Post by gamedave on Aug 4, 2012 13:13:24 GMT -5
So, I've given some more thought to my never-ending attempt to write a good Supers ruleset. I've come up with another approach I'll be detailing here. This time for sure!
A few designer's notes so anyone who bothers to read this will understand some of my design decisions.
KISS!
In all of my (many, many, many) attempts, I've tried to keep in mind the mantra, "Keep It Simple, Stupid!" A Supers RPG, more than just about any other genre, should be fast, simple, and light. I haven't always succeeded in this element, but it's a driving force in many of my design decisions.
Scaling
This was a design insight I had many, many, many years and aborted attempts ago. Supers operate at different scales. This is a problem for many RPG systems, which deal well with human or slightly super-human scales, but either don't work well at higher power scales, or lose granularity, or both. By granularity, I mean that in most systems, there's quite a few grades of ability that normal humans can fall into, but higher power levels get compressed. For example, there's often a greater difference in ability between a bystander's strength and Captain America's than there is between Spider-Man's and the Hulk's.
My big insight was that if you had a game mechanic and rating system that handled differences between non-supers, you could simply scale it up, so that you could use the same system to handle two characters in the same scale (say, Thor vs. the Hulk), and also retain the same granularity. That's great in theory, but getting the scales to interact is a bit of a design problem, particularly with the KISS! principle.
This will be my latest attempt. This one sacrifices some of the central elements of my scaling principle (different scales act differently, even when comparing two abilities in the same scale), but hopefully retains more of the KISS! principle.
Roll and Go
Although I've discovered a lot of (IMHO) flaws with the Mutants & Masterminds system, one thing I liked a lot was the idea of "roll and go." You roll a die, add your modifier, and you're done. A lot of my previous attempts involved comparing scales, and modifying the die rolling mechanic based on scale differences. This kept granularity and consistency across scales, but added a LOT of complications. This newest version will be roll and go.
The Brave and the Bold
At a couple of different points, DC has had an entire series devoted to Batman/Superman team-ups - their most powerful character teamed with a guy with no powers who usually fights gangsters, criminals, and psycho (but human) killers in his own book. Both are (at least at some point in most continuities) members of the Justice League, which features (in some versions) Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Martian Manhunter at one end of the power scale, and Batman, Green Arrow, and the Huntress at the other end. The Avengers have featured line-ups with Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man alongside Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Panther. And so on.
Comic book super hero teams almost always feature characters of wildly varying power levels. Super hero RPGs almost always feature characters of exactly the same power level, down to the fraction of a point. I've always aimed at a system that can handle having a demi-god and a street-level crimefighter as PCs in the same group. Obviously, RPGs are different than comic books. For one thing, if an unpowered hero in a comic book feels useless and ignored, it can be great drama. If a PC (or moreso a player!) feels the same way, it's a bad situation all around. I have some ideas for this system that I hope will be able to handle not just different scales of power for individual abilities, but different scales of overall power between characters.
A few designer's notes so anyone who bothers to read this will understand some of my design decisions.
KISS!
In all of my (many, many, many) attempts, I've tried to keep in mind the mantra, "Keep It Simple, Stupid!" A Supers RPG, more than just about any other genre, should be fast, simple, and light. I haven't always succeeded in this element, but it's a driving force in many of my design decisions.
Scaling
This was a design insight I had many, many, many years and aborted attempts ago. Supers operate at different scales. This is a problem for many RPG systems, which deal well with human or slightly super-human scales, but either don't work well at higher power scales, or lose granularity, or both. By granularity, I mean that in most systems, there's quite a few grades of ability that normal humans can fall into, but higher power levels get compressed. For example, there's often a greater difference in ability between a bystander's strength and Captain America's than there is between Spider-Man's and the Hulk's.
My big insight was that if you had a game mechanic and rating system that handled differences between non-supers, you could simply scale it up, so that you could use the same system to handle two characters in the same scale (say, Thor vs. the Hulk), and also retain the same granularity. That's great in theory, but getting the scales to interact is a bit of a design problem, particularly with the KISS! principle.
This will be my latest attempt. This one sacrifices some of the central elements of my scaling principle (different scales act differently, even when comparing two abilities in the same scale), but hopefully retains more of the KISS! principle.
Roll and Go
Although I've discovered a lot of (IMHO) flaws with the Mutants & Masterminds system, one thing I liked a lot was the idea of "roll and go." You roll a die, add your modifier, and you're done. A lot of my previous attempts involved comparing scales, and modifying the die rolling mechanic based on scale differences. This kept granularity and consistency across scales, but added a LOT of complications. This newest version will be roll and go.
The Brave and the Bold
At a couple of different points, DC has had an entire series devoted to Batman/Superman team-ups - their most powerful character teamed with a guy with no powers who usually fights gangsters, criminals, and psycho (but human) killers in his own book. Both are (at least at some point in most continuities) members of the Justice League, which features (in some versions) Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Martian Manhunter at one end of the power scale, and Batman, Green Arrow, and the Huntress at the other end. The Avengers have featured line-ups with Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man alongside Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Panther. And so on.
Comic book super hero teams almost always feature characters of wildly varying power levels. Super hero RPGs almost always feature characters of exactly the same power level, down to the fraction of a point. I've always aimed at a system that can handle having a demi-god and a street-level crimefighter as PCs in the same group. Obviously, RPGs are different than comic books. For one thing, if an unpowered hero in a comic book feels useless and ignored, it can be great drama. If a PC (or moreso a player!) feels the same way, it's a bad situation all around. I have some ideas for this system that I hope will be able to handle not just different scales of power for individual abilities, but different scales of overall power between characters.