Black Industries to Publish DC Comics RPG?

[jdrakeh]

But that's not exactly Champions vs. Mutants & Masterminds. For example, the excellent Pulp Hero just came out and it doesn't really support the Champions line, but it's a hell of a Hero book.

Well, Hero is the core book for the game line, so I think the comparison is valid. Note that Champions isn't a game, but a supplement for the Hero System as it currently exists. So, I guess I initially should have said "Hero' is held to be the best supers system by and large, which is true when it comes to actual sales numbers (note that 'supers' is still the #1 reason people buy Hero).

I hear that Silver Age didn't do as well as it might've (perhaps no small part thanks to competing with M&M instead of dual statting to it.)

Silver Age Sentinels kind of marked the downturn for GOO's Tri-Stat products, IMHO. It had a fairly complex character creation process without the payoff for complexity (such as Hero provides) and a simple die mechanic that stripped away the detail provided in character gen (unlike M&M, which mangaes to have a simple die mechancis and keep the detail intact).

I thought about it for a bit, and I actually think that, in retrospect, Cosmic Enforcers might be my favorite supers game. It had a really nifty built-in premise and setting, a simple system, and some fairly... ah... different introductory adventures. Good stuff. M&M comes in second. Superworld (WoW Edition) a close third. MEGS a fourth. And Hero Sidekick a very distant fifth.

Obviously, my list has nothing in common with the one in Game Trade

 

[Henry]

Time to "School the Henry", but could someone explain to me in a sentence or two what the MEGS version was? I remember Mayfair, which sounded godawful to me at the time with its exponential stats to represent everything from Superman to the joe on the street, but MEGS I don't remember.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Well, Hero is the core book for the game line, so I think the comparison is valid. Note that Champions isn't a game, but a supplement for the Hero System as it currently exists. So, I guess I initially should have said "Hero' is held to be the best supers system by and large, which is true when it comes to actual sales numbers (note that 'supers' is still the #1 reason people buy Hero).

I won't say I completely disagree, but I know a lot of people who use Hero for Fantasy and have been pleased by the support coming from that era. It's not like the old days where we have a clear break with the Hero 4th ed book and the BBB (Big Blue Book.)

And it's still an invalid comparission though, as Green Ronin makes a ton of games, most of which do not support M&M, while Hero Games on the other hand is well...stuff that is used in Hero Games, even when it's not used in Champions. Can we point at Star Hero and go, "Well, we'll have to deduct sales of that because it wasn't meant for Champions..." According to your post, no.

 

[Psion]

Time to "School the Henry", but could someone explain to me in a sentence or two what the MEGS version was? I remember Mayfair, which sounded godawful to me at the time with its exponential stats to represent everything from Superman to the joe on the street, but MEGS I don't remember.

MEGS is the Mayfair system. It stands for "Mayfair Exponential Game System."

 

[Aaron L]

MEGS was the Mayfair Exponential Game System. I was the exponential system, and works very well, is very flxible, and is very smooth. It uses two tables to resolve all actions, A resolution table and an effect table. Everythign is represented in Attribute Points, or APs, from weight to speed to information to time. A person can lift an APs of weight equal to his Strength score, for example. You could travel your APs of, say Superspeed or Flight, in 1 phase (0 APs of time.) To figure out how far you could throw something, you subtracted your APs of Strength from its APs of weight, and what was left was how many APs of distance it would travel. Everything works like that, and its very elegant. It does get grainy at the low end of the scale, the physical attributes of normal humans tend to all be 2s, but it can model everyone from Jimmy Olsen lifting say 200 pounds, to Superman lifting 3,276,800 tons, without the clunky seperation of Strength score and Superstrength special attribute like M&M does. And a lot of it woudl be familiar to 3e players, in combat you have 2 automatic actions and one dice action, and as I was reading through it recently a lot of similiar terminology lept out at me (Dimensional Anchor power I recall specifically) and combat flows very smoothly.

Sorry, I just really dont like d20 for superhero games.

 

[jdrakeh]

And it's still an invalid comparission though, as Green Ronin makes a ton of games, most of which do not support M&M, while Hero Games on the other hand is well...stuff that is used in Hero Games, even when it's not used in Champions. Can we point at Star Hero and go, "Well, we'll have to deduct sales of that because it wasn't meant for Champions..." According to your post, no.

Good point. I hadn't thought about it quite like that - that said, I still believe that Hero leads supers games in sales (although, to be fair, I really don't know why). M&M 2e hasn't been out long enough to have any kind of discernable impact on the market as of yet, but I think there is a very good chance that it will (although lately, I've really been hearing more about Spycraft 2.0, which might be stealing some of M&M's thunder - and the loss of the Super Unicorn iconics seems to have hurt it somewhat, too).

 

[JoeGKushner]

One of the things I dislike about the old DC game, was that it didn't model the characters very well.

Impossible I hear some say.

For the individual character, they were fantasticly done.

As groups like the JLA, JSA, Teen Titan, etc...? No. It fell flat on it's face.

Unless your GM was extremely kind and never had Black Adam smack Batman and never had Darkseid hit the Elongated Man, it could work.

But games like Mutants & Masterminds and Champions tend to allow those 'human' style characters to fit with their super human cousins at least a little more easily.

Marvels' old system just ignored the whole problem and let your powers/points be based on your origin which could also lead to the Thing knocking out the Punisher with one shot, but was at least honest about it.

 

[Psion]

as I was reading through it recently a lot of similiar terminology lept out at me (Dimensional Anchor power I recall specifically)

d20 ripped off MEGS!

[/rolemaster fan mode]

 

[Aaron L]

d20 ripped off MEGS!

[/rolemaster fan mode]

I wouldn't say that, as I'm sure that a lot of other games developed similiar things too, and a lot of stuff probably became common terminology and/or methodology.


But yeah I definately knew you already knew that hehe.

 

[Bretbo]

I GMed MEGS for several years and it really wasn't that difficult to play. There were a few issues with minor elements that we had to house rule, but it played in a fashion suitable to a comic book genre. Until MnM came out, it was my favorite superhero game.