Developing a Superhero Campaign: Evaluating Systems Part II

I received a number of useful comments from my previous post as I consider systems for a possible superhero game.

With that in mind, I've eliminated several games and have a few more to consider.

Eliminated:

  • Hero System/Champions: I'd love to try this out but I sense this is creating more work than I want at this case - only about half the players in the group have any experience with the Hero System coupled with a need to run the game on a virtual tabletop.
  • Mutants & Masterminds: Certainly lighter than Champions, but truthfully I'm trying to keep things a bit on the lighter side.
  • Wild Talents: One of my favorite games, running it on a virtual tabletop is a bit more complicated than I'd prefer, with everyone needing to roll simultaneously and ordering everything accordingly.
Still in the running is Daring Comics. I'm still in the process of digesting the game but I've been liking it so far. I do need to consider if I want to run such a strongly narrative game, with its economy based on Fate Points and Aspects.

With that in mind, there's a few more I'm considering:

Guardians/Sentinels of Echo City



I've had a number of OSR games recommended to me, with the big two being Guardians and Sentinels of Echo City. Having given them a lookover, I'm going to say they are both fantastic games. Guardians is based on the original edition of D&D while Sentinels of Echo City is more like early 1980's D&D. 

To be honest, I didn't buy the idea of using D&D as a basis for superhero games. However, both of these systems have implements a simple and elegant way of doing so. Sentinels uses a single class while Guardians uses multiple classes to represent characters such as gadgeteers, martial artists, power specialists, etc. I find myself a little partial to Guardians - mainly due to the implementation of multiple classes and what appears to be a more moderate power curve.

Supers!



Supers! is one of those games I've had a digital copy on my cloud drive for years without ever giving it more than a basic look. 

Supers!, much to my surprise, has a bit of a resemblance to the D6 system. Characters are surprisingly freeform, with the only locked stats being various resistances a character has. They also have fairly open aptitudes and powers. All of these are ranked with D6. One thing I really liked is a character can use any power, resistance, or attribute to resist an attack. The catch is, with a few exceptions, a character can only use a given ability once per round for this purpose. This would seem to require an interesting amount of creativity instead of the usual attack-dodge-dodge-attack sequence. I can picture Daredevil using his radar sense to dodge one attack, whipping out his billy club to deflect another, etc. 

BASH!



BASH! is the final game I'm considering and the second game whose title has an exclamation point. Must be a superhero thing. Character have three stats is BASH!: brawn, agility, and mind, rated on a scale of 1 to 5, as well as powers and skills.

When making a stat roll, you roll 2d6 and multiply it by your stat. This suggests some pretty big gaps between stat ratings, much like Mayfair Games' DC Heroes of the 1980s and early 90s. It's definitely a rules-light game, though a bit crunchier than Supers!

Current Thinking

No, that's not the name of a game... Right now I'm leaning a bit towards Supers!, but I'm still in the process of digesting Daring Comics. 

As far as setting goes, right now I'm leaning pretty heavily towards a pre-modern game. In superhero terms, early Bronze Age at the latest - early 1970s. However, I'm also mulling over a 1930s or 1950s Golden or Silver Age game. I wouldn't be working at exactly emulating the comics - I wouldn't want a Comics Code compliant Silver Age game but rather something more akin to DC's New Frontier, with a more realistic view of the time period without giving up on a general sense of optimism. Similarly the 1930s were a tough time in history, with Depression and Fascism. I like the idea of running a game in a setting not dominated by computers and instant technology and with the social problems of an era being safely in the past.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jules Verne Translations That Don't Stink

Image
Shortly after I graduated from college R. Talsorian published their fantasy steampunk RPG,  Castle Falkenstein. Having missed out on Space: 1889  when it first came out this was my first steampunk RPG, though I had been exposed to the genre by Gibson and Sterling's novel The Difference Engine (a novel which, though I though I found the setting compelling, I did not particularly care for - must reread some day). Jules Verne was one of the authors in the inspirational reading section of Castle Falkenstein.  Heck, the game also made him into France's scientific advisor, having him responsible for their massive Verne Cannons  which formed a sort of nuclear deterrent.  With that in mind, one Sunday afternoon I was at a Barnes & Noble bookstore my new girlfriend (now my wife of nearly 16 years!).  On a whim I decided to pick up a Jules Verne novel. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . That night I started reading it, never having read any of his works b...
Keep reading

Stepping Away and a New Beginning

Image
After maintaining this blog for nearly seven years (an eternity in internet time), I've decided to step away from it. When I first began I wasn't 100% certain what it would be about. For a while I thought it would be a blog related to OSR type RPGs but I found my own tastes not firmly rooted there. Looking at the history of the blog, I see a lot of Call of Cthulhu which is hardly surprising. However, some lack of consistency definitely made it tough for me find a defined niche and over the past few months I've been giving some thought to starting a new, more narrowly focused blog. The imminent end of Google+ played a part in these thoughts, with much of my traffic coming from that site. I write because I enjoy writing, but I do enjoy growing an audience. My plan to start a narrowly-focused blog took a turn when I had the opportunity to join the  Rolling Boxcars  blog. Talking with the contributors (one of whom I game with on Discord already) and going through thei...
Keep reading

Using the Force in D6 Star Wars

Image
Defending yourself with just 1D in Sense is not easy, as Luke discovers when training with a remote. My previous post discussed the proto-D6 System as found in the Ghostbusters RPG. For those unfamiliar with the D6 System and the way it does the Force (or for a brief review) the essentials are: You roll a bunch of six sided dice against a target number, typically ranging from 5-ish (easy) to 20 or even higher. Your rating is listed as something like 2D+2 which means roll 2d6+2. By default, most normal/non-heroic people have 2D in most stats.  Starting heroes will might have their best skill be at 5D or a touch higher. You can take as many actions as you want in a round. However, taking two actions in a round reduces all dice codes by 1D, taking three reduces all by 2D, etc. Starting with Force skills will lower a characters starting attributes. Unlike most skills they start off at 1D. There are three Force skills - control, sense, and alter. Control lets you contr...
Keep reading

Developing Boston for 1920s Call of Cthulhu

Image
While Chaosium has produced sourcebooks for many locations in Lovecraft Country (Kingsport, Arkham, and Innsmouth) as well as non-fictional cities of the 1920s (such as New York City and New Orleans), the nearby city of Boston, while being featured in many adventures, has never received its own full sourcebook. The most common era for my Call of Cthulhu  games has been in the 1920s - some campaigns have been in New York City while others have been in Lovecraft country. For those in Lovecraft Country, many adventures have been in nearby Boston. Over the years I've slowly been building up some expertise in the area and I thought it might be of interest to others gaming in the same setting - whether with Mythos horrors or a purely mundane game. First, let us investigate those official sources. While Boston has found its way into many adventures, I can think of two sources where it has been given a fair amount of detail. First, The Unspeakable Oath  double issue 16/17 has ...
Keep reading

Balancing Classes in Swords and Wizardry

Image
DM: "The box is the size of a small trunk; it is latched but not locked."  Dougal: "I'm looking for traps on the box."  DM (rolling for Dougal's "find traps" ability. The roll indicates that Dougal has failed to find the poisoned needle in the latch.) "You don't find a trap."  Morgan (the group's leader): "Black Dougal will open the box."  DM: "Black Dougal, you find out that you missed a tiny discolored needle in the latch. Roll a saving throw vs. Poison, please!"  Dougal (rolling): "Missed it!"  DM: "Black Dougal gasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead."  Fredrik: "I'm grabbing his pack to carry treasure in." Game balance. It's a tricky concept in RPGs. D&D 3rd and 4th editions made a very strong effort to balance the character classes with one another as well as to balance encounters. For my purposes, they went too far. A...
Keep reading