Thread: Superhero games
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Old November 28th, 2007
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fmitchell fmitchell is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Atgxtg View Post
Perhaps the biggest challenge has less to do with game mechanics but with game style. For instance many RPGs need to work some sort of balance of power between characters, or at least between the PCs and their opponents.

Supers games don't. Batman just isn't in the same league as Superman (okay, they are both in the Justice League), and can't really compete with him. In the comics they get around this by having Batman use his brains. Even that is bending things a bit. Supes is supposed to be very intelligent, but acts like a musclebound idiot most of the time. For instance he has superspeed, but tends to rely on his invulnerabilty-thus he get shot with the kryptonite bullet. Or he pauses when someone threatens a civilan despite the fact that he has 100 differernt ways to disarm/defdeat a foe before they could carry out the threat.
If you've seen Truth & Justice from Atomic Sock Monkey, the author explicitly tries to reproduce these sort of plot-dependent powers. Not to delve too deeply into the rules (what there is of them), every use of power is a roll against that power's rating. So, you can pit Superman's "Kryptonian Physique" +6 against Batman's "Gadgeteer" +6 directly, and the odds would be 50/50; if Supes won, he'd knock Bats for a loop (but not actually drive his fist through Bats' body, as he might in real life); if Bats won, he'd have some secret weapon in his utility belt that hurt Supes for that round.
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