What's your favorite superhero TTRPG and why?

[Morrus]

I have a fondness for DC Heroes' exponential system, and an appreciation for M&M's sheer weight and support. What does it for you, and why?

 

[Davies]

I have a fondness for DC Heroes' exponential system, and an appreciation for M&M's sheer weight and support. What does it for you, and why?

Marvel Super Heroes (aka FASERIP.) I've done more with the Hero System and Mutants and Masterminds, but that first system will always have the higher place in my heart.

 

[aramis erak]

I have a fondness for DC Heroes' exponential system, and an appreciation for M&M's sheer weight and support. What does it for you, and why?

I love the concept, but hated the game...

All the supers games I've run or played, favorite to least:

1. Sentinel Comics - love the way it works, the presumptions of success, and the fail forward advice is worded particularly usefully.
2. Marvel Heroic Roleplay (MHRP) Best Marvel Yet. Much the same reasons as Sentinels
3. Advanced Marvel Super Heroes (AMSH) - About as narrativist as Trad Games from the 80's get. Lots of forward looking elements. The color table is brilliant. First game with a resources roll mechanic I liked. Note that "advanced" is a misnomer; it's really "2nd edition"
4. (basic) Marvel Super Heroes - the resource point mechanic and fixed numbers per category are why this isn't above Advanced.
5. Champions (but note: I've only used it in the fantasy hero mode as a GM, and only done supers mode as a player) The most flexible trad game ever.
6. Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game - Fun for one-offs, easy to run, but lacks meat for campaigns.
7. Spirit of the Century (the way we played, it turned into a pulps supers game, influenced by the Watchmen movie) Once was a hoot. We enjoyed it, but none of us wanted to run that setting again. All of us were willing to play it again.
8. Car Wars (using Autoduel Champions section 3) - Car Wars in RPG mode is brilliant. Adding Supers (and the magic and dragons rules) is a lot of fun.
9. Villains and Vigilantes - too much of the "incomplete due to early design standards" for me when I found it. Great adventures, mediocre system.
10. TMNT (palladium) Not a good system, but a great adpatation of the setting to that mediocre system
11. Heroes Unlimited (Palladium)
12. The Fantasy Trip (original) with the supers article. unfun++
13. GURPS Supers 1e Unfun and math-intensive
14. Mayfair DC Super Heroes - unfun, unintuitive, math intensive, too abstract
15. Mutazoids - My god, the formulae.
16. Marvel Universe - I hate point pushers.

Superhero Adjacent games (where they'd fit if I considered them true supers):

• (NR) John Carter of Mars (John is a super, as would be any other Earthperson present on Barsoom) (not run yet)
• (3.5) GW Judge Dredd.
• (4.2) Battle Born, G/Sol, and IoS&RG (Better Games - Everyone's in battlesuits.)
• (4.5) Tails of Equestria (I've run multiple 1-shots. Everypony is a super to some degree. But it's not in the Supers Genre)
• (5.5) Deathwatch (FFG 40K) (all the powered suits)
• (5.6) other FFG 40K RPGs
• (7.1) CP 2013 (many PC's are street level supers for power levels)
• (7.2) CP 2020 (ibid)
• (7.3) Shadowrun 1E (ibid) More supers than Cyberpunk, but not as good a game engine.
• (7.4) Shadowrun 3E (ibid)
• (10.5) Judge Dredd Traveller
• (15.5) Judge Dredd D20

The ones I could be convinced to run again as multi-adventure or extended adventure campaigns:

• Sentinel Comics (am about to restart my pre-Covid campaign)
• MHRP
• AMSH
• Car Wars w/ADC

One Shots only down the road:

• MSHAG
• Original MSH

Undecided (games I have but haven't used for supers despite rules for supers, or supers games I've never tried but would someday like to):

• CORPS (2e, generic engine, has a robust powers system I've used for fantasy.) Would be interesting to try as a "street level" game.
• EABA 1e (I playtested it, and used the powers system for alien abilities, but it supports much higher levels of power than I used)
• WEG Batman
• D6 Supers
• TORG (fan expansion for supers built upon the Nile Empire mechanics for pulp supers)
• Genesys (if it gets a supers expansion, which I do expect)

To some extent, I consider D&D and Pathfunder to be "medieval super heroes", all the way back to AD&D 1 and BX. Especially before the idea of NPC Classes with levels. (Which goes back to the 1970's... in Dragon... it didn't hit core rules until D&D 3E, but it was present for late 0E and AD&D 1E in magazines, and in 2E in an expansion book.)

Edit note: I got distracted by nature, so saved, and came back to complete the answer.

 

[timbannock]

I have a fondness for DC Heroes' exponential system, and an appreciation for M&M's sheer weight and support. What does it for you, and why?

Marvel Heroic (Cortex) by miles. It makes it equally fun to play Punisher, Thor, and Jubilee in the same scenario. The streamlining in Cortex Prime makes it even better.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Masks: A New Generation does a really great job with abstracting and mechanizing character arcs through its playbooks, and I love the teenage super hero team genre, though I prefer a few years older (early 20s) as the classic New Teen Titans stuff.

 

[Jay Murphy1]

Way dig DC Heroes system, I use the retro clone The Blood of Heroes 2nd Edition. Spent years banging my head against the wall with Champions. You spend more time discussing the rules then actually playing a roleplaying game. Actually I should say if you want to play a tactical game of superheroes of your own design bashing hell out of each other it is great, but it will be four hours of your game time.

MEGS gives a resolution system I find very much in tune with FASERIP. It has Hero Points, FASERIP has karma, both use charts to give you degrees of success or failure. The important thing, to me, both these games give you spectacular supers action but it doesn't gobble up the entire session so you may do all those other crazy roleplaying and subplot activities. In other words, the story moves along. Players get to do more in less time. And then have a good punch up with knockback and LAW rockets to the chest and magic portals and whatever

 

[billd91]

Mutants and Masterminds and Villains and Vigilantes have been my favorites.

 

[Arilyn]

Icons. Has a dose of Fate with a nice list of powers and a great random system

Sentinels. Haven't played it yet but I will be soon and I love the light narrative rules system with a dose of crunch. It looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

Marvel Heroic. (Cortex) This one has rules I love and the ability to mix up characters from street level to God like appeals to me. A super hero game should mimic comics or it cannot be a complete success.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I finished a Galaxies in Peril campaign not too long ago and that was a lot of fun. It’s a Forged in the Dark game.

Beside that, I still like Marvel Super Heroes by TSR abd DC Heroes by Mayfair. Both are solid games. Play Marvel occasionally, but not DC.

 

[MGibster]

Marvel Super Heroes (aka FASERIP.) I've done more with the Hero System and Mutants and Masterminds, but that first system will always have the higher place in my heart.

Ditto. I had more fun with MSH than I have with any other super hero game I've played since then.