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Post by finarvyn on Aug 6, 2015 12:16:22 GMT
I'll confess that I haven't played as many Superhero RPGs as I'd like, but I thought I'd share a short list of games that might be inspirational and maybe others can chime in with their experiences as well. What's interesting to me is that when I start making lists I've owned a lot more superhero games than I would have thought. Champions -- This was the superhero RPG of the 1980's, as best as I could tell. It had a nice list of superpowers, advantages and disadvantages, and other story elements that made for some fun games. The problem I had with it was that a player could use their "point buy" system in ways not designed and thus break the game. Marvel Super Heroes -- The classic TSR game is the one I played most, and I liked the power scale better than Champions. What I didn't like was that magic was too vague in the core rules, and I was never a big fan of the multi-color action chart. (I had the same issue with Gamma World 3E that used the same chart. Just seemed clunky.) Smallville -- I haven't played it but have enjoyed reading it. This game uses the Cortex system, which I never got into much but others tell me is pretty easy to play. The reason I mention Smallville is because of their use of Relationship Maps. Smallville takes a lot of time having players develop a Relationship Map which is sort of like a Soap Opera, so that characters are all tied to one another and to NPCs in such a way that I think one cares a lot more about the world than in mnay other RPGs. I think that next time I run a superhero game I will do something like this. The TV show Smallville has very complex character relationships and I enjoyed watching it, and more recently I've become enamored with the TV show Arrow that does much the same thing. I've also owned (but not played) the Marvel RPG based in Dragonlance SAGA (cards instead of dice) and the Marvel RPG which was diceless but used stones in a power pool. Neat ideas but not enough to grab my group.
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Post by Adminenkainen on Aug 6, 2015 14:28:45 GMT
Seems like a good thread to have, and some comparing and contrasting with H&H might be a useful thing.
Champions is almost the reverse of H&H, in that Champions is about having a rule and a stat for everything and H&H encourages you to wing it a lot more. I've played some Champions and enjoyed it, but thought character creation was a nightmare.
Marvel Super Heroes is a fantastic system and, pre-H&H, was my go-to system for running superhero games. MSH is great for combats, but doesn't support an exploration game or a long-term campaign as well as I think H&H does. I've actually wondered what a mash-up campaign would be like, that used MSH for combats only, and H&H for everything else...
Eep! Don't mention this Smallville game to my wife -- she loves Smallville and will start insisting I run that instead of H&H!
I played the Marvel version of SAGA once, but I dislike all RPGs that don't use dice, so I'm not an unbiased judge of those systems.
Who wants to suggest some more? There's a deluge of superhero RPGs out there, and I keep seeing new ones on DriveThruRPG all the time.
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Post by finarvyn on Aug 6, 2015 15:15:35 GMT
Champions is almost the reverse of H&H, in that Champions is about having a rule and a stat for everything and H&H encourages you to wing it a lot more. I've played some Champions and enjoyed it, but thought character creation was a nightmare. I agree about Champions. I mostly mentioned it since it was the "gold standard" for a long time in superhero RPGs. I know that there was Superhero 2044 and some others, but for the longest time Champions was the D&D of superhero games. Champions, to me, was always too point-centered. Seemed like a character became a pile of stats instead of a living-breathing character.
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Post by finarvyn on Aug 6, 2015 15:19:38 GMT
Eep! Don't mention this Smallville game to my wife -- she loves Smallville and will start insisting I run that instead of H&H! I'll tell her the next time I see her. Seriously, the Cortex system doesn't do it for me but I think their ideas for relationships are a good read. One of my own flaws is that I tend to make 2D cardboard cutout type campaigns, and stuff like this can add another layer to the game and make characters care more. Superhero games seem to benefit a lot form this because the good guys are protecting the city or their relatives or their secret or whatever. It's a decent resource.
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Post by order99 on Aug 6, 2015 21:16:13 GMT
The one thing I love about the Superhero Genre is it can incorporate other genres-and if the system is robust enough the same works for RPGs. My first superhero RPG had to be Villains and Vigilantes 2nd Edition. Creating your PC was just a leetle bit math-intensive, but once you had the PC written out things got just a little bit easier-not a big fan of the "Attack Form vs Defense Form" chart for your combat rolls though. The game that I played more often in the early days was TSR's first Marvel Superheroes RPG-A simple Ranking system with percentile dice and a color chart ran so fast and so smooth-it had a few flaws, but what didn't? Superworld was a pretty decent game out of the box, but the best thing about it was the tried-and-true BRP system it was based on. Since it shared a common scaffold with all the other BRP games(early Runequest, Call of Cthulu, Stormbringer etc) I could mix and match bits as I pleased and make it completely mine. The absolute BEST Superhro RPG I ever played in though-it wasn't. Our GM tweaked the rules from Atlas Games' Over the Edge for street-level Supers play-and given that the Traits used were freeform, there's no reason you couldn't list 'Steel-Hard Skin' or 'My Eyes are Lasers!' as Traits rather than the usual 'Hard-bitten Private Eye' or 'Computer Hacker'.. Atlas Games released the system separately a while back as the WaRP Core: www.atlas-games.com/warp/ Mind you, there's so many out there these days, you can't run down to the donut shop without tripping on one...
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Post by order99 on Aug 6, 2015 21:32:11 GMT
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Post by archersix on Aug 7, 2015 4:14:47 GMT
The first superhero game I played was Marvel Super Heroes. I liked the magic system, although the gm had to keep a reign on it. It did a good job of emulating magic as portrayed in Marvel comics. Dr. Strange basically did whatever he wanted. I've also played quite a bit of the old GURPS Supers. Very crunchy, but did a good job with street lever through medium-high powered supers. Superman and Thor level characters kind of broke it. Played Villains & Vigilantes once or twice, didn't care too much for it.
I've only played one session of H&H (as the editor), and had a great time.
Gotta say I'm eagerly anticipating the new edition of H&H (in print!)
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Post by finarvyn on Aug 7, 2015 11:29:21 GMT
The first superhero game I played was Marvel Super Heroes. I liked the magic system, although the gm had to keep a reign on it. It did a good job of emulating magic as portrayed in Marvel comics. Dr. Strange basically did whatever he wanted. I'd like to hear more about your experience with magic in MSH. Probably in another thread so as to not derail this one.
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Post by Adminenkainen on Aug 7, 2015 12:39:23 GMT
I haven't played all the games getting mentioned here, but I'll start commenting on the ones I know (from here, and that "top 10" thread as well).
>Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles and other Strangeness (Palladium)
I played this once or twice almost 30 years ago. I still remember my character, Joe Gibbon (he was a gibbon) fondly, though I don't remember much of what he did other than swinging through a window once. I remember the Palladium system being really crunchy.
>Marvel SAGA (TSR)
I played this at GenCon once. I even own it, but have rarely looked at it, given my bias against diceless games. I did enjoy playing it, but that has more to do with the scenario being a free-for-all between heroes and villains and my villain (The Wizard, no less) was the last man standing.
>Villians & Vigilantes (FGU)
This is another game I've only just this year finally picked up. It reads well and I love the Jeff Dee art. I've sort of played it, but I know the GM was house ruling it so thick that I'm not sure how much of it was actually V&V. I'd like to run a session of V&V some day so I can compare and contrast it to H&H better.
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Post by finarvyn on Aug 7, 2015 20:59:00 GMT
>Marvel SAGA (TSR) I played this at GenCon once. I even own it, but have rarely looked at it, given my bias against diceless games. I did enjoy playing it, but that has more to do with the scenario being a free-for-all between heroes and villains and my villain (The Wizard, no less) was the last man standing. Funny story about this one. I attended a seminar on Marvel SAGA before it came out (I forget which convention ... maybe GenCon? It was in Milwaukee, I'm pretty certain.) and this guy had these beta pages that he handed out, all color-coded and pretty but without any artwork. As he was explaining the game he kept referring to the colors instead of the stat names. At one point my buddy nudged me and whispered "which one is magenta?" I had forgotten that he was color blind. So he got pretty much nothing out of the demo. It was okay enough to play. I bought a copy with the intent of taking DragonLance SAGA and blending with with Marvel SAGA somehow, but they didn't seem at all compatible to me. Eventually it went on tyo Noble Knight, unplayed...
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Post by Adminenkainen on Aug 8, 2015 17:33:45 GMT
I have a similar Marvel SAGA anecdote to share. I was at a GenCon just before Marvel SAGA came out (maybe we were at the same panel...?), and when the TSR people at the front table were done talking up Marvel SAGA, I spoke up and predicted that it was going to bomb, because TSR fans would never give up their dice to play a diceless game. They just looked uncomfortable at that and one of them said something like, "Some people's jobs are riding on you being wrong..."
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Post by Adminenkainen on Aug 8, 2015 18:02:46 GMT
Continuing my compare & contrast game,
>Mutants & Masterminds (Green Ronin)
There are some things I really like about M&M, like replacing hit points entirely with the saving throw mechanic, and I have long said that "3E" D&D (which M&M is built on) itself was set-up more to play superheroes than medieval fantasy characters. To be completely honest, M&M already did much of what H&H set out to do, and I might be playing M&M instead today, if it wasn't for that "3E" design aesthetic that I can't stand.
>Champions (Hero Games)
I own it, I've played it, I've never run it. It's possible to play a perfectly good superhero game with Champions, but it feels to me that the math and the bookkeeping it requires is an impediment to the fun, rather than part of the fun.
>Superhero 2044.
I have seen the rules and tried to read them, but they make no sense to me. I have considered just borrowing the patrol rules for one night of patrolling in one of my H&H campaigns, but it hasn't happened yet.
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Post by finarvyn on Aug 9, 2015 13:16:19 GMT
I have a similar Marvel SAGA anecdote to share. I was at a GenCon just before Marvel SAGA came out (maybe we were at the same panel...?), and when the TSR people at the front table were done talking up Marvel SAGA, I spoke up and predicted that it was going to bomb, because TSR fans would never give up their dice to play a diceless game. They just looked uncomfortable at that and one of them said something like, "Some people's jobs are riding on you being wrong..." That sounds so familiar! Wouldn't it be cool if we had been at the same session!
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Post by finarvyn on Aug 9, 2015 13:21:04 GMT
Continuing my compare & contrast game, >Mutants & Masterminds (Green Ronin) There are some things I really like about M&M, like replacing hit points entirely with the saving throw mechanic, and I have long said that "3E" D&D (which M&M is built on) itself was set-up more to play superheroes than medieval fantasy characters. To be completely honest, M&M already did much of what H&H set out to do, and I might be playing M&M instead today, if it wasn't for that "3E" design aesthetic that I can't stand.. That was my problem as well -- I loved the concept of a universal 3E/d20 game line where one basic rules set could fit many different eras, but in reality I never liked 3E. I discovered M&M though some Amber message boards. I had been discussing Amber Diceless (one of my all-time favorite RPGs and all-time favorite settings) and someone told me that they used M&M to run Amber games with dice. So I ran out and bought the thing (I may still have a copy, I'm not sure) but when I read it I just couldn't imagine linking a 3E style game mechanic with Amber.
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Post by finarvyn on Aug 9, 2015 13:24:22 GMT
I don't like the new cover art nearly as much as that of the original, and it makes me nervous to find a "new and improved" version of a game which was pretty much dead for 40 years. Sounds like a total rewrite with the intent on cashing in on the name recognition. I wish they would sell a two-fer: a PDF of the original and another PDF of the advanced. That way I could look at both and compare... - - - - - EDIT: To clarify, I already own a copy of the original. I think that since Superhero 2044 was the first ever superhero RPG that they should include both for histoical reasons. While the "advanced" re-write might be great, buying it and expecting to see what the original was like might be like buying a copy of 3E D&D with the hopes of getting insight into OD&D.
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