What makes a successful superhero game?

[Aldarc]

This begs the question of why be a crimefighter instead of making the world better for EVERYONE with their inventions, etc.

Because you refuse to confront your trauma about your parents’ deaths through therapy.

 

[Theory of Games]

If I recall, part of the problem was MSH didn't have too much in the way of passive (as in, not taking up actions) avoidance. That's a real problem for characters like Daredevil or Spider-Man who are heavily based around it.

As part of MSH's combat sequence, players were allowed to make a defensive FEAT roll that could make it harder for foes to hit them. The real issue is that most rpg players consider defensive options anathema to the extent that they will put their characters in terrible positions tactically just so they can constantly attack.

Part of the problem is that the superhero genre is actually very, very broad and narratively variable, so what the rules of reality are depend heavily on the genre.

Is that a problem or a perk? There are hundreds of superhero ttrpgs to choose from because the superhero genre is so diverse.

A JLA game is quite different from an X-Men game which is very different from Invincible which is extremely different from Young Heroes in Love, despite superficial similarities.

I’m in the camp that says point-buy power balancing is almost entirely a waste of time. Yes, your character can bench press the Moon, but how much can she affect the story with her biceps? That’s much more important. Will she flatten any NPC or PC 90% of the time? Can she deal with obstacles more easily than any other PC? Is the campaign more about relationships, personal growth, or the nature of heroism than who can beat whom in a big fight?

Depends exactly on what your group wants from a superhero campaign. Finding the system that best delivers what you want is key.

One thing I think now is absolutely essential for superhero (emphasis on the hero) games is that there should be good fun mechanical support for actual heroics - saving people, rescuing people, natural disasters, saving the city. That should be absolutely front and centre in the system, more so than combat, in any superhero game, and not just sidelined to Chapter 11: Natural Disasters and the Grappling Rules. You honestly don’t see this a lot and I’ve usually made up my own rules most of the time. Icons isn’t bad and I’ve been quite inspired by the Danger Patrol (not superhero but an excellent system for escalating danger).

(For instance: we’re currently running an X-Men game set in 1995, using MSH. In the last session, the PCs (directed by Destiny, who in this universe is a blind billionaire and the patron in the chair) had to deal with the appearance of “Magneto” (actual identity unrevealed) whom they knew would appear at a Sentinel publicity festival in San Francisco. The resulting battle between Magneto and the Sentinels would kill hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent bystanders since neither side would give any f*cks about collateral damage and friendly fire. The PCs therefore had to spend the first few rounds saving lives while diverting the battle away from the crowd before they could engage the bad guys meaningfully. There were a lot of big hero moments - catching thrown boats and buses, pulling kids out of the way of plasma blasts, the brick tanking a laser beam head-on to protect others despite not having enough invulnerability to do so - and they all needed good rules, which I mostly improvised.)

Agreed!

That all sounds excellent and it’s always great to hear of a campaign really coming together that way.

That said, I think we’re talking at cross purposes. Yes, how the heroes act and the choices they make are often mostly down to roleplaying and inhabiting their characters. But many of those choices will be shaped by the mechanics and their characters’ stats. If Omniman can do almost everything better than everyone else in terms of affecting and changing the story, that’s a mechanical problem.

No it isn't. That's the system emulating exactly what happens in comic books with certain superheroes being are far more powerful than their teammates. Superman is the JLA's big gun; Phoenix was the X-Men's big gun; Thor is the Avenger's big gun; Dr. Strange is ridiculously powerful. That's most of comic books/films. There's no "balance" in the genre and thus there shouldn't be some forced "balance" in the ttrpgs.

If Tinywoman’s best go-to move is to murder people then she’s encouraged to do so by the mechanics.

That looks like a forced example. I can't think of any superhero ttrpg that encourages murderous combat. Usually it's heroic characters fighting dangerous criminals.

If there are no rules apart from “make an Agility check and I’ll tell you descriptively how it works out” for rescues then rescues are boring and that is a mechanical problem. It combat is more tactically fun and interesting than anything else then that’s what the players will default to, barring other issues.

Similarly, narrative games have mechanics that are designed to be gameable and affect player choices. If you get a benny for playing up the Thing’s self-loathing and getting him in trouble you do it so that you can activate his It’s Clobbering Time ability later. If that mechanic isn’t there, then Ben’s player has no incentive to roleplay an anxiety breakdown on Yancy Street and so he probably won’t.

Ben's player might RP the Thing's gregarious nature just because they like the character. Superhero rpgs don't need meta-currencies in order to be enjoyable to play. I like Mutants & Masterminds, but one of the big failures of its design is Hero Points and how they make it extremely difficult to emulate certain kinds of situations that are common in comic books.

 

[GrimCo]

I'd argue that Bucky and Black Widow arent superheroes. They are Super-spies, anti-heroes and so fit as genre adjacent.

Cap is superhero mostly due to his ethics and behaviour. In terms of power, he and Bucky are low level supers, below Spidey. Enhanced human level. Black Widow is peak human level. On their own, Cap/Bucky are specialist mid tier, BW is elite street level, but neither of them, alone, can't go head to head with heavy weights of Marvel Universe. TBH, their power tier is last one that's interesting to play for me personally. Above them, you get in real superhero ( ability, power and threat level) territory.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That said, I think we’re talking at cross purposes.

Seems so, because:

Similarly, narrative games have mechanics that are designed to be gameable and affect player choices. If you get a benny for playing up the Thing’s self-loathing and getting him in trouble you do it so that you can activate his It’s Clobbering Time ability later. If that mechanic isn’t there, then Ben’s player has no incentive to roleplay an anxiety breakdown on Yancy Street and so he probably won’t.

This isn’t something I’ve seen up close & personal. The players “probably” not playing their PC’s established personality without mechanical reinforcement, that is.

 

[billd91]

Similarly, narrative games have mechanics that are designed to be gameable and affect player choices. If you get a benny for playing up the Thing’s self-loathing and getting him in trouble you do it so that you can activate his It’s Clobbering Time ability later. If that mechanic isn’t there, then Ben’s player has no incentive to roleplay an anxiety breakdown on Yancy Street and so he probably won’t.

I think there are problems with that sort of quid pro quo approach - engage self-loathing or the Yancy Street Gang relationship to enable Clobbering Time. Clobbering Time is one of the main things Ben does - but he does it whether he got himself (and therefore the FF) in trouble, or Reed did by engaging in Weird Science and opening a dimensional rift exploited by monsters, or Johnny did by trying to run off to join his girlfriend, or Sue by... being crushed on by Namor or having a weird pregnancy (oh, the FF has been a strange comic in its day). Basing powers on a payoff for jumping through those hoops may be an incentive but it's kind of a resentful one.
I think of these sorts of things more as ways to generate scenarios or exploit a PC's backstory or motivations without them being requirements to fuel their best abilities. I much prefer Mutants and Masterminds's approach - these are complications that, when invoked in a scenario, generate hero points that will come in useful when coming into conflict with the big bad of the scenario (be it villain or phenomenon) that outclasses any individuals in the group normally. Johnny has a psychological need to be in a relationship - so generate a scenario based on that be it Johnny encountering something while running off to Attilan to join Crystal, or Johnny finds out that Frankie has flame powers. And give him a metacurrency bennie in return.
So maybe a superhero RPG needs mainly to require PCs to be developed with exploitable elements for the GM to aggressively use.
Plus, it turns out a metacurrency sort of complication works within scenarios as well. Endanger innocents to keep the PCs busy and enable the big bad's escape? Here's your metacurrency (hero points) for doing the right thing heroically. Spend them wisely.

 

[chuckdee]

I'd argue that Bucky and Black Widow arent superheroes. They are Super-spies, anti-heroes and so fit as genre adjacent.

Cap despondent as left out of chat...

 

[chuckdee]

Cap is superhero mostly due to his ethics and behaviour. In terms of power, he and Bucky are low level supers, below Spidey. Enhanced human level. Black Widow is peak human level. On their own, Cap/Bucky are specialist mid tier, BW is elite street level, but neither of them, alone, can't go head to head with heavy weights of Marvel Universe. TBH, their power tier is last one that's interesting to play for me personally. Above them, you get in real superhero ( ability, power and threat level) territory.

I don't think Superhero is determined by power level, personally, but by ethics and behavior.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To me, that’s kind of the “role-play” aspect of the superheoic genre, not really the mechanics.

So the GM has to present the players with options to do heroic things beyond punching Prof. Terribad in the face. But then the players have to make the decisions to perform those heroic acts beyond punching Prof. Terribad in the face. And TBH, for certain PCs, punching Prof. Terribad is their “raison d'être”, while others will be doing everything they can to minimize collateral damage and unintended casualties caused by all combatants.

(See, for instance, the original incarnations of DC’s Hawk & Dove.)

And part of THAT is depends on whether your players can really get inside the superheroes they’ve created.

I’ve mentioned several times in this board that my best ever campaign was a supers game set in an expanded version of the Space:1889 setting, using HERO for the mechanics. I really peaked as a GM running it- I’ve never even come close to the level of worldbuilding, storytelling and game management than I did running that game. It lasted for over a year.

But at least half of that campaign’s success was due to the 100% buy-in I got from the players. Not only were their PCs created in harmony with the setting, they really played within their characters’ boundaries as written. Even when doing so had negative consequences, characters who had “codes of honor” didn’t take cheap shots, for instance. Characters with more passive/pacifistic builds contributed to victories without compromising their ethics. Etc.

And not to put too fine a point on it, when I tried to run a campaign years later in a different city with different players using the same setting and M&M as the mechanical ruleset, it was a slow-motion disaster. It fizzled in just a few months. Not only was I not as locked in, but the players were somewhat…detached. (One guy didn’t realize that the campaign included the potential to go to the Moon, Mars and Venus until a month after we stopped playing it.)

Yeah, for me, any successful supers game needs strong genre buy in from the players, and ideally some kind of mechanical reinforcement of that fact.

 

[jian]

No it isn't. That's the system emulating exactly what happens in comic books with certain superheroes being are far more powerful than their teammates. Superman is the JLA's big gun; Phoenix was the X-Men's big gun; Thor is the Avenger's big gun; Dr. Strange is ridiculously powerful. That's most of comic books/films. There's no "balance" in the genre and thus there shouldn't be some forced "balance" in the ttrpgs.

Just because the comics do have characters who should be able to trivially outperform their colleagues at almost everything doesn’t mean that’s something you want to emulate in a game where hopefully everyone is supposed to be having fun and enjoying being able to work together with equal spotlight and usefulness. If the game allows great variations in character utility (not power level, that’s a different thing), that is a mechanical problem first and foremost.

That looks like a forced example. I can't think of any superhero ttrpg that encourages murderous combat. Usually it's heroic characters fighting dangerous criminals.

There are quite a few game systems where lethal attacks are explicitly more effective than non lethal attacks and it’s not hard to imagine a superhero game doing the same. A good example might be MSH, where being able to get a Kill result (as you can with guns and swords) with a Red is mechanically better than almost any other outcome in combat, especially if there’s discussion about whether getting a Kill result costs you Karma in and of itself (we generally ruled not, because you couldn’t help the result with an energy blast or similar, you only lost the Karma if the person actually died).

 

[jian]

I think there are problems with that sort of quid pro quo approach - engage self-loathing or the Yancy Street Gang relationship to enable Clobbering Time. Clobbering Time is one of the main things Ben does - but he does it whether he got himself (and therefore the FF) in trouble, or Reed did by engaging in Weird Science and opening a dimensional rift exploited by monsters, or Johnny did by trying to run off to join his girlfriend, or Sue by... being crushed on by Namor or having a weird pregnancy (oh, the FF has been a strange comic in its day). Basing powers on a payoff for jumping through those hoops may be an incentive but it's kind of a resentful one.
I think of these sorts of things more as ways to generate scenarios or exploit a PC's backstory or motivations without them being requirements to fuel their best abilities. I much prefer Mutants and Masterminds's approach - these are complications that, when invoked in a scenario, generate hero points that will come in useful when coming into conflict with the big bad of the scenario (be it villain or phenomenon) that outclasses any individuals in the group normally. Johnny has a psychological need to be in a relationship - so generate a scenario based on that be it Johnny encountering something while running off to Attilan to join Crystal, or Johnny finds out that Frankie has flame powers. And give him a metacurrency bennie in return.
So maybe a superhero RPG needs mainly to require PCs to be developed with exploitable elements for the GM to aggressively use.
Plus, it turns out a metacurrency sort of complication works within scenarios as well. Endanger innocents to keep the PCs busy and enable the big bad's escape? Here's your metacurrency (hero points) for doing the right thing heroically. Spend them wisely.

Generally in such games it’s not a requirement to generate Plot Points via role playing (or getting yourself in trouble, rather) but since it’s an option it’s one players are encouraged to take.

Let’s take three examples of the Thing in different systems:

1) In many traditional RPGs, Ben derives no benefit from going on a brief self-loathing rampage in Yancy Street, but does derive narrative and reputational disbenefit from property damage etc. The player is discouraged from doing so unless it’s something he feels is important to do.

2) In MSH, Ben is penalised 50 Karma for going on a rampage (it’s actually one of the key examples in the book) as well as all the problems from 1) above. The player definitely isn’t doing that unless he really feels he has to.

3) In MHR, Ben gets a PP for playing up his Man or Monster Distinction; he can later spend that PP on a variety of bonuses, such as the Clobbering Time FX (attack an entire crowd of mooks with one swing). The player is incentivised to at least think about having a rampage when it’s dramatically appropriate.

The three options result in different incentives and thus sometimes different player choices. Different tables will have different opinions about the three options and their play styles.

Personallly, I rather like 3) for superhero games because it tends to model what happens in comics better. There’s a mechanical reason Ben gets into a self-loathing funk, or Johnny is such a hothead, or Reed loses himself in his work, or Sue always tries to protect everyone. Sure, you can do all that with just roleplaying, but in my experience you get better and more dramatic results with 3).