For the first time in a while, I dove into a week with a theme in mind. Welcome to the results of Supers Week from the Pick of the Day site - a collection of superhero gaming Picks across the spectrum. We've got some Champions, some Savage Worlds Supers, Mutants & Masterminds, and more! So make your choice - Capes! No Capes!
IMPROBABLE TALES: TORC OF THE BLOOD KINGS
It’s Supers Week here at the Pick of the Day, and we’re opening up with one of the myriad products from Fainting Goat Games for superhero roleplaying (for lots of systems). This is their latest, specifically for Savage Worlds.
A treasure hunter has uncovered a powerful, arcane artifact that was best left buried! Now, unwillingly transforming into a violent mutant overlord, he poses a dangerous dilemma to the heroes: will they let him suffer the consequences of his actions, or face the ire of the Blood Kings upon themselves?
Savage Worlds and the Super Powers Companion 2nd Ed are required to play.
MUTANTS & MASTERMINDS 3RD EDITION
Can’t really have a Supers Week without showcasing the current “Superman” of the category, Mutants & Masterminds. This is the latest-and-greatest of the system rules, and it really is a powerhouse of a game.
Fly into super-heroic battle with Mutants & Masterminds! You and your friends take on the roles of super-powered heroes in a world of criminal masterminds, paranormal terrorists, destructive brutes, and other insidious villains. You get to thwart their evil plans and bring them to justice!
Since 2002, Mutants & Masterminds has earned its title as the World’s Greatest Superhero RPG, inspiring countless game sessions and winning many awards for excellence. The Deluxe Hero’s Handbook is the revised and expanded core rulebook of the game’s Third Edition and it gives you everything you need to have your own super-heroic adventures:
So what are you waiting for? Choose your powers. Put on your mask. Fight the forces of evil and… Save the world!
ONEDICE SUPERS
We power through Supers Week with this gem from Cakebread & Walton. Known for charming and eclectic releases (most notably Abney Park‘s Airship Pirates, based on the famous steampunk band), they’ve developed a number of releases based on their OneDice system. This is their supers iteration, offering a special take on high-powered comics-style gaming.
Quick and easy supers role-playing rules
OneDice Supers an easy, quick and flexible role-playing game system for running Superhero games.
Whether you want to play Supers of your own design, recreate the adventures of your comic book heroes, or play in a world prepared for you, OneDice Supers has been developed to be easily adaptable for your games. Complete with a set of ready-made Supers and an adventure to get you started, everything you need to play is in this book!
PROWLERS & PARAGONS
As we march on through Supers Week, I wanted to take today to point out the original Prowlers & Paragons rules by Len Pimentel. He and are furiously at work on the new Prowlers & Paragons: Ultimate Edition, which we’re planning to launch later this year (those really wanting to see some preview stuff should check out my Patreon), but this original set is well worth a look to see the core brilliance that let me to choose it as the foundation for my superhero setting efforts. It’s an elegant, deceptively simple game with immense nuance that lends to both satisfying crunchy (yet easy) supers combat, very robust character creation, and a surprising amount of player-empowered narrative influence.
Prowlers & Paragons (or P&P) is a tabletop roleplaying game with a narration-driven, rules-light system designed to emulate four-color superhero comics. Let’s break that down so you can see what you’re getting yourself into.
P&P is a tabletop roleplaying game. We’re going to assume you’ve got this one covered.
P&P is a narration-driven system. The rules in this game are not effects driven. For the most part, they don’t tell you what happens. Instead, they tell you who gets to describe what happens. And that’s what it’s all about in P&P: describing what happens. Both the players and the gamemaster (GM) take turns narrating events in the game world. This makes P&P feel more like an exercise in collaborative storytelling than a typical roleplaying game. However, P&P isn’t totally freeform and open-ended either. There are rules that help determine what characters can do and how they compare to one another, especially in combat! This prevents the game from devolving into a never-ending debate about what is and isn’t reasonable.
P&P is rules light. It’s chock full of gross oversimplifications and blatant inaccuracies that mimic comic book tropes rather than real-world facts. This also makes P&P a simple game with a streamlined set of rules. Once you know what you’re doing, you should be able to play without ever opening the book.
Finally, P&P is designed to emulate four-color superhero comics. This game is about the heroic things the characters do and the heroic burdens they shoulder. Mundane matters get little attention. There aren’t any detailed rules for dealing with money and wealth, but there most definitely is a rule for smashing into a bank vault. Let’s be perfectly clear: This is not a deep and cerebral game. P&P was designed to let you play stories about super heroes who save the world and beat the snot out of villains who richly deserve it. Like so much of the genre, P&P is a gleefully unapologetic exercise in heroic wish fulfillment.
Core Rules!
The core rules are finally here!
Included here are 2 versions of the game, one in full beautiful color and one with crisp, black-and-white line art so that your printer won’t break up with you for printing it out. Both are 142 pages long and include:
Chapter 1: Introduction: Um … it’s an introduction. What did you expect?
Chapter 2: Action: This chapter include most of the rules you need to play the game, including rules for narrative task resolution and comic book slugfests!
Chapter 3: Characters: Here is where you learn how to make heroes! We have full character creation rules that allow you to create street level prowlers, cosmic paragons, and everything in between.
Chapter 4: Heroism: This chapter explains the use of Resolve and Adversity, the narrative currency that players and gamemasters use to bend the rules of the game and even the game world itself in their favor.
Chapter 5: Wonderful Toys: You like gear? Then this is the chapter for you. This chapter includes weapons, armor, miscellaneous equipment, vehicles (and yes, vehicle combat rules), and even rules for creating your own makeshift items on the fly in the middle of a story. What could possibly go wrong?
Chapter 6: Big Bad World: It’s a big world full of bad stuff that give heroes headaches. Disasters, Diseases, Hazards … ther’re all in here.
Chapter 7: Friends & Foes: A veritable rogues gallery at your disposal. A host of mundane (and not so mundane) npcs, from Athletes to Zombies, a large number of animals from Bats to Zebras (yes, of course there are dinosaurs in there), and a collection of archetypal supers from the Acrobat to the Weather Controller that you can used as villains, or even as heroes if you’re in a rush.
Chapter 8: Playing the Game: This chapter provides both players and gamemasters (but mostly gamemasters) with tools, tips, and tricks for running the best super hero roleplaying game they can run. We give you our thoughts about playing and running roleplaying games while desperately trying not to sound patronizing.
Chapter 9: From the Ashes: A light-hearted (and rather forgiving) introductory adventurefor a group of heroes of standard power level.
AARON ALLSTON'S STRIKE FORCE
I felt there was no better way to round out Supers Week than to once again showcase this award-winning revival of one of the greatest superhero gaming (honestly, greatest gaming, genre-be-damned) supplements of all time. Michael Surbrook did a masterful, loving job of going through all the material that the great Aaron Allston left behind, carrying forth Aaron’s desires to publish a new version with all the added insight and campaign information gathered over the years since the original 1988 publication. If you want to run a supers game, you need to read this. I am proud to have had a part in producing it.
A superhero setting like no other. A role-playing game campaign book that includes techniques and lessons from over 22 years of play. A tribute to one of the greatest creators in the RPG industry, created using Champions 6th Edition.
In 1988, Aaron Allston released Strike Force, a supplement detailing the first eight years of his superhero campaign. Noted for its extensive and highly-influential advice to gamemasters on how to run a long-term campaign, Strike Force was a landmark RPG publication.
We have now released an updated version of this classic book for the 21st Century. Aaron himself was designing this new edition of Strike Force before his untimely death, and we wanted to bring his work to life as a monument to Aaron’s lasting influence on the RPG hobby. This updated Strike Force sourcebook includes never-before-seen material detailing Aaron’s multiversal superhero setting, compelling characters and villains, and updated and expanded advice from Superhero RPG veterans like Steve Kenson and Sean Patrick Fannon for how to run a campaign using “the Strike Force method.”
The electronic portion of this product includes character write-ups for Mutants & Masterminds and ICONS.
-----
OK, I know a lot of folks are going to remark that I should have mentioned ICONS, the other Steve Kenson superhero RPG masterpiece. So -
Meanwhile, tonight I am running the first session in Volume II of my Modern Gods campaign series, a "crisis reboot" event I am calling the Archos Imperium. This allows me to adapt everything and everyone to the latest iteration of Prowlers & Paragons: Ultimate Edition (which Leonard Pimentel and I are working on releasing later this year, along with my Modern Gods setting and a few other things).
The story is a callback to something I ran for the Champions community many, many years ago (during the 4th Edition days), which collected a lot of known GMs and creatives involved with the system and culminated in the Hand of God mega-scenario I ran for over 30 players at a Los Angeles convention. One of the rules of superhero storytelling is "Never let a great McGuffin stay out of circulation, and never let a great epic storyline not come back."
I am also using this to resurrect the OmniVerse... but more on that later. ;-)
The Adventure Continues!
Note that I use affiliate links in all my posts as a way to generate additional revenue for my efforts; I make my Picks and other article choices, however, based on the desire to share a wide variety of things with you. Thank you for your support.
Sean Patrick Fannon
Writer & Game Designer: Shaintar, Star Wars, Savage Rifts, much more
Please check out my Patreon and get involved directly with my next projects!
IMPROBABLE TALES: TORC OF THE BLOOD KINGS
It’s Supers Week here at the Pick of the Day, and we’re opening up with one of the myriad products from Fainting Goat Games for superhero roleplaying (for lots of systems). This is their latest, specifically for Savage Worlds.
A treasure hunter has uncovered a powerful, arcane artifact that was best left buried! Now, unwillingly transforming into a violent mutant overlord, he poses a dangerous dilemma to the heroes: will they let him suffer the consequences of his actions, or face the ire of the Blood Kings upon themselves?
Savage Worlds and the Super Powers Companion 2nd Ed are required to play.
MUTANTS & MASTERMINDS 3RD EDITION
Can’t really have a Supers Week without showcasing the current “Superman” of the category, Mutants & Masterminds. This is the latest-and-greatest of the system rules, and it really is a powerhouse of a game.
Fly into super-heroic battle with Mutants & Masterminds! You and your friends take on the roles of super-powered heroes in a world of criminal masterminds, paranormal terrorists, destructive brutes, and other insidious villains. You get to thwart their evil plans and bring them to justice!
Since 2002, Mutants & Masterminds has earned its title as the World’s Greatest Superhero RPG, inspiring countless game sessions and winning many awards for excellence. The Deluxe Hero’s Handbook is the revised and expanded core rulebook of the game’s Third Edition and it gives you everything you need to have your own super-heroic adventures:
- A flexible and powerful system for creating the hero that you want to play.
- A huge variety of super powers, skills, and advantages to choose from and customize.
- A core system that emphasizes action and uses only a single 20-sided die.
- Integrated rules for gadgets, vehicles, and headquarters.
- Ready-to-play archetypes and a Quickstart Character Generator if you want to get to the action even faster.
- Advice for Gamemasters on creating and running your own adventure series.
- Introductions to Mutants & MasterMinds premier settings, Emerald City and Freedom City.
- Two brand new adventures, Ghost Town by Seth Johnson and Time of the Apes by Christopher McGlothlin.
So what are you waiting for? Choose your powers. Put on your mask. Fight the forces of evil and… Save the world!
ONEDICE SUPERS
We power through Supers Week with this gem from Cakebread & Walton. Known for charming and eclectic releases (most notably Abney Park‘s Airship Pirates, based on the famous steampunk band), they’ve developed a number of releases based on their OneDice system. This is their supers iteration, offering a special take on high-powered comics-style gaming.
Quick and easy supers role-playing rules
OneDice Supers an easy, quick and flexible role-playing game system for running Superhero games.
Whether you want to play Supers of your own design, recreate the adventures of your comic book heroes, or play in a world prepared for you, OneDice Supers has been developed to be easily adaptable for your games. Complete with a set of ready-made Supers and an adventure to get you started, everything you need to play is in this book!
PROWLERS & PARAGONS
As we march on through Supers Week, I wanted to take today to point out the original Prowlers & Paragons rules by Len Pimentel. He and are furiously at work on the new Prowlers & Paragons: Ultimate Edition, which we’re planning to launch later this year (those really wanting to see some preview stuff should check out my Patreon), but this original set is well worth a look to see the core brilliance that let me to choose it as the foundation for my superhero setting efforts. It’s an elegant, deceptively simple game with immense nuance that lends to both satisfying crunchy (yet easy) supers combat, very robust character creation, and a surprising amount of player-empowered narrative influence.
Prowlers & Paragons (or P&P) is a tabletop roleplaying game with a narration-driven, rules-light system designed to emulate four-color superhero comics. Let’s break that down so you can see what you’re getting yourself into.
P&P is a tabletop roleplaying game. We’re going to assume you’ve got this one covered.
P&P is a narration-driven system. The rules in this game are not effects driven. For the most part, they don’t tell you what happens. Instead, they tell you who gets to describe what happens. And that’s what it’s all about in P&P: describing what happens. Both the players and the gamemaster (GM) take turns narrating events in the game world. This makes P&P feel more like an exercise in collaborative storytelling than a typical roleplaying game. However, P&P isn’t totally freeform and open-ended either. There are rules that help determine what characters can do and how they compare to one another, especially in combat! This prevents the game from devolving into a never-ending debate about what is and isn’t reasonable.
P&P is rules light. It’s chock full of gross oversimplifications and blatant inaccuracies that mimic comic book tropes rather than real-world facts. This also makes P&P a simple game with a streamlined set of rules. Once you know what you’re doing, you should be able to play without ever opening the book.
Finally, P&P is designed to emulate four-color superhero comics. This game is about the heroic things the characters do and the heroic burdens they shoulder. Mundane matters get little attention. There aren’t any detailed rules for dealing with money and wealth, but there most definitely is a rule for smashing into a bank vault. Let’s be perfectly clear: This is not a deep and cerebral game. P&P was designed to let you play stories about super heroes who save the world and beat the snot out of villains who richly deserve it. Like so much of the genre, P&P is a gleefully unapologetic exercise in heroic wish fulfillment.
Core Rules!
The core rules are finally here!
Included here are 2 versions of the game, one in full beautiful color and one with crisp, black-and-white line art so that your printer won’t break up with you for printing it out. Both are 142 pages long and include:
Chapter 1: Introduction: Um … it’s an introduction. What did you expect?
Chapter 2: Action: This chapter include most of the rules you need to play the game, including rules for narrative task resolution and comic book slugfests!
Chapter 3: Characters: Here is where you learn how to make heroes! We have full character creation rules that allow you to create street level prowlers, cosmic paragons, and everything in between.
Chapter 4: Heroism: This chapter explains the use of Resolve and Adversity, the narrative currency that players and gamemasters use to bend the rules of the game and even the game world itself in their favor.
Chapter 5: Wonderful Toys: You like gear? Then this is the chapter for you. This chapter includes weapons, armor, miscellaneous equipment, vehicles (and yes, vehicle combat rules), and even rules for creating your own makeshift items on the fly in the middle of a story. What could possibly go wrong?
Chapter 6: Big Bad World: It’s a big world full of bad stuff that give heroes headaches. Disasters, Diseases, Hazards … ther’re all in here.
Chapter 7: Friends & Foes: A veritable rogues gallery at your disposal. A host of mundane (and not so mundane) npcs, from Athletes to Zombies, a large number of animals from Bats to Zebras (yes, of course there are dinosaurs in there), and a collection of archetypal supers from the Acrobat to the Weather Controller that you can used as villains, or even as heroes if you’re in a rush.
Chapter 8: Playing the Game: This chapter provides both players and gamemasters (but mostly gamemasters) with tools, tips, and tricks for running the best super hero roleplaying game they can run. We give you our thoughts about playing and running roleplaying games while desperately trying not to sound patronizing.
Chapter 9: From the Ashes: A light-hearted (and rather forgiving) introductory adventurefor a group of heroes of standard power level.
The world needs heroes.
Take a Stand! Join the Fight!
BE A HERO!
Take a Stand! Join the Fight!
BE A HERO!
AARON ALLSTON'S STRIKE FORCE
I felt there was no better way to round out Supers Week than to once again showcase this award-winning revival of one of the greatest superhero gaming (honestly, greatest gaming, genre-be-damned) supplements of all time. Michael Surbrook did a masterful, loving job of going through all the material that the great Aaron Allston left behind, carrying forth Aaron’s desires to publish a new version with all the added insight and campaign information gathered over the years since the original 1988 publication. If you want to run a supers game, you need to read this. I am proud to have had a part in producing it.
A superhero setting like no other. A role-playing game campaign book that includes techniques and lessons from over 22 years of play. A tribute to one of the greatest creators in the RPG industry, created using Champions 6th Edition.
In 1988, Aaron Allston released Strike Force, a supplement detailing the first eight years of his superhero campaign. Noted for its extensive and highly-influential advice to gamemasters on how to run a long-term campaign, Strike Force was a landmark RPG publication.
We have now released an updated version of this classic book for the 21st Century. Aaron himself was designing this new edition of Strike Force before his untimely death, and we wanted to bring his work to life as a monument to Aaron’s lasting influence on the RPG hobby. This updated Strike Force sourcebook includes never-before-seen material detailing Aaron’s multiversal superhero setting, compelling characters and villains, and updated and expanded advice from Superhero RPG veterans like Steve Kenson and Sean Patrick Fannon for how to run a campaign using “the Strike Force method.”
The electronic portion of this product includes character write-ups for Mutants & Masterminds and ICONS.
-----
OK, I know a lot of folks are going to remark that I should have mentioned ICONS, the other Steve Kenson superhero RPG masterpiece. So -
Meanwhile, tonight I am running the first session in Volume II of my Modern Gods campaign series, a "crisis reboot" event I am calling the Archos Imperium. This allows me to adapt everything and everyone to the latest iteration of Prowlers & Paragons: Ultimate Edition (which Leonard Pimentel and I are working on releasing later this year, along with my Modern Gods setting and a few other things).
The story is a callback to something I ran for the Champions community many, many years ago (during the 4th Edition days), which collected a lot of known GMs and creatives involved with the system and culminated in the Hand of God mega-scenario I ran for over 30 players at a Los Angeles convention. One of the rules of superhero storytelling is "Never let a great McGuffin stay out of circulation, and never let a great epic storyline not come back."
I am also using this to resurrect the OmniVerse... but more on that later. ;-)
The Adventure Continues!
Note that I use affiliate links in all my posts as a way to generate additional revenue for my efforts; I make my Picks and other article choices, however, based on the desire to share a wide variety of things with you. Thank you for your support.
Sean Patrick Fannon
Writer & Game Designer: Shaintar, Star Wars, Savage Rifts, much more
Please check out my Patreon and get involved directly with my next projects!
