Superhero RPG that is not about wizards

[jt]

The majority of supers in Worm are one trick ponies, so there's definitely superhero fiction out there that works that way.

I can't imagine a sane system for playing Worm in though. Like the protagonist can control all bugs in a 3-block radius, so she cares about things like how nice of a neighborhood she's in and where the dumpsters are. Does your system model the fact that there are more bugs in slums? If so, WTF, only one character cares about that. And she ends up way stronger than anyone expects (so much for balance) and falls over when fighting a small time fire manipulator (so much for encounter building).

If you want to go full simulations-of-powers like Worm I think you're better off using something like FATE and frequently resorting to looking things up in Wikipedia. If your goal is just to have the Justice League all contributing to the same fist fight though, I think the effects-based approach probably is your best bet.

[Josh_Kablack]

Also Josh, join our discord and play Champions with us.

Thanks for the invite, and I can't say I'm not intrigued at the notion of joining a new Champs game -- But my scheduling availability is gonna be shit for the next couple months, and sadly I have too many RL obligations to take on any sort of regular RPGing.

[TiaC]

The majority of supers in Worm are one trick ponies, so there's definitely superhero fiction out there that works that way.

I can't imagine a sane system for playing Worm in though. Like the protagonist can control all bugs in a 3-block radius, so she cares about things like how nice of a neighborhood she's in and where the dumpsters are. Does your system model the fact that there are more bugs in slums? If so, WTF, only one character cares about that. And she ends up way stronger than anyone expects (so much for balance) and falls over when fighting a small time fire manipulator (so much for encounter building).

If you want to go full simulations-of-powers like Worm I think you're better off using something like FATE and frequently resorting to looking things up in Wikipedia. If your goal is just to have the Justice League all contributing to the same fist fight though, I think the effects-based approach probably is your best bet.

Are you aware of Weaverdice? It's a RPG created for Worm. Here's it's reddit, with links to the rules. Glancing at character creation, it looks bad, but I'd love to hear other people's thoughts.

[Orca]

When it was first being put together I remember thinking the character creation was about torturing the players in the same way a lot of Worm was about torturing the characters. It still looks that way.

Success rolls use 1d6 vs. target number 4, with a + (stat-3) applied and some skills adding 1 or 2 or allowing roll twice, take the highest. Simplifying that's 1d6 + stat (+ possible skill mods) vs. TN 7. I don't know why they didn't do it that way. Opposed rolls exist too.

In combat standard (committed), move (partial) and full round actions exist. Damage is by wounds aka lovingly detailed critical effects.

It's definitely a rules-light system outside the character creation and maybe critical effects. I can't see the den liking it.

[jt]

I've never dug into it too much, but everything I've seen about weaverdice puts me off. It introduces a mapping between trigger events and resulting power classification that makes no sense within the fiction of the series. In Worm the power classes have nothing to do with how powers actually work; they're purely a way of communicating which set of countermeasures a law enforcement agency needs to employ if they're trying to deal with that cape. So having those same classes actually matter for where powers come from makes no sense, as they're just something people in-story made up.

[jadagul]

The game was actually made largely by Worm's author, and is basically considered secondary canon/a way for Wildbow to share worldbuilding that didn't make it into the original text.

You're right that the classification system is a post-hoc creation of the PRT, but it is definitely canon that the type of powers relate to the type of trigger event, and you can classify that relationship through the post-hoc classification system as well.

[Foxwarrior]

OP seems to have a problem actually analyzing superheroes, starting with their own examples:

I admit it, I don't have a lot of experience with actual comic books. I'm attracted to the idea of playing a superhero more because of the promise of a character who can do cool things without being able to do every cool thing. Even in my first post I express disappointment that Champions effectively supports playing characters like Dr Strange and Batman, who are superheroes.

But...

doesn't need oxygen to live

I'm going to hazard a guess that the first time this showed up, the writer thought the audience would be okay with it because the Hulk is Super Tough.

Everyone wants to tell me that the Hulk has 15 powers to represent being Super Tough, but that's about as sensible as giving humans the following non-super powers:

Skin capable of resisting rain.
The ability to regenerate from bruises and some broken bones.
Temperature resistance in a range of several degrees.
Minor resistance to radiation.
The ability to survive light bludgeoning hits.
Skin strong enough to survive very gentle slashing hits.
Some organs that aren't destroyed by small stabbing hits.
The ability to not die when exposed to some electricity.
Moderate resistance to diseases.
Minor resistance to poisons.
Immunity to death by chocolate.
The ability to build up a resistance to Capsaicin.
Etc.

[hyzmarca]

doesn't need oxygen to live (can survive in the vacuum of space, and has done so several times),

Hulk does need oxygen to live, but he has super lung capacity proportional to his strength and can hold his breath for a very long time.

[Username17]

There are a wide constellation of things which are reasonable and acceptable for a character with a particular "super" archetype to do in a story. A character with "super toughness" might be resilient in any of a number of situations, but equally might not be. Can a character who is "tough" be incapacitated with an electric current? A poison gas? Being dumped under water? Psychic blasts?

The answer, obviously, is maybe. A character who can bounce bullets off his manly chest could very plausibly also survive any of those scenarios. But equally plausibly they could pass out and wake up captured and placed into a death trap by the villain.

A game about Superheroes needs means to determine whether a character who has a simple description like "is tough" is resilient in any particular situation. Champions, for example, has Physical Defense, Energy Defense, Resistant Defense, Hardened Defense, Ego Defense, Flash Defense, Power Defense, Knockback Resistance, and various environment survival powers. You can certainly argue that the specific list of Champions defenses needs work, but you are going to have to do something along those lines. Because one character who "is tough" will be expected to shrug off an effect that another tough character would fold like a paper doll to.

Now personally, I now feel that Superheroes lend themselves more to character class mechanics and that asking people to do point accounting to buy individual facets of toughness or super strength is both too fiddly and not actually desirable. But equally claiming that noting that one super tough hero can drown and another cannot isn't worth having mechanics to represent is ridiculous on its face. Obviously it's important whether one character can drown in water or not. It's obviously critically important sometimes, and a super hero game that doesn't definitively answer that question isn't worth talking about.

-Username17

[Dogbert]

Hulk does need oxygen to live, but he has super lung capacity proportional to his strength and can hold his breath for a very long time.

Except lung capacity in space means shit, because the moment you move to a vacuum, all oxygen your cells is expelled... mind you, you don't even need to be in space for this to happen (read on hypoxia and anoxia). All you do by "holding your breath" in space is destroying your own lungs as the exiting oxygen tears them everywhere (Double Dragon Neon parodies this crap actually). Also, Hulk roars in space, and talks in space, just like Superman... so no, he doesn't "hold his breath."

[Wiseman]

The majority of supers in Worm are one trick ponies, so there's definitely superhero fiction out there that works that way.

I can't imagine a sane system for playing Worm in though. Like the protagonist can control all bugs in a 3-block radius, so she cares about things like how nice of a neighborhood she's in and where the dumpsters are. Does your system model the fact that there are more bugs in slums? If so, WTF, only one character cares about that. And she ends up way stronger than anyone expects (so much for balance) and falls over when fighting a small time fire manipulator (so much for encounter building).

If you want to go full simulations-of-powers like Worm I think you're better off using something like FATE and frequently resorting to looking things up in Wikipedia. If your goal is just to have the Justice League all contributing to the same fist fight though, I think the effects-based approach probably is your best bet.

Except not even that. The main character can control bugs within a 2-3 block radius from her, but she also has the power of perfect multitasking, able to effectively infinitely divide her focus on multiple tasks at once. Grue can create darkness, that limits sight, and also hearing, and also can copy the powers of people in his darkness. Glory girl is a flying brick, but also has an aura that bolsters her allies and demoralizes her enemies.

Then you get to Tinkers, who are basically just wizards anyways.

[Dogbert]

I admit it, I don't have a lot of experience with actual comic books.

Hot Tip: Read them and study them then, don't go F4ntastic on us just because you don't think you need to know how things work (just like Fox). The Dunning Kruger effect is always painful to watch.

P.S: Yes, I can be pretty anal on superheroes, that and science fiction are things I'm very fussy about.

[Kaelik]

I admit it, I don't have a lot of experience with actual comic books.

Hot Tip: Read them and study them then, don't go F4ntastic on us just because you don't think you need to know how things work (just like Fox). The Dunning Kruger effect is always painful to watch.

P.S: Yes, I can be pretty anal on superheroes, that and science fiction are things I'm very fussy about.

Yeah sorry, it's 2018, "Read and Study Comic Books before you start having opinions about how to play Superhero RPGs" is pretty fucking dumb.

[CaptainComics]

Yeah sorry, it's 2018, "Read and Study Comic Books before you start having opinions about how to play Superhero RPGs" is pretty fucking dumb.

Obviously, anyone can have an opinion at any time, regardless of their level of sophistication or familiarity with any particular topic. But if you're going to come in and ask why things are a particular way, the answer is obviously going to be, "Well, do some research and you'll find out."

Do you think it's dumb for someone to say, "Read Harry Potter before you try to armchair design a game system to simulate the events of the Harry Potter novels"? Because I think it's the obvious primary response.

Except lung capacity in space means shit, because the moment you move to a vacuum, all oxygen your cells is expelled... mind you, you don't even need to be in space for this to happen (read on hypoxia and anoxia). All you do by "holding your breath" in space is destroying your own lungs as the exiting oxygen tears them everywhere (Double Dragon Neon parodies this crap actually). Also, Hulk roars in space, and talks in space, just like Superman... so no, he doesn't "hold his breath."

You're not wrong, dogbert - except that you're wrong. The Incredible Hulk does in fact hold his breath to survive underwater and in space.



That's stupid and nonsensical, but every time he does it the caption boxes proudly announce that this is what is happening. It's like when the Flash vibrates through solid objects - it doesn't actually work, but those are the rules established in the fiction and the explanation granted by it.

I'm going to hazard a guess that the first time this showed up, the writer thought the audience would be okay with it because the Hulk is Super Tough.

Everyone wants to tell me that the Hulk has 15 powers to represent being Super Tough, but that's about as sensible as giving humans the following non-super powers: (long list here)

The problem there is that humans are real, and Hulks are not.

You can answer the question of "Would a human lift that thing/survive that attack/jump that high/etc?" by going to the internet and Googling it, or possibly trying it yourself if that doesn't seem particularly stupid and dangerous. As a result, two people are likely to answer the questions the same way, or at least be capable of being convinced to agree when presented with evidence. This means that in a roleplaying game, you don't need to explain it - common experience will generally mean that the stories told by multiple people will overall agree on what humans can and can't do.

Now, how do you answer if a cosmically-mutated scientist who can stretch his body into bizarre shapes can withstand a nega ray blast from the Infinirod? Well, Infinirods don't exist, and neither do stretchy people, and for that matter, neither do the kind of cosmic rays that give you superpowers. So these interactions need to be actively defined, either in advance or at the time that an interaction comes up - and then, they should be remembered and kept consistent, so when that Infinirod comes back in issue (or session) 23, now in the hands of Dr. Diabolical, it does what the audience (or player) expects.

Now if Rubber-Man has on his character sheet "Stretchy", that might be enough to answer the question. Maybe the game system has a robust explanation of what kind of impacts can be absorbed by rubbery bodies vs which can't, and whether or not this needs to be activated on purpose or is just passively "on". But maybe it doesn't, and then everyone at the table has to argue about whether Rubber-Man can use his stretchiness to roll with the force beam, or if it neutralizes his atoms into protomatter just like it did on the houseplant in the earlier scene.

In superhero stories, there are a lot of duplicates, rip-offs, and pastiches. As a result, there are a lot of characters with similar, or at least nominally similar, power sets. These edge cases are legitimately a means of differentiating one character from another. They matter. And a game that tries to allow you to play superheroes needs to account for the tough guy that needs to breathe but doesn't burn and the tough guy who is invulnerable to fire but suffocates in moments.

Now personally, I now feel that Superheroes lend themselves more to character class mechanics

I'm very interested to hear more on this. I've seen it attempted several times, and I've never seen a class-based supers game that didn't seem incredibly limiting in its archetypes. Some power sets are so basic, like the Brick, that you could fairly easily universalize that archetype, but what the heck classes are Sleepwalker, Quislet, and Cannonball?

[Foxwarrior]

Okay, I admit that my arguments about the Hulk being just tough are a bit pedantic, perhaps as a reaction to the idea that he has multiple powers because if you enumerate all the things that being tough means, you get a lot. The distinction between having 15 powers that are linked, and having 1 power that's very nuanced, is perhaps kind of irrelevant.

But my impression of the Hulk from the movies is that his toughness is, within superhero movie physics, a pretty generic form of toughness, and that a system built with superheroes in mind should key as many environmental hazards as possible off of stats the Hulk already has a lot of. If, every time a new type of harmful thing is introduced, the Hulk has to add a new power to be immune to it, then the Hulk is a kludged character concept.

[jadagul]

CaptainComics: it's a bit hard to Google because Frank's working title is Fantastic, which is also just a common adjective. But you can find a basic writeup here.

The inspiration, I believe, was complaining about 4e when it came out; Frank argued that that system was better suited to superheroes than to sword and sorcery.

[Kaelik]

Yeah sorry, it's 2018, "Read and Study Comic Books before you start having opinions about how to play Superhero RPGs" is pretty fucking dumb.

Obviously, anyone can have an opinion at any time, regardless of their level of sophistication or familiarity with any particular topic. But if you're going to come in and ask why things are a particular way, the answer is obviously going to be, "Well, do some research and you'll find out."

Do you think it's dumb for someone to say, "Read Harry Potter before you try to armchair design a game system to simulate the events of the Harry Potter novels"? Because I think it's the obvious primary response.

That's an amazingly good example, because I also wouldn't tell harry potter fans who watch the movies religiously that they aren't allowed to have an opinion until the read the books.

Which is kind of my point. "Go read comics" is not the only source for someone to have SUPER HERO stories in 2018, there are books, and movies and TV shows and shit, it's fine to just admit that comics aren't the only possible source for super hero stories and people can have ideas about what super hero stories should be like without reading comics.

[CaptainComics]

But my impression of the Hulk from the movies is that his toughness is, within superhero movie physics, a pretty generic form of toughness, and that a system built with superheroes in mind should key as many environmental hazards as possible off of stats the Hulk already has a lot of.

Yes, that's true, but we're modeling not just the Hulk, but Superman and Unus the Untouchable as well. Superman doesn't need to breathe at all, the Hulk needs to breathe once in a while, and Unus suffocates like anyone else because his toughness comes from an always-on force field. Same with diseases, or poisons, or gas attacks, or how long you can go without food or sleep. In the source material, "toughness" simply does not correlate to resistance (or lack thereof) to a number of different attack types. And this holds for most powers you'd care to name - there are stretchy heroes who can disguise themselves as lamps and some that can't deform themselves that much, there are fire controllers that can generate flames and some that can't, there are transforming heroes who maintain the same personality and knowledge in both forms and there are those that don't. An RPG has to do more that model one archetype - it needs to distinguish between characters within that archetype.This is generally done by breaking down abilities into the most basic building blocks that can be identified, and then giving you enough character build resources to get the ones that tend to go together, or would otherwise make sense to be co-occurring.

CaptainComics: it's a bit hard to Google because Frank's working title is Fantastic, which is also just a common adjective. But you can find a basic writeup here.

The inspiration, I believe, was complaining about 4e when it came out; Frank argued that that system was better suited to superheroes than to sword and sorcery.

Thanks for the link. I'm interested if this ends up getting completed. However, at the very beginning there are an awful lot of caveats of what characters can and can't be modeled (calling out the Martian Manhunter and Galactus specifically). So it sounds like this is running into the exact same issue that every other class-based supers game I've seen has - you can play that game just fine, but it's not going to resemble any published comic book universe at all.

[CaptainComics]

That's an amazingly good example, because I also wouldn't tell harry potter fans who watch the movies religiously that they aren't allowed to have an opinion until the read the books.

Which is kind of my point. "Go read comics" is not the only source for someone to have SUPER HERO stories in 2018, there are books, and movies and TV shows and shit, it's fine to just admit that comics aren't the only possible source for super hero stories and people can have ideas about what super hero stories should be like without reading comics.

Kaelik, what the hell are you talking about? Absolutely no one has said anything close to the ridiculous straw man that you are referring to. Absolutely no one said "Comics only, no items, final destination."

The original subject of discussion was why do superhero games have to give characters so many powers. The answer was that characters tend to have more powers than you would think, or at least have the potential to have those powers or not as the player/writer/creator chooses. Examples were drawn from multiple media, but obviously more references will be made to the comics. They're the most plentiful source material, and in fact the original source of all of the fucking characters being discussed. For example, I don't think the Hulk ever went underwater in the five or so movies he's appeared in, so the question of if he can drown gives you a null pointer error unless you go to the earlier source material, where the question has been emphatically answered hundreds of times.

You're not talking with people who said you can't have an opinion on Harry Potter if you've only seen the movies. You're talking to people who cited the part of the book that the movie left out that explains someone's question about why Dumbledore did that weird thing.

Furthermore, I'd argue that the currently popular superhero movies give an incredibly limited view of what the genre is capable of. In the case of DC's side of things, they miss the point entirely and provide a bizarrely distorted version of the characters and scenarios available.

[erik]

Kaelik, what the hell are you talking about? Absolutely no one has said anything close to the ridiculous straw man that you are referring to. Absolutely no one said "Comics only, no items, final destination."

not in that many words, no. Dogbert just dismissed opinions because someone didn’t read da books.

For example, I don't think the Hulk ever went underwater in the five or so movies he's appeared in, so the question of if he can drown gives you a null pointer error unless you go to the earlier source material, where the question has been emphatically answered hundreds of times.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tgcbuO3ku7Y&t=0m54s

You're not talking with people who said you can't have an opinion on Harry Potter if you've only seen the movies.

Dogbert.

[CaptainComics]

I don't think that's a fair or charitable reading of Dogbert's post, but I'll leave it to Dogbert to clarify or defend those statements, rather than try to argue what another poster meant or was trying to say.

[maglag]

You're not wrong, dogbert - except that you're wrong. The Incredible Hulk does in fact hold his breath to survive underwater and in space.



That's stupid and nonsensical, but every time he does it the caption boxes proudly announce that this is what is happening. It's like when the Flash vibrates through solid objects - it doesn't actually work, but those are the rules established in the fiction and the explanation granted by it.

Considering how the Hulk already laughs at physics like violating the conservation of mass and energy all the time, it's stupidly silly to try to claim "nuh nuh the Hulk couldn't possibly hold his breath in extreme conditions because muh realizm!"

[CaptainComics]

Realizm has nothing to do with it. It's about whether or not you can assume a character has one power when they have been demonstrated to have a different power. And you just can't do that, because none of it works with real physics and therefore you just can't extrapolate freely or deduce anything much at all.

The Hulk is strong and tough, and he can hold his breath a long time. Strong Guy is strong and tough, and he can't hold his breath for very long. The one is completely independent of the other, even though the rationale for why the Hulk can hold his breath theoretically could apply just as well to Strong Guy. Likewise, the Flash can use his superspeed to turn intangible and travel in time, and Quicksilver can't, and Magneto can use magnets to mind contrrol people and Cosmic Boy can't.

[Dogbert]

Considering how the Hulk already laughs at physics like violating the conservation of mass and energy all the time, it's stupidly silly to try to claim "nuh nuh the Hulk couldn't possibly hold his breath in extreme conditions because muh realizm!"

This discussion has little to do with realizms and everything to do with character creation guidelines as related to understand the source material.

F4ntastic was a stupid movie because it was basically Fox throwing a temper tantrum after having his X-Men crap movies repeatedly panned.


"Iiiii doooon't neeeed to knoooow how toooo dooo suuupeeeerheeeroes!"

Kevin Siembieda also showed how little he knew about superheroes (and almost everything) with Heroes Unlimited, which is a stupid game.

People look stupid when doing stupid things without documenting themselves first. If I write a horror game that doesn't actually support any of the genre's conventions and can't be used to replicate any horror story, then my game is stupid, and if I go all Uwe Bol telling critics "you all rubes don't understand my genius!" then I'm also a pedantic idiot.

Now, if the OP had phrased his post into something more coherent like "I want a game that does rock bottom-tier mutants like Pyro or Dazzler or Excrement-Eating Lad" then I'd have gladly pointed them in the direction of a couple suitable games.

[Username17]

Actual comic book universes have Night Owl and Superman in them, which is not a thing you are going to want to represent in an RPG. The power differences between characters that are routine for a comic book are less OK for a movie and less OK still in a cooperative storytelling game. The needs of an RPG are definitely going to make certain kinds of characters unplayable or at least undesirable. Just as players need to subjugate their desired tone to what the table consensus will accept, the "power band" of the characters needs to be pretty tight. You aren't going to have Phoenix and Jubilee in the same team of mutants.

Now specific characters like Quislet are generally not that complicated. Functionally, Quislet is just a telekinetic. So if your psychic class can manage a character who has telekinesis and can make short journey astral projections, you can do Quislet. It's just that your explanation of how that works is that your "body" is actually a non-baryonic spaceship from a micro dimension which is coincidentally the only object you can return to for any length of time and that when you are concentrating on telekinesis you are actually possessing some other object and moving it around and then return to your spaceship when you run out of time in the other object.

The question of whether you want to support characters like Quislet is an open one. Incorporeality leads to a lot of game balance issues. It would be pretty reasonable to say that your don't want Psychics in your game doing that stuff - just as obviously you aren't going to want Psychics who are as powerful as Professor X or Gene Grey.

-Username17