What Licensed RPG Do You Wish Used A Different System?

[Faolyn]

Even the latter doesn't really work because you run into in between cases galore over time. Mutants that are also mages. Gadgeteers that also have a superpower. And that's just the class part; don't even get me started on the level part.

That's one reason why I'm enjoying Masks. The source of your powers doesn't really matter, it's the type of character you are, in terms of comic book narrative, that matters.

 

[Faolyn]

Oh man. Now I want to stat up my favorite X-Man, using 5E rules.

Here goes nothing...

In one of the Gazetteer's for Level Up, they had archetypes that were clearly supposed to be Marvel Supers type.

 

[Thomas Shey]

True, but 5e has its issues.

Kind of my point. Bolting some genres onto systems not designed initially for them does not work well in a lot of cases and supers and a D&D chassis is just a poster child here.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The Fellowship splits up. So at various points do the Star Wars protagonists. Personally, I think D&D struggles with this.

I'd argue most games do; its just that games with strong specialization (or even worse, niche protection) have it particularly bad.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's one way to hold a standard, but not every superhero game is trying to be Champions. No one judges fantasy or sci fi games for not being able to cover every possible corner of the genre. Holding supers games to that standard is a failure of your perspective, not design.

Your opinion is noted. Unless a game is explicitly designed for a narrow range (say, street level heroes) I stand by my opinion. Otherwise it just gives them a pass for not being willing to do the heavy lifting, and no, I'm not going to do that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's one reason why I'm enjoying Masks. The source of your powers doesn't really matter, it's the type of character you are, in terms of comic book narrative, that matters.

Narrative focused games do have a great degree of ability to sidestep these problems--but you do have to be accepting of that sort of strong-narrative focus for it to work. For me, its a bridge too far.

 

[Reynard]

Your opinion is noted. Unless a game is explicitly designed for a narrow range (say, street level heroes) I stand by my opinion. Otherwise it just gives them a pass for not being willing to do the heavy lifting, and no, I'm not going to do that.

I just want to be clear that I understand your position: you think a super-hero game is a design failure unless it can do any kind of super and any power level? So Masks is a design failure and Aberrant is a design failure and ICONS is a design failure?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Kind of my point. Bolting some genres onto systems not designed initially for them does not work well in a lot of cases and supers and a D&D chassis is just a poster child here.

They do if you use WotC 5e's RAW. Plenty of variants out there that can give you the experience you want and still basically be 5e. Level Up was referenced just above, for example.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I just want to be clear that I understand your position: you think a super-hero game is a design failure unless it can do any kind of super and any power level? So Masks is a design failure and Aberrant is a design failure and ICONS is a design failure?

For what they want, without going narrative (which they said they don't want to do)? Absolutely, and I would agree.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I just want to be clear that I understand your position: you think a super-hero game is a design failure unless it can do any kind of super and any power level? So Masks is a design failure and Aberrant is a design failure and ICONS is a design failure?

Masks is a dedicated narrative game; they work by different rules. Aberrant is setting-specific, and explicit about it. I don't consider Icons to fail that criteria; the worst it can be accused of is not always being able to show some distinctions, but I don't have any sign it can't do any kind of super or power level (though it may be better at some, which is an issue almost all supers games struggle with).