Best system/setting for Super-Heroes?

[scruffygrognard]

DC Heroes (3rd Edition)

If you can get your hands on a copy of Mayfair's DC Heroes, 3rd Edition, you'll be a happy camper. I've played Champions (liked it a lot), Villains and Vigilantes (far too limited), Mutants & Masterminds (eh... okay), and DC Heroes... DC Heroes blew the other systems away. Simple and elegant, the game scales incredibly well, allowing you to play heroes as weak as Robin or as powerful as Superman.

If you can't find it, the system still lives on in Blood of Heroes. The art is awful and the game no longer is set in the DC universe but the meat of the game is still intact.

If you want to play in a "Big Trouble in Little China", "Matrix", or "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" style game, you can't beat Feng Shui. Your characters easily beat the snot out of hordes of unnamed mooks but you had best watch out when a "named" villain walks on the scene. For a high action game, Feng Shui is the game to play.

 

[Grazzt]

I don't know Mutants and Masterminds, but other than that Champions (HERO Games) is THE system for superhero action (IMHO), altho it's kinda complex.

Bye
Thanee

Agreed. Champions (or as mentioned above, DC Heroes) would be the best systems on the market for superhero-type stuff.

 

[Drow Jones]

Hello, I want to create a campaign where the players are very over-the-top superheroes. With supervillains that always manage to escape to take revenge later, PC's that never die, hordes of cloned henchmen and every adventure ends with a boss, the supervillains' own creation. All this set in a "Metropolis" of sorts.

System:
Mutants & Masterminds. Lightyears ahead of anything else I've seen including HERO, old FASERIP Marvel and others. A perfect blend of ease of use and flexibility.

Setting:
Freedom City also from Green Ronin. A nice 4-colourish City full of heroes and villains.

I've also heard good things about San Angelo from Gold Rush Games, but I haven't seen it myself.

- DJ

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I prefer to think of V&V as "freeform," rather than "limited."

As for setting, set it in our world. Over time, as you create content, it'll take on its own character, in response to you creating content for your players to fight. Just start out with an idea of your own, and make up some responses to your players' characters. Got a magical character? Create a magical villain, etc. After you've gone through the intro everyone-meets adventure, the adventures where you have each of their specialized enemies show up, and finally your seperate idea, have all of their enemies (or at least the appropriate ones) team up to fight your heroes.

Voila, a good number of game sessions, very true to the genre, and sinfully easy to do.

 

[TracerBullet42]

I haven't played it yet, but spent some good time looking through the book and I think that Mutants and Masterminds looks pretty cool.

Check out this thread to see what you can do with this system:
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=66307

Enjoy!

 

[Virtue]

ANOTHER VOTE FOR M&M

Im my groups super heros guru and i have played and owned most games that have been discussed and Mutants and Masterminds is the best game for the buck
(never played dc universe)
GFL out

 

[billd91]

I've played Champions, Marvel, Villains and Vigilantes, and Mutants and Masterminds. Back when it was in print in the mid-1980s, we definitely prefered V&V. Champions was too much of a hassle even though it gave you powerful tools to simulate very subtle power variations and Marvel was too simplistic. V&V was nice because you didn't have to give up cost-prohibitive character concepts like broad-based weather controllers like you kind of had to in Champions. The powers were defined broadly with a bunch of related effects already built in. It was also a good game to teach to new players because it was easy and the rules were pretty bare-bones.;

Mutants and Masterminds, as I see it, splits the difference between Champions and V&V very nicely by having powers defined a little more broadly than in Champions but with a lot of flexible ways of purchasing odd variations on them. The combat system is very simple in that you don't even have to deal with ablating stats like hit points, power points, endurance pips, or body pips.
Mutants and Masterminds is well worth checking out. In you're interested in an interesting contrast in characters, check out this build of the Hulk in 4 current superhero systems. Especially contrast Champions with Mutants and Masterminds. You'll see why Champions is sometimes criticized for being overly complex.
http://www.gametrademagazine.com/PDFs/GTM_40_PDFS/Hulk SMASH_1.pdf

And another good source of M&M conversions and characters:
http://www.valdier.com/

 

[MDSnowman]

I have to agree Mutants and Masterminds really struck a cord with me. It has proven itself to be a great system, and one that anyone can learn with a small ammount of effort.

As for settings Mutants and Masterminds already has three distinct settings...

Freedom City: Your old fashioned high powered over the top world of Four Color heroes and villains duking it out but no one ever seeming to get killed in the chaos in battle. Detailed extensively in the book Freedom City, as well as the one printed M&M adventure, Time of Crisis.

The Nocturnals: A Low powered grim and gritty setting based on the comic of the same name. With elements of westerns, lovecraft, and pulp detective novels. It Appears in Nocturnals: A Midnight Companion (one of the most beautiful RPG books I have ever seen, bar none)

Meta-4: Technically the default setting, Meta-4 is a cross between the grim and deadly world of The Nocturnals and high flying world of Freedom City. Of the three Meta-4 is largely hinted at in the core M&M book, and has a book filled with Villains, leaving the heroes largely up to you.

 

[Crothian]

No idea what would be the best system, I haven't played a super heroes game in over a decade.

But setting I would strongly recomend Freedom City. It is a super hero setting, but works well wit hoither genres as well.

 

[Kanegrundar]

Let me put my hat in the ring for Mutants and Masterminds. It's an easy to learn system (even for those not familiar with D20) and has a lot of complexities for the more experienced player. In my opinion, it's the best super-hero RPG on the market, and I've played the big ones like Champions, Heroes Unlimited, Marvel, and DC.

Kane