there a system that fills all those checkboxes and is easy to get into?


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 28, 2021)

pemerton said:


> What RPG has Hawkeye and Hulk "kicking arse" at the same level? In MHRP, for instance, The Hulk is most potent by punching things. Hawkeye is most potent using his acrobatics and trick arrows.
> 
> Either has a good chance at being the one to take down Titanium Man - The Hulk by punching, Hawkeye by using one of his Adamantium Arrows to puncture Titanium Man's armour.




Well, it sounds like this RPG has them kicking arse at the same level.


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 28, 2021)

Imaculata said:


> I've never ran or played in a supers game, but I would like to. What would be the best system, if I'm looking for good character creation options, an exciting combat system (with a bit of strategy) and a bit of crunch? Mind you, I've played D&D 3.5 all my life, so is there a system that fills all those checkboxes and is easy to get into?




I recommend Champions (6th ed. is the current edition.)


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## pemerton (Jun 28, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Well, it sounds like this RPG has them kicking arse at the same level.



Hulk will typically be a d12 effect. Hawkeye will typically be a d10 effect.


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## MidnightBlue (Jun 28, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Controversial opinion coming here... I don't get why people want to to have Hulk and Hawkeye operating at the same power level. I'm *not *saying I don't understand why a person or persons would want to play such disparate characters. That I totally get. Even playing them on the same team is fine - it'll just require some good judgement by the GM to make sure everyone gets their time to shine . And some adjustment of expectations by the players; sometimes Hawkeye ain't gonna do squat, and sometimes Hulk is gonna be sitting on his big, dumb, green hands.
> 
> Let me give you an example from a game I ran for some friends earlier this year. (Hey! I just remembered - I played some Champions earlier this year! Woohoo!) It was a playtest for a con game (assuming cons ever happen again) and the team is basically the Avengers. We had (similar but legally distinct!) Ironman, Hulk, and Wasp. And Black Widow. Widow was much lower power than the others (yep, even Wasp) but had plenty of utility. The player didn't try going one on one with the enemy bricks, or to out-shoot the enemy power armour dude. But they had a great time. They infiltrated, tracked, found clues, completely circumvented my big set-piece final fight, and occasionally dropped knock out gas on bad guys. Everyone else did their own schtick. Hulk smashed, Wasp flipped between super stealth and zapping, and Ironman flew around zorching people.




What you're describing isn't that different in MHR or other narrative games regarding situations in which a character is useful or not.  To use the primary example, even in MHR, Hawkeye isn't going to punch the Abomination to the same effect as the Hulk.  For one, the Abomination's armor traits are going to narratively shut that down, likely without a roll even necessary.

But here is where narrative games in general and MHR in particular shine.  Hawkeye's player can think of how his character WOULD approach this level and type of threat.  He isn't going to punch the guy...that's suicide for him and stepping into Hulk's spotlight.  But at the same time, there is no comic that I recall reading that showcases a team-up and then writes one of the characters throwing up their hands saying they can't do anything and sitting in the car while the beatstick handles the challenge.  No, Hawkeye's player is going to use that character's traits in creative ways to be equally as effective as his jade teammate, but in the style of his character.  As others have mentioned, Hawkeye has trick arrows that can disorient, entangle, and possibly hurt even a bruiser like Abomination.  He has training to help keep him out of arms reach of the massive threat.  So while he can't go punch for punch with Hulk, again, punching is Hulk's spotlight, Hawkeye does hold his own in the comics against the same threats Hulk faces in his own ways.

Again, this is why I personally love MHR (and City of Mist and Smallville) over many crunchier systems.  Quite often crunchier systems are very narrow in what you can do once combat starts.  In most crunchy systems you simply have an attack value, a damage value, a defense value, and an amount of hit points.  Likely any way you boil down the Hawkeye, Hulk, and Abomination statistics into those categories and have a strict system where it is simply roll to hit, apply defense, and assign damage...Hawkeye is useless and likely dead in this matchup or simply completely ineffectual.  For that matter, so is Batman in a Batman, Superman, Darkseid fight...but I've seen Batman win that fight in the comics...not with straight punching, but using his traits in a more thematically appropriate manner.

MHR (and City of Mist and Smallville) don't have those same kinds of restrictions in combat situations as many of the other crunchier systems that I own and have played.  When initiative is called, Batman and Hawkeye aren't restricted to the same type of combat actions as Superman and Hulk.  In MHR in particular, besides dealing Stress (damage) with an action, a character can attempt to create an Asset (buff) for themselves or others and they can attempt to create Complications (hindrances) to the opposition that can also take them out of a scene just as effectively as punching the character could through damage.  So again, Hawkeye and Hulk in MHR are not on the same level when it comes to punching, lifting, or ripping something apart...Hulk wins that contest every time...don't even need to roll for it.  But can they both be equally effective in taking on a challenge using their varied methods?  Most definitely.  The narrative game systems I've come to love have action options built into the game system to allow for those varied methods to have equal weight in the story.  It's what allows Batman's intelligence, training, and wonderful toys to effect the story as much as Superman's godlike physique and powers, while still letting both shine in their particular spotlights.  In one particular story I'm thinking of, just because Batman extorts Darkseid into releasing Supergirl from his control through intellect and planning, doesn't make it any less cool later in the story when Superman flies Darkseid near the sun and pummels the New God into submission before boom-tubing him to the edge of the universe and imprisoning Darkseid in the Source Wall.  Both have their skillsets and both managed to win against the same threat.  Same challenge, different mechanical character traits, different mechanical system actions, same outcome...victory.

Over the years I've grown to really appreciate a system that can handle that and give me a true comic book experience.


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## Aldarc (Jun 28, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Controversial opinion coming here... I don't get why people want to to have Hulk and Hawkeye operating at the same power level. I'm *not *saying I don't understand why a person or persons would want to play such disparate characters. That I totally get. Even playing them on the same team is fine - it'll just require some good judgement by the GM to make sure everyone gets their time to shine . And some adjustment of expectations by the players; sometimes Hawkeye ain't gonna do squat, and sometimes Hulk is gonna be sitting on his big, dumb, green hands.



You don't really explain what you don't get about it here.

Why should the GM be the one to make them feel balanced? What you propose feels a little too close to the Oberoni Fallacy.



DrunkonDuty said:


> Let me give you an example from a game I ran for some friends earlier this year. (Hey! I just remembered - I played some Champions earlier this year! Woohoo!) It was a playtest for a con game (assuming cons ever happen again) and the team is basically the Avengers. We had (similar but legally distinct!) Ironman, Hulk, and Wasp. And Black Widow. Widow was much lower power than the others (yep, even Wasp) but had plenty of utility. The player didn't try going one on one with the enemy bricks, or to out-shoot the enemy power armour dude. But they had a great time. They infiltrated, tracked, found clues, completely circumvented my big set-piece final fight, and occasionally dropped knock out gas on bad guys. Everyone else did their own schtick. Hulk smashed, Wasp flipped between super stealth and zapping, and Ironman flew around zorching people.



I'm not really sure what this proves other than you had fun with Champions in a playtest one-shot game at a con.



Imaculata said:


> I've never ran or played in a supers game, but I would like to. What would be the best system, if I'm looking for good character creation options, an exciting combat system (with a bit of strategy) and a bit of crunch? Mind you, *I've played D&D 3.5 all my life, so is there a system that fills all those checkboxes and is easy to get into?*



Uncontroversial opinion coming here, but based upon what you say here, it sounds like Mutants & Masterminds should do the trick.



pemerton said:


> Hulk will typically be a d12 effect. Hawkeye will typically be a d10 effect.



Even then, Fate and Cortex often provide a great deal of latitude for narrative power discrepancies through narrative permissions while still maintaining mechanical parity between player characters. What they can each attempt or achieve may be limited by their Aspects (Fate) or Distinctions (Cortex).


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## MidnightBlue (Jun 28, 2021)

Imaculata said:


> I've never ran or played in a supers game, but I would like to. What would be the best system, if I'm looking for good character creation options, an exciting combat system (with a bit of strategy) and a bit of crunch? Mind you, I've played D&D 3.5 all my life, so is there a system that fills all those checkboxes and is easy to get into?



There are some OGL 3/3.5E systems out there.  I've got a few: Silver Age Sentinels D20, Aberrant D20, Adventure! D20, Trinity D20...just to name a few.  While the systems aren't my go-to anymore, I still enjoy what those games have to offer within that system.  

Edit: Yep...forgot about Mutants and Masterminds that Aldarc mentioned above.


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## MidnightBlue (Jun 28, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Some of us want--or in some cases outright need--more structure than modelling provides.




I get that.  There are a million and one gaming systems out there, with more coming everyday, because there are at least a million and two ideas of what would make a cool game.  And then you have folks like me that love MANY systems because of what each offers.  (My bank account wishes I could find one and be content forever.)  

Heck, when I first bought the TSR Marvel Superheroes game, which I immediately fell in love with, I couldn't wrap my head around the concept of modelling.  "What, I just make the character I want?  Okay...I make the one true God...I win, right?"  The thought of not having anything to hold back my crunchy system min-max/optimization tendencies was daunting.  So I always used the random generation system.  (Heh...of course anyone thinking that MHR doesn't have a balanced creation system should take a second look at the MSH-FASERIP random characters...heh they ran the range of "this guy's AWESOME" to "Can I play Aunt May instead?".)  

Now circle around to nearly 30-ish years later when Marvel Heroic Roleplaying comes into my life and I have the same three character creations options as my beloved Marvel Superheroes (FASERIP); Modeling, using a pregen/established hero/villain, and random generation.  Suddenly modelling just clicked for me.  I'm sure part of it was that I'd grown tired of running into road blocks to creating the oddball character concepts that kept coming to me over the decades...roadblocks that could only be bypassed with house-rules and with a lot of GMs that weren't comfortable with house-rules, understandably worried that the wrong answer would break the game.

For the first time that I could recall, having ignored modelling as an option in Marvel Superheroes (FASERIP), I finally had a game where I didn't have to worry about the system keeping me from making the character I wanted.  You start with your character concept, talk it over with your GM and group to make sure the concept fits in the game (which you should do in ANY system, in my opinion), then assign traits until that character concept is formed on paper.  My only restriction to making the exact character I want to play is my imagination in MHR.  That game landed in my hands when I could appreciate it most, and dare say when I needed it in my life.

I think part of the key to being able to get the most out of modelling a character is, besides having a character-idea muse whispering in your ear, understanding that "winning" is helping your table tell a good story where every player gets to have the spotlight at times, and not "beating" the GM and gathering all the glory for yourself.  I know that sounds obvious, but the game and character creation systems that many of us were raised on is all about building power/level to an optimum creation.  The thought of making a well-rounded character with inherent flaws and limitations wasn't a part of the games I grew up on.  It was more about minimizing weaknesses and optimizing effectiveness.

MHR changed that for me in a big way.  Though I do still love the random generation option it has for those times when I need to come up with a character, but the muse is sleeping and I need a character concept prompt.

For being able to make exactly the character I want to play right out of the gate...without a need to level-up to someday be the character I wanted to begin with, I can't think of a better system than Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.  And especially in the super hero genre where our beloved, long-lasting heroes (and villains) very seldom have significant changes that last much beyond a story arc.  Sure, there was that time when Spider-Man grew four extra arms, had a symbiote suit, had organic webshooters, etc., but nothing stuck (pun intended) for long and we were left with our same friendly neighborhood Spider-Man that we've grown to love.  But if you DO want a zero-to-hero game or the ability to gain XP and change aspects of your character beyond just a conversation with the GM, MHR offers that too.  Best of all worlds in my eyes.  But of course not for everyone.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 28, 2021)

Champions a.k.a. HERO.  Simply put, I have yet to come up with a character concept I can’t model in it.  There are others I own* for a variety of reasons, but that’s my default.

The next closest would be Mutants & Masterminds (1Ed or 2Ed).


* such as M&M, Godlyke, Aberrant, Brave New World, Silver Age Sentinels, Underground and Heroes Unlimited.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 28, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Well, it sounds like this RPG has them kicking arse at the same level.



It has them kicking arse at about the level you'd expect in the comics or the Marvel movies rather than some sort of attempt to model the real world where the archer would be pretty useless.


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 28, 2021)

Whelp... what I was trying to get at was that I don't feel the need for Hawkeye and Hulk (or Batman and Supes) to be on par in every situation.  Not that they can't both do things. But the things they do won't be the same or necessarily equally effective in a given situation.

When they are operating together I'd hope to see a situation like the one MidnightBlue outlined with Hawkeye trying all sorts of tricks to slow down and harass Abomination. But here's the thing: Hawkeye's player will have to be content with only ever rescuing civilians, harassing Abomination, and maybe setting him up for Hulk's knockout punch. They (the player) will have to adjust their expectations to this role. 

The other thing I was trying to get at is the broader implication the different roles have for a campaign . The GM should be careful that both characters get their time to shine because no-one wants to play second fiddle the whole time.

What I wouldn't want to see is Hulk punches for X damage and Hawkeye shoots for the same amount of damage. The only reason I wouldn't be happy with this is because Hawkeye has been set up (narratively) as highly trained but just human; whereas "Hulk is strongest there is." They fill different roles in the narrative.

Hope that clears up my position.


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 28, 2021)

Neonchameleon said:


> It has them kicking arse at about the level you'd expect in the comics or the Marvel movies rather than some sort of attempt to model the real world where the archer would be pretty useless.




Well.............. Probably a tangent that should be broken off as a thread in the media section but the comics do not have Hawkeye and Hulk in the same league. Not even close. They're closer in power to one another in the MCU but still not, you know, close. 

Or, wait, did you mean the modelling is close to the respective characters?


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 28, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Well.............. Probably a tangent that should be broken off as a thread in the media section but the comics do not have Hawkeye and Hulk in the same league. Not even close. They're closer in power to one another in the MCU but still not, you know, close.
> 
> Or, wait, did you mean the modelling is close to the respective characters?



They aren't close - but they are close enough to meaningfully function on the same team. And close enough that the GM doesn't have to tailor situations so Hawkeye is useful. If you're working on a physics model rather than narrative model base this doesn't really happen.


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 28, 2021)

Neonchameleon said:


> They aren't close - but they are close enough to meaningfully function on the same team. And close enough that the GM doesn't have to tailor situations so Hawkeye is useful. If you're working on a physics model rather than narrative model base this doesn't really happen.




I don't know any narrative(?)* systems. I'll take your word on not needing to tailor specific scenes for specific characters. 



*I assume you mean narrative systems, please correct me if I'm wrong.


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## Tonguez (Jun 28, 2021)

Imaculata said:


> I've never ran or played in a supers game, but I would like to. What would be the best system, if I'm looking for good character creation options, an exciting combat system (with a bit of strategy) and a bit of crunch? Mind you, I've played D&D 3.5 all my life, so is there a system that fills all those checkboxes and is easy to get into?



Mutants and Masterminds is built on the d20 chassis so if you know 3.5 it will be familiar enough even with the big changes it made for genre (no HP and no Classes)


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## MidnightBlue (Jun 28, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Whelp... what I was trying to get at was that I don't feel the need for Hawkeye and Hulk (or Batman and Supes) to be on par in every situation.  Not that they can't both do things. But the things they do won't be the same or necessarily equally effective in a given situation.
> 
> When they are operating together I'd hope to see a situation like the one MidnightBlue outlined with Hawkeye trying all sorts of tricks to slow down and harass Abomination. But here's the thing: Hawkeye's player will have to be content with only ever rescuing civilians, harassing Abomination, and maybe setting him up for Hulk's knockout punch. They (the player) will have to adjust their expectations to this role.
> 
> ...




All good points.  Definitely enjoy the system(s) discussion and not at all combative here.  

To your first point:  Agreed, if the situation is super defined, like an arm wrestling contest, then you are definitely going to have folks tooled for that kind of challenge.  (That said, don't underestimate the power of psyching out an opponent, or some other clever trick/narrative, to give you an edge.)  But just on its face value, if Hawkeye and Hulk are facing off against each other in an arm wrestling match, you don't even roll the dice.  Hulk wins.  MHR has that baked in just from the narrative of the character concepts.  It's easy for the Watcher (as the GM is called) to just make that call..."Hulk wins."

As to your second point, that Hawkeye's player would need to realize in such a major fight that he'd be relegated to support roles, well most narrative games work a little different in those regards than their crunchier sisters.  In MHR, for example, you can defeat most challenges by either "stressing out" the target (doing damage to knockout/put down the target) or in "complicating out" the target.  In our Hulk & Hawkeye vs. Abomination example, sure, Hawkeye is less likely to be doing major damage to Abomination...though creative narrative on Hawkeye's player's part might change that.  (Explosive arrows, dropping a building on Abomination, etc.)  However, Hawkeye's player can also get creative in creating complications for the Abomination that could also take him out of the fight.  Complications could be a number of things like leading him into a pool of wet cement that acts as quicksand, dropping powerlines on him that act as a taser effect (could also be a narrative for inflicting Stress), or any number of his trick arrows.  Maybe Hawkeye or some fast talking, but physically deficient hero tricks the Abomination into giving up or leaving the area.  Either way, Hawkeye's player doesn't have to feel like he is playing second fiddle as he is actively helping to eliminate the threat, just in a manner more appropriate to Hawkeye.  (I still remember an arrowless Hawkeye and a powerless Ben Grimm taking Klaw and Lizard out of the battle in Marvel's Secret Wars mini-series by convincing them to play patty-cake instead.  (I think it was patty cake...)  Marvel Heroic is setup right out of the gate to handle just such a wacky situation and allows, no encourages, players to get creative with their character's traits and think outside the box in resolving threats.

One of my most fun moments playing Spider-Man in a Marvel Heroic game...I was facing off against a full-powered Graviton alone.  Graviton, a guy that has taken on the entire Avengers team by himself.  I won the encounter by talking Graviton down through dice rolls, playing on the villain's insecurities.  It was a lot of fun...and yeah, I patted myself on the back for that bit of gameplay.  This wasn't house-ruled, this wasn't GM handwaving, it was all through using the systems that MHR provides.

Anyway, I know, get me on a subject I like and I can go on for ages...sorry.  

The point...the narrative games I really enjoy give you more options to taking on a challenge than simply attack and run away.  You can use your character's abilities in any way you can justify.  Thinking outside the box is encouraged and is often the way you can win when more straight forward options don't make sense for the situation.

Okay...back to work for me.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I get that.  There are a million and one gaming systems out there, with more coming everyday, because there are at least a million and two ideas of what would make a cool game.  And then you have folks like me that love MANY systems because of what each offers.  (My bank account wishes I could find one and be content forever.)




Just saying that from where they sit, there's a legitimate reason to say that MHR didn't have a character generation system.  I get that they didn't really think anything more was needed, or perhaps appropriate, but as I've noted, if modelling is a "character generation system", its one in every game ever.  That's just going to be a problem for some people.



MidnightBlue said:


> Heck, when I first bought the TSR Marvel Superheroes game, which I immediately fell in love with, I couldn't wrap my head around the concept of modelling.  "What, I just make the character I want?  Okay...I make the one true God...I win, right?"  The thought of not having anything to hold back my crunchy system min-max/optimization tendencies was daunting.  So I always used the random generation system.  (Heh...of course anyone thinking that MHR doesn't have a balanced creation system should take a second look at the MSH-FASERIP random characters...heh they ran the range of "this guy's AWESOME" to "Can I play Aunt May instead?".)




The people who have that issue generally don't present MSH as a model superhero system either; I don't think random character gen without strong constraints makes a lick of sense in a superhero game anyway, and then there's the issue you mention.



MidnightBlue said:


> Now circle around to nearly 30-ish years later when Marvel Heroic Roleplaying comes into my life and I have the same three character creations options as my beloved Marvel Superheroes (FASERIP); Modeling, using a pregen/established hero/villain, and random generation.  Suddenly modelling just clicked for me.  I'm sure part of it was that I'd grown tired of running into road blocks to creating the oddball character concepts that kept coming to me over the decades...roadblocks that could only be bypassed with house-rules and with a lot of GMs that weren't comfortable with house-rules, understandably worried that the wrong answer would break the game.
> 
> For the first time that I could recall, having ignored modelling as an option in Marvel Superheroes (FASERIP), I finally had a game where I didn't have to worry about the system keeping me from making the character I wanted.  You start with your character concept, talk it over with your GM and group to make sure the concept fits in the game (which you should do in ANY system, in my opinion), then assign traits until that character concept is formed on paper.  My only restriction to making the exact character I want to play is my imagination in MHR.  That game landed in my hands when I could appreciate it most, and dare say when I needed it in my life.




Well, I'm going to acknowledge here that its harder to build characters out of balance with each other in Cortex than in most games, but I have two caveats on that: 1. Harder is not the same as impossible, and 2. The reason that's the case (the compression of practical range of numbers) isn't an unmixed virtue to everyone.



MidnightBlue said:


> I think part of the key to being able to get the most out of modelling a character is, besides having a character-idea muse whispering in your ear, understanding that "winning" is helping your table tell a good story where every player gets to have the spotlight at times, and not "beating" the GM and gathering all the glory for yourself.  I know that sounds obvious, but the game and character creation systems that many of us were raised on is all about building power/level to an optimum creation.  The thought of making a well-rounded character with inherent flaws and limitations wasn't a part of the games I grew up on.  It was more about minimizing weaknesses and optimizing effectiveness.
> 
> MHR changed that for me in a big way.  Though I do still love the random generation option it has for those times when I need to come up with a character, but the muse is sleeping and I need a character concept prompt.
> 
> For being able to make exactly the character I want to play right out of the gate...without a need to level-up to someday be the character I wanted to begin with, I can't think of a better system than Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.  And especially in the super hero genre where our beloved, long-lasting heroes (and villains) very seldom have significant changes that last much beyond a story arc.  Sure, there was that time when Spider-Man grew four extra arms, had a symbiote suit, had organic webshooters, etc., but nothing stuck (pun intended) for long and we were left with our same friendly neighborhood Spider-Man that we've grown to love.  But if you DO want a zero-to-hero game or the ability to gain XP and change aspects of your character beyond just a conversation with the GM, MHR offers that too.  Best of all worlds in my eyes.  But of course not for everyone.




Well, assuming that the power level presumed for the campaign allows it--its always possible to have a character concept you fall in low with that just doesn't fit well in the campaign power level, no matter what supers system you're using--supers games in general are good about that, since the only subset of superhero settings that have any significant zero-to-hero progression are the teen/trainee superhero subgenre.  Its why on genre grounds its always defensible to have zero-progression, though that doesn't mean its satisfying to people.


----------



## Fenris-77 (Jun 28, 2021)

You might call it more 'Supers adjacent', but City of Mist is very cool.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Well.............. Probably a tangent that should be broken off as a thread in the media section but the comics do not have Hawkeye and Hulk in the same league. Not even close. They're closer in power to one another in the MCU but still not, you know, close.
> 
> Or, wait, did you mean the modelling is close to the respective characters?




Speaking only of MHR, which has been the primary discussion focus MidnightBlue has bee mentioning, the mechanics of Cortex tend to compression the _practical_ power differences between characters (though not, IMO, to quite the degree some fans will claim). And its absolutely true that its better than many systems about handling what I think of as the non-physical elements of conflict (to the point its possible to defeat someone purely that way if you're good at it and things go your own way, which is only true in a few other systems, and most of those are far more heavily narrative-focused than Cortex).


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> You might call it more 'Supers adjacent', but City of Mist is very cool.




From what I know of it, its in that liminal space between supers games and urban fantasy.


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## Fenris-77 (Jun 28, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> From what I know of it, its in that liminal space between supers games and urban fantasy.



That's accurate. Having read it I don't think it would take any actual hacking to push more toward straight supers, just some light fluff adjustment. Still a niche version of supers perhaps, but very doable.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> That's accurate. Having read it I don't think it would take any actual hacking to push more toward straight supers, just some light fluff adjustment. Still a niche version of supers perhaps, but very doable.




That would have been my guess.  There are a couple of settings that lean that way, coming in from one end or the other (if you tried to game the Nightside that'd be very much the vibe you'd get).


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## Fenris-77 (Jun 28, 2021)

There's a lot of urban fantasy that's essentially just supers doing Shakespeare in the park.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> There's a lot of urban fantasy that's essentially just supers doing Shakespeare in the park.




To a degree, but it tends to stand out when a very high percentage of characters in the setting are sort of one-offs, and not treated as though being one-offs is unusual (there's a huge amount of Special Snowflakes as urban fantasy protagonists, but they're pretty much acknowledged as such).


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## Fenris-77 (Jun 28, 2021)

I was really just indexing urban fantasy that trends toward the upper echelons of the power matrix. This isn't even a thing that's specific to a given IP. The _Dresden Files_, just to pick an example, doesn't really start off like that, but once you get to the most recent handful of books describing the characters as supers becomes a lot more reasonable. That's not to say that I'd file those books under 'Superhero' instead of Urban Fantasy, but rather that RPG systems that are 'Supers' become far more appropriate to model those characters, and that the perils and challenges faced by those characters tend to be much more in keeping with what you'd expect from a superhero narrative.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2021)

That's all fair.  From my wife's descriptions of things that go on, it pretty well describes most of Ilona Andrews output.


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## MidnightBlue (Jun 28, 2021)

I'll still consider City of Mist as dipping its toe in the waters of the supers genre since the creators presented it that way, but it definitely is a different flavor of supers than your four color or other more common varieties.  Urban fantasy is also a good descriptor. 

The game is awesome, by the way.  I love the noir flavor and drawing on myths and major cultural icons, even pop culture.

I had a blast making a group of pregens built on the "myths" of the classic Universal Movie Monsters Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Wolfman, The Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and The Invisible Man.  I've always meant to go back and add a rift of Bride of Frankenstein and Phantom of the Opera to complete the originals.

Another game I enjoy and appreciate for its narrative systems.


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## ART! (Jun 28, 2021)

That's a tough call, because I've played a lot of them, and although there's a few that I played a lot of at one time or another, nothing has stuck to the point of _currently_ being a go-to game for supers.

That said, I think *Truth & Justice* would be my pick for favorite. It has a nice balance of narrative and more traditional/old-school mechanics.

_Villains & Vigilantes_ had a nice loose, original D&D quality to it. Considering it was basically the first supers rpg, it's a pretty amazing game.

I played a lot of _Champions_ in the '80s and '90s, and it's an incredibly robust game, butit's not my cup of tea now.

_Mutants & Masterminds_ is equally robust, and it's the supers game I would recommend to anyone familiar with d20 OGL games, but again it doesn't suit my tastes now.

_Icons_, _Supers_, and _BASH_ all have their strengths, too.

_Masks_ is brilliant, but there's a narrative bent to it that I find oddly constraining.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 28, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Controversial opinion coming here... I don't get why people want to to have Hulk and Hawkeye operating at the same power level.




Poor Hulk and Thor constantly belittled in discussions of superhero RPGs and comparative ability! 



DrunkonDuty said:


> Well.............. Probably a tangent that should be broken off as a thread in the media section but the comics do not have Hawkeye and Hulk in the same league. Not even close. They're closer in power to one another in the MCU but still not, you know, close.




Kidding aside, I don’t think they’re as different as you say. I mean, from a brute strength or raw power angle, sure, Hulk’s basically the apex.

But Unearthly or Class 100 Strength aside…the two characters are both shown to be effective in the comics. They just go about it in different ways.

So any game that is going to expect two characters like these to coexist should likely be designed to do so. Or at the very least, designed not to inhibit it or to screw one player over.

So if the system boils down to opposing maths and not much else, then that may be problematic. But if the system is more flexible then it should work like it does in the comics.

To give some specific examples (because I feel I must), in the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes cartoon, Hawkeye defeats the Hulk by threatening him. The Hulk laughs….and anger gone, he turns back into Banner and Hawkeye takes him into custody.

In Solo Avengers issue 12, Hawkeye does indeed defeat the Abomination. Ultimately he takes him down using an adamantium tipped arrow that releases an incredible electrical charge (designed with the intention of destroying Ultron if he ever showed up again).

And in West Coast Avengers Annual 2, Hawkeye takes out She-Hulk in a one on one battle. Basically, he keeps her at a distance, manages to knock her into water, uses some explosives to keep her from surfacing, then when she does, he hits her with a KO gas arrow just as she’s gulping air….and it knocks her out long enough for him to claim victory.

He’s pulled off all kinds of crazy things over the years. Not to the absurd level of Batman….but to me, how a game handles this kind of stuff is a huge indicator if I’ll enjoy it or not.

It’s one area where MSH from TSR kind of falters, which is a shame because otherwise that game would be nearly flawless. I’ve only played Marvel Heroic a handful of times, but it seemed less of an issue.


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## Aldarc (Jun 28, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> There's a lot of urban fantasy that's essentially just supers doing Shakespeare in the park.



That's basically Greg Weisman's Gargoyles.


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## Grendel_Khan (Jun 28, 2021)

Highly random question, but still related to the OP:

Has anyone here actually played Underground?

I really loved its transgressive tone and setting when it came out, the mix of powers and guns (meaning not modeling guns as powers) and even the way it shamelessly ripped off the Marshall Law comic. But even as a dumb teen I looked at the system and knew enough to stay away from it. 

I think Dennis Detwiller mentioned in a podcast interview that there were some very tentative discussions with the creator about rebooting it, but that real-world political stuff made that kind of satire sort of impossible. It really was a product of the 90s, and imo probably couldn't survive an update intact.

But anyway, I'm mostly curious if anyone managed to either play it as written, or was inspired to use the setting for another system. Or was Underground yet another interesting, but read-only game?


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## billd91 (Jun 28, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> He’s pulled off all kinds of crazy things over the years. Not to the absurd level of Batman….but to me, how a game handles this kind of stuff is a huge indicator if I’ll enjoy it or not.
> 
> It’s one area where MSH from TSR kind of falters, which is a shame because otherwise that game would be nearly flawless. I’ve only played Marvel Heroic a handful of times, but it seemed less of an issue.



There are other crunchy systems, like Champions and Mutants and Masterminds, that can handle this with a variable power of some sort. Those would, in fact, be reasonable ways to handle a power that's as variable as Hawkeye's (or Batman's) special arrows/gadgets, particularly since they often seem to pull out just the right one for a situation.
Of course, even then, there's no guarantee of it working depending on the dice rolling - a contrast with a narrative system that determines if you succeed by the die roll first and then backfill in the explanation why.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 28, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Highly random question, but still related to the OP:
> 
> Has anyone here actually played Underground?
> 
> ...



Never got a chance to.  Very few of the groups I’ve belonged to have expressed an interest in Supers gaming,


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## pemerton (Jun 28, 2021)

MidnightBlue said:


> I still remember an arrowless Hawkeye and a powerless Ben Grimm taking Klaw and Lizard out of the battle in Marvel's Secret Wars mini-series by convincing them to play patty-cake instead.  (I think it was patty cake...)



I don't know that one. I remember Storm, without her powers due to having been "nullified" by Forge, defeating Cyclops to regain leadership of the X-Men. As @hawkeyefan posted also, for me a satisfactory supers game has to be able to capture these sorts of events.


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## Staffan (Jun 28, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Highly random question, but still related to the OP:
> 
> Has anyone here actually played Underground?



I've played and enjoyed it, though I don't think we picked up much on the satire. For us at the time, it was mostly a powergaming exercise.


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 29, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> Poor Hulk and Thor constantly belittled in discussions of superhero RPGs and comparative ability!
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I agree on all points.


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## Blue (Jun 29, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Well, I'm going to acknowledge here that its harder to build characters out of balance with each other in Cortex than in most games, but I have two caveats on that: 1. Harder is not the same as impossible, and 2. The reason that's the case (the compression of practical range of numbers) isn't an unmixed virtue to everyone.



You quoted MidnightBlue here and I *strongly* recommend you reread their posts. That is not the only reason or even the primary reason the characters balance out.


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## Blue (Jun 29, 2021)

ART! said:


> That said, I think *Truth & Justice* would be my pick for favorite. It has a nice balance of narrative and more traditional/old-school mechanics.



Cool, one I haven't heard of!  (That's genuine.)  Can you give us an elevator pitch about it?  And what makes it a stand out for you?


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 29, 2021)

Blue said:


> You quoted MidnightBlue here and I *strongly* recommend you reread their posts. That is not the only reason or even the primary reason the characters balance out.




Except I don't see anything special about Cortex in producing the others he references.  As he notes, characters should be built to concept in all games.  That doesn't mean someone can't build to concept and still build something that's too limelight stealing.  Its pretty trivial to build to both if you lean in that direction, and Cortex isn't immune to that.


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## Blue (Jun 29, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Except I don't see anything special about Cortex in producing the others he references.  As he notes, characters should be built to concept in all games.  That doesn't mean someone can't build to concept and still build something that's too limelight stealing.  Its pretty trivial to build to both if you lean in that direction, and Cortex isn't immune to that.



Modelling what not what he went on about, at eloquent length, in multiple posts, about why MHR does well covering different power characters and how they work in the comics - and MHR.  Please, actually reread his posts about that.


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## coyote6 (Jun 29, 2021)

My favorite is still Mutants & Masterminds (specifically, 2nd edition). As to why I love it, I think Kenson & co. hit the perfect spot for me (given that I spent time in high school geometry class writing up Champions characters from memory).

(I kind of want an M&M edition that's based on 5e - more saving throw types, advantage & disadvantage, etc.)


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## aramis erak (Jun 29, 2021)

Blue said:


> Champions was my #1 hands down favorite.  But frankly it was because I was in some really superlative campaigns of it, and the first superhero sysem I ran.  Started with 2nd ed, all the softcovers, but the BBB (Big Blue Book, a/k/a 3rd) was my favorite edition.  I've heard good things about FREd (Fifth Revised Edition).



Big Blue was Champions 4th, not third.  








						Champions 3rd Edition
					

Champions - 3rd Edition Softcover - front cover




					rpggeek.com
				











						Champions 4th Edition
					

Front Cover of Champions 4th Edition




					rpggeek.com
				




Champions 4th to HSR 5th was mostly more concrete examples and all the FAQ elements being added, while removing some of the Champions-specific  setting material.
HSR 5 to 5th REd aka FREd, mostly corrections to the examples.

HSR 5 to 6 was making all the figured atts no longer figured. It was an attempt to expand the fanbase. Most of my friends who play hero refused to even look at 6th, and continue to use 3rd, 4th, or 5REd.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 29, 2021)

Blue said:


> Modelling what not what he went on about, at eloquent length, in multiple posts, about why MHR does well covering different power characters and how they work in the comics - and MHR.  Please, actually reread his posts about that.




_I read them_.  I've also _run_ MHR, and I don't think its as good at that as proponents paint it as.  It can come across like that because it actually has a functional system for combat-by-other-means, but that doesn't mean the characters are really able to compete with others of different power levels; it just means that there are ways to take advantage of weak areas in otherwise strong characters--but if that's the criterion, the old Mayfair DCH did _that_ one.

So I'm pretty much disagreeing with the premise, and that's why I didn't reference it.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 29, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> Big Blue was Champions 4th, not third.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




There were a number of things in 5th and 6th that were attempting to address old weak spots in Hero, and they mostly did, though in some cases (6e KA) they may have over-fixed it.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 29, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> Big Blue was Champions 4th, not third.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



While I have 5th & 6th, the last edition I got to play in any really meaningful amounts was 4th.  Ran my best campaign ever* in it. 









* Supers using an expanded, homebrewed version of the Space:1889 campaign setting.  Really caught lightning in a bottle with it, in no small part because the group had bought into it 100%.  It’s been more than 25 years, and I’ve never even approached the experiences of running it.


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## aramis erak (Jun 29, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> There were a number of things in 5th and 6th that were attempting to address old weak spots in Hero, and they mostly did, though in some cases (6e KA) they may have over-fixed it.



4th, IMO, fixed far more from 3rd than 5th/5REd did from 4th. And the move from the standalone Fantasy Hero to the 4th ed core + Fantasy Hero splatbook was a much bigger improvement than Champions 3 to 4...


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 29, 2021)

I started with 4th ed Champions and moved on to 5th when it came out. But really, they're the same game, as has been said above. I've not made the move to 6th ed; I just didn't feel the need to. I have bought a couple of 6th ed  supplements: _Champions Beyond _and the 3 _Books of the ... Destroyer, Machine, _and _Empress. _They're compatible enough with 6th that I can use them.


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## MidnightBlue (Jun 29, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I don't know that one. I remember Storm, without her powers due to having been "nullified" by Forge, defeating Cyclops to regain leadership of the X-Men. As @hawkeyefan posted also, for me a satisfactory supers game has to be able to capture these sorts of events.




It was Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #8...the cover that showed Spider-Man in his black, symbiote suit for the first time.

And yeah, as a Cyclops fan, I grudgingly remember powerless Storm beating Cyclops.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 29, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> 4th, IMO, fixed far more from 3rd than 5th/5REd did from 4th. And the move from the standalone Fantasy Hero to the 4th ed core + Fantasy Hero splatbook was a much bigger improvement than Champions 3 to 4...




Eh.  I don't think I can really agree.  The killing attack has been a problem from day one of the system, and the effect of Strength on distorting designs has been a thing for a long time.  The EC was likely a mistake from the get-go (and I had a part in creating the damn thing).  

I think 4e brought a lot of different Hero pieces together in a more coherent way, but the actual effect-in-play of changes from 3e to 4e was significantly less than from 4e to 6e.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 29, 2021)

MidnightBlue said:


> It was Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #8...the cover that showed Spider-Man in his black, symbiote suit for the first time.
> 
> And yeah, as a Cyclops fan, I grudgingly remember powerless Storm beating Cyclops.




Well, this can also get into another issue: one of the ways characters beat much more powerful opponents is _massive authorial contrivance_ in some cases. That's also how characters who clearly would have addressed a problem all by their lonesome in their own books fail to do so in team books sometimes. I'm not sure that sort of thing is a virtue in a game.


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## pemerton (Jun 29, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Well, this can also get into another issue: one of the ways characters beat much more powerful opponents is _massive authorial contrivance_ in some cases. That's also how characters who clearly would have addressed a problem all by their lonesome in their own books fail to do so in team books sometimes. I'm not sure that sort of thing is a virtue in a game.



Super heroes are contrivance all the way down: whether that be the secret identities, or the supervillains, or the fact that Storm spends her time using her powers to fight Arcade and Dr Doom rather than responding to droughts and famines. Something like Watchmen, or Miracle Man, is an exception but that's what makes those works distinctive.

At least for my part, I want a supers RPG to emulate the comics I love.


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## Grendel_Khan (Jun 29, 2021)

MidnightBlue said:


> And yeah, as a Cyclops fan, I grudgingly remember powerless Storm beating Cyclops.



You hear about Cyclops fans but never spot them in the wild. What a treat!


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jun 29, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Super heroes are contrivance all the way down: whether that be the secret identities, or the supervillains, or the fact that Storm spends her time using her powers to fight Arcade and Dr Doom rather than responding to droughts and famines. Something like Watchmen, or Miracle Man, is an exception but that's what makes those works distinctive.
> 
> At least for my part, I want a supers RPG to emulate the comics I love.




There's a difference, however, between "These are genre conventions that you just can't push on much" and "This worked out this way because the author wanted it to, not because of any obvious established traits of the characters".  The latter often requires characters to do things they do at no or few other times in their careers, or alternatively when opposition is involved, for said opposition to suddenly lose a great degree of acumen that they normally exhibit.

Its one thing for a weaker character to take advantage of Juggernaut's psychological issues to make him do something stupid; Juggernaut has been like that from day one.  Its another thing when its done against opponents who otherwise exhibit combat and other savvyness that suddenly flees because the hero needs to be the one to win this fight.

Over and above my feeling that media change what I expect from them, some things don't deserve porting over because those things aren't even virtues in the medium they're used in.


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## Grendel_Khan (Jun 29, 2021)

pemerton said:


> At least for my part, I want a supers RPG to emulate the comics I love.



I realized early on that Champions wasn’t simulating most cape comics in a direct way. That few supers in comics have any sort of defenses, and that the fights in comics were mostly just neat but had no internal consistency. Champions doesn’t do that. You don’t have to be a brick, but you gotta have something that prevents you from getting floored right away. And that changes character concepts and power sets and so on, and suddenly it’s less about a soap opera with powers and more about big balanced showdowns.

But that also made me fully come to grips with RPGs just being their own odd subgenre. Most stories have a protagonist, not an ensemble with no clear lead. Most team-based comics have tons of solo stories and betrayals and so on. RPGs are just weird, and can take on the trappings of different genres, but they can’t really capture them directly, IMO. At least not in extended campaigns.

Absolutely not saying you or anyone else should avoid trying to do a supers game that leans all the way into the action-as-melodrama nature of stuff like X-Men, just that, to me, that was a lost cause, and maybe a bit too meta for my tastes. The fact that both Cyclops and Storm are gonna get knocked the hell out the instant anyone looks at them in Champions wasn’t ideal, but that system made for some great fights and action scenes that never felt arbitrary or, dare I say, Chris Claremont-y.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 29, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> I realized early on that Champions wasn’t simulating most cape comics in a direct way. That few supers in comics have any sort of defenses, and that the fights in comics were mostly just neat but had no internal consistency. Champions doesn’t do that. You don’t have to be a brick, but you gotta have something that prevents you from getting floored right away. And that changes character concepts and power sets and so on, and suddenly it’s less about a soap opera with powers and more about big balanced showdowns.
> 
> But that also made me fully come to grips with RPGs just being their own odd subgenre. Most stories have a protagonist, not an ensemble with no clear lead. Most team-based comics have tons of solo stories and betrayals and so on. RPGs are just weird, and can take on the trappings of different genres, but they can’t really capture them directly, IMO. At least not in extended campaigns.
> 
> Absolutely not saying you or anyone else should avoid trying to do a supers game that leans all the way into the action-as-melodrama nature of stuff like X-Men, just that, to me, that was a lost cause, and maybe a bit too meta for my tastes. The fact that both Cyclops and Storm are gonna get knocked the hell out the instant anyone looks at them in Champions wasn’t ideal, but that system made for some great fights and action scenes that never felt arbitrary or, dare I say, Chris Claremont-y.




Well, you absolutely can find ways to make characters in comics who have no obvious defenses viable in representative supers games, but you have to really step back and ask the question of how they apparently do so.  You can run into problems where there's no even implied answer to that (this would have been a problem a lot of members of the Legion of Super-Heroes for a lot of their lifespan; the only reason they didn't get clobbered was because no one with any skill shot at them, and past that they had good team tactics for taking down the opposition ASAP, but its hard to make that both work and be satisfactory in a game) but for a lot of others there are implied or outright stated issues (Cyclops is supposed to have a great degree of situational awareness and a high order of general martial skill, Storm has a fair bit of the latter and is also extremely maneuverable in the air); the usual issue is a lot of comic supers are built around avoidance, and to the degree games make a distinction between avoiding hits and being able to take them (some games like Supers! or Prowlers and Paragons don't), its often hard to make "not being hit" as good a choice as "not being hurt"; its frequently difficult to do (it was damn near impossible in the old MSH) and can be unsatisfying on various levels, so you end up doing things like Hero Combat Luck or M&M Defensive Roll that are about not taking the hit solidly.

But in general you're right; games in general don't look particularly like the more common forms of their genres in other media (supers are actually one of the _closer_ ones in some ways, since at least team books are a thing), and I suspect the majority of people would only somewhat want them to given what would be needed to make that happen.


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## pemerton (Jun 29, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> There's a difference, however, between "These are genre conventions that you just can't push on much" and "This worked out this way because the author wanted it to, not because of any obvious established traits of the characters".



I can't comment on the Secret Wars story that @MidnightBlue referenced. But in the case of Storm vs Cyclops, this was based on established character traits: Storm's abilities as a leader, which had grown over the course of her arc; and Cyclops's psychological and moral decline which really began with Jean's death but has reached new levels since meeting Madelyne Pryor.

In MHRP this would be Emotional Trauma that Cyclops has not been able to rid himself of, which Storm's player uses as part of a pool to establish a complication pertaining to Cyclops's visor.

(I'm ignoring here the later X-Factor retcon of the duel. I tend to find most of those X-Factor retcons are best ignored.)


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jun 29, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I can't comment on the Secret Wars story that @MidnightBlue referenced. But in the case of Storm vs Cyclops, this was based on established character traits: Storm's abilities as a leader, which had grown over the course of her arc; and Cyclops's psychological and moral decline which really began with Jean's death but has reached new levels since meeting Madelyne Pryor.
> 
> In MHRP this would be Emotional Trauma that Cyclops has not been able to rid himself of, which Storm's player uses as part of a pool to establish a complication pertaining to Cyclops's visor.
> 
> (I'm ignoring here the later X-Factor retcon of the duel. I tend to find most of those X-Factor retcons are best ignored.)




And I'm not talking about that particular fight, either.  As you say, that took advantage of Cyclops being in a particular place in how he would react to certain things, but I'm not convinced most supers games couldn't handle that.  But a lot of "weaker hero defeating more powerful opponent" stories are in just the context I've mentioned before, where they only work by overstating traits of the hero and/or ignoring traits of the villain.  I feel absolutely no need for a tool to do that generically.


----------



## ART! (Jun 29, 2021)

I absolutely adore the stat grid from *DC Heroes*. Nine stats in a 3x3 cube, each row and column was a different _kind_ of stat, and the each row and column averaged into a derived stat. Elegant!


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jun 29, 2021)

ART! said:


> I absolutely adore the stat grid from *DC Heroes*. Nine stats in a 3x3 cube, each row and column was a different _kind_ of stat, and the each row and column averaged into a derived stat. Elegant!




It was pretty clever.  It was too bad most characters had nothing to do with Aura and Will though, and in practice, Strength wasn't always much better.


----------



## Grendel_Khan (Jun 29, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I can't comment on the Secret Wars story that @MidnightBlue referenced. But in the case of Storm vs Cyclops, this was based on established character traits: Storm's abilities as a leader, which had grown over the course of her arc; and Cyclops's psychological and moral decline which really began with Jean's death but has reached new levels since meeting Madelyne Pryor.
> 
> In MHRP this would be Emotional Trauma that Cyclops has not been able to rid himself of, which Storm's player uses as part of a pool to establish a complication pertaining to Cyclops's visor.
> 
> (I'm ignoring here the later X-Factor retcon of the duel. I tend to find most of those X-Factor retcons are best ignored.)



I might be revealing my trad sensibilities and experience with this, but on a more fundamental level I just can't imagine this being a confrontation that would be in most RPGs, since PvP of almost any kind is usually so rare.

Granted, in an X-Men game PvP should be like half of what you do, and I'd maybe want a system that builds in endless heel turns and team members constantly storming off in a huff. I'm guessing Masks or a similar PbtA game might be well-equipped for that, since ultimately this kind of development is more about emotions and consequences than modeling a fight? I don't have familiarity with Masks, but I can imagine really loving it for that sort of dramatic play (preferably in a limited-run campaign where consequences are more of a thing).


----------



## Randomthoughts (Jun 30, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> I realized early on that Champions wasn’t simulating most cape comics in a direct way.
> 
> But that also made me fully come to grips with RPGs just being their own odd subgenre.



Yeah, this is how I saw Champions. Just like how D&D pretty made up its own sub-genre of fantasy, so did Champions for superheroes. Even if PCs were made as expys of some known Marvel or DC heroes, they forged their own identities through  play.
And Champions had a lot rules to develop that identity, not only in powers and skills but bases, support staff and vehicles. That’s why I keep searching for some holy grail for this game.


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## pemerton (Jun 30, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> I might be revealing my trad sensibilities and experience with this, but on a more fundamental level I just can't imagine this being a confrontation that would be in most RPGs, since PvP of almost any kind is usually so rare.
> 
> Granted, in an X-Men game PvP should be like half of what you do, and I'd maybe want a system that builds in endless heel turns and team members constantly storming off in a huff. I'm guessing Masks or a similar PbtA game might be well-equipped for that, since ultimately this kind of development is more about emotions and consequences than modeling a fight? I don't have familiarity with Masks, but I can imagine really loving it for that sort of dramatic play (preferably in a limited-run campaign where consequences are more of a thing).



I think one reason to have systems (like MHRP) that permit emotional stress and the like is to open up more space for interpersonal conflict.


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## Campbell (Jun 30, 2021)

Smallville is my personal favorite. Used it to run an Xavier Academy game.

Masks, Marvel Heroic, and Abberant also get high marks.


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## Grendel_Khan (Jun 30, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Smallville is my personal favorite. Used it to run an Xavier Academy game.
> 
> Masks, Marvel Heroic, and Abberant also get high marks.




Keep hearing about the Smallville RPG. I need to stop scoffing and check it out.


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 30, 2021)

MidnightBlue said:


> It was Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #8...the cover that showed Spider-Man in his black, symbiote suit for the first time.
> 
> And yeah, as a Cyclops fan, I grudgingly remember powerless Storm beating Cyclops.




As a Storm fan I really should track this down and enjoy the hell out of it. 



Thomas Shey said:


> Well, this can also get into another issue: one of the ways characters beat much more powerful opponents is _massive authorial contrivance_ in some cases. That's also how characters who clearly would have addressed a problem all by their lonesome in their own books fail to do so in team books sometimes. I'm not sure that sort of thing is a virtue in a game.




Agreed, authorial fiat making character's do stuff they just shouldn't be able to do is not a virtue in a game. Or in the original comic. It just does no favours for anyone involved; not the reader, not the fictional characters. One of my most hated examples of this is Spiderman taking out Galactus's herald, Firelord. Now I love me some Spidey. He's my #1 fave spandex wearing fool. But there is no way in Mephisto's Realm that Spidey could take out Firelord. None. NONE! 

<ahem> sorry, got carried away there. In my defence it's only been about 35 years or so since it happened.



pemerton said:


> I think one reason to have systems (like MHRP) that permit emotional stress and the like is to open up more space for interpersonal conflict.




Agreed. I think something like this is essential for any sort of super soap opera story - frinstance Claremont's X-Men; the best X-Men. 

Now... how would I do this in Champions?????? I mean, I hate the idea of having another number to track...

How about - anytime a psychological complication is invoked in a negative fashion the character accrues some sort of "having a bad day" point.  Oh! no. a "soap" point. Or just soap for short. "If you miss yet another date with MJ you're gonna accrue some serious soap, my friend."

For those still reading I should point out that "invoking" a complication is not a Champions concept.

Soap points could simply work like bennies, but given to the GM to use against that particular hero. Hero can buy them off with their own bennies. Hmm, starting to sound a lot like FATE here.  Still, that's no bad thing. And it'd be super easy to tack on.


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## billd91 (Jun 30, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> As a Storm fan I really should track this down and enjoy the hell out of it.



Eh, it was actually kind of terrible. Two X-Men duking it out for leadership of the team? It wasn’t exactly the X-Men at their best as far as writing went. The issues of the later 1980s were a HUGE let down compared to how the X-Men entered the decade.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jun 30, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I think one reason to have systems (like MHRP) that permit emotional stress and the like is to open up more space for interpersonal conflict.




Which is an area I do acknowledge MHR is better in regards than most supers games.  Even other games that make some gestures in that direction (Supers! for example) don't tend to have it as well implemented.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 30, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Agreed, authorial fiat making character's do stuff they just shouldn't be able to do is not a virtue in a game. Or in the original comic. It just does no favours for anyone involved; not the reader, not the fictional characters. One of my most hated examples of this is Spiderman taking out Galactus's herald, Firelord. Now I love me some Spidey. He's my #1 fave spandex wearing fool. But there is no way in Mephisto's Realm that Spidey could take out Firelord. None. NONE!




Yeah.  As I said, I have no problems with physical powerhouses that are either mentally or socially weak.  

But that's a lot different than suggesting there's always, or should be, a generic way for a weaker character to take on a stronger.  Sometimes the stronger one is as strong or stronger in other areas too.



DrunkonDuty said:


> Now... how would I do this in Champions?????? I mean, I hate the idea of having another number to track...




You could treat it like a cumulative Transform against Ego as a basis.


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 30, 2021)

billd91 said:


> Eh, it was actually kind of terrible. Two X-Men duking it out for leadership of the team? It wasn’t exactly the X-Men at their best as far as writing went. The issues of the later 1980s were a HUGE let down compared to how the X-Men entered the decade.




Oh, look, no argument. Two people, supposedly friends, punching one another to see who's leader of the gang... says 8 year old kids to me; not functioning adults. But then there's a strong element of childishness in the superhero genre so I'm just gonna roll with it to the best of my ability. But I'll still get joy out of seeing Cyclops getting kicked square in the nuts. (I'm sure he isn't kicked in the nuts, rhetorical.)

I started reading X-Men in 88 (IIRC). Yes, I did read back issues to get a sense of the big plot moments that kept getting referenced. eg: Dark Phoenix and all that. But I much preferred the silly, dare I say soap operatic, qualities of the later  stuff. 2 of my fave issues were... I believe they were called _Women _and _Men_. Back to back issues in which we see the team split up, along gender lines*,  and get some R'n'R. Now something like this cold be terrible. But both were done with tongue firmly in cheek and gave a much needed breather after all that Death of the Mutants or whatever the hell the crossover event with Sinister, Goblyn Queen, Manhattan turning into a hellscape**, etc. was called.

But if we are going to turn this into a favourite eras in comics conversation we should probably start a new thread over in Geek Media.


*Again, 8 year olds.
** take your shots at NYC here.


----------



## aramis erak (Jun 30, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Eh.  I don't think I can really agree.  The killing attack has been a problem from day one of the system, and the effect of Strength on distorting designs has been a thing for a long time.  The EC was likely a mistake from the get-go (and I had a part in creating the damn thing).
> 
> I think 4e brought a lot of different Hero pieces together in a more coherent way, but the actual effect-in-play of changes from 3e to 4e was significantly less than from 4e to 6e.



those elements (KAs and ECs) are effectively unchanged through 5th.
The changes to disads, the unification of the mods from all the disparate games in the 1st-3rd ed lines (Danger International, Justice Inc, Star Hero 1e, Fantasy Hero 1e, Robot Warriors, Champions 1-3 eds) was huge. (pun intended)
Martial arts as collections of powerlike moves bought individually was also wonderful. The option for Normal Characteristic Maxima as a campaign setting switch was a huge benefit for those of us choosing to run non-supers...
My own Fantasy Hero world used Fantasy Hero 2e for HSR 4E, but I opted for the Mystic Masters magic rules instead of the stock FH ones.

And if you hadn't seen it, FH 1E wasn''t actually compatible with Champions - same rules but different valuation of points and magic. Star Hero 1E was essentially champions with only tech and aliens allowed powers...

5th was evolution - errata, a few powers' modifiers tweaked, errata and FAQ integrated... 4th was a revolution; it literally marked a change in the whole marketing approach and play of non-supers setting approach supported in the core... because prior, each genre was a separate rulebook, and powers varied in cost across them, mods were differently valued in them, and so on.
5REd was more of the same.

The only major revolutions in the Champions line are the 3-4 transition and the 5-6 transition. And Champions 4 brought all the others into being one unified game system.

Oh, and 5th made zero changes to playstyle in the groups I know. It made minor tweaks. I've not run 5REd, but I have it, and it's also not a significant set of changes.

If all you are considering is the champions side, you might not like the 4th ed changes, but for fans of multiversing and cross-borrowing, it made it finally a consistent experience, one basically unchanged by 5th. 

6th doing away with figured was even more drastic.


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## DrunkonDuty (Jun 30, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Yeah.  As I said, I have no problems with physical powerhouses that are either mentally or socially weak.
> 
> But that's a lot different than suggesting there's always, or should be, a generic way for a weaker character to take on a stronger.  Sometimes the stronger one is as strong or stronger in other areas too.




Now I wish I'd said this earlier. This is where I was coming from with my "controversial opinion" post way back up thread.



Thomas Shey said:


> You could treat it like a cumulative Transform against Ego as a basis.




That did cross my mind. But it's a lot more to keep track of.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jun 30, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Now I wish I'd said this earlier. This is where I was coming from with my "controversial opinion" post way back up thread.




And to be fair, I think people claim this about MHR more than is really true.  While I find the flatness of the profession in dice a little problematic (without getting into SFX, the most range you're going to have on an actual super power comparison is D8 to D12, and there's too much overlap there not to produce some things I find kind of counter-genre on occasion, though its usually flattened out by the other dice in the pool), its not actually _generically_ true that a weaker character can defeat a stronger in the same type of conflict. They can shift the type of conflict and hope that helps, but it isn't a given except in the case of characters who have an unusually strong secondary approach (say, intimidation) against targets that are particularly weak in that area. But there's no assurance that'll match up that way, except for notorious standout cases (the Rhino is a physical powerhouse, but anybody halfway trying can get into his head).



DrunkonDuty said:


> That did cross my mind. But it's a lot more to keep track of.




If you're going to be forging into areas of conflict the system only minimally does, you're going to have to have some extra bookkeeping of _some_ stripe.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 30, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> those elements (KAs and ECs) are effectively unchanged through 5th.




Notice I was explicitly mentioning 5e and 6e_ as a set_.



aramis erak said:


> And if you hadn't seen it, FH 1E wasn''t actually compatible with Champions - same rules but different valuation of points and magic. Star Hero 1E was essentially champions with only tech and aliens allowed powers...




That was technically true of all the pre-4e "little games", though it stood out more with FH because powers were more of a factor than they were with Danger International or Justice, Inc.  But in practice, there were only a couple powers that were that different once you got away from cost, so _in play _they weren't that different.



aramis erak said:


> Oh, and 5th made zero changes to playstyle in the groups I know. It made minor tweaks. I've not run 5REd, but I have it, and it's also not a significant set of changes.




Well, honestly, other than making some design choices less degenerate, no Hero incarnation has made a huge change in playstyle.  There'd be extra bobs and bibs, but someone who played Champions 2e would understand most of what was going on in a 6e game without a problem.  It'd only be when getting into the guts of character (particularly power) creation that a lot of it would feel different--unless they went in with a lot of expectations about KA in the superhero end or happened to come up against some of the new options that they didn't recognize, and a lot of those are kind of special case.


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## ShinHakkaider (Jun 30, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> As a Storm fan I really should track this down and enjoy the hell out of it.



It's Uncanny X-Men #201 if my memory serves.


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## ShinHakkaider (Jun 30, 2021)

To be fair Cyclops (who I am another fan of) takes on his teammates single-handedly not once but TWICE. 
The first time after the team is clearly rattled after thier first encounter with Proteus way back in X-men #127. He sees that they won't survive another encounter with Proteus if he doesnt snap them out of their state so he goads them into a "fight". He surrenders when he sees that they've regained thier focus and even Wolverine grudgingly understands what Cyke was doing. 

The second time is in X-men #175 when the team, thanks to Masterminds shenanigans believes that Cyke is in fact Pheonix and comes after him. Scott lures them into the Danger Room and takes them on there using the environment and their weaknesses against them. 

As a teen reading these? made me like Cyclops all the more because all he has are his eyebeams and his tactical acumen but clearly, it's enough.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 30, 2021)

Well, as noted, Cyclops is not a low powered character.    His eyebeams may well be the most bang-for-your buck on the heroic side of Marvel until you hit the cosmics, he's got an extra side order of spatical relationship awareness, and he's been using them for years by that point.  His big problem as referenced earlier is that he's a glass cannon; he's fairly good at avoiding being hit, but once he does he's usually down for the count.


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## WayneLigon (Jul 1, 2021)

There are any number of systems that adequately handle low-level supers (Basically, 'Heroes' level people (with a possible exception for Peter)). Big splashy four-color supers, on the other hand.... 

M&M does it best, I think, but the system went from something simple and clean to almost Champions-level complexity and self-reference. I'd like something more like 1e (and let me tell you, a complete core rule book at under 200 pages is a huge plus for me) where they used the later idea of the Fighting stat to break apart Str/Dex from fighting ability. But I never could quite shake the idea that there was some undefined core concept I simply did not 'get'. 

ICONS is great. I'd love to play it more, since I've only ever GM'ed. The most recent ed fixed all the problems I had with it, I think.

Marvel FASERIP holds a special place in my heart. Other than M&M, I don't think any other game system handles the 'Hulk and Hawkeye are on the same team' disparity quite as well (by not handling it, actually).


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## WayneLigon (Jul 1, 2021)

ss2art said:


> I have read Savage World Supers, but not played. Any feedback?



I don't think anyone answered your question, but I'm not 100% sure. 
We tried both editions of the Supers rules. 
We wanted to like it. We really, really did since SW was our group's big go-to system at the time. 
I have never seen such a total and complete mess of a game in my life, and the second edition fixes some things but the end results are the same.
This is a system that does low-level supers very well. Once you get above the 'pulp' level of hero the wheels come off, catch on fire, and steer you into a ditch.
The main problem being that in SW, adding dice or even a '+1' mod is a big game-changer. 
If you do not have 110% buy-in from everyone concerned that they simply will not push a thing above Power Level X, or never take something like enhanced speed, thing get out of hand very, very quickly. 

You know how SW only lasts really until about the time you hit somewhere around the 20/25XP level or so, if I remember right? 
That's your next session after the first XP spend with the Supers books.


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 1, 2021)

Yeah, to be specific (and this is over and above the SW supers rules being really reluctant to let you have anything which could look like a plot breaker--something the system is generally really hesitant with--which makes it super conservative about some types of senses, mental powers, and even some movement powers) there's an ugly dynamic about how the damage-threshold system works with supers, which is made even worse by the fact the SPC has things that can cause damage dice to get up to as many as six (you only see this with heavy weapons in most of the other games, which is just as well because I think some artifacts start to sneak into the system with more about 3-4 because of the open-ended damage rolls).  This means to be protected against the frequent gusting in damage, there's a tendency for characters to find some way to get pretty high Toughness (being harder to hit is a theoretical alternative, but its all-or-nothing nature means that when it fails its going to be pretty ugly).  This means the routine attacks tend to bounce, even ones at a level that the same character puts out.

TLDR, it produces a system where the likely result is either one where characters get pasted good and thoroughly with some frequency, or one where its often hard to make them even notice you did anything.  And non-damaging attacks aren't really a substitute for various reasons.


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 1, 2021)

WayneLigon said:


> There are any number of systems that adequately handle low-level supers (Basically, 'Heroes' level people (with a possible exception for Peter)). Big splashy four-color supers, on the other hand....
> 
> M&M does it best, I think, but the system went from something simple and clean to almost Champions-level complexity and self-reference. I'd like something more like 1e (and let me tell you, a complete core rule book at under 200 pages is a huge plus for me) where they used the later idea of the Fighting stat to break apart Str/Dex from fighting ability. But I never could quite shake the idea that there was some undefined core concept I simply did not 'get'.
> 
> ...




Given your apparent tastes, have you given Supers! RED a look, Wayne?


----------



## aramis erak (Jul 2, 2021)

WayneLigon said:


> There are any number of systems that adequately handle low-level supers (Basically, 'Heroes' level people (with a possible exception for Peter)). Big splashy four-color supers, on the other hand....
> 
> M&M does it best, I think, but the system went from something simple and clean to almost Champions-level complexity and self-reference. I'd like something more like 1e (and let me tell you, a complete core rule book at under 200 pages is a huge plus for me) where they used the later idea of the Fighting stat to break apart Str/Dex from fighting ability. But I never could quite shake the idea that there was some undefined core concept I simply did not 'get'.
> [snip]
> Marvel FASERIP holds a special place in my heart. Other than M&M, I don't think any other game system handles the 'Hulk and Hawkeye are on the same team' disparity quite as well (by not handling it, actually).



M&M's fight stat is probably inspired by FASERIP and  GW's  RPGs (Judge Dredd, WFRP), where it's also a separate stat.

And, much as I love it, FASERIP leaves hawkeye unable to hurt a number of villains he's hurt in the comics, because armor is SO effective (100% of rating) and damage is 0/100%/200%/Special, with special being 200% and if any gets through massive side effect. Low end supers often do very little when someone else has a big attack, and the target is able to stand up to the brick.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jul 2, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> M&M's fight stat is probably inspired by FASERIP and  GW's  RPGs (Judge Dredd, WFRP), where it's also a separate stat.
> 
> And, much as I love it, FASERIP leaves hawkeye unable to hurt a number of villains he's hurt in the comics, because armor is SO effective (100% of rating) and damage is 0/100%/200%/Special, with special being 200% and if any gets through massive side effect. Low end supers often do very little when someone else has a big attack, and the target is able to stand up to the brick.




Its an intrinsic problem with having fixed values at both the damage and protection end.


----------



## Staffan (Jul 2, 2021)

billd91 said:


> Eh, it was actually kind of terrible. Two X-Men duking it out for leadership of the team? It wasn’t exactly the X-Men at their best as far as writing went. The issues of the later 1980s were a HUGE let down compared to how the X-Men entered the decade.



As I remember it, it was pretty good. It's clear that this is not Cyclops at the top of his game. He is beset by doubts and by divided loyalties – one one hand he has his wife and child to think about, and on the other he feels that he _should_ be the one who leads the team, particularly since Xavier is gone. But his heart isn't into it, and that (combined with a Danger Room scenario designed to play to Storm's strengths, as compensation for her lack of powers) is why Storm can defeat him. Also, said defeat doesn't really involve punching, but her using stealth to be able to put Cyclops in an unwinnable position at which point he surrenders.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 2, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Agreed. I think something like this is essential for any sort of super soap opera story - frinstance Claremont's X-Men; the best X-Men.
> 
> Now... how would I do this in Champions?????? I mean, I hate the idea of having another number to track...
> 
> ...



How you would do “soap points” in Champions would depend on what you wanted “soap points” to do.


----------



## Aging Bard (Jul 2, 2021)

I'll be a chaos agent. It is either *Superhero '44* because of its legacy as one of the first examples, or *Gamma World* because I love Gamma World and mutations map well to super powers. I fully accept all incoming flack.


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## DrunkonDuty (Jul 2, 2021)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> How you would do “soap points” in Champions would depend on what you wanted “soap points” to do.




Good point.

<Stream of consciousness ramble initialise>



Spoiler



I think I want them to be representative of the character's increasing mental/emotional stress. Stress that results from their disads. Not every time a disad comes up, but when the character fails to do the right thing (in their own eyes.) So Spiderman has "Loves MJ Watson." If he is so caught up in chasing a bad guy that he misses his anniversary dinner he gets a soap point. Of course, since this is Peter Parker he also has "With great power, etc." so if he lets the burglar get away (shades of Uncle Ben) he gets a soap point for that too. Poor Peter, always seems to be caught in a cleft stick.

What does that soap point actually do? 

Well there's plain old mechanical penalties. The GM (maybe the player can call for it to be spent?) spends the soap point and Spidey takes a penalty that represents their distraction/loss of faith in self/whatever. Maybe the penalty could apply to a whole scene. A -1 penalty/soap point used that an be applied to OCV, DCV, or ECV. 

Invoke a character's disad; meaning the chacter automatically fails a disad check or does the GM get to set up a scene in which the disad comes up? I'm leaning toward the former. Spidey has tracked the bad guy to a lair, the whole stinks of a trap. The GM invokes "With great power." Spidey knows it's a bad idea but he can't take the chance that the bad guy will get away and so goes into the obvious trap. At least he knows it's a trap, right?

Add something to a scene to heighten the stakes - something specific to the character and if possible to one of the invoked disads. Say, MJ, wondering why Peter is late for anniversary dinner, comes looking for him, only to get caught in the middle of Spidey/Scorpion battle.

Hmmmm, how about, I wanna call it _Double or Nothing_. The player can gamble soap point on another shot at the disad. If the player wins the soap point(s) is removed from play without being spent. If the GM wins they double the soap. Spidey from the above example is swinging along after Scorpion (I've retconned that burglar into Scorpion) and he goes past a billboard with MJ on it (she's still a model right? Doesn't matter, in this continuity she is.) Spidey is reminded of anniversary dinner and gets another chance to resist their "With great power" disad so as to not disappoint her. If they successfully resist the disad they can give up chasing Scorpion and go for dinner instead. No soap for missing dinner with MJ! If they fail to resist the disad and keep chasing Scorpion they gain 2 soap. Of course, as mentioned above, poor Spidey is in a cleft stick here because he still gains soap for failing to chase Scorpion. So unless there's different amounts of soap for these different actions (based on the strength (moderate, strong, or total)) of the disad. there's no point for the player to play double or nothing in this scenario. Hmmmm. This Double or Nothing thing clearly going to need some more thinking if it's going to work.




I guess I have something to ponder this weekend.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 2, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Good point.
> 
> <Stream of consciousness ramble initialise>
> 
> ...



Hmmmm…

I‘d probably set Soap Points (SP) as a kind of campaign-wide rule/limitation, like “Normal Characteristic Maximums” for a heroic campaign.

Instead of doing _specific_ things, accumulation of SP perhaps they would increase the probability of Disadvantages triggering.

Or, you could treat them as a global Luck/Unluck mechanic, using SP like free-floating XP to buy levels of those powers for particular PCs.  Limit the SP to make them expire when used.  Because SP like this could be good or bad, track them separately: Black SP (Unluck) and White SP (Luck).


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## DrunkonDuty (Jul 5, 2021)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Hmmmm…
> 
> I‘d probably set Soap Points (SP) as a kind of campaign-wide rule/limitation, like “Normal Characteristic Maximums” for a heroic campaign.
> 
> ...




All good ideas.


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## biopsinc (Jan 15, 2022)

I've become a big fan of Cypher system supers, Claim the Sky. Character creation is fun and pretty simple, while the game itself moves quickly with a big story focus. The power stunt mechanic allows for a ton of flexibility. We're running lower powered characters (3 power shifts) and borrowing heavily from a live game from a few years back called Callisto 6, basically cyberpunk meets supers. Three sessions in and we're having a great time!


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## Piratecat (Jan 15, 2022)

biopsinc said:


> I've become a big fan of Cypher system supers, Claim the Sky. Character creation is fun and pretty simple, while the game itself moves quickly with a big story focus. The power stunt mechanic allows for a ton of flexibility. We're running lower powered characters (3 power shifts) and borrowing heavily from a live game from a few years back called Callisto 6, basically cyberpunk meets supers. Three sessions in and we're having a great time!



You have my attention!

My favorite game ever for RUNNING or playing supers was MnM 2; I found it incredibly fast, intuitive, and fun. Character creation was a real bear, though. I've hunted for something with a similar feel ever since, but I haven't quite landed on it.


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## TheHand (Jan 16, 2022)

Well since this thread took a Recovery and is back in action (Champions players should get that reference), why not share some thoughts!

My first supers rpg was FASERIP and though I doubt I would play it again without some modern design sensibilities bolted on, I still have a huge nostalgic fondness for it and I can remember the name and number value of every rank. Haven't played it in ages though.

Throughout the 90's I probably logged hundreds of hours in both playing and running Champions 4e. I created so many characters with the DOS floppy disk program that the hardcover came with. It was my go-to game for anything super or near-super related. One of my most treasured rpg memories was when I got to play Champions at a convention (US West-Coast) with some of the Hero Games staff and a big guy with a resonating voice named "Mike" who I later learned was _Mike freaking Pondsmith_!!  All that being said, I don't think I'd ever play Champions again. These days I find I just don't have the patience for that level of crunch in my games and even with veteran players, combats just dragged on and on (and I grew to loathe the Speed system).

I like but don't love Mutants and Masterminds.  Character creation was always a struggle for most players and making 'saving throws' against damage just didn't hit me in the right feels. But I will say, it's a solid system and can do most of what Champions can do for much less of the work.

Of all the classic Super RPGs I'm sad to say I never got to play the Mayfair DC game; I actually have some of the books and the system seems to be well loved by its fans.  

I've played a smattering of others, but I haven't found any Super Rpgs in recent years any that I could truly get excited about. Marvel Super Hero's seems to have its fans, but the whole Cortex system never clicked for me. I actually picked up the most recent Savage Worlds Supers Companion and have been playing that... it works pretty good if you're playing around Classic X-Men tier power, but I've heard the engine has scaling problems if you prefer to play in the world-class Justice League tiers. Savage Worlds also has its quirks, but it works for our group because most of us already know the engine and are fine with it.


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## MGibster (Jan 16, 2022)

TheHand said:


> My first supers rpg was FASERIP and though I doubt I would play it again without some modern design sensibilities bolted on, I still have a huge nostalgic fondness for it and I can remember the name and number value of every rank. Haven't played it in ages though.



I have yet to play another superhero game I enjoyed as much as I did Marvel Superheroes from TSR.  



TheHand said:


> I actually picked up the most recent Savage Worlds Supers Companion and have been playing that... it works pretty good if you're playing around Classic X-Men tier power, but I've heard the engine has scaling problems if you prefer to play in the world-class Justice League tiers. Savage Worlds also has its quirks, but it works for our group because most of us already know the engine and are fine with it.



I like SW, but it does have problems when you try to scale it up too far.


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## timbannock (Jan 16, 2022)

TheHand said:


> My first supers rpg was FASERIP and though I doubt I would play it again without some modern design sensibilities bolted on...



Funny you should say that! At the risk of being a selfish shill, I'm about to release book 1 of 2 that is exactly that first week of February.

AstonishingSuperHeroes.com

The first book is the Basic Rulebook, which is basically OGL FASERIP with a dramatic social conflict system, and Cortex-inspired alternate Karma system. Done in a way to keep it fully backwards compatible. The second book will be a bit more of a departure, featuring even more modern principles.


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## Piratecat (Jan 16, 2022)

timbannock said:


> Funny you should say that! At the risk of being a selfish shill, I'm about to release book 1 of 2 that is exactly that first week of February.
> 
> AstonishingSuperHeroes.com
> 
> The first book is the Basic Rulebook, which is basically OGL FASERIP with a dramatic social conflict system, and Cortex-inspired alternate Karma system. Done in a way to keep it fully backwards compatible. The second book will be a bit more of a departure, featuring even more modern principles.



Please come back and remind us when it goes live.


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## TheHand (Jan 16, 2022)

timbannock said:


> Funny you should say that! At the risk of being a selfish shill, I'm about to release book 1 of 2 that is exactly that first week of February.



Yes, I'd also like to check that out when it releases!

Another thing about FASERIP that I recall was a downside for _some _was that attacks did static damage (unless I'm remembering it wrong?). So you either knew exactly how many hits you could land on Green Goblin to take him down, or your Incredible (40) lightning attack had no chance of getting through Potassium Man's Amazing (50) armor. But it's been a while since I played.
(I think the group I played with a house-rule that a yellow or red result shifted up your attack damage...)

Without going into too much detail, how does Astonishing Heroes handle attacks, damage vs armor?


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## Thomas Shey (Jan 16, 2022)

TheHand said:


> Yes, I'd also like to check that out when it releases!
> 
> Another thing about FASERIP that I recall was a downside for _some _was that attacks did static damage (unless I'm remembering it wrong?). So you either knew exactly how many hits you could land on Green Goblin to take him down, or your Incredible (40) lightning attack had no chance of getting through Potassium Man's Amazing (50) armor. But it's been a while since I played.
> (I think the group I played with a house-rule that a yellow or red result shifted up your attack damage...)
> ...




It was complicated.  You could still get some side effects through that were not dependent on damage per se (a trait Icons kept over from it) but, yes, damage was pretty binary; you could get some through or you couldn't.


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## Piratecat (Jan 17, 2022)

I want to mention my love of Marvel SAGA, the card-based RPG put out by Mike Selinker when he was at WotC in the 90s. Man, that game was fun.


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## Greg K (Jan 17, 2022)

Piratecat said:


> I want to mention my love of Marvel SAGA, the card-based RPG put out by Mike Selinker when he was at WotC in the 90s. Man, that game was fun.



I thought that out of the box, it was an ok game with missed potential. Now, add in fixes from Steve Kenson and the MSHAG community along with Tom Costa's erratas/expansions for the Roster Books and it becomes one of my top supers games (even if still disliked most of the art used).


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## timbannock (Jan 17, 2022)

TheHand said:


> Yes, I'd also like to check that out when it releases!
> 
> Another thing about FASERIP that I recall was a downside for _some _was that attacks did static damage (unless I'm remembering it wrong?). So you either knew exactly how many hits you could land on Green Goblin to take him down, or your Incredible (40) lightning attack had no chance of getting through Potassium Man's Amazing (50) armor. But it's been a while since I played.
> (I think the group I played with a house-rule that a yellow or red result shifted up your attack damage...)
> ...



I don't mind going into detail since we're very conscious of our system being (1) backwards compatible with other FASERIP games, (2) not meant to replace some person's favorite version of FASERIP, but rather exist as optional add-on rules, and (3) act as an affordable, in-print option for fans of the podcast we use the system in.

It's purposely very, very similar in order to fulfill our Book 1 promise of backwards compatibility. That said, it does have one additional combat result wherein Yellow and Red results not only do the special effects noted by attack type -- blunt might Slam or Stun, Shooting might Bullseye or Kill, etc. -- but you also get +1 to the rank of the results effect for Yellow and +2 for Red. So there's a very slight variability there. Plus certain advanced combat tactics might also influence damage (true in original FASERIP; no change there), which we've made some a little easier to implement in an effort to place a bit more focus on teamwork strategies.

Combats are thus just a little more variable, erring on the faster side. This is intended, and vaguely mitigates the fact that the social conflict rules we've added to the system provide another avenue of conflict, so we wanted most conflict -- physical or social -- to resolve a tiny bit faster by design.


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## TheHand (Jan 17, 2022)

Thanks for taking the time to answer! It actually sounds pretty cool. I’ll definitely have to check it out.


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## TheHand (Jan 17, 2022)

Piratecat said:


> I want to mention my love of Marvel SAGA, the card-based RPG put out by Mike Selinker when he was at WotC in the 90s. Man, that game was fun.



Oh if we’re adding card games too, I have to give a shout out to Sentinels of the Multiverse. I even went so far as to print out my favorite fan-created decks and made a couple of my own.


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## Eric V (Jan 17, 2022)

TheHand said:


> Yes, I'd also like to check that out when it releases!
> 
> Another thing about FASERIP that I recall was a downside for _some _was that attacks did static damage (unless I'm remembering it wrong?). So you either knew exactly how many hits you could land on Green Goblin to take him down, or your Incredible (40) lightning attack had no chance of getting through Potassium Man's Amazing (50) armor. But it's been a while since I played.
> (I think the group I played with a house-rule that a yellow or red result shifted up your attack damage...)
> ...



This was why our group preferred the DC Mayfair system, ultimately; in Marvel FASERIP, Spider-Man was a clear underdog against Scorpion (as an example) precisely because of this damage-armor relationship.


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## timbannock (Jan 18, 2022)

Eric V said:


> This was why our group preferred the DC Mayfair system, ultimately; in Marvel FASERIP, Spider-Man was a clear underdog against Scorpion (as an example) precisely because of this damage-armor relationship.



I might be getting into minutiae with this, but I'd expect that (Spidey = underdog versus Scorpion) because in a single issue Spidey should be the on the ropes against him to show he's a threat. It's Spidey's intelligence and access to entangling/restraining webs that gives him a shot at defeating Scorpion through some means other than just raw fisticuffs.

Of course, then you get into the whole thing of how/why does Scorpion have more Strength than Spidey, or why in one comic panel can his armor resist ABC but in another he gets knocked out by XYZ, and...anyway, comics are funny like that sometimes ;-P


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## Eric V (Jan 18, 2022)

timbannock said:


> I might be getting into minutiae with this, but I'd expect that (Spidey = underdog versus Scorpion) because in a single issue Spidey should be the on the ropes against him to show he's a threat. It's Spidey's intelligence and access to entangling/restraining webs that gives him a shot at defeating Scorpion through some means other than just raw fisticuffs.
> 
> Of course, then you get into the whole thing of how/why does Scorpion have more Strength than Spidey, or why in one comic panel can his armor resist ABC but in another he gets knocked out by XYZ, and...anyway, comics are funny like that sometimes ;-P



Fair enough, but there are plenty of issues showing Spidey punching the Rhino (and hurting the latter) and the game system can't represent that (Spidey's 40 damage vs the Rhino's 75 damage reduction).


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## timbannock (Jan 19, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Fair enough, but there are plenty of issues showing Spidey punching the Rhino (and hurting the latter) and the game system can't represent that (Spidey's 40 damage vs the Rhino's 75 damage reduction).



For sure! Comics aren't beholden to modeling physics, whereas game systems inevitably have to reconcile to some degree.

That being the case, I think there's an excellent opportunity for our team to do something about that in our second release for the game. We're already playtesting all sorts of fun options and variants, so finding a way to resolve this issue would be great. Our second book is intended to be a toolkit for any FASERIP game, not just Astonishing Super Heroes. If anyone has any thoughts on this subject, don't hesitate to let us know!


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jan 19, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Fair enough, but there are plenty of issues showing Spidey punching the Rhino (and hurting the latter) and the game system can't represent that (Spidey's 40 damage vs the Rhino's 75 damage reduction).



He also solo’ed Firelord, clings to walls via static electricity and other nonsense in comics, so there’s that.


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## TheHand (Jan 19, 2022)

timbannock said:


> For sure! Comics aren't beholden to modeling physics, whereas game systems inevitably have to reconcile to some degree.
> 
> That being the case, I think there's an excellent opportunity for our team to do something about that in our second release for the game. We're already playtesting all sorts of fun options and variants, so finding a way to resolve this issue would be great. Our second book is intended to be a toolkit for any FASERIP game, not just Astonishing Super Heroes. If anyone has any thoughts on this subject, don't hesitate to let us know!



You could do something easy like, you can forgo the normal Yellow result to instead ignore part of the target's armor and maybe a Red result could get through all of it. Probably with some caveats thrown in so Aunt May can't injure Galactus with a steak knife.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jan 20, 2022)

Since the early 80's I have tried several and owned others that never got played. I started with the OG Villains & Vigilantes, which Kickstarted a 3rd edition in 2016/2017. I keep meaning to grab it and see how much changed. Spent some time with Heroes Unlimited by Palladium. I liked it but never got to play it. And then Mutants & Masterminds, which tended to have more players than the others because of using the D20 OGL for it's core system. I liked the DC stuff that was published for M&M 3E before Green Ronin lost the license, but never cared for any other DC-based game. I also never cared to any of the Marvel systems, which I know is an "unpopular opinion" around here, but I definitely want to try the new Marvel system when it comes out.


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