"The Boys meets The Black Company" System Recommendations

[Reynard]

Mutants and Masterminds might be a good fit. Lots of room to build supers and theres and fantasy companion.

As I stated in my OP, it's definitely on the list. I just haven't ever run "low level" M&M so I am not 100% sure on how well it handles it.

 

[Fenris-77]

As I stated in my OP, it's definitely on the list. I just haven't ever run "low level" M&M so I am not 100% sure on how well it handles it.

Hah, sorry, I obviously didn't read the OP very well. When you say 'low level' do you mean like power level 5 or 6? I just joined a GI Joe campaign that's using M&M at PL 5 and it seems solid so far. It was the ease of scaling a given PC of NPC by power level that made me think it might work though.

 

[innerdude]

@Reynard -- The old Savage Worlds GM in me is trying to think of a way to balance what you want. Savage Worlds really does ground itself around "action hero++" style gaming, but I've never pushed it up a notch to superheroes. To make a SW game that allows "muggles" to go after the superheroes, it feels like you've got to create some built in backstory/narrative conceit that even gives the non-supes a chance at all.

If the supers are really that much better than the muggles, I don't know how you balance the numbers between damage + toughness across the spectrum of character effectiveness. Otherwise, the whole premise becomes "the PCs go find the MacGuffin that lets them actually hurt/wound/kill the supes."

Or you're doing what Savage RIFTS did where it uses a different damage scale entirely, and weapons have to work within the right damage scale to even have a chance to hurt the supers, etc.

For Savage Worlds, it just feels like a bunch of narrative conceits have to be baked into the premise to even make it work.

And if you're going to be throwing around a bunch of narrative conceits, might as well do it with a narrative-style system.

Like I could easily see hacking Starforged for this purpose, just by creating a few new player assets but otherwise running it as-is.

*Edit: Thinking about it, taking 2-3 hours to brainstorm assets, I could easily see a hack of Starforged being a really, really fun way to run that game. And I can easily see why others would recommend PbtA or FitD style games as well.

 

[Reynard]

@Reynard -- The old Savage Worlds GM in me is trying to think of a way to balance what you want. Savage Worlds really does ground itself around "action hero++" style gaming, but I've never pushed it up a notch to superheroes. To make a SW game that allows "muggles" to go after the superheroes, it feels like you've got to create some built in backstory/narrative conceit that even gives the non-supes a chance at all.

If the supers are really that much better than the muggles, I don't know how you balance the numbers between damage + toughness across the spectrum of character effectiveness. Otherwise, the whole premise becomes "the PCs go find the MacGuffin that lets them actually hurt/wound/kill the supes."

Or you're doing what Savage RIFTS did where it uses a different damage scale entirely, and weapons have to work within the right damage scale to even have a chance to hurt the supers, etc.

For Savage Worlds, it just feels like a bunch of narrative conceits have to be baked into the premise to even make it work.

And if you're going to be throwing around a bunch of narrative conceits, might as well do it with a narrative-style system.

Like I could easily see hacking Starforged for this purpose, just by creating a few new player assets but otherwise running it as-is.

*Edit: Thinking about it, taking 2-3 hours to brainstorm assets, I could easily see a hack of Starforged being a really, really fun way to run that game. And I can easily see why others would recommend PbtA or FitD style games as well.

Savage Worlds is my first choice -- but it's always my first choice.

The whole idea is that the PCs have to figure out a way to take out their Super targets -- with a dangerous weapon, by manipulating another super, by finding a weakness, etc... I don't know if those qualify as "narrative conceits" or not but they are intended parts of the play loop.

Mechanically, creating weapons that bypass "super toughness" is an easy mechanic to apply in SW.

 

[Reynard]

I am going to check out Wild Talents, since it comes up a lot in searching threads on other forums about modeling The Boys. Does anyone have any experience with it?

 

[Grendel_Khan]

I am going to check out Wild Talents, since it comes up a lot in searching threads on other forums about modeling The Boys. Does anyone have any experience with it?

Wild Talents can be a lot of fun, if you're into the One Roll Engine thing (which not everyone is). But as with Godlike I think the system would definitely be less interesting as a player if the PCs don't have superpowers, just the enemies—means you're watching these extra mechanics happen that you don't have access to.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I am going to check out Wild Talents, since it comes up a lot in searching threads on other forums about modeling The Boys. Does anyone have any experience with it?

Not directly, but I’ve played Godlike, its predecessor that uses the same system, the One Roll Engine (ORE). It certainly may suit.

Godlike is specifically a World War II take on supers. You don’t play superheroes but rather soldiers who have super powers. The powers are potentially potent, but usually very focused, which means that the character is still very fragile.

I have Wild Talents and have read through it a bit, but not yet played it. I think it takes the system and moves it from soldiers to a more traditional take on supers.

I’ll say that I enjoyed Godlike to an extent, but the ORE system takes some effort to get used to. I don’t think we played long enough to really internalize the rules. Every time we rolled, we had to decipher the results. I expect for some groups this will be a quicker process.

The core mechanic is that you roll once for any action that requires a roll. It’s a pool of d10s. That one roll determines success/failure, degree of success/damage, hit location, and so on. One roll for everything. The Height of the roll is the number rolled, the Width is the number of dice that show that number. So you’re looking for matches.

It’s a pretty cool idea, but it takes some time to interpret the results of each roll. Often more time than systems that require more than one roll would need. As I said, more practice with this would likely improve the time, but across the three or so sessions we played, it was a factor for sure.

 

[Fenris-77]

Not specifically, but I have some experience with the ORE engine. It's a really cool mechanic, but it's not for everyone.

 

[Reynard]

Wild Talents can be a lot of fun, if you're into the One Roll Engine thing (which not everyone is). But as with Godlike I think the system would definitely be less interesting as a player if the PCs don't have superpowers, just the enemies—means you're watching these extra mechanics happen that you don't have access to.

Not directly, but I’ve played Godlike, its predecessor that uses the same system, the One Roll Engine (ORE). It certainly may suit.

Godlike is specifically a World War II take on supers. You don’t play superheroes but rather soldiers who have super powers. The powers are potentially potent, but usually very focused, which means that the character is still very fragile.

I have Wild Talents and have read through it a bit, but not yet played it. I think it takes the system and moves it from soldiers to a more traditional take on supers.

I’ll say that I enjoyed Godlike to an extent, but the ORE system takes some effort to get used to. I don’t think we played long enough to really internalize the rules. Every time we rolled, we had to decipher the results. I expect for some groups this will be a quicker process.

The core mechanic is that you roll once for any action that requires a roll. It’s a pool of d10s. That one roll determines success/failure, degree of success/damage, hit location, and so on. One roll for everything. The Height of the roll is the number rolled, the Width is the number of dice that show that number. So you’re looking for matches.

It’s a pretty cool idea, but it takes some time to interpret the results of each roll. Often more time than systems that require more than one roll would need. As I said, more practice with this would likely improve the time, but across the three or so sessions we played, it was a factor for sure.

Not specifically, but I have some experience with the ORE engine. It's a really cool mechanic, but it's not for everyone.

The "essentials" version of the rules was only $5 so I picked it up from DTRPG. I will give it a read later and see if I feel like I can grok it.

Otherwise, I am leaning back toward my comfort zone and picking either M&M or SWADE. It will really depend on which one models bypassing the Champions' super-toughness better (either through special weapons or a trick or whatever) since that will kind of be the "win condition" for the adventures. Supers pulping PCs in one or two hits is easy in either system, and both have fail safe mechanics that PCs can use once or twice to not make it instant death (just inevitable...).

 

[Blue]

I don't know if you have read The Reckoners series by Brandon Sanderson. Similarish-enough concept (normals that through prep and tech were able to take on evil supers) that I just went searching for an RPG for ti. But unfortunately all of the recommendations were ones already listed here.

If whatever system you pick has too large of a gap between normal and supers, you could steal an idea from that series - each super has a weakness, and finding that out could be leveraged for a chance for victory.