Let's Talk About Supers RPGs (Especially Ones Good For Cons)

[corwyn77]

As someone who still owns Mutants & Masterminds 2e, is there anything in 3e that people feel is dramatically improved? One of the things I always liked about M&M is that once bonuses passed +10, you replaced it with another d20.

I always felt it kept things interesting and die rolls relevant.

I'm almost positive that wasn't a thing, unless in some obscure supplement. I've never seen it in the core book or the Manual. Where is it from?

 

[Reynard]

I really didn't like char gen for BNW. Least favourite supers game aside from the many d20 ones and Heroes unlimited.

It wasn't meant to be a game where you can be whatever. It wasn't trying to be Hero/Champions.

 

[Committed Hero]

I played a great game of Sentinel Comics RPG last GenCon. The GM made six Marvel heroes and we fought several battles against various villains. I think it was an excuse for him to use Marvel minis but it was quite enjoyable.

 

[Reynard]

Yesterday was the first session of Bastion City Outlaws at RPG Con in Milford MA USA, using the Marvel Multiverse RPG. It went pretty well. One of the players who is a good friend made the pre-gen characters for me (thanks Rob!) and I reskinned a bunch of characters from the core book for adversaries. It was a bank heist that quickly went bad as the teen hero group HEROMAXXING! showed up to thwart the PCs (a group of rogues and C-list villains). The PCs beat up on the teen heroes pretty good, which brought the REAL heroes down on them but they escaped. later, the Batman analog tracked them to their hideout and disabled Killbot Kamando by pulling his head off before Nooka, the radioactive hyper-intelligent ape from a post apocalyptic future that will never happen, did the same to not-Batman. Ew.

Today I have two more sessions of that game and am stoked. I was not sure whether the marvel game would play well but it definitely plays better than it reads. It is stilla complex, 90s feeling game, but at the table it works.

The other characters include Jumpin Jack, who stole and repainted another villain's jump jet suit, Menajorie, a shapeshifter who can only change shape into weird hyprid animals (the highlights were a goosrilla and a antopus) and Disassembler, the technotelekinetic.

 

[billd91]

later, the Batman analog tracked them to their hideout and disabled Killbot Kamando by pulling his head off before Nooka, the radioactive hyper-intelligent ape from a post apocalyptic future that will never happen, did the same to not-Batman. Ew.

Interesting. Are killing-style attacks a normal part of this particular supers game? I know there are some that hold closer to the 4-color feel than others.

 

[Reynard]

Interesting. Are killing-style attacks a normal part of this particular supers game? I know there are some that hold closer to the 4-color feel than others.

I don't think so. But Nooka's player definitively wanted to kill not-Batman so I went with it.

 

[jian]

So, there’s a new player in town, at least as a Quickplay: Justice League Unlimited.

This is the first official DC superhero game in a while and it does look very promising. It’s at least nominally based on the current comic book of the same name and one of the writers is Mark Waid, a comics legend (Justice League Year One, Superman Birthright, Kingdom Come, runs on pretty much every comic of note such as Flash, Daredevil, FF, etc) who is the writer of said comic. The Quickplay has you as new heroes being recruited into the JLU and helping them deal with a major global crisis. It’s not identical to the animated series of the same name but definitely takes inspiration from it.

The rules are sort of like a lighter version of Marvel Multiverse - a d20 system with only 5 levels (Tiers) and a whole stack of powers, skills, and other traits which all look sensible. It definitely looks like one worth trying at a con.

A couple of nice touches include the fact that your health (Resolve) is also your pool for activating powers, and that the more Plot Points you spend, the more likely you are to trigger a Crisis (the PCs face evil twins of themselves; they’re transported involuntarily to another space or time; they all swap bodies) which is great for four-colour shenanigans.

(As usual, I’m currently doing a rewrite which includes renaming the attributes to Awareness, Brains, Coordination, Determination, Empathy, and Fortitude. It amused me.)