Best Superhero System for a Mush?
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Have you checked out ICONS, any? That's what I am eyeing, though I admit I haven't gotten much past cracking the book. But I was able to roll up a plausible character in fifteen minutes which is a personal record.
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@kay That aint half bad, might need to look into it.
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For what it's worth, my take on the various Supers RPG's I've played over the years....
Champions: The big kid on the block. You can create any character you can imagine with this system. Moderately easy to learn rules-wise, complex to learn cgen-wise. A lot of new players take a look at the size of the two 6th Edition corebooks and run away screaming, thinking they have to know everything in both books in order to play. Having lots of power templates from the UNTIL Superpowers Database and 'Ultimate' books would be advisable. You also need to have an app staff that can say 'no' to a concept/build that's too abusive of the system.
Mutants & Masterminds: Another 'build the character of your dreams' system. Also easy to learn rules, hard to learn cgen. Again, have lots of pre-made power templates ready to go and an app staff that knows the system and can nix problematic builds that can break the system.
DC Heroes/MEGS: A good mix of point-build and pre-made powers. You have a solid definition of scale for each attribute (M&M really only gives you Strength) in terms of how you rank among others in that attribute. Also, a built-in subplot system for players to define personal TPs and thread them through events. The downside tot he system is lots of players don't like the idea of your XP mixed with points to spend on increasing dice rolls & successes.
Marvel Super Heroes/FASERIP: Easy to learn, fun power/attribute descriptors (Unearthly Strength, Amazing Reason, Monstrous Endurance), simple percentile chart system to determine success. Suffers from the same issue as DC Heroes: XP used to also alter dice rolls. Also, it's a fully randomized cgen system, which might turn many players away; although there are lots of ways to turn it into a point buy system.
Aberrant: Great adaptation of the Storyteller system for Superheroes. Lots of players will be familiar with the dice system already, and there's crossover playerbase potential with the slew of WoD games already out there for players looking for something different, but with a familiar system. Also, Onyx Path is gearing up to release the new version of Trinity/Aberrant/Adventure! next year, so corebooks will be easy to attain. Also, the new version will apparently have rules for events affecting the future, or even previous, eras of gameplay.
DC Universe: The DC RPG from West End Games just before it shut down. It's a variant on the D6 system, so it's rather easy to learn. The problem is that it does break down at higher levels of power with nebulous benchmarks instead of 'you can lift this much with X dice of Strength'.
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I wanted to mention FASERIP/Marvel Super Heroes but the lack of a real social component kept me from doing so. However, as I think about it, that might be a good thing for a MUX where some players really don't care for social stats/conflict. I think tweaking FASERIP a bit might be in order so that someone with a lower strength can actually hurt someone with a slightly higher armor/toughness but that's about it(my version grants bonuses when you score a Yellow or Red success, one of those being +1 strength for damage purposes).
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@zombiegenesis in FASERIP, Popularity is your social stat, but only used on NPC's. PC's can't socially dominate each other without actual Powers, which is a good thing, IMO. Even then, Popularity can still help players determine PC's reactions towards each other.
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I'm aware of Popularity as the social stat, which is why I said the game lacks a "real" social component. There's no charisma, appearance, persuasion, etc. Which may make it a preferred method of play on most MU's. I'd ditch Popularity on a MUX, however, as managing it for the entire game might be a nightmare.
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@zombiegenesis Yeah, especially when dealing with Karma. There'd have to be logs dedicated to 'Meeting Obligations' rewards, adjustments for 'Breaking Obligations', 'Charity' awards...and staffers would have to go through them all and do the rewards. The best you could hope for would be a week's delay after a log submission for a Karma Reward.
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@Runescryer I have a hero game in my pocket that uses a modified version of FASERIP. I tried to "spice it up" with some modern RP tropes. Namely Karma is no longer a mutable stat that also equates into "experience". Instead it's just the sum of your mental stats that replenishes at the start of every scene. During a scene you can spend Karma to add to your die rolls. So if you +roll Fighting and need 13 points to get a white result you can spend 13 points, or X points for Yellow, or Y points for Red. In the private sessions I had with some people we really enjoyed it.
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@zombiegenesis Yeah, I'm of two minds on the Karma/Hero Point combining XP and Dice Boost system. On the one hand, I can understand people's frustrations, and sounds like you have a good work-around. On the other hand, comic-book characters don't drastically change most of the time. If there's a continuity re-boot, things get shifted around, or if you're an equipment-based hero like Iron Man or Batman, your gear can certainly change. But a lot of the fundemental 'core' powers and skills don't really evolve as much over time they way they do in other literature & RPG's.
As I said, though, looks like you have a good work-around for FASERIP that could also be applied to MEGS.
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Honestly the more I look at the competition the less absurd Wild Talents looks. I know that's a strange conclusion to come to, but I've spent most of today looking over the books people have suggested, and I think (Again only my opinion) that what wild talents does in the current simplification rewrite being used for my 4tmu project thing isn't really that bad once it's put into perspective like it has been.
Honestly I did go into this thread with the intention of "I'm mad this system wasn't what I thought it would be and people don't seem to like it". Yet after everything said it's really given me a different perspective you know?
It's a strange thing.
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@runescryer said in Best Superhero System for a Mush?:
DC Universe: The DC RPG from West End Games just before it shut down. It's a variant on the D6 system, so it's rather easy to learn. The problem is that it does break down at higher levels of power with nebulous benchmarks instead of 'you can lift this much with X dice of Strength'.
Superspeed gets pretty broken pretty quickly at even moderately levels and character hitting over 100 actions is a real possibility. While this might be realistic for what someone in the Flashes class could do it quickly becomes hell to play through in table top I wouldn't even want to imagine how long a speedster's turn would take on a MU* otherwise the system is not bad but any use would want to seriously alter how superspeed works.
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@thatguythere Champions and M&M deal with Superspeed fairly well. They describe/code the superspeed 'hundreds of attacks' as Autofire (Champions) or Multi-Attack (M&M). So, it's only 1 roll needed. Also, with the generally lower strength of speedsters, it's really only effective against minions/henchmen/agent type NPC's, which is in keeping with comics; Flash clears the field of the henchman hordes while the big guns of the Justice League take on the Big Bad Boss.
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@runescryer
I think my favorite way of handling Superspeed comes from the Mayfair games version of DC Heroes, where you could just substitute your speed for the strength to simulate the many small punches effect. And also the face they had two power running (which just let you move fast,) and Superspeed (which let you move fast while also being able to do everything else fast as well.)My big disappointment with DC Universe was making a moderate level speedster (I think top speed around mach 1) and then having to shelve him quickly because he had 40 actions in a round which killed the game for everyone involved including myself.
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@thatguythere Yeah, no argument that DC Universe had a LOT of issues. It could have used a couple more months of playtesting, at least. But, it came at the terminal stage of WEG, so I don't suppose I blame them for not doing enough pre-release work. It's also possible that WEG wanted to do more testing, but Yeti just said 'Eh, we've already sunk our money in here. Release it and see what we can get back.'
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@runescryer said in Best Superhero System for a Mush?:
@thatguythere Champions and M&M deal with Superspeed fairly well. They describe/code the superspeed 'hundreds of attacks' as Autofire (Champions) or Multi-Attack (M&M). So, it's only 1 roll needed. Also, with the generally lower strength of speedsters, it's really only effective against minions/henchmen/agent type NPC's, which is in keeping with comics; Flash clears the field of the henchman hordes while the big guns of the Justice League take on the Big Bad Boss.
This kind of thing is really the reason I like Champions so much. It is possible to make a Speedster who can autoattack one guy who doesn't have high defenses, do a selective area of effect to target lots of mooks, and unleash the 'jackhammer attack' which is a single attack with a higher damage value against a heavy target. You can also buy +8 with your Computer Programming with the limitations of using Endurance and 'only to offset time penalties' so that you can do a day's worth of programming in a single turn, selective area effect teleportation usable on others which cannot move people through solid objects (imagine the Flash grabbing up and relocating all the civilians in an area) or Change Environment with the effect being that the area gets cleaned up.
In short I like Champions because unless a power is extremely game breaking* (I make matter explode from the inside, I can remove a person from reality) or super problematic to enact (I can see the future, so I want the GM to tell me what players are going to do before they tell him) you can create it.
This works really well when you do a sort of 'horse before the cart' method (I've got a cool idea, how do I build the power). Unfortunately it has big weaknesses because A) it is complex, and B) people can build absolutely horrible things when they use the 'cart before the horse' method of 'I'm going to build something broken and then come up with the effect to justify it'.
Problem B can be handled by a GM with a firm hand (I don't care that the math works, no you may not do that) but that is somewhat problematic for a MU*. Problem A is even harder to resolve. Still, I dearly love the system.
*This doesn't mean that you can't build game breaking powers and have the math 'work'. I'm just saying that there's a good reason you can't make the math work if you have a concept of 'literal undefeatable fighter'.
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@the-sands said in Best Superhero System for a Mush?:
Problem B can be handled by a GM with a firm hand (I don't care that the math works, no you may not do that) but that is somewhat problematic for a MU*. Problem A is even harder to resolve. Still, I dearly love the system.
This part is only problematic for a MU* when GM/Staff don't do it /enough/ or consistently.
Hello! Long time listener, first time caller...
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@lithium said in Best Superhero System for a Mush?:
@the-sands said in Best Superhero System for a Mush?:
Problem B can be handled by a GM with a firm hand (I don't care that the math works, no you may not do that) but that is somewhat problematic for a MU*. Problem A is even harder to resolve. Still, I dearly love the system.
This part is only problematic for a MU* when GM/Staff don't do it /enough/ or consistently.
Very much this
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@lithium said in Best Superhero System for a Mush?:
This part is only problematic for a MU* when GM/Staff don't do it /enough/ or consistently.
Yes and no. The real issue is that it can be very, very difficult to do 'consistently'. In most game systems powers are pretty cleanly defined. Occasionally there is an interaction between two powers that designers didn't foresee and a house rule needs to be made.
In the Hero Games system it can be much more tricky because you are basically 'building' every power. Sure, it's easy if you just say something like 'no more than 60 Active Points in a power', but then how do you handle someone who says 'you know what, I'd like to make a super special 75 Active Point attack that takes a full turn to power up and leaves me half dead when I'm done'. Storywise it isn't that bad a power. It's a bit more than the attacks that the other people are able to pop off with reckless abandon but not a lot more and it comes with some big limitations.
And that's a relatively easy case. What about someone who apps a penetrating one hex area effect autoattack Presence Drain with a really half-assed excuse for how the power works? Such a person seems to have noticed an oversight in how most people build characters (relatively low Presence relative to cost, lack of hardening on Power Defense, and stupid rules governing Primary Stats reduced to 0). Shut them down as well? What if someone feels they actually have a really good explanation for how that power works? Clearly it is still broken but it doesn't look like they are deliberately gaming the system and it is less than the 60 Active Point limit. If you veto it because it's broken how much does it need to be 'fixed' before you can approve it?
I'm not saying it is impossible for a GM/Staff to be consistent, but it can get very difficult (and remember, I love this system. I'm not bad mouthing it because I don't think anyone should use it. I'm just admitting its flaws).
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@the-sands I was not being Champions specific. I was being MU* specific.
Champions has a lot of room for versatility, this is it's greatest strength, but you can also just set up power templates where the SFX is defined by the player, or you can prebuild whole power suites that can then be SFX customized.
You /can/ control Champions, you just have to be willing to from the get go.
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@the-sands Any cgen for a point-buy system like Champions or M&M is going to take extra work for both the player and staff; not only does the concept and background have to fit the game, but the powers need to be built and checked over to make sure that the build won't break the game. Having pre-made templates and power sets really helps speed things along, and are very useful to new players. Fortunately, both game systems have numerous books that contain such builds and power templates; I would just take a while to document them in the game/wiki for players to use.
