Besides D&D, what are you playing?

[Fenris-77]

I was posting for @hawkeyefan's benefit, rather than in relation to your project. MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic would be good for a classic Supervillain Team-Up, but it's not at all gritty - which seems to be at least part of what you're going for.

Well, yeah, but I also specifically wanted to play around with the FitD rules and mechanics. I'm going to take a closer look at MHRP/Cortex + Heroic in general though, based mostly on your recommendation.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't know PbtA/FitD well enough to comment on their capacity for supers RPGing. When I look at AW it doesn't look like a good fit in itself, but I realise this family of games has moved a long way in the past few years.

My recommendation for supers RPGing is Marvel Heroic RP. I don't know how easy or hard it is to find through various channels, but I've had good experiences with it playing Marvel, adapting it to fantasy with some help from the Cortex+ Haciker's Guide, and most recently (and hopefully again tomorrow) using it for MERP/LotR.

I have a copy of that in PDF from when it came out. That was so long ago now I’ll have to search for it, but I’m sure I transferred it whenever I got a new PC over the years.

It was one of the last supers games I played. I don’t think it went over well with my group...but I think that was mostly because they wanted it to be the ol FASERIP system from TSR’s Marvel game, and it wasn’t that. I remember liking a couple of things about it, but being disappointed that it lacked character creation rules (or that they were pretty minimal).

I have since read your comments and those of others here in discussion, and I know it’s pretty well regarded, so I think that warrants a second look.

 

[Robby24]

I play constantly Contra: Hard Corps.

 

[Aldarc]

@hawkeyefan, the new Cortex Prime has a power list that you can use to customize your game. It would not be of immediate help since it is not yet fully released. You can also look at Smallville, which uses Cortex, but it focuses on super teen melodrama. But I can send you a basic character sheet for a Cortex supers game that a major fan enthusiast of Cortex shared in Discord.

You can also check out Venture City for Fate Core. The rules are freely available online as part of the Fate SRD. The setting is a Superpunk. Corporate-sponsored superheroes, supers used for corporate espionage, corporations and crime syndicates attempting to develop supers for the black market, warfare, and the like, as well as street level supers that oppose the corrupt powers of society. There's nothing about the rules that means you have to run the game this way. It's only a sample setting.

 

[Fenris-77]

@hawkeyefan
You can also check out Venture City for Fate Core. The rules are freely available online as part of the Fate SRD. The setting is a Superpunk. Corporate-sponsored superheroes, supers used for corporate espionage, corporations and crime syndicates attempting to develop supers for the black market, warfare, and the like, as well as street level supers that oppose the corrupt powers of society. There's nothing about the rules that means you have to run the game this way. It's only a sample setting.

Who doesn't want to roleplay The Boys? Sign me up.

 

[pemerton]

I remember liking a couple of things about it, but being disappointed that it lacked character creation rules (or that they were pretty minimal).

That issue of character creation is a common criticism. My own view is that it isn't warranted, but it does require a different approach to PC/NPC creation from many RPGs. I've been creating a lot of characters for my Middle Earth.LotR adaptation, and have created characters for my other games too. It needs you to have a good sense of who the character is and what they can do, and of how to translate that into the system's mechanical terms. Those mechanics are less elaborate than a system like D&D, but do have an intricacy and subtlety that is greater than (say) Classic Traveller or Prince Valiant or even (I would say) classic RuneQuest. It is helped by having good range of published "datafiles" to look through and borrow from.

Another challenge with the system results from its presentation: purely for publication/sales reasons MHRP is framed in its presentation around published "events", although in actual play it is well-suited to free-flowing, open-ended though scene-based play. To facilitate this sort of play (and perhaps manifesting some of my own obsessive/completist tendencies) I worked through my books/PDFs and have generated generic charts of Doom Pool costs for introducing new elements into action scenes, and of XP costs for fiction-based "unlockables" (like making friends with a faction leader or having someone gift you an item that enhances your powers).

Like all systems it also benefits from getting a bit of GMing experience under one's belt. Learning how to use the Doom Pool, and learning how to use some of the mechanical aspects of scene-framing in the system to harness the mechanics in order to drive the fiction benefits from practice (and, again, also from familiarity with some of the published examples.).

 

[pogre]

• Coriolis the Third Horizon (Free League). The characters are free traders (smugglers) who answered a distress call from a stranded ship. They saved the crew survivors. The engineer character found a large stash of drugs on the ship while repairing the environmental system. The players decided to steal the drugs. It went down hill from there. They did make a profit but now they have many enemies in the underworld and the authorities are looking for them. It's been one long chase scene over 7 sessions. Great fun to GM.

You have me intrigued. Is the quickstart a good intro to the game?

I have two D&D campaigns going, but my next campaign is going to be:
1. Shorter - Under 100 hours of playtime; and
2. Not D&D - may be several adventures in different systems to see what is fun for us.

 

[atanakar]

You have me intrigued. Is the quickstart a good intro to the game?

I have two D&D campaigns going, but my next campaign is going to be:
1. Shorter - Under 100 hours of playtime; and
2. Not D&D - may be several adventures in different systems to see what is fun for us.

Yes it is:

The free quickstart rules contains all you need to get started playing Coriolis - The Third Horizon!

• Full character creation rules
• Full rules for skills and combat
• "Dark Flowers" - a high-paced introductory scenario
• Ready to play Player Characters
  
  

  DriveThruRPG

  www.drivethrurpg.com

 

[Fenris-77]

Coriolis is awesome. Free League makes great games generally, and Coriolis is a particularly good example. It uses mostly the same mechanics as their other games, including the new Alien game. I like the mechanics a lot. I also really like the setting. Anyway, it gets my two thumbs up.

 

[hawkeyefan]

That issue of character creation is a common criticism. My own view is that it isn't warranted, but it does require a different approach to PC/NPC creation from many RPGs. I've been creating a lot of characters for my Middle Earth.LotR adaptation, and have created characters for my other games too. It needs you to have a good sense of who the character is and what they can do, and of how to translate that into the system's mechanical terms. Those mechanics are less elaborate than a system like D&D, but do have an intricacy and subtlety that is greater than (say) Classic Traveller or Prince Valiant or even (I would say) classic RuneQuest. It is helped by having good range of published "datafiles" to look through and borrow from.

Another challenge with the system results from its presentation: purely for publication/sales reasons MHRP is framed in its presentation around published "events", although in actual play it is well-suited to free-flowing, open-ended though scene-based play. To facilitate this sort of play (and perhaps manifesting some of my own obsessive/completist tendencies) I worked through my books/PDFs and have generated generic charts of Doom Pool costs for introducing new elements into action scenes, and of XP costs for fiction-based "unlockables" (like making friends with a faction leader or having someone gift you an item that enhances your powers).

Like all systems it also benefits from getting a bit of GMing experience under one's belt. Learning how to use the Doom Pool, and learning how to use some of the mechanical aspects of scene-framing in the system to harness the mechanics in order to drive the fiction benefits from practice (and, again, also from familiarity with some of the published examples.).

I’ve found my copy and I’ll be checking it out.

I think that when it comes to character creation, I kind of like to have a system in place for how to do so because it would actually be several players making characters rather than just me. Having a set process helps when you have multiple people following the process.

We’ll see...maybe when I read through it again it’ll seem more manageable. Thanks for the recommendation and suggestions.