What makes a successful superhero game?

[Thomas Shey]

Advancement is superhero fiction is so weird. Sometimes there’s an obvious skill or power increase over time while sometimes there’s nothing for years or decades, then a massive leap ahead. Or the perennial favorite of complete power swaps. It just doesn’t map to standard RPG expectations of advancement.

The one general exception is the teen-supers genre, where some visible advancement is almost always present over time. That's admittedly a special case, however, and your general point is sound.

(That said, you can make some of that argument for any persistent episodic fiction. Most of them the characters are at least semi-static, but it'd be unlikely most people would want that in an RPG based on it.)

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I think a supers game needs some sort of narrative currency that lets the PC put their thumb on the scale. E.g. FASERIP's karma system was a revelation to me back in the day. And that's something Champions does not have out of the box. Luckily, a hero point system isn't hard to tack on and I have my own house rules for them now.

Some sort of system for "natural"* disasters is a good idea. Again, I will note that my two favourite supers games, Champions and FASERIP, do not have such a thing. You're expected to model scenario's by extrapolating from the basic rules. And you can. But it would save a lot of work if they had some guidelines.

Super PCs really benefit from connection to the world. (I think all RPGs benefit from this, but for supers it's essential.) So a mechanism for connecting the character to the game world is needed. Champions disadvantages system does the job quite nicely; but the RAW could make it clearer for players that that is what it's for.

Interpersonal drama between PCs is an important trope. But I struggle to think of how one can put this into a game system; other than basing it on disadvantages.

*The inverted commas are because this is a supers game. When there's an earthquake there's every reason to suspect Mole People. Frankly, I always suspect Mole People.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think a supers game needs some sort of narrative currency that lets the PC put their thumb on the scale. E.g. FASERIP's karma system was a revelation to me back in the day. And that's something Champions does not have out of the box. Luckily, a hero point system isn't hard to tack on and I have my own house rules for them now.

Some sort of system for "natural"* disasters is a good idea. Again, I will note that my two favourite supers games, Champions and FASERIP, do not have such a thing. You're expected to model scenario's by extrapolating from the basic rules. And you can. But it would save a lot of work if they had some guidelines.

Super PCs really benefit from connection to the world. (I think all RPGs benefit from this, but for supers it's essential.) So a mechanism for connecting the character to the game world is needed. Champions disadvantages system does the job quite nicely; but the RAW could make it clearer for players that that is what it's for.

Interpersonal drama between PCs is an important trope. But I struggle to think of how one can put this into a game system; other than basing it on disadvantages.

*The inverted commas are because this is a supers game. When there's an earthquake there's every reason to suspect Mole People. Frankly, I always suspect Mole People.

There was at least one Marvel-Phile article in Dragon dealing with natural disasters in MSH, I think.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Really? I'll have to track it down.

 

[dbm]

Some sort of system for "natural"* disasters is a good idea.

Another plus for Savage Worlds SPC - the core system has a Dramatic Tasks sub-system which is spot-on for this sort of thing.

 

[overgeeked]

Some sort of system for "natural"* disasters is a good idea. Again, I will note that my two favourite supers games, Champions and FASERIP, do not have such a thing. You're expected to model scenario's by extrapolating from the basic rules. And you can. But it would save a lot of work if they had some guidelines.

Really any kind of clock would do. Pick a number and that's how many successes you need to end the problem. Give it an intensity rank for FEATs and damage. Or give it a health pool and reduce it with each successful FEAT. Decide what kinds of things are really effective (double successes or health reduction) and what kinds of things are really not effective (make things worse by increasing the clock or health pool).

DC Heroes has the AP chart and some rules on disasters. The ones I remember are fires and earthquakes. Fires have a rank of 3-8, natural fires increase 1 rank per round up to rank 8, and fire spreads 10ft (0 APs) per round. Hilariously, the writers thought that earthquakes can last up to 4.5 hours (12 APs) despite the longest known earthquake lasting only..."only"...8-10 minutes.

From the M&M4E playtest document, it looks like GR are going with a kind of clock setup as well. So many successful checks before so many failures within a limited time.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If it were an RPG those would be permanent upgrades rather than one-offs or emergency use only.

Sorta.

It’s possible to model stuff like that in HERO as discrete, alternative power suits that require access to a base and time to do the swap. I’d probably do that via Multiform for an Iron Man PC with specialized armors.

For PCs with lower powers, a VPP or Multipower might be more appropriate- again, requiring time & a base to swap out.

 

[dbolack]

DC Heroes has the AP chart and some rules on disasters. The ones I remember are fires and earthquakes. Fires have a rank of 3-8, natural fires increase 1 rank per round up to rank 8, and fire spreads 10ft (0 APs) per round. Hilariously, the writers thought that earthquakes can last up to 4.5 hours (12 APs) despite the longest known earthquake lasting only..."only"...8-10 minutes.

I took that to include aftershocks and other soon after the quake potential failures ( gas leaks, etc. )

 

[Some Dude]

I think a supers game needs some sort of narrative currency that lets the PC put their thumb on the scale. E.g. FASERIP's karma system was a revelation to me back in the day. And that's something Champions does not have out of the box. Luckily, a hero point system isn't hard to tack on and I have my own house rules for them now.

Some sort of system for "natural"* disasters is a good idea. Again, I will note that my two favourite supers games, Champions and FASERIP, do not have such a thing. You're expected to model scenario's by extrapolating from the basic rules. And you can. But it would save a lot of work if they had some guidelines.

Super PCs really benefit from connection to the world. (I think all RPGs benefit from this, but for supers it's essential.) So a mechanism for connecting the character to the game world is needed. Champions disadvantages system does the job quite nicely; but the RAW could make it clearer for players that that is what it's for.

Interpersonal drama between PCs is an important trope. But I struggle to think of how one can put this into a game system; other than basing it on disadvantages.

*The inverted commas are because this is a supers game. When there's an earthquake there's every reason to suspect Mole People. Frankly, I always suspect Mole People.

Supers! and Supers! RED have systems for natural disasters. I say "systems" because IIRC they're different between editions. They're simple, but functional.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Supers! and Supers! RED have systems for natural disasters. I say "systems" because IIRC they're different between editions. They're simple, but functional.

There have been some attempts at that I've seen in some other games here too (I want to say Hero and BASH UE).