POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check

[3543thrh67]

@Ghost Could also go the angle of making it in a time frame where the original X-Men (not XP) are now the instructors or something. As NPCs (unless you want them as PCs)

[surreality]

I think with 'in space' you start running the risk of going too hard into the scifi, which can be daunting for some.

Depends on how it's set up, though. If it's just 'what's going on on earth is not something you're going to be interacting with regularly' in a terraformed zone or something, that's one thing.

If it's too tech-focused and futuristic, you start running into the 'lost in the technobabble' problem. (The struggle is real.)

That said, I think that would be pretty cool unto itself as a futuristic setting, since both scifi games and superhero games definitely have their fans, and seeing a pooling of those players in a tightly defined concept like this would be pretty cool to see.

[Nein]

@WTFE said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

Unethical players will use dice to their power pose advantage too. It just shifts the point of their being assholes around.
Dice are not the great equalizer their advocates seem to hold them. Here's a trivial hack off the top of my head: in chargen make your character invincible, for all practical purposes, in one specific area: say ranged combat. Give them loads of numbers on a ranged attack and loads of numbers on damage avoidance/elimination. Then just carefully avoid any scene in which your advantage can't be used. Suddenly you have a character who cannot lose when played, even though the all-holy dice are there to adjudicate things.
There's a million ways for assholes to be assholes. There's only one sure-fire way to stymie an asshole: don't be there. Avoid the fucker and walk away. This could be as blatant as:
<asshole> has arrived.
home

"Don't feed the cancer cell and it dies" is what I've heard this referred to. Always what I was told to do. 80% of the time it works.

The other 20% are staff and then you just have to turn around and exit the game.

I'd pitch for an 80's-90's X-Men, Agents of SHIELD, Gotham or Justice League.

[Lithium]

I'd pitch for Gotham rather than Justice League. Justice League has people that are practically impossible to deal with SuperMan, Wonder Woman, Martial Manhunter, the Flash.

Gotham is a lot easier for OC's and FC's to get along with. The power level is lower so it's less... powerful and more easy to write stories about.

[Bobotron]

Pitch: Batman Beyond. You get Gotham, you get a lack of a lot of FCs (leaving things open for legacy villains and heroes), you get cyberpunk.

[Coin]

Re: Green lanterns -- I once played a Skrull Green Lantern whose ring belonged to a recently martyred Kree Green Lantern.

Tons of fun.

Re: Mutants in Space -- there's an X-Men / Star Trek: TNG crossover novel (yes, yes there is) in which not only is there a planet of aliens (well, people on their planet, the others are the aliens) that are developing like mutants do on Marvel-Earth, but also you get to see the X-Men and crew of the Enterprise freak out about how similar Picard and Xavier are (before the movies ever cast Stewart as Xavier), AND you get to see Jean Grey freak the fuck RIGHT out about how powerful Deanna Troy is, because she can empathically sense people ON OTHER STARSHIPS, WHICH ARE PROBABLY SITTING ABOUT HALF A PLANET AWAY IN SPACE.

Yeah.

It's pretty awesome.

I think I still have it somewhere.

Wolverine and Worf get along.

[Ganymede]

@surreality said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

I think with 'in space' you start running the risk of going too hard into the scifi, which can be daunting for some.

Depends on how it's set up, though. If it's just 'what's going on on earth is not something you're going to be interacting with regularly' in a terraformed zone or something, that's one thing.

If it's too tech-focused and futuristic, you start running into the 'lost in the technobabble' problem. (The struggle is real.)

That said, I think that would be pretty cool unto itself as a futuristic setting, since both scifi games and superhero games definitely have their fans, and seeing a pooling of those players in a tightly defined concept like this would be pretty cool to see.

In the Marvel Universe, just because you can do something doesn't mean you understand how the science goes. Like, there are a lot of alien things out there, and spaceships, but you know what they don't do? Explain any of that. That's why it's hard to consider Guardians of the Galaxy a sci-fi story.

Speaking of systems, you know what might work well?

FS3.

Bear with me, please. It could work very well, actually. Just needs a little tweaking.

Why FS3? Because it's simple to learn. Because combats are easy to run and operate, and can have 8-10 people and still get resolved in around 3 hours.

I've seen FS3 work in a medieval setting (Fifth Kingdom). I've seen it work in a war setting (BSG:U). And I think you could easily adapt it here. It doesn't handle the fluidity of magic very well, but I think it could work here.

Seriously.

Don't laugh, @faraday.

[Roz]

@Ganymede said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

@surreality said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

I think with 'in space' you start running the risk of going too hard into the scifi, which can be daunting for some.

Depends on how it's set up, though. If it's just 'what's going on on earth is not something you're going to be interacting with regularly' in a terraformed zone or something, that's one thing.

If it's too tech-focused and futuristic, you start running into the 'lost in the technobabble' problem. (The struggle is real.)

That said, I think that would be pretty cool unto itself as a futuristic setting, since both scifi games and superhero games definitely have their fans, and seeing a pooling of those players in a tightly defined concept like this would be pretty cool to see.

In the Marvel Universe, just because you can do something doesn't mean you understand how the science goes. Like, there are a lot of alien things out there, and spaceships, but you know what they don't do? Explain any of that. That's why it's hard to consider Guardians of the Galaxy a sci-fi story.

Speaking of systems, you know what might work well?

FS3.

Bear with me, please. It could work very well, actually. Just needs a little tweaking.

Why FS3? Because it's simple to learn. Because combats are easy to run and operate, and can have 8-10 people and still get resolved in around 3 hours.

I've seen FS3 work in a medieval setting (Fifth Kingdom). I've seen it work in a war setting (BSG:U). And I think you could easily adapt it here. It doesn't handle the fluidity of magic very well, but I think it could work here.

Seriously.

Don't laugh, @faraday.

@Tat spent a good deal of time working out how to adapt FS3 to handle mutations for X-Factor. It wasn't perfect, obviously, but it was surprising how much we could accomplish with custom weapons, armor, and stances.

[faraday]

@Ganymede I seriously don't think FS3 is a good fit for a superhero game. You could probably square-peg-round-hole it into some semblance of submission, but I wouldn't. Combats only work well because the effects are coded and you don't have to sit around fussing about what happens. It's all automated. Once you throw flexible superpowers into the mix, you lose all that.

[Bobotron]

Re: Superheroes

I wonder if you could full-on automate the Cortex system in Marvel Heroic.

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

I seriously don't think FS3 is a good fit for a superhero game. You could probably square-peg-round-hole it into some semblance of submission, but I wouldn't. Combats only work well because the effects are coded and you don't have to sit around fussing about what happens. It's all automated. Once you throw flexible superpowers into the mix, you lose all that.

You don't really need flexible powers for combat, though. I mean, Superman has a limited number of attacks: he either punches the bad guy or uses some sort of elemental blast (heat vision or ice breath). His Super Strength could be a melee weapon that does a stupid amount of penetration and/or damage, and his ranged attacks could simply be a ranged weapon named "Blast."

Take Iceman. He doesn't have super strength, but he could make ice weapons, so maybe he has some sort of Elemental melee weapon available that has medium penetration and damage. And for his ice blasts, again, you could use a ranged weapon called "Blast."

Take Jean Grey. Psychic attack? "Blast." Cyclops? Maybe given him an Augmented Blast that does more damage, or allows him to do either a charged, massive attack or a burst attack.

I think one simply needs to be creative, and FS3 provides the flexibility to do so.

[Ominous]

@surreality At that point, though, are you better served by just making your own setting with mutants? You aren't getting much of the benefits of using an existing IP (none of the existing X-Men, unless they visit; few of the locals; etc.) but you get the baggage.

[Tat]

@faraday You undersell your system!

It's true that FS3 doesn't work for ALL mutations/powers. It worked for us at X-Factor largely because we were a PvE game and weren't using it to settle player disputes. We used it in a few ways.

• In general, you were required to take your mutation as a BG skill. This skill represented the finesse with which you used your mutation (IE, how well you could control it) and NOT how strong it was. We had a lot of conversations over how to use that stat and what it meant, and this turned out to work pretty well. Strength was determined in your mutation write-up, so when you rolled your mutation, it told us how well you used what you were in theory capable of.

• Combatty powers like super strength, claws, explosions, even fire-creation, all got their own customized weapon, allowing them to use it in +combat. This took some trial and error, esp with things like penetration and lethality, but honestly worked really, really well.

• Powers involving speed got their own stance. It took me a while to come up with this and I'll be honest, I'm really dang proud with how it turned out. This also allows the player to use their power in +combat.

• Powers that didn't fall under any of these categories could get a plain old roll to see their success/failure. Again, we were looking for how well you did with what you've got, not how strong your hit was or something.

• Finally (and I think this is seriously key), we GMed with flexibility and a grain of salt. There were times when it turned out that the custom weapon I made was clearly underpowered (hello, armor blocking adamantium). So we just ignored the +combat and I posed the NPC dying and knocked them out. There were times when someone was so OBVIOUSLY possible that we didn't bother to roll. I didn't make someone roll to take flight unless there was an obvious impediment to it, or to phase through a wall unless there was an obstacle. Etc. Honestly, I think in ANY system that tries to tackle flexible powers of any sort, mutation, mystical, or otherwise, this is the absolute key to making it work.

We really liked FS3 for this game because it let us add a degree of suspense and surprise to combat scenes, to handle weapons and armor, but also gives you the tools to flex what the dice say when they are clearly wrong. I know some people don't like this kind of GMing when dice are involved, but I feel like it worked pretty well for us.

[surreality]

@Ominous I'm all for original worlds and themes. If somebody does want to run with existing IP but not necessarily all the FCs as PCs, an alternate setting within that world works with FCs as NPCs pretty well as an opening for new original characters to thrive rather than constantly be outshone or rendered irrelevant by the existing FCs people might otherwise gravitate toward exclusively.

[Tat]

@Tat Oh, and also (perhaps obviously), players with invulnerability of some sort got their own special armor.

I'd say that maybe half of our characters on grid had something for their mutation in the combat code.

[faraday]

@Tat I'm glad you made it work to your satisfaction, but I know from our discussions that it was not a natural fit and it took a great deal of finesse, as you say, to get all the combat stats tolerably balanced. I'm not a comic book person, really, but I don't even know where to begin setting weapon values for Superman's laser eyes or Captain America's shield, for instance. Also the stat values are geared towards normal human abilities (with max attribute representing Albert Einstein, where does Professor X fall?)

[Tat]

@faraday said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

@Tat I'm glad you made it work to your satisfaction, but I know from our discussions that it was not a natural fit and it took a great deal of finesse, as you say, to get all the combat stats tolerably balanced. I'm not a comic book person, really, but I don't even know where to begin setting weapon values for Superman's laser eyes or Captain America's shield, for instance. Also the stat values are geared towards normal human abilities (with max attribute representing Albert Einstein, where does Professor X fall?)

Well, to some extent you hit a point where all that matters is /relative/ power/smarts/skill. I mean, if you have adamantium claws that can cut through literally freaking anything, you can just crank the penetration and lethality up to insane degrees and you're fine. You don't have to know where exactly the math makes sense until you find something that it /can't/ penetrate.

Similarly, if I knew that one person's superpunch should be able to damage another person's super rock armor, I just tweaked numbers and sat in a room using them til it looked 'about right'.

I mean, you're right that it's not a 'natural' fit. I did sit there and roll things a lot and calculate rough percentages, and I screwed things up, sometimes massively, and sometimes to really freaking hilarious effect. But my players rolled with it pretty well.

Which brings me back to the flexibility thing. At the end of the day you really have to just accept that nothing is going to do superpowers perfectly because there are simply too many variables. I think this was a pretty good approximation, though.

Oh - I also think that we chose to not mess with attributes when it'd be appropriate (say, strength) and instead added bonuses to rolls or just ignored them all together when the scene called for it. In many cases, mutation use doesn't /realistically/ require a roll because look, if you're THAT strong, yes, you can knock down the door. Etc.

But we also have a more permissible GM style that tends toward the cinematic rather than the nitty gritty numbers, and I don't think it would have worked for someone who wanted that more 'realistic' level of code regulating combat or RP.

[Rainsodden]

I once requested a dragon for some player GMing. Tat mocked some super duper weapons and armour up, and I and one of her PCs bashed at it until she had it tweaked to be appropriately lethal.

[BobGoblin]

@Bobotron

You can... do things to bring it close using a selection @program to choose your dice pool and then the results you want to utilize.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@Ganymede said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

Take Iceman. He doesn't have super strength, but he could make ice weapons, so maybe he has some sort of Elemental melee weapon available that has medium penetration and damage. And for his ice blasts, again, you could use a ranged weapon called "Blast."

I played a pyrokinetic on X-Factor and that was a REALLY easy thing for the combat system to ape. And my custom flame weapon amused the hell out of me, just going to admit that. I think it helped that the characters were supposed to have rather street-level powers, so you didn't really have Superman/Xavier-level folks running around. Admittedly, I did feel there were balance issues with powers that were harder to quantify, but I feel like those would've actually been worse, not better, in something where you were just dealing with descriptive traits. I appreciated having a dice framework at all.