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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5141252" data-attributes="member: 80487">Villians & Vigilantes (1982 revision) is still one of my favorite games. When it was published, though, Champions was already light-years ahead in the kinds of game balance that I think are most to the point of the OP.It was necessary for a Champs ref to moderate how players spent their points, to make sure that supposed disadvantages and advantages really were properly assessed in the campaign context, and to nix "game breaking" notions. Flexibility always comes with such a price.However, the points system made it easy (if often time consuming) to work out balances of character power. It helped that long combat sessions were -- par for the course in that genre -- the central focus. I have not seen the new (6th) edition, but from what I have read about it there is a decoupling of factors that might make such evaluations even easier.V&V emphasized the element of surprise, and the downright wackiness, characteristic of the comics that inspired it. The recommended approach was to play oneself with the addition of a semi-random (but mostly random) set of super-powers.If players instead are choosing their powers, then even the probabilistic factors don't apply -- and it is easier to come up with extremely powerful synergies.Some things just are not immediately provided for, and those can be surprising omissions. For instance, neither wall-crawling nor web-spinning turn up as "arachnid powers". To lift tons of weight, one really needs not just a high strength score but a lot of body mass (telekinesis, as written, not availing much).Still, I find that it works out pretty well most of the time taking things just as written. Variations in character "stats" tend just to fit into the bigger picture of what players do, and how, along with a hefty helping of chance. The effects of experience levels are quite subtle next to those in D&D, serving much more to give a sense of growth than to determine the odds in encounters.Like the D&D editions that had come out at the end of the '70s, V&V was still very much rooted in the original "just examples for your consideration" gamer-to-gamer mode of viewing and presenting RPG "rules".Over all, I find the emphasis in those old games more on players exploring the imagined world -- not just as a map, but as an often surprising process -- than on players defining the milieu. Strategy is very important, more in choices in the role-playing context than in choices of mechanical scores. However, that "stuff happens" on the basis of swings in dice-rolls is also important. There's a keen appreciation of the novelty factor that makes "Man Bites Dog" news whereas "Dog Bites Man" is not.The super-hero genre has its own peculiarities, of course. The vagaries of the comic book business and the value of trademarks have established that death is seldom more than a temporary state. On the other hand, it is just one of many occasions on which characters may be subject to radical transformations. Retroactive continuity is par for the course (and just as reversible). Of all forms of fantasy, this is the most far out!</blockquote>

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