D20 Modern Supers
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HeapThaumaturgist
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ledded said:Dryad-themed super? Oh man, there is a perfect example to yoink for inspiration from the PC game Freedom Force. ... ... There are several good choices for that theme already in the book though.
Hrm, honestly I never played Freedom Force or knew anything about it, so I had to look it up to see what you were refering to.
Odd thing is, I'm not much of a superhero comics guy. I've only gotten into them recently as an off-shoot of my interest in Graphic Novels and exploring the comics FORM ... Superhero Bloat was the reason I stopped reading comic books when I was something like nine. I was always an amazingly fast reader and even at that age, serial comics were too short in the way of reading for the amount of hassle (MOOOOOOOMMMM, can I have another COMIC?) involved in getting them ... that and finding them.
(Heh. I was going to get into serials again because I REALLY liked the recent "Losers" but after three different times of not finding the back issue I was looking for I said "F it" and am waiting for the Trade Paperbacks to be issued ... )
I got into Supers only recently, in that I taught "Watchmen" as one of the texts for my Freshman English class. One of my students also happened to be a kid that played in the local college game club. He started playing in my regular home games and recently asked me if I'd run a Supers game ... my wife JUST recently got into comics too and thought it was a great idea, and thus was born my hunt for a good supers game.
Heh. So hopefully the game won't suck too badly ... I'm not really versed enough in the tropes and classic themes of the superhero genre, I think, to RUN a game.
I've recently been reading the Doc Savage pulp novels to research the birth and growth of the genre.Can we tell I'm a graduate student?
--fje
ledded
Herder of monkies
I did a similar thing, I read a lot of different comics as a youth but turned into a voracious reader; too much so to continue with comics past the age of 12-13 except for a select few. I read Tolkein when I was twelve and realized that I could make those pictures in my mind if the book was good enough, and got a lot more 'bang for my buck' out of a good book. The last involvement with comics I had for a long time was writing a comic for my friends in school essentially about the people I knew in school, if they were action heros. Several excerpts were taken from my notebook, penned, and published in the school paper as a comic strip. I did a comic strip a few times in college with a buddy of mine doing the inking/co-creation, but it was so raw the paper would rarely publish because of fear of backlash against the various stereotypes we pummelled.HeapThaumaturgist said:Hrm, honestly I never played Freedom Force or knew anything about it, so I had to look it up to see what you were refering to.
Odd thing is, I'm not much of a superhero comics guy. I've only gotten into them recently as an off-shoot of my interest in Graphic Novels and exploring the comics FORM ... Superhero Bloat was the reason I stopped reading comic books when I was something like nine. I was always an amazingly fast reader and even at that age, serial comics were too short in the way of reading for the amount of hassle (MOOOOOOOMMMM, can I have another COMIC?) involved in getting them ... that and finding them.
But I always loved the old Superhero comics genre and all of the different facets with it, so when my son started getting into superheros, I was overjoyed to find a kind of resurgence in interest for me. Soon he was getting the big figures with all of the points of articulation and staging battles for the Dominance Of The Living Room. I picked up Freedom Force in the Best Buy sale bin one day because he had a fit to play superhero game, and we had a lot of fun playing it together. I also introduced him to his first set of Heroclix at age 4; he has been hooked ever since. We play with a super-simple rule set that is specifically ours (basically, if you want to do something cool, roll 2d6, and if the number seems high enough, hey it worked!). It's made him even more imaginative and playing with dice increases his math skills because if he doesnt add those pips up, I don't let it count
. So I've kind of gone back to my comics roots in the last couple years because of his unbridled enthusiam for anything where the Good Guys thrash the Bad Guys, and then everyone goes over to Captain America's house for pizza. Yeah, I recently got back into them for my son, reading them at night for bedtime sometimes. Then I picked up some more 'adult' graphics novels, etc, like Sandman, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and I've moved a little towards finding some more along that vein.HeapThaumaturgist said:(Heh. I was going to get into serials again because I REALLY liked the recent "Losers" but after three different times of not finding the back issue I was looking for I said "F it" and am waiting for the Trade Paperbacks to be issued ... )
I got into Supers only recently, in that I taught "Watchmen" as one of the texts for my Freshman English class. One of my students also happened to be a kid that played in the local college game club. He started playing in my regular home games and recently asked me if I'd run a Supers game ... my wife JUST recently got into comics too and thought it was a great idea, and thus was born my hunt for a good supers game.
Heh. So hopefully the game won't suck too badly ... I'm not really versed enough in the tropes and classic themes of the superhero genre, I think, to RUN a game.
Can we tell I'm a graduate student?
--fje
With the way you research and write, I'm sure you'll do great in your game. Any chance of seeing a Story Hour for it?
Wikidogre said:
Another option is Aberrant d20:
http://secure.white-wolf.com/catalog/default.tpl?point=16706
... which I believe was just recently released. I picked it up yesterday so no playing experience yet, but the rules part looks like a decent set of supers stuff that could be added on to a d20 Modern campaign relatively painlessly. Around half the book is campaign background - Aberrant is set in a near-future world in which supers have existed since 1998 - which is a bit of a bummer if you don't plan to use it, but it does provide some good tidbits for any supers-suddenly-appear type setting. The rules themselves aren't dependent on the background.
HeapThaumaturgist
First Post
ledded said:With the way you research and write, I'm sure you'll do great in your game.
Any chance of seeing a Story Hour for it?
Definately. One of the major reasons I enjoy gaming is the chance to do the Story Hours. Gives me an excuse to write something fun and something I WANT to write.
I'm actually chomping at the bit to get the supers game up and running because I want to put my hand to the genre and write something for it.
To return to topic: If there's anything to say for Supers games, it's that it is FUN. Fun to work with, fun to mess with.
--fje
ledded
Herder of monkies
Amen to that. Especially since most of the writing I do on a daily basis is code, so it aint exactly what you'd call a good read.HeapThaumaturgist said:
I'm glad to hear it.
Double-amen. I has started out wanting to do a very serious, gritty WWII one-off campaign. When the opportunity came up, some wanted that, others wanted supers. One guy wanted both, so he said "why not WWII supers, like Captain America and Bucky vs the Red Skull" and everybody cheered. It started like a gritty war-driven low-to-medium supers campaign, but has taken more and more of a campy turn as the characters grow as our regular GM brings in an android that looks and acts like Peter Sellers. I would never have envisioned it that way to begin with, but I wouldnt change it for the world now, as it makes for some good clean *fun* on the table, and makes a good challenge for writing the story hour.
So yeah, I think no matter how you do it, supers is just plain FUN.
Interesting, I havent heard that much about Aberrant, but it looks cool on the surface. Let us know how it works out once you have a chance to play/read up on it some more.DMScott said:
HeapThaumaturgist
First Post
Vigilance said:
I thought about it, but I wasn't sure how many points to put into my "Jelly" Save. As opposed to my "Cinnamon And Sugar" save. Then there's the whole "Butter" thing, which you can buy for two points a rank, but is totally better than "Cream Cheese" at the same cost. So why would anybody take "Cream Cheese"? So now all of my toast has "Butter" and I can't get any of the players to take anything OTHER than "Butter" unless I tell them all that's left is "Cream Cheese" and "Peanut Butter". THAT's always a big argument ...
Seriously, though, M&M is getting insane press pretty much constantly. I got to look it over the other day and it seems interesting enough, and all, but I'm not sure if it does what I want for the game I currently have in mind. So, at least, it isn't the panacea of Supers gaming.
I do like that one-die mechanic, though. I keep looking at that Damage Save and drumming my fingers with pursed lips. It doesn't seem to work well, though, with gritter gun-centric combat. So while the mechanics are the most interesting part of the game, they're also the reason I'm not planning on using it for my own game.
--fje
