Favorite superhero RPGs?

[nevin]

havn't played any recently back in the day my players loved the palladium heroes unlimited. Had a great campaign for about a year.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Champions for me. I love the flexibility of the chargen. Which, for my money, is essential for a supers game. Add flexible combat options and pretty straightforward play and I'm in my happy place.

The other great staple of the supers genre is of course soap opera. Champions has, for the time, a good system for modelling the many complications that plague super heroes. By adding some modern gaming sensibilities, and probably fate points, one can make complications much more... proactive for generating role play.

Hmm. There's probably a whole essay required for me to properly explain what I mean here. TL;DR: trouble equals fun, so players and GM should lean into it.

For something simpler, something I could easily convince my group to try, it's Marvel FASERIP. I would have to make some adjustments stolen from modern variations of the game. I'd use some of my house-rules from back in the day, too. But it's simple and fun. Minimal tweaks required to get a game running.

 

[pemerton]

I've read DC Heroes. I can't imagine playing it. I've read and played Marvel Heroic RP. I'm sitting with a book case of 70s-90s Marvel behind me, and MHRP captures the Marvel feel for me.

 

[Velderan]

For something simpler, something I could easily convince my group to try, it's Marvel FASERIP. I would have to make some adjustments stolen from modern variations of the game. I'd use some of my house-rules from back in the day, too. But it's simple and fun. Minimal tweaks required to get a game running.

I keep meaning to try the retro clone FASERIP. The main tweak it makes, aside from renaming all the power ranks, is having the GM set a power rank for the campaign so everything is balanced around that rank. I know the original had balance issues, but we always saw it as more of a feature than a but when we played years ago so not sure how I'd feel about the tweaks in the retro clone

 

[beta-ray]

Been a comic reader since the 70s but haven't really played a comic book super hero ttrpg yet. Interested to see what people like (I like things on the less complex side). Drive-Thru is having a sale on super titles this week too…

 

[Reynard]

havn't played any recently back in the day my players loved the palladium heroes unlimited. Had a great campaign for about a year.

This was my first non D&D RPG.

 

[Reynard]

If we are talking about actual success at the table, Mutants and Masterminds wins hands down for my players, 2E was superior -- it had much more of that "Champions" feel in that they could create anything if they just did the math right. For me as GM though I think 3E is a little easier to manage.

From a nostalgia perspective, thought, it is Mayfair DC Heroes 2E. That wasn't my first supers RPG (that honor goes to Heroes Unlimited, which was also my first non-D&D RPG) but DC Heroes really opened my eyes to "point based" and of course the DCU. I love Champions 4E, but I came to it late and found the relative simplicity of M&M more to my liking.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This was my first non D&D RPG.

Cool! Mine was TMNT & Other Strangeness.

 

[Juxtapozbliss]

I played Champions as a kid and have really been hankering for running some supers games again so I picked up all the Hero System 6e rules, the latest version of Champions. Yes, it’s complicated, but it’s also so good. Elegant and very powerful. I really enjoy reading the rules, actually. The Core rules are hefty…vol 1 about building characters and vol 2 mostly about combat, each about 350 pages long…however there is also Champions Complete, which gives you all you need to play with less details and fewer options in only 250 pages. If you like it, you can move on to the expanded details. There’s also a Java app called Hero Builder that lets you build characters and that helps a lot with the complexity of calculating abilities. And you can even import those characters into Foundry VTT. I’m not sure about Roll20.

Another benefit of this system is the a Discord channel is amazing. Lots of helpful experienced players answering questions.

I love the ability to entirely build characters using points rather than following predetermined paths like D&D or Pathfinder. And I love how you are given small incremental experience points that you can immediately apply to strengthen your abilities or add new ones. I think it’s genius.

I’m planning to run a short campaign for my players later this year.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I keep meaning to try the retro clone FASERIP. The main tweak it makes, aside from renaming all the power ranks, is having the GM set a power rank for the campaign so everything is balanced around that rank. I know the original had balance issues, but we always saw it as more of a feature than a but when we played years ago so not sure how I'd feel about the tweaks in the retro clone

The clones do something (there's at least a few clones and from what I can tell they all have their own ways of doing the something) to alleviate issues like Incredible Strength can never do any damage to someone with Incredible armour.

For balance, I dunno, it's a tough one. Once in the olden days I offered to run a street level supers game; I put a cap of Incredible on all powers and stats. One player showed up with Mr. Incredible. Incredible STR, Fighting, Armour, Agility, Endurance, Energy blasts. This character was a hell of long way from the Dare Devils and Batmans I was assuming people would show up with. But, the thing is, it's not that unlikely that he rolled up those stats honestly. So a simple cap is not sufficient.

I think I'd go with a cap plus points spend, with points split between the categories of: X for Stats, Y for Powers, Z for Other. (Other being popularity, resources... I'm sure there's at least one other thing.)

Hmm. All this FASERIP talk is making me nostalgic. I might download one of those clones for a bit of weekend reading.