How Do You Like Your Super Hero TTRPG Games/Campaigns?

[Reynard]

I bought the recent edition of Aberrant on a whim and scanning through it remembered how much we enjoyed it at the time. Even so, I generally prefer less cynical takes on super heroes.

I thought I would post a poll about super hero TTRPG preferences. I am sure I forgot a bunch of elements, so feel free to discuss those as well.

 

[Blue]

Wow, I seem to have lots of opinions on this.

My formative superhero was a decade of Champions (now Hero System), with various others tried. But my current favorite is a PbtA called Masks: A New Generation, which is just about it's opposite as a rules system in every way. Crunchy vs. light. Simulation vs. narrative, etc.

One of the ones liked along the way was Marvel Heroic Roleplay, which really was more of a comic book emulator than a superhero one. And that was also really fun.

And while I like powers to be rare and therefore special, I'd play in a setting like My Hero Academia where almost every person has a Quirk of some power.

I've always felt they needed to be full of drama - not just external, but also on the team.

All of that said, while I played a lot of superhero RPGs, I wasn't a comic collector or even regular reader. Gold Age vs. Bronze Age I have a mild intellectual understanding of, but no strogn opinions, nor am I able to generally say "oh this game was XX Age" if it wasn't obvious or at the forefront of play.

I like things that make sense, so some deconstruction can be good. But by the flip side of the same token, it's a superhero genre so there's already suspensions of disbelief and handwaving going on - what's a bit more as long as it's enjoyable?

One trend I notice in myself - the crunchier & simulationist the game, the more wargamey it seems, and the more I want the heroes to be of a balanced power level, like a D&D party within that crunch. Conversely a light game I don't care about the relative power level as long as they have equal amounts of trouble. Thor and Hawkeye having a buddy drinking night, with Loki as the hidden cruise director? Sure, bring it on. Masks has a great example of this, with a playbook like The Nova who explicitly has more power - but so much that control of their power and potential consequences of it are their crux point, vs. a playbook like The Beacon who has no powers at all and needs to establish their right to be a hero and walk in a hero's world.

One thing I'd add not in the poll (but it's quite obscure, that's no shade towards Reynard) is that I like when there are mechanical reasons not to always be at full power. Just like some heroes need to worry about accidentally killing others, having reasons to be careful with your powers at times is a real bonus to me.

 

[MGibster]

I like my superhero campaigns heroic with a side of justice!

 

[The Soloist]

I never played a super RPG. I want to do a pulp superhero campaign using Modern AGE. Masked vigilantes team with a few mental powers. Probably set during WWII.

 

[Reynard]

I never played a super RPG. I want to do a pulp superhero campaign using Modern AGE. Masked vigilantes team with a few mental powers. Probably set during WWII.

Not that this is a reason to not set it during WW2 but in general the masked mystery man with psychic tricks genre is about a decade earlier.

 

[The Soloist]

Not that this is a reason to not set it during WW2 but in general the masked mystery man with psychic tricks genre is about a decade earlier.

Good to know. So 30's leading to 1939. Is there an official super name for that period? I recall reading The Spirit comics in the 90s. I think he was a 40s masked hero.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Side note: I really dislike the modern attempts to classify the post-Silver Age eras. There seem to be at least one too many eras in most classification systems, and none of them have the easy demarcation point that "The Flash of Two Worlds" provides for the dividing line between the Gold and Silver Ages. Most of the dividing lines come down to "well, this is when I was in college," IME.

That said, I think superhero RPGs might be the toughest genre for RPGs to emulate. Ideally, they'd play fast and reward creativity. But modeling superpowers -- and making the Punisher feel like a viable character next to Thor -- is a hell of a mechanical challenge that tends to involve getting way too fiddly or just throwing out the pretense that every type of superhero will be fun to play, which feels like a failure to me.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Good to know. So 30's leading to 1939. Is there an official super name for that period? I recall reading The Spirit comics in the 90s. I think he was a 40s masked hero.

I think most people just refer to that as the "Mystery Men" era. The Shadow, The Spirit, etc.

 

[Reynard]

Side note: I really dislike the modern attempts to classify the post-Silver Age eras. There seem to be at least one too many eras in most classification systems, and none of them have the easy demarcation point that "The Flash of Two Worlds" provides for the dividing line between the Gold and Silver Ages. Most of the dividing lines come down to "well, this is when I was in college," IME.

That said, I think superhero RPGs might be the toughest genre for RPGs to emulate. Ideally, they'd play fast and reward creativity. But modeling superpowers -- and making the Punisher feel like a viable character next to Thor -- is a hell of a mechanical challenge that tends to involve getting way too fiddly or just throwing out the pretense that every type of superhero will be fun to play, which feels like a failure to me.

The Bronze Age is usually roped off at the death of Gwen Stacey or Speedy's drug addiction. The Iron Age is a little tougher but I have heard DKR as a starting point, or the appearance of Venom. But, yeah, it's pretty fuzzy.

Personally I like to think of Kingdom Come and Marvel's as the "Modern" Age beginning. Some people create borders of a nuSilver Age with the advent of the Ultimate Universe but I don't really buy it.

I stopped reading comics regularly when the nu52 appeared, so I don't know if today's Modern Age is notably different than the one that emerged in the late 90s and early 00s.

 

[TheHand]

I used to play in a ton of Champions games, ranging the full genre gamut from four color tights to paranormals hunted by shadow government agents, but I wouldn’t ever play in a system that crunchy again.

These days my gaming groups only dabble with super hero one shots. We tried a few engines like Mutants and Masterminds and the old TSR Faserip, but one I really enjoyed was Sentinel Comics because I felt it did a better job of simulating comic books as opposed to simulating super powers.