If you think M&M is fiddly, HERO must cause you a total anxiety attack.
But seriously, I don't find M&M very simulationist. There is a lot of cinematic abstraction.
Not an anxiety attack. Merely a lot of eyerolling. I can cope with GURPS Vehicles if I need to.
Aside from Hero points, you interact with the world through your character and his actions. In that sense the game is geared around playing superheroes in a world of superheroes. If there is a car on the street, and your PC is strong enough, you can pick it up and throw it at a villain. Easy peasy.
You can do
that in MHRP. It just doesn't do anything notably different from hitting them with your fists. And, as Empowered pointed out in one memorable scene, that's being generous to the car thrower. The right thing to do with a car is climb in and ram the bad guy.
Whereas in Marvel Heroic, the game is geared around simulating a comic book. There are a lot of metagame oriented mechanics that allow the players to manipulate scenes and plot. If there is a car, you have follow specific rules about tagging it as an "asset" that your PC is allowed to use in that scene.
Not at all. You can hit someone with a car without tagging it as an asset. If you want a bonus from throwing a car that's a stunt. If you want to get in the car and crash it into the villain that's probably a stunt (it might even be an asset and your next move is to drive back over it) - and is more effective than throwing the car.
If you want to use a car, that's normally cosmetic. If you want to get a one-shot bonus from a car, that's a stunt. Spend a plot point and add a d8 to your pool. If you're trying to escape and want to jack a car because you don't have superspeed or flight, that's an asset. Spend a turn to climb in the car, make a roll against the doom pool to jack it, and you've an asset for the rest of the scene as you turn your attempt to escape into a car chase.
Likewise, I remember reading about an absurd example on RPG.net about Daredevil's blindness not protecting him from sight based attacks unless the players spend the appropriate resource to activate it as an asset.
That example floored me. Daredevil is blind. Sight based attacks fail because he is blind. That's it. I don't like Marvel Heroic style play at all. But its good at what it does and its popular with people who like that sort of metagame scene manipulation. So its certainly worth checking out.
I remember that RPG.net thread. And the multiple interpretations. The one question I would raise is "What is a sight based attack?" Because I can't think of any explicitely sight based attacks from
anyone (with the possible exception of Mysterio). This is an edge case, and one rule of writing a rules-light game is "don't sweat the small stuff". On the other hand I can think of attacks that involve the sense of sight - such as a telepathic illusion. So Daredevil could spend a plot point to say "Your illusion doesn't work on a blind man. Sure I can see it. That's the problem." Or again hypnosis. That dirty great spinning disk is a part of the attack - but only part of it. If Daredevil doesn't spend a plot point the words and the tone get him. If he does the hypnotic disk his fellow heroes are drooling at does nothing.
[MENTION=3817]Cam Banks[/MENTION], have I got this all right?
