Superhero games

[ORtrail]

Hmm, my only experience with the boxed Superworld was with another friend as GM. He was pretty new to GMing and Superworld, and all the stuff about Full actions, Semi-actions, Quartermoves, etc. really soured us. We got through part of the sample adventure and never finished.

I picked up a NEW Superworld boxed set around 1995, but never bothered to really read it. The simplicity of the WoW version, and vague memories of the box set version being too complicated have always stayed with me.

Sounds like they did some practical adjustments between WoW and the boxed set, although, I've house ruled so much, and gotten so comfortable with it, that I'm resistant to learning new/other rules.

Actually, despite STILL collecting a number of RPGs over the years, I don't have the time or desire to learn new gaming systems. Hence the return of BRP is so very welcome. I could sit down and run something in 15 minutes, and even newbies "get" the percentage system very quickly.

I'll need to wait and see how much I want to change with the new BRP book, before deciding what to run with it. At least that way I'll know what BRP rules most people will know, and how to explain the changes I'll probably make.

Supergirl clones are ALWAYS welcome. In ANY game.

[Nightshade]

The Boxed Superworld still had some functional top end limits--it wasn't going to really handle your Thor types or some of the Silver Age DC heroes--but it could handle the majority of Marvel characters and at least half of the post Silver DC ones.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

The Boxed Superworld still had some functional top end limits--it wasn't going to really handle your Thor types or some of the Silver Age DC heroes--but it could handle the majority of Marvel characters and at least half of the post Silver DC ones.

Yeah, pretty much. What I found with my Powergirl clone was that the character wasn't quite a s good. Of course having 20 odd powers didn't help. You could probably build Thor with the STR, toughness and skills of the thunder god, but wouldn't have enough points left over to do justice to his fully array of powers.

But most of those limits were more "not enough points" than "system can't do it".

And the game did get a little clunky at that level.

[ORtrail]

I just had to comment on your post from that "Fate points" thread, Atgxtg. You wrote:

I think the thing with FATE points and with the multi-genre nature of the new BRP is that we end up needing the options to tweak the BPR rules enough to make them work.

For example, if you run a BRP supers campaign, you need a way to tone down the inherent lethality of the BPR rules or after the first advenutre half the PCs will be dead and the rest wanted for manslaughter.

Even a "Street-level" supers campaign needs a little tweaking. In BRP if a half dozen thugs open fire on someone like the Batman, we are probably going to be short one superhero. Ganging up is very effective in BRP, and one or two bullets could drop the caped crusader (with a an 18 CON and at 210lbs/SIZ 15, Brucvie has 17 hp). IN BRP the laws of probability will result in the eventual impale or worse a critical hit and one dead hero. Fairly quickly, too.

That doesn't happen in the comics, not in over 65 years. So to run that sort of game we need a tweak that will help us simulate that kind of reality. Something like FATE points is certainly an option.

Same with most of you figures in heroic fantasy. With all the fighting, someone would have rolled an 01 against Conan and killed him.


Firearms sort of aggravate the problem, too, since the normal defenses aren't as effective. Maybe BRP will change the dodge rules. As it stands, Batman can't dodge a dozen bullets. So most the attacks are uncontested. BRP was really designed around the melee fight and the attack/parry mechanic. Without some sort of active defense against missile attacks we'll have problems.

End quote.

Agreed, BRP needs some changes to allow for a more heroic campaign. This made me realize how much I've tweaked Superworld to boost the players chances of survival. First, they get CON + a bonus from SIZ and POW.

Batman, would have 24 hps: CON 18, plus 1pt for every SIZ pt over 12, and 1 pt for every 2 pts over 12 POW (call it "will to survive"). Giving Batman an 18 POW seems reasonable to me, so you get 18+3+3= 24. I'd allow them to take half CON in negative numbers before they actually died from wounds, and stay conscious with even 1 hp. It worked to dramatic effect in more than one adventure.

Watch "Batman Begins" and remember his armored suit, which was a given in my Superworld campaigns (to one degree or another, all characters costumes provided some armor value). I'd give Bats about 5-6 pts versus Kinetic. I like his chances of survival better now, but those 6 armed goons are still trouble for him. As it should be.

BTW, we subtracted any SIZ pt over 15 from dodge rolls. And speaking of dodge rolls?

We always allowed dodge rolls to be made versus all physical attacks. It fits well with the super genre. You could parry missle attacks with a shield, or roll a "basic" dodge roll (DEX times 2). You could spend your next action for "full dodge" roll where the character was diving, rolling or whatever to avoid the hit (DEX times 3). Success, even versus a critical hit, it would reduce it to a normal hit, or a miss if you also got a critical dodge. Impale shots went by the wayside in favor of roll 10% or less of skill for critical success.

I had a group of fairly newbie players, and this made BRP even simpler for them. It also kept them from taking many critical hits, in favor of more drawn-out super battles where players usually got taken down 3,4,5 hps at a time.

I think FATE points work well in a super game, though I never thought to use them, and would keep them very limited to crucial moments. I'm not sure of the actual application either. Re-rolls? Add 20% to rolls? Criticals to normal success or normal to miss? Truthfully, as we played our version of Superworld, no hero ever needed more than an extended hospital stay.

In a WARLORDS OF ALEXANDER campaign, I think they go by the wayside, or allow a character just 1-2 FATE points total. I'd be using more gritty BRP combat rules too.

I understand my take on Superworld and BRP might send some purists into an apoplectic fit though...

[Atgxtg]

Not as bit a fit as you might think. Superworld also allowed dodging of byullets and such. It simply fits the genre. How often do you see Spidy or Batman leap out of the way of a hail of bullets. Too often for it to be missed attack rolls.

As for the Batman armor, well the started that with the first firm. Probably becuase unless you have the physique of Bruce Wayne, you won't look like you do in spandex. Adame West used to comment that you could watch the shows and tell when he had eaten a big lunch.

From a modern perpective the armor makes sense too. I'm sure Finger and Kane would have had Bruce wear it in the 40s if it had been around. What they had at the time was too heavy.

The balancing act for any RPG is for the player to feel threatened and like all the odds are against him, when in reality the oppoiste is true. The last thing a godd GM wants is to wpie out the PCs. That ruins the mood, and requires new characters, and more work to get the new characters into the campaign.

zFor instance, we want whoever is playing Batman to thing that those six goons have his number and that he's dead unless he does something clever. In reality the six goons can't shoot straight and probably are as likely to kill each other in the crossfire as they are to hit the Batman. More likely.

That is where the GM comes in.

BTW, that is also why I like the "Hero Points" fix for lethality. It is more transparent than some solutions. The PC doesn't look any tougher on paper.

[ORtrail]

Allowing those dodge rolls in other BRP games, especially the Wild West ones, would help characters survive... at least longer. If the GM hates Fate points, and the players don't happen to be time travellers with kevlar vests, you don't have that many options. Note: Other then a bit of Boot Hill (where thrown knives always seem to hit groins), my only western adventures have in fact been with characters as armored time travellers*.

Unless the character is taking careful aim, I'd assume they are side-stepping, ducking, using any bit of cover (hitching post, water trough, kick over a table, boulder, etc.) to make themselves a harder target. All while trying to get off a few shots of their own, of course.

Smart characters will try to ambush and/or choose fights carefully. Use a rifle when they have pistols, take out the guy with the shotgun first, etc. If a player wants to stand in middle of the street, well, live and learn I guess.

In that Batman example? I'd really expect the player to be smart about how he went after those guys. Take a few out from the shadows with your batarangs, sneak up and hit one or two from behind after distracting them with a noise, call in a swarm of bats, use Robin as a human shield... er, well, you get the idea. I was always willing to work with the players when they gave me any little reason to give them an advantage.

Of course, that should apply to every game.

*The Alamo counts as a western adventure, right? I mean, 1836, black powder pistols, rifles, bayonets, bowie knives? Close enough? They were there as observers of events, to stop that guy with the modern sniper rifle from killing Santa Anna, and run like rabbits to the time portal inside the Mission as the Mexican army came over and through the walls. One of my players DIDN'T know how the whole Alamo thing was going to end. I still chuckle about that.

[Atgxtg]

One thing that could and should make a different if movement. If a character is actively trying to make ones self a hard target, halving the attack skill chance is appropriate. Cover would be another big plus.

I'm not a big fan of doging in a Western game. It just gives the wrong feel. Doding firearms is more of a sueperhero thing. But I'll happily use Haro/Fate points for a similar effect.

On fact, the old LUC roll from the FASA Star Trek game might work. In that game if a character got hit by a phaser if they made a LUC save they were only "grazed" and took only a fraction of the normal damage, roughly a third. A luck roll to take half damage or so might just work. Or a LUC roll to downgrade the Sucess level by a grade.

Another solution would be the "Flashing Blades" method. In Flashing Blades most weapon only did about 2 points of damage of an attack. But on a roll of half skill or less it added 1D6 to the damage. If we had normal hits only do 1 point of damage unless under half skill it would make flunkies less threatening without really hurting the PCs or big villains.

[FunGuyFromYuggoth]

It becomes hard to scale a known superhero b/c all of their powers were presented by different artists/writers across decades with wild swings up and down depending on where the story needed to be. They weren't developed by game designers with point buy systems. My suggestion would be to rejigger the point buying system to a maxed out character with points appropriate for an Epic Level campaign as a goal and to put that to one side, but to place the player somewhere in the middle or the bottom, and add and subtract power across an entire campaign (so that a cerain budget of points can be reallocated). They could occasionally borrow/leverage these other powers depending on need (Fate?). This would hopefully keep the player and the GM invested in a storyline that challenges and inspires them.

[Nightshade]

There's also another issue that comes up in Superhero games that A refers to above at one point: how much a premium you place on versitility. In a game that charges full value for all powers, you're putting quite a premium on it, as two offensive powers cost full cost even though its anything but clear that the second one actually increases the capability of the character as much as the first did; sometimes a Blast is useful and sometimes a Snare is useful, but having both is probably not worth twice as much as just having one. At the other end, something like Mutants and Masterminds (and to a lesser extent, Hero) places versitility at a heavy discount over raw power. Where you want a superhero game to sit tends to turn on your perceptions of the genre and the sorts of characters within the genre you want to support, because any decision tends to encourage some and discourage others.

[CthulhuFnord]

Originally Posted by Trifletraxor

Is there anyone of you who plan to use Basic Roleplaying to play a superhero game? If so, how do you game such a setting? Superhero stuff have very little appeal to me, but I would like to hear how other people are planning to use this part, and how the setting would be.

SGL.

Well my plan is pretty much... Call of Cthulhu + pre Golden age of Superheros. It's going to be a globe trotting, cult smashing kind of game. Depending on how long the campain goes on the players may even have a chance to smash some nazis too.

Fate points are going to be key for the game. I may even consider using some mook rules as well.