Favorite Superhero TTRPG

[Theory of Games]

I enjoyed M&M 2e, but as I got older, I found it to be crunchier than I like. Steve Kenson is a S tier designer, though, so when he put out Icons: Assembled, I was all over it. It's become my go-to for supers: it really marries a lot of what I like best about M&M with a skeleton that is clearly derived from the old Marvel Superheroes RPG.

I have ICONS: Assembled and it is a great rpg. Steve's great at taking pieces of different games and fitting them together perfectly. "S-tier" as you wrote.

The original yellow box set of the MSHRPG may be my favorite RPG period, and I think its "Advanced" version has unfortunately affected how people remember it. Many of the complaints I see about the MSHRPG tend to be specific to the Advanced version. C'est la vie!

Oui! TSR's Marvel rpg is iconic with so many loving fans. Plus so many clones it's silly. I believe "Heroic" is the latest one.

My experience of supers RPGs outside of these systems is fairly limited. I used to enjoy Palladium's Heroes Unlimited BitD, but anything Palladium tends to be too wonky for me these days. I've always wanted to like Aberrant more than I ended up actually liking it. I'm embarrassed to say that I've never tried V&V or Champions. I'd certainly play in them, but I don't see myself ever running them.

I love the art of HU and V&V and the systems are fun but, they're kinda dated in design. Aberrant I never liked, but it has its fans. Champions? It's my parachute game: if M&M ever starts to crash for me, I can pull the string on Champions and float to safety. The two are very similar.

Finally, re: the Marvel Multiverse RPG. I was excited when it was announced, and then utterly dismayed when I bought a copy of the playtest rules. Then I was excited when they discussed how they were revising them. Then dismayed again when I bought the rulebook. When I got to the ineffable passages on knockback and item damage, I noped out for good. I keep telling myself I'll give it another try, but every time I look at it, my eyes start to cross. 5e is about the upper limit of my tolerance for system complexity. I'm not saying it's a bad game by any stretch. Rather, it's not to my taste for GMing (which is mostly my role these days).

Your experience with MM is identical to mine: it just never matched the hype.

 

[okumarts]

M&M is getting a lot of love. I am an old Champions player. I currently have a 2e campaign on the go set in 1981. Champions was a treat and we played the heck out of it for decades but in the late 90s we used VtM Storyteller system for a supers game and it was very fun. We got back into Champions with 5th ed but didn't move on to 6e as it seemed to get rid of the stuff we enjoyed about Champions. We had a brief stint with M&M but the same old d20 games problems were off-putting. So we tried Icons and Supers and while we enjoyed the character creation process we were not as fond of the game mechanics. So I did what most people do in my situation, I wrote my own game. I tried to keep everything simple and at the same time tried to emulate all kinds of superhero comics.I like it but I can understand it may not be everyone's cup of tea. Over ten years on we are still playing it regularly and I have found it useful for running all kinds of genres from Pulp Sci Fi to Fantasy.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I’m a devoted HEROphile, and have been since Champions 1Ed.

I was a Champions guy for literally decades (I have kind of a connection with its history) before I decided I wanted something just a little lighter. Which lead me to...

Mutants & Masterminds is in 2d place, mainly because there’s certain mechanics that just didn’t match my preferences, nor those of the players I ran it for.

This, until I lost the ability to not see what the gears under the skin were really doing.

I have a bunch of others- SAS, Aberrant, Godlike, Heroes, Inc., Underground, Brave New World, and so forth- and each has plusses & minuses.

I ended up skipping a couple of systems in my recommendation list because they're what I think of as "specialty" superhero games--they do what they do reasonably well, but they're not really general purpose superhero games; AMP Year One comes to mind here.

 

[Thomas Shey]

second place? MHRP. Cam Bank's masterpiece. Cam literally dared me to try it.

I am so ruddy conflicted on MHRP (and its expies you can construct with Cortex Prime); it does what it does pretty well, but I just found after running a campaign using Cortex Prime that over time the sense that all battles were just fishing for the best three dice just became something I couldn't ignore (and yes, there's more nuance than that, but even acknowledging that it produced a bit to much SOP for me).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Really? I learned how to play & run M&M on the old ATT. There were a lot of helpful people there like JDRook, FuzzyBoots, Epic, and Davies. The "all-new" ATT site is okay but not the same, and I agree that M&M has its cracks, but all games have 'em.

There are things M&M does really well. Its probably got the second best character generation of any superhero game I've seen if you want detail and nuance (the best is Hero) while keeping it a little simpler.

But after running two campaigns of it and playing in three, it just finally sunk in that in combat most maneuvers and alternate power usage was a waste of time over whatever happened to be your best configuration for delivering damage to a target. And it was a really sad realization, because it left me without a clear superhero choice.

I bought MASKS fully prepared to run a 1shot and couldn't put it together. IMO, the game focuses too much on relationships and not enough on what makes superheroes dynamic (powers and fights). But, for people looking for something more like "Super-Soap Opera", MASKS completely nails it.

Masks appears to be very heavily focused on trying to capture certain dynamics you see in (particularly) the teen superhero subgenre, and it may well be one of the best at doing that, but like you say, its not what I'm there for.

 

[Thomas Shey]

M&M is getting a lot of love. I am an old Champions player. I currently have a 2e campaign on the go set in 1981. Champions was a treat and we played the heck out of it for decades but in the late 90s we used VtM Storyteller system for a supers game and it was very fun. We got back into Champions with 5th ed but didn't move on to 6e as it seemed to get rid of the stuff we enjoyed about Champions. We had a brief stint with M&M but the same old d20 games problems were off-putting. So we tried Icons and Supers and while we enjoyed the character creation process we were not as fond of the game mechanics. So I did what most people do in my situation, I wrote my own game. I tried to keep everything simple and at the same time tried to emulate all kinds of superhero comics.I like it but I can understand it may not be everyone's cup of tea. Over ten years on we are still playing it regularly and I have found it useful for running all kinds of genres from Pulp Sci Fi to Fantasy. View attachment 379609

I will say this: though I think your game is a little too lightweight for me, you do a lot of very clever things within its framework, to the point I found it an interesting read as a mechanics hack. It says something I think I have everything you wrote for it.

 

[okumarts]

I will say this: though I think your game is a little too lightweight for me, you do a lot of very clever things within its framework, to the point I found it an interesting read as a mechanics hack. It says something I think I have everything you wrote for it.

Aw, thanks. It means a lot.

 

[Thomas Shey]

By the by, regarding Icons: the only major problem I have with Icons is that its, really, really set up to be a random generation game (in that some powers just are significantly more impactful than others, to the degree any sort of build usage will draw them in like a gravity well) and I tend to find mandatory random gen a generally undesirable thing and absolutely not what I want in a supers game. Other than that, its a pretty fine system for what its trying to do.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I enjoyed a Golden Heroes campaign in 1984-85. I liked the rules-lite approach (Champions I found far to complicated) randomness of character generation, with it’s widely different power level heroes, and its hint of Britishness.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Torg.
Okay, not really, but that is the closest to a superhero system I actually played. All storm knights have a bit of superheroic abiltiies thanks to their possibilities and coming from realms with access to different levels of technology and magic, and Terra's pulp heroes specifically can give you at least "lower" powered superheroes.