Superheroes are a hot commodity -- why aren't superhero RPG's?

Arilyn · Oct 16, 2017

Jose Allen said:
I am long overdue for a Supers game. Sadly in Tampa, Florida everyone is all about D&D and Pathfinder...

Volunteer to be GM, if you aren't already, with your DnD or Pathfinder game. After few sessions send players through portal to a supers setting. Make sure players realize it's temporary, but then get them so engaged in setting that they will be open to give it a try on a more permanent basis. Might work!

billd91 · Oct 16, 2017

Dannyalcatraz said:
IMHO, the best source material for supers campaigns, generally speaking, is the team titles, not the solo stuff.

So ignore Superman, Daredevil, Spawn, etc., look at X-Men, Justice Machine, Legion of Superheroes, and so forth. Why? Besides the obvious, the team books tend to skimp on the narrative complications The Human Target mentions above. You might get hints here and there, especially if something major is developing for a character, but for most team books, you won't see much in the way of a character's missing out on a mission as because her kid has the mumps or he has jury duty.

...though excuses like that may be handy if players actually have to miss game night...

Instead, unless and until the personal life sans masks starts to impact cape time, the team books tend to have a more..."action-centric" pace.

They also tend to introduce complications that most solo heroes don't have to deal with, like maintaining an obvious base of operations, or if they don't have one, the logistics of how the team can assemble when needed. And those complications can be good sources of plots.

Titles like these also give you an idea how to mix characters like Hawkeye and Thor, Dream Girl and Ultra Boy, and Angel and Storm. Because even with a point system giving out balanced numbers of points, you'll still see some significantly different PCs that may not play very similarly at all.

Dannyalcatraz · Oct 16, 2017

billd91 said:
Titles like these also give you an idea how to mix characters like Hawkeye and Thor, Dream Girl and Ultra Boy, and Angel and Storm. Because even with a point system giving out balanced numbers of points, you'll still see some significantly different PCs that may not play very similarly at all.

Certainly! In my favorite system, HERO, I could easily build a 1000pt "Batman" type character who could be defeated in combat by a 250pt character who can lob school busses at him if the skill monkey tried to simply defeat the brick in a toe-to-toe rumble.

Virgo · Oct 16, 2017

Personally I welcome the chance to flesh out my character's backstory. It doesn't have to take up the entire game session and it keeps it from turning into weekly episodes of "What Super-Villain Gets Pounded Tonight?"

Coming up with a background as well as listing specific details (actual physical address where your hero lives, possible family/friend names, etc.) can be one of the hardest things about character creation as well as one of the most rewarding. During my stint with "Champions" all those years ago, one of the GM's cardinal rules was that if you spent 20 points on a Secret Identity disadvantage you'd better have a good framework of what your hero does when he's not running around in spandex.

neq.the.glockenspiel · Oct 17, 2017

Yeah, I don't know. It seems an obvious leap given that typical fantasy characters are kinda super heroes in some senses.

I've never played Champions but I grabbed the villains books for the inspiration. I'd never chew through that much rule system.

Anyone like / heard of Valiant Universe RPG?

It's Cosmic Patrol rejigged for Valiant comics. I love it. I may be the only one.

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Virgo · Oct 17, 2017

neq.the.glockenspiel said:
I've never played Champions but I grabbed the villains books for the inspiration. I'd never chew through that much rule system.

Generating a Champions character is like driving in New York City -- if you can do it, you can pretty much do anything. :lol:

As I mentioned in an earlier post, "Champions" was my very first RPG and I was fortunate to know someone who knew the HERO system very well. With all its powers, skills and frameworks the system was very detailed...which made it both a blessing and a curse. I think the Mutants and Masterminds system is a bit similar (I have 3 out of the 4 "DC Adventures" books from Green Ronin, which uses the M&M system) but I've yet to try creating a character from scratch. I think I'll have a bottle of sangria and a chocolate cake handy. Just in case.

Tony Vargas · Oct 17, 2017

Trismegistus said:
The title pretty much sums up my question. Superheroes are enjoying the biggest popularity in years. Films, television shows, video games -- comic book hero and heroines are everywhere. You would think that superhero RPG's would be red-hot as well right now but that's apparently not the case...and frankly, that has me mystified.

It's because they're RPGs that aren't D&D.

Heck, when 3.x was the current D&D and you wanted to play a mutant, you could at least fake it pretty amusingly with a Sorcerer.

But, in general, D&D can't come close to handling supers. It is, as folks have detailed up-thread, too varied and too character-focused a genre. It takes a universal build system to do supers, like, well ....

Trismegistus said:
Generating a Champions character is like driving in New York City -- if you can do it, you can pretty much do anything.

I still can't sing.

(and I definitely couldn't drive in New York City)
But, when I was playing it the most heavily, c1993, I could build a Champions! character in 20 minutes, with just a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. Didn't even need to crack the BBB.

It's going on 10 years since I had the occasion, though. It's all D&D, broken up with the (very) occasional indie game.

Dannyalcatraz · Oct 18, 2017

The thing about HERO- one of my favorite things about it, actually- is that once you have your character all figured out and on the sheet(s) in front of you, you almost need not crack the books again until it's time to improve your PC via XP expenditures.

johndesmarais · Oct 18, 2017

neq.the.glockenspiel said:
I've never played Champions but I grabbed the villains books for the inspiration. I'd never chew through that much rule system.

It's not really as rough as you think. The system is EXTREMELY front loaded. Almost all of the complexity is in character creation. Once you have a character actual game play reasonably straightforward, and most of what you need to know is on the character sheet.

pickin_grinnin · Oct 18, 2017

I played a ton of Champions back in the 80s, and loved it. Once you got the character creation part down, you could model just about any power.

I have been trying to find players for a superhero game for years. I would love to run a Wild Talents: Progenitor one (or Kerberos Club), but nobody around here seems to want to play in that system. I can't even find players for a Savage Worlds superhero game.