Good Superhero-Game?

[Aaron L]

DC heroes is my vote.

 

[WayneLigon]

But he has to take a power to do it. In the other two systems, he can do it based solely off his normal stats, with out having to buy powers. And if having to buy a power for Batman (the quinessential non-powered hero) isn't an indicator of a flaw in MM's system, I don't know what is.

Moreover Lois LANE can make both PRE or INFL attacks as well; *any* character can. They might not be effective, but they can at least make the attempt.

As is pointed out, Fearsome Presence is a Feat, not a power, but that's just semantics. The effect is what's important and how you define it, not whether it happens to be labeled a Power or a Feat.

But he doesn't even have to buy that. How often does he do it? Is he constantly terrifying to look at? No. He and Lois Lane can do the same thing: spend a Hero Point to get that Feat for a round or a scene, depending on the exact feat. Lois really puts out an effort, she spends a Hero Point, and she makes a Senator babble on about how he took bribes, on camera.

Same thing with skills. You stat out the skills you need, or use all the time. Someone like Batman has Jack-of-all-Trades, which gives him every skill in the book at his stat bonus (which is pretty good).

No game is perfect, or there would only be one. But MnM sure comes close.

 

[woodelf]

Can anybody recommend me a good Superhero game? I've been looking about, but I havent found a good one yet - and Jürgen, I'm not looking for a GURPS option .

So, what would you recommend?

Given the complete lack of specified preferences on what sort of supers game you want, i'll recommend several.

• With Great Power...
• Advanced Marvel Super Heroes
• Marvel Universe
• Mutants & Masterminds
• Four Colors al Fresco

With Great Power... is in many ways the best supers RPG i've yet seen. [n.b.: i've only just bought Truth & Justice and haven't read it yet, and am holding out on Hearts & Souls hoping for a hardcopy version.] Specifically because it focuses on the drama of superhero stories, rather than the powers. IME, too many supers RPGs, in the process of trying to simulate the world of the comics, end up giving you a too-crunchy ruleset that doesn't actually feel anything like the comics when you actually play. Either the world is far more rigid than what we read in the comics (where Superman's strength and speed vary according to plot needs), or there are very complex rules to regulate the flexibility ('pushing' rules and the like).
Advanced Marvel Super Heroes is the classic standby, against which all other supers RPGs are measured, IMHO. An almost-perfect blend of crunchy underpinnings and narrative assumptions--even with a few rules to support those narrative assumptions (karma points, power stunts). A game years ahead of its time.
Marvel Universe is a game i haven't actually gotten to play yet, so i'm basing this on just reading it, plus others' opinions from playing with it. I find its resource-management-driven stones system to be a great match for the feel of supers, forcing you to trade off success now for success later (or vice versa). On the other hand, i think it's focused on too small of a unit of time, and while great for short game sessions, it looks like it is in part by trading off long-term play.
Mutants & Masterminds uses D20 System, so if that's important to you, it's a great choice. Otherwise, i'd say it's merely a good choice--those who claim it's 90% of the results of Champions for half the work seem to be right; i'm just not convinced that Hero System-style mechanics are desireable for supers gaming. But if i were going to go that route, M&MM would be near the top of my list. (Precisely because it's not the 'best' example of the style of game--if i had the preferences to actually prefer such rules, i'd probably pick Champions/Hero System or Silver Age Sentinels/Tri-Stat dX, instead.)
Four Colors al Fresco is our own supers RPG, so this is in part a plug. But, obviously, we wouldn't have written it if we didn't think it offered something that nothing else did. First, it was written long before Truth & Justice, Capes, With Great Power..., or Hearts & Souls, and at the time we originally wrote it, there weren't any narrative supers RPGs. Secondly, unlike all the options above (except maybe MSH), Four Colors al Fresco is basically a Simulationist game. Most RPGs are predominantly Gamist--they focus on detailed, balanced rules--with supers RPGs often being extremely so (due in no small part to Hero System). The few that aren't (With Great Power..., Hearts & Souls, etc.) are generally Narrativist--they focus on theme and story with the mechanics. Our mechanics focus on producing gameplay that feels like a comicbook superhero story.
[/list]

There are plenty of other good and great supers RPGs out there. The above are just what i consider the best (plus M&MM which, based on the reviews of people who can appreciate that style of supers RPG, is probably one of the best at it).

 

[Wystan]

Villains and Vigilantes

Now I will introduce my Personal Favorite Superhero role Playing game:

Villains and Vigilantes

This game was written well before D20, it is a sort of D&D does superheroes game. Stats are 3-18 for a normal person with possible super adds. It has devices, skills, powers, magic, psionics, ect. all of these use the same powers listing, each list of powers/skills/ect... is slightly different due to the list itself.

Examples:
Skills would have 'Heightened Strength A' which is +2d10 to Str. as this is a Natural addition and not a super power it is somewhat believeable in a superhero universe that a person can max out to 38 Str.
Powers would have 'Heightened Strength B' which is +3d10 to Str. this may or may not be more that the A version, but it is descibed differently. It is a superpower, you would be ok in describing the character as looking like Jimmy Olsen and still have a 48 Str.
Devices might have either, but it is a modification of your body by a device and most of those had charges and uses per day. (Picture the guy that beat the bloody hell out of Batman)
Magic/Psionic Items are similar to devices, but have a different origin.

There are powers that basically say 'Talk to the GM and devise something interesting.'
There are powers that give a small list of powers added by themselves (Animal/Plant Powers gives you 1d6 (I think) additional powers/weakness's from a special list for the Animal/Plant you randomly roll...(Like my friend who got A/PP 3 times and got Mollusk all 3 times)).

Flexible, easily buildable, easily adjucated, cheap (still available from FGU or for Download as a PDF).
(

)
$5.60
Great game, just wish Jeff Dee did not get the short end of the stick on it like he did.

 

[woodelf]

[snip]point-based system to buy relatively generic powers which are then customized to fit a concept. That model has worked pretty well for superheroes for 25 years, and M&M does it well.
[snip]
There's lots of other games out there, the supers genre attracts a lot of attention despite the fact it's a pretty small niche in the RPG market. These are just the ones I've seen work well, many other games also have their fans.

Actually, i believe it's precisely because the Hero System model doesn't really work that well for supers, and has thus left a lot of people dissatsfied, that there've been so many attempts at a good supers RPG over the years. And i don't think any of them succeeded until designers figured out that the problem with Champions wasn't balancing particular powers/stats, or pricing one-time uses, or any of that, it was the fundamental approach. I know the reason i own more supers RPGs than any other genre is because i hadn't found any that really satisfied me mechanically, until we wrote our own. [Only since writing our own, have a couple come out that would do the trick--most notably With Great Power.... Well, and Panels, among others, may have already existed, but i didn't know about it at the time.] And the fact that, except for M&MM 2nd ed, most of the new supers RPGs of the past couple years, both free and commercial, seem to be following a similar tack is, to me, telling--i don't think i'm the only one who's decided that the crunchy gamist approach to supers just doesn't work.

 

[woodelf]

It needs to be flexible. It needs to be able to handle all kinds of powers, power levels. Anything I see in a comic, I want to be able to do here as well.

EDIT: Oh, and it needs to be - relativly - simple and elegant.

Well, "relatively simple and elegant" are highly-subjective criteria. If you agree roughly with where i'd draw the line, however, that would eliminate all but Four Colors al Fresco, Panels, With Great Power..., Truth & Justice, and maybe Capes and Hearts & Souls. Even Marvel Universe crosses over the line into excessive complexity for supers, IMHO. M&MM, Silver Age Sentinels, Godlike, Providence, DC Heroes, Champions, Marvel Super Heroes, and Godsend Agenda fail the 'simple' test; while Heroes Unlimited, Four Colors to Fantasy, Villains & Vigilantes, Champions, and maybe Capes fail the 'elegant' test. (Ditto for Deeds Not Words, i suspect, though i've yet to read the whole thing, so i may well be mistaken.)

Anyway, as far as handling all kinds of powers and power levels, the only systems that'll really do that are those that don't try and quantify/balance them in the first place: Four Colors al Fresco, Panels, With Great Power..., Capes, and maybe Hearts & Souls. Even Truth & Justice has power levels that could get in the way of doing 'anything'.

Oh, and one other thought: while familiarity with D20 System will make getting up and running with M&MM a fairly painless affair, i think that Panels, With Great Power..., Truth & Justice, and Four Colors al Fresco would all be even easier to learn. There are plenty of RPGs out there, even in supers, that are sufficiently simple to be even easier to learn than a new iteration of D20 System (presuming you're already familiar with D20 System).

 

[Wystan]

Well, "relatively simple and elegant" are highly-subjective criteria. .... M&MM, Silver Age Sentinels, Godlike, Providence, DC Heroes, Champions, Marvel Super Heroes, and Godsend Agenda fail the 'simple' test; while Heroes Unlimited, Four Colors to Fantasy, Villains & Vigilantes, Champions, and maybe Capes fail the 'elegant' test.

I disagree with the comment about V&V not being Elegant. It is simple and elegant, powers are adjucated by the player and GM agreeing beforehand what the power does. This keeps play fast and simple and sometimesthings happen that confuse the player but make sense in the overall scheme, or surprise the GM but make sense in the end. V&V is Cheap, Easy, Elegant to play, and either Random or not as the GM wishes. (Core rules are roll 1d6, add two, roll that many powers from the lists of your choice, drop one, then drop another or take a random weakness as well. They state that in the interest of fairness your should up the power level of people with less powers. Now a good optional rule would be to roll the number of powers random, roll the first power random and choose the rest to match, or just choose them all with Copious GM Adjucation.)

 

[Mallus]

Yet another vote for M&M 2nd Ed. It let me model "The Egyptain God of Mexican Wrestlers" for Heaven's sake, with a minimum of effort.

Is it as robust as HERO? No. Is it easier to use and less intrusive? Great Ceasar's Ghost, yes!

 

[Umbran]

But he has to take a power to do it. In the other two systems, he can do it based solely off his normal stats, with out having to buy powers.

I am not terribly familiar with either system, but I've done a whole lot of supers gaming over the years, and I don't see what the big problem is.

In the final analysis, what is most important is what the character can do. What the rules call the ability is not likely to be generally relevant - A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Be open to separating the game definition of "power" from the flavor-text describing the origins of the ability, and the problem largely vanishes.

 

[Umbran]

Well, "relatively simple and elegant" are highly-subjective criteria.

*nod*. Case in point - I'd call the original Marvel Superheroes (the FASERIP version) both simple and elegant. What it isn't is "balanced".