d20 Super Heroes --- coming in July '06 from WOTC

[EditorBFG]

I don't consider Vampire or Werewolf horror any more than I consider The Crow horror. Gothic, yes. Violent, yes. Dealing with unpleasent things like undeath, yes. But horrific? I think not.

To my mind, the original Vampire was horror.

You had to keep doing horrible things or your character's instincts would force you to lose control and do truly awful things. It was personal horror, fear of your own body and self, which I think was scarier than, say, Ravenloft.

Also, Wraith scared the crap out of people. Another player controlled the dark part of your personality that wanted to destroy you.

Yes, I know what the line eventually fell into, which was power gaming rather than horror, and certainly Werewolf was D&D with tougher barbarians. But if the original Vampire and Wraith don't strike you as horror, your definition differs from mine rather dramatically.

 

[buzz]

I don't consider Vampire or Werewolf horror any more than I consider The Crow horror. Gothic, yes. Violent, yes. Dealing with unpleasent things like undeath, yes. But horrific? I think not.

While WW sort of agrees agrees with you (the WoD core book is "stylish horror", while V:tR is "modern gothic"), as far as the context of this thread and tracking genre sales, these games are horror. Horror where you play the monster, but horror nonetheless.

Not to mention, modern gothic is essentially a sub-genre of horror.

 

[JPL]

Karma to improve your character? Man, maybe I'm misremembering but it took thousands of karma points to raise an ability score, much less a power.

And as far as modelling the source material, to a point, it did this well, but it did it often times at the cost of a player's enjoyment. "Gee Mr. Shield Agent, I'm sorry that the hulk like brick is the only one standing again..."

Well, if you have a SHIELD agent and a Hulk-like brick as PCs, you need to have them fight a Hydra agent and an Abomination-like brick. Then it evens out.

Seriously, though...FASERIP could handle everything from Ant-Man to Thor, but as in any game, PCs of widely different power levels require special handling.

Yeah, advancement was slow. That means you better get out there and start acting HEROIC and earn some Karma.

I dunno. It was fast, it was simple, it was my first game, and I loved it.

 

[woodelf]

Put me in the grognard camp too then. MSH is the game the rest of us try to capture the feel of.

Chuck

[plug type=shameless]You might want to take a look at Four Colors al Fresco. It intentionally captures a lot of the feel of MSH, in that it's very flexible and genre-driven, rather than trying to model in detail (like, say, Champions/HERO). We've had at least two people who were of the "supers RPGs suck" or "no supers RPG since MSH actually captures the genre" opinion fall in love with it (and tell us). Oh, and while the version that is free online only explicitly addresses the pseudo-Renaissance setting, the print edition (Feb, i hope) will have extensive advice and examples for adapting to other settings/sub-genres.[/plug]

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

But if the original Vampire and Wraith don't strike you as horror, your definition differs from mine rather dramatically.

Fair enough. You're right, I'd been thinking more of Werewolf and co. than Wraith, which is undoubtedly horror (in addition to being a marvelous idea). And my idea of horror is probably different from a lot of peoples'

 

[woodelf]

Right- stating the fact that you're going to proselytize M&M over this game you haven't seen. I read what you said, and the later poster who said he'd be impressed if it was "half as good".

But I do expect there to be *be* a fight, at least from M&M's very loyal and devoted fanbase.

And I also feel that many of the comments already posted in the thread back this up: people saying d20 Supers won't be as good, when all we know is a pagecount (if we even know that); people looking at "pagecount 160" and saying "well that can't be right- it'll be 96 pages and that's not enough" (and again- we don't know one way or the other).

No, we know one other thing about it: it will be produced by WotC, and is therefore likely to conform to their standards, because they probably wouldn't publish it if it didn't. That, IMHO, is sufficient basis for presuming it will be noticably inferior to M&MM. D&D3E/D&D3.5E is inferior to Everquest D20 for hack-n-slash/dungeon-crawl/power-up play. D&D3E/D&D3.5E is soundly trumped by Arcana Unearthed/Evolved for capturing the essence of "D&D". Iron Heroes is much better than D&D3[.5]E for making tactical combat both playable and fun. Spycraft is better than D20 Modern for everything but "modern D&D"--and Spycraft+[something fantasy] is gonna be better than either. Spycraft 2.0 is better than that. That other arctic book (whose name i'm blanking on) was more interesting than Frostburn. T20 is better than D20 Future. There are several D&D monster books far better than anything WotC has produced. Forgotten Realms is perhaps the least-interesting fantasy setting published for D20 System. Similarly, when i start looking at significant sub-systems (such as Spycraft's action dice vs. D20M's action points), the WotC version is usually inferior. Quite seriously, the only cases where WotC has done as good of a job or better than the competition on a topic are when it was a completely outside job and it just got published by WotC for branding reasons--like CoC D20. [obviously all in my opinion, but i *have* looked at all of these, and am prepared to back these claims up with specific criteria/examples.]

So, based on WotC's track record of the last 8 years or so [i continued to find the occasional D&D product i wanted right up 'til TSR folded--despite giving up on playing D&D in '93; i haven't seen a WotC product worth buying since then, even while playing D&D with D20 System for the last 4 years], i consider it a safe pronouncement that D20 Superheroes won't be as good as M&MM.

 

[Vigilance]

No, we know one other thing about it: it will be produced by WotC, and is therefore likely to conform to their standards, because they probably wouldn't publish it if it didn't. That, IMHO, is sufficient basis for presuming it will be noticably inferior to M&MM. D&D3E/D&D3.5E is inferior to Everquest D20 for hack-n-slash/dungeon-crawl/power-up play. D&D3E/D&D3.5E is soundly trumped by Arcana Unearthed/Evolved for capturing the essence of "D&D". Iron Heroes is much better than D&D3[.5]E for making tactical combat both playable and fun. Spycraft is better than D20 Modern for everything but "modern D&D"--and Spycraft+[something fantasy] is gonna be better than either. Spycraft 2.0 is better than that. That other arctic book (whose name i'm blanking on) was more interesting than Frostburn. T20 is better than D20 Future. There are several D&D monster books far better than anything WotC has produced. Forgotten Realms is perhaps the least-interesting fantasy setting published for D20 System. Similarly, when i start looking at significant sub-systems (such as Spycraft's action dice vs. D20M's action points), the WotC version is usually inferior. Quite seriously, the only cases where WotC has done as good of a job or better than the competition on a topic are when it was a completely outside job and it just got published by WotC for branding reasons--like CoC D20. [obviously all in my opinion, but i *have* looked at all of these, and am prepared to back these claims up with specific criteria/examples.]

So, based on WotC's track record of the last 8 years or so [i continued to find the occasional D&D product i wanted right up 'til TSR folded--despite giving up on playing D&D in '93; i haven't seen a WotC product worth buying since then, even while playing D&D with D20 System for the last 4 years], i consider it a safe pronouncement that D20 Superheroes won't be as good as M&MM.

Well as long as you're not biased or anything.

 

[Kichwas]

I think we -CAN- presume that d20 Supers will be based on and perhaps require ownership of the d20 Modern rules.

Therefore, if that presumption is to be accepted, one could make judgments on it even now on the basis of an opinion of d20 Modern.

I imagine for example that we could assume it will have classes, feats, levels, hit points, and d20 modern combat as a core. If one finds those things counter to one's tastes in a game, particularly a supers game, one could probably guess d20 supers will not be satisfactory to one's tastes.

 

[buzz]

obviously all in my opinion, but i *have* looked at all of these, and am prepared to back these claims up with specific criteria/examples.]

No, I think there's sufficient evidence to show that you do, indeed, agree with yourself. Well done!

 

[Teflon Billy]

No, I think there's sufficient evidence to show that you do, indeed, agree with yourself. Well done!

well played sir