Best Heroes game to start

[Kichwas]

I can take several days, weeks, months, or years to make a character - but then I have to visualize that character and its story before I ever sit down to do game stats. Once I do put it to stats, the first version is almost never a good reflection of the concept. And of course, once the visualizing goes to making an actual illustration, I have to start over.

 

[Dragonblade]

This is to Dragonblade,

I have also had all the Palladium books, but did you look into the 2nd Edition of Heroe's Unlimited where you could actually combine superpowers to get different aspects of the powers as well. 2nd Ed. also actually had a City developed along with other sourcebooks as well and is alot more received then 1st. ed. ever was. They also developed a maximum security Island for the supers for this city as well and was a very hard set of books for me to part with when I traded my whole collection of 32+ books for D20/OGL books.

I highly recommend the 2nd Edition stuff over 1st edition of Heroe's Unlimited and is one of the biggest sellers especially when it comes to the Palladium series.

I had Revised Heroes Unlimited; both the original blue cover book, and then the one that came out later with the white cover. I stopped playing Heroes Unlimited when I discovered HERO. The Palladium system has a lot of potential, but I got tired of Siembieda's refusal to revise the system, and the fact that he drove away all the writers and artists that I loved like CJ Carella, Kevin Long, Vince Martin and so forth.

I still played RIFTS for a long time after, but eventually stopped playing even that. When D&D 3e came out, my group was all about d20. And then when M&M came out, we switched from HERO to M&M and now we pretty much play all d20 or d20 based games. I have since sold all my Palladium stuff except for Mystic China. Because Erick Wujcik rocks and that is one book I deemed worth keeping.

 

[Dwarven Godfather]

I also got rid of my Palladium stuff as well since Siembieda was not going to convert over to D20 which I think would have revived his system as well. I just know that I had alot of fond memories of Heroe's/Villian's Unlimited. I converted over to D20 when I saw Dragonstar and Star Wars for D20 and knew it was time for a change over to D20

Now my arsenal is D20/OGL only now since my playing group consists of me and one of my friends now who is able to play up to nine different characters with their own voices at one time. This also give me the chance that of I wanted to do a solo with one of his characters then I could without the other players getting upset or bored.

 

[woodelf]

My personal fave is DC Heroes (not the WEG abomination, but the long out of print Mayfair thing). Since it is very out of print, finding it might be the first obstacle. It is phenomenal at scaling up and down.

Luckily, Blood of Heroes is the same sytsem, without the DC universe attached. Plus, it's had a few fixes/tweaks, including apparently-"fixed" gadget rules. [I say 'apparently' because i've never played DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes, only read them, so i'm going on other people's opinions here.] Blood of Heroes is pretty easy to find used, and i believe is still technically in print and can therefore be ordered. I'd recommend the "special edition", which is really a second edition, incorporating another 100 or so pages of content originally published as a supplement (Blood of Heroes Sidekick).

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Others have commented on systems, so I won't go into great detail.

HERO is my system of choice. It has more supplements (and in general better, but with a caveat later). If you haven't played the system for years instead of going for the huge base rulebook use Sidekick. It is a trimmed down (slightly) version of the rules, and it is written to help someone new to HERO learn the rules, whereas the 5thed Revised is written for someone who knows the rules, and as a reference manual. Sidekick is also only 10 bucks. Can't beat that.
Other really nice books in the line - Until Superpowers database which is basically writeups of a bunch of powers in HERO terms, useful for the beginner.
Champions is a sourcebook with all sorts of advice on running a superhero game, and discussion of archtypes and such - it does not contain the rules of the system though - those are in 5er or Sidekick.
There are 3 city/area sourcebooks, a campaign book, a number of character/orginization books, and a number or subgenre books (teen champions and galactic champions).

M&M would be my second choice - although I dislike the damage save. It's character creation is very flexible, and fairly intuitive (although that is coming from a longtime HERO player, most point buy system are fairly intuitive to me). All of the support material out right now is for 1st ed.

The caveat I mentioned earlier- I personally don't like the feel of the Champions universe. It comes off a little to Iron Age for me - not the big gun toting stuff (thankfully) but it is a litte darker than other campaigns I've seen. Freedom City is one of the best campaign settings out there - I use it as much or more than I use the Champions Universe in my champions games.

And the absolute best superhero/character supplements being written right now are out for both systems - Blackwyrm Games' Algernon files supplements. They have a different version of thier books for Champions and for M&M - so you can get the great stuff for whichever of the big two you decide to play.

 

[Hjorimir]

Figured I'd get my $0.02 in before the thread is overrun with M&M suggestions.

...and there is a reason for the MnM hoard. It's that good.

I loved FASERIP Marvel back in the day, but I now appreciate a more sophistcated ruleset that can still play very fast combat. MnM fills the bill.

 

[C. Baize]

...and there is a reason for the MnM hoard. It's that good.

I loved FASERIP Marvel back in the day, but I now appreciate a more sophistcated ruleset that can still play very fast combat. MnM fills the bill.

There are hordes of people that clamor for lots of bad or mediocre things....
*shrug*

It's not that good.

 

[Kanegrundar]

What's that smell? I think it's a thread about to be engulfed in a flame war. Arguing over which supers game is better is rather stupid. There's no way to say anyone is right or wrong in a debate of OPINION, so let's not even start. Play the game you like and be happy to play it and be happy that other people have found a game they like as well. Yeesh.

 

[jdrakeh]

I'd suggest either Mutants & Masterminds 1e (as former Hero players, I assume you like a tool-kit approach to supers - and M&M 2e doesn't have that at the present time) or Hero Sidekick (a 'light' version of Hero 5th Edtion designed to introduce newcomers - or old hands coming back for another go - to the system).

[Edit: Incidentally, Hero Sidekick isn't terribly complex and has the added benefit of costing a measly $10 while being 100% compatible with all of the genre and setting books published for full-blown Hero 5th and 5th Ed Revised.]

 

[jdrakeh]

I like Hero, but it's very much a case of a game having too much to read through. Getting a character made in Hero is a pain. The creation process isn't bad, just trying to make sure that you've got the bases covered so that the character isn't a complete weakling or one-trick pony in a group that knows the rules well can be rough.

Hero Sidekick (I still can't believe that I'm the first person to mention said product on this thread) alleviates most (if not all) of these issues for the crazy low price of $10. I'm an old-school Hero fan (4th Ed) myself, and I much prefer using the streamlined Sidekick to run games (I use it in conjunction with 5th Ed setting/genre books).