What makes a successful superhero game?

[overgeeked]

This is a riff on a similar thread about horror. With Fantastic Four and Superman in theaters, the DC Heroes reprint Kickstarter getting closer and closer to fulfilling, and M&M playtesting 4E…I’m feeling a bit nostalgic in the mood for superheroes.

By “successful” here I mean that it works as a superhero game, not whether it makes money for the company.

So, what do you think? What makes a successful superhero game?

 

[zarionofarabel]

This is a riff on a similar thread about horror. With Fantastic Four and Superman in theaters, the DC Heroes reprint Kickstarter getting closer and closer to fulfilling, and M&M playtesting 4E…I’m feeling a bit nostalgic in the mood for superheroes.

By “successful” here I mean that it works as a superhero game, not whether it makes money for the company.

So, what do you think? What makes a successful superhero game?

A system that is capable of allowing heroes of differing power levels to work as a team without the high powered heroes completely overshadowing the lower powered heroes. Marvel Heroic Roleplaying for example.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I fell for HERO hard when it first hit shelves as Champions. Every supers game I’ve purchased since then has had merits, but falls short for me. The closest contender has been Mutants & Masterminds.

What they have in common is they both have incredible flexibility in character creation.

The other games are all more limited in that regard, BUT they usually do a very good job of modeling a certain subgenre or underlying intellectual property.

 

[Corinnguard]

As a fan of Mutants and Masterminds 2e, I liked using the RPGs Point Buy system to create customizable superpowers that make your character feel unique and thematic.