I loved the old TSR Marvel game! Only game I ever GM’ed for. Didn’t do a very good job of keeping my players in check though. I allowed one of them to get away with a Power Stunt that literally melted the Juggernaut. Not kidding. Of course, it was my first time as a GM as opposed to a player, AND I was like 12 or 13 at the time.

Actually,. no that’s still not a good excuse. I let him melt the fucking Juggernaut! What is even the hell?

Don’t be so hard on yourself.
Everyone’s allowed to botch a v-log every now and then…

I love how Oreo immediately turns her head towards the camera when Spoony says “heightened sense of smell” She’s like damn right!

Hahaha Spoony you tease, abrupt cutaway much? :p

That was remarkably pessimistic.

You have options in any game system; most of which come from not relying entirely on your character’s specialization.

For example, a thief’s specialization is combat is backstabbing. If you thought of D&D as solely combat, then it would look just a boring if you were playing a fighter (as you stated).

But superhero games are just like D&D in that while the characters do have defining traits, they are not limited to them.

What can Cyclops do? Let’s examine that:

- Cyclops can optic blasts.
- Cyclops has an instinctive understanding of geometry. He can ricochet those blasts off just about any surface. Several issues of Claremont’s run showed this off including him knocking every pool ball into various pockets while a pack of bar patrons had their backs to him.
- Cyclops can use martial arts (most of the X-Men are trained in hand-to-hand combat).
- Cyclops has tactical skills that you could talk a GM into letting you give bonuses to the entire team’s roles (like a Bard).

And that’s just combat. Outside of a combat role:

- Cyclops has psionic training (despite not being a telepath himself). When Rogue had absorbed Professor Xavier’s telepathic powers, Cyclops was able to use that training to keep her from losing her mind.
- Cyclops has a pilot’s license and experience as a sailor.
- Cyclops has various connections with other hero teams and they’d be much more willing to listen to him because of their history and his role as leader than they would with, say, Nightcrawler or Colossus.

A superhero game can be limited much in the same way D&D can be limited if the DM and the players are uninspired/inexperienced/etc.

Did your adventuring party start in a tavern and head off to a dungeon?
Can be done well as a starting adventure; usually isn’t.

An experienced GM (I know I’m moving back and forth between terms, sorry) can work with character and player strengths, giving options and possibilities that may not be obvious from the start.

(For starters, you can have solo adventures with individual players between group sessions. Superhero games have that advantage and are easier to work around everyone’s schedule.)

And a good GM can keep things interesting:

“It’s a beautiful Saturday morning. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and the sound of construction on the building across the street has put a lie to your vow to sleep in today. While on your way to the corner coffee shop, a strange sight catches your eye in the storefront nearby. All the display televisions in the window& have switched over to the image of a greasy-looking man in a medical coat, grinning maniacally.

‘Greetings New York! It is I, Dr. Insano! The fools gave me parole! Can you believe it? You all know the drill, so I’m going to cut to the chase. As I speak, several devices I’ve constructed are surrounding Shea Stadium*; ready to go off at a moment’s notice. Unless I am given 10 million dollars, Vanna White to be my bride* and the revoked driver’s license of the jackass who cut me off last night, I will shrink the New York Mets into the Microverse! FOREVER!!! AHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!!!’

As the screens simultaneously go dark, you’re left to stare at your stunned expression reflected in the window. The only thing colder than the chill running down your spine is the reactions of your fellow New Yorkers on the sidewalk next to you.

‘Ah, let him! The team stinks this year.’”

Beats dungeon crawling. =) At least for me.

Cyclops is a good leader and tactician though.
Noah, have you ever played X-men Legends 2? Because it was great at the part where charatcers with limited abilities – the ones who could shoot shit or stab shit – had some great attacks.

This isn’t an issue with super-hero games, but one with games in
general. basically, being that options = power. in 3rd ed D&D, the
most capable fighters usually were decked out with items that mimicked
wizard capabilities : flight, freedom of movement, miss % chance, “panic
buttons” like instant or near instant teleportation, etc…

now
i’ve seen characters with few innate chosen options, like the fighter
who can only swing a sword or the stealthy/faceman/non-combat rogue
who’s stuck in the middle of an open battlefield be good, but that was
for the most part due to player skill rather then character skill, with
the occasional lucky roll on his part (or unlucky rolls on the enemies).

the more versatile the character, the more situations they can
handle or attempt to at least which means the player stays interested in
the game. more then a few times i’ve played the big dumb fighter or
barbarian and been bored out of my gourd because the character had very
few innate skills beyond “hit with stick”. even the rogue or ranger
types tend to be focused with the former being either highly skilled
non-combatants who can on rare occasions spike damage on a target (but
tend to be too fragile so they don’t risk it) or are a walking cuisinart
that has little skill in a whole lot of stuff whereas the latter tends
to be usually either a stealthy bowman or a outdoorsman with twin
machetes. when outside that scope though, it’s entirely the purview of
“what random piece of gear did i bring/find” and “how skilled is the
player”… only very rarely, IMO, can i find with these types of
characters i can look at the sheet and find an immediate potential
solution that isn’t my over-specialisation.

most casters (or
grab-bag of powers supers) though, in most games really, tend to get the
fun suite of abilities since “magic” (or it’s equivalent) is so badly
defined where it’s limits aren’t spelled out (either obviously or less
so) or is simply defined as “everything that isn’t mundane”. look at the
divine casters of 3.5… they get access to their entire repetoire of
spells at every level. not every spell is a winner mind you, but still.
it allows the cleric to be a pacifistic healer one day, a blaster the
next and a “horde of minions” necromancer the next… or with some
tweaking a potentially better fighter then the fighter (at least in raw
damage output) that sill keeps most of his clerical casting
capabilities.

or the most outrageous character i ever played and
immediately retired: Ours. Ours is the french word for bear. he was a
dwarf druid. i was getting kinda tired of my warlock and wanted to try
something new for once… well, i did… just once. i retired that dwarf
because he was simply too powerful and versatile. he was a bear. with a
pet bear. who summoned smaller bears. and made all bears BIG. and
flying (as well as the rest of the party). and could fire death lasers.
most of that was using only the core rulebook for 3.5 too. i took a few
spells outside of it, but the only one of note was the akin to a
mass-overland flight with the limitation of being useable outdoors only.

i
called it the rather punny Royal Canadian Bear Force. it was a massacre
as the bears kamikaze’d anything in their way in pairs as i hung back
and lobbed death lasers and motars from above. it was not pretty. after
that session, Ours was retired and i went back to the warlock.

this
is the character that opened my eyes to things i was aware of in the
back of my mind but never really thought about it: “win buttons”.
abilities that simply bypass the conventional methods of dealing with a
problem and say “you win at this!”. the standard posterboy for this is
the wand of knock removing the need for the rogue to try to pick locks
(which is more infuriating since the rather low-level, cheap and
permanent arcane lock spell means you simply can’t pick the lock at all)
but other similar things exist: long range teleportation removing the
need for travel (and a lesser-extent long-lasting and quick flight) and
precise teleportation forcing the necessity for often-contrived “you
can’t teleport here fields” just so the Scry-and-Die won’t occur or
actually make the journey part of the adventure rather then an
afterthought. long-lasting abilities that allow you to bypass entire
sections of the dungeons by passing through walls or dirt, etc… all on
one character if you’re (un)lucky.

if often find myself having
to hold back when playing the characters with options because i simply
don’t want to start punching the “cheat codes” that the book strait up
gives me. it’s annoying as a player when you use it as it removes most
challenge and tension, it’s annoying when another player uses them since
it makes my potential contributions moot and as a DM it means one more
hoop i have to start taking into consideration when designing
adventures.

now, i’m currently playing in a Star Wars Saga game.
i’m Rorworr, the wookie with the stun bat (technically a force pike for
all intents and purposes), where even my subdual strikes ends up killing
people… Rorworr is a beast. i’ll admit to being rather specialized in
that i’m a swordsman in game of laser guns, but as i admitted: that was
my choice. most of the time when combat happens my options are: “run at
enemy and hit with stick”, “throw a stun/ion/frag grenade”, “pray and
spray”, “smoke bomb and run away on speeder”. usually in that order and i
very much hope number three never needs to happen… my carbine is more
for show then something i’m skilled with.

that or “drive a
Space-Garbage Truck into it”. few things survive a head-on collision
with a Space-Garbage Truck (or any other heavy, mobile object). party
seems to prefer the use of subterfuge so i relish the chances to use
this.

the rest of the time success at tasks is a mix of player skill, genre savvyness & knowing the DM likes cinematic action.

it’s
a change of pace from my normal slew of casters (which are for the most part, let’s face
it, the poster-boy supers of the generic fantasy world though a few “wolverines” and “batmen” do stand out) and a genre i’m not very
used to playing in.

but it’s something i very much look into when playing or picking up a new system: how much pure “i win” power does the game allow each player to have. i don’t mind some being given to each player… that’s kinda cool that they each can narratively go “i do this” and the game goes “yup, that happens” but when i need to actively go out of my way to no be super capable in virtually all aspects? ugh.

as for random character generation, let’s just say my mum told me if i can’t say anything polite about something i shouldn’t speak, so i’ll try to keep it brief: i didn’t like it when i started in 2nd ed AD&D and i still don’t like it now. if i’m going to be playing a character and be expected to invest time and effort in the campaign, i want the character to be one i want to play, not one the dice happen to decide.

I think if there were systems in place to encourage it, I’d recommend having the minor or unusual powers be used in unconventional ways. Of course there’s no way of knowing what those are, so I don’t know how you’d implement it.

What I mean is that some powers seem really lame, like Heart from Captain Planet. But if you actually stop and think about it, the power could be really awesome. Take for example Color Kid from the Legion of Superheroes. Or rather from the Legion of Substitute Superheroes, the group of guys who weren’t allowed into the main Legion because their powers were too situational or had too many inconvenient limitations or were just of dubious usefulness. Color Kid naturally could change the color of anything he wanted. He could make an apple blue if he wanted.

At first you think that’s a dumb, useless power. And apparently no writer ever considered it good either considering he was on the Substitute Legion. But then you start to think. The most obvious use for it would be to change the surface of people’s eyes black, rendering them blind. Already you have a guy with effectively unlimited Blind spells. And if you need to blend into an environment, just change yourself and your allies to the background color (or a pattern if you have that fine control over it; be like a Chameleon). Or change the color of an enemy so they stand out more if they’re trying to blend in. Make the surfaces of a well-lit room white so the reflected light blinds people.

And then I think back to another Substitute Legion member Night Girl, whose superpowers only work in the dark. Just have Color Kid turn the surfaces of lightbulbs opaque, and suddenly the room is dark, and Night Girl can use her powers with impunity. Change the colors of items randomly in a place and watch the enemies freak out in confusion.

I just came up with a bunch of reasons why Color Kid’s superpower is a freaking awesome one. A lot of the time writers don’t even bother exploring the subtle possibilities of their characters aside from the most obvious use. Have Cyclops ever tried shooting the ground at his feet, using the force of the blast to propel him through the air? Has he used it to dig a trench to stop a speeding vehicle? Use some creativity people!

i hate the main x-men but i tend to like the side and background characters like Domino and Deadpool.
because not only do they have powers, but they do other shit too.
that and deadpool is greatest thing out of comics since panels and speech bubbles…..made of yellow…..speaking in yellow…..yellow is his language.

I had an experience with Champions, well Fuzion rather. Making characters was very liberating, the options were massive and everything was left off to the imagination as far as animation and style. GM’d a game myself and it was a decent experience, it lasted about 3 months.

Imho, Superhero games are better if you add a sense of intrigue, make them like crime dramas where the character’s actions have heavy consequences so using their powers is not necessarily the first thing they will want to use. Establishing limits is a good idea too, as in ‘is killing allowed?’, is ‘stealing ok?’ etc.

On the issue of balance, the bad guys are built on the same system so the power level balance out as far as fighting and you can trade points in powers for points in other things like money, influence and knowledge. There’s also non-fighting powers like transportation, resistance and regeneration.

Everything is based on a power level of the game, if you want a lower power level (Watchmen) you can give the players less points, if you want to higher power level (DC/Marvel) you give them more points.

There’s 2 defining factors, Origin and Power Source which are rolled randomly, same with the origin story; so you can be a Powered Armor Tony Stark man that just happens to get his armor powers from Magic that were gained from coming into contact with an alien crystal.

Death is rare as usually you get knocked out and you need to do double that damage to kill people, it does happen when people go all out, but you have the choice to hold back.

I actually hosted it in a City of Heroes setting, super easy to recreate the characters and villains with Fuzion, I used City of Villains so the heroes were pushed to not use their powers in public without being hunted down and stuff, and filling the city with baddies. Turns out everyone wanted to be a rich boy at first, then I ended up with Magical Tony Stark, Tau Commander, Moon Knight and Conan the Immortal Barbarian; it was odd.

I don’t think it’s in print anymore, but if you can get a pdf you can get it printed and coiled as I did at my local officemax. I recommend it for a fun night/weekend.

I dont really like “these” counter monkeys. The ones people like are the STORIES! This is just a “tips for dungeon masters/thoughts on the game” videos.

Wouldn’t breathing underwater in a pool cause nasty chemical burn to a character’s lungs/gills due to the chlorine?

My favorite Superhero Systems have been a) Biff Bam Pow! (A independent superhero system. Google It! It’s good.) b) Marvel SAGA System, and c) GURPS Supers.

I really must defend Marvel Saga, because it really was revolutionary and ahead of it’s time (Along with Dragonlance SAGA) when it was released. Having a character’s endurance and how well they performed tied to hand size was brilliant and even more abstract way of handling hit points, and having player controlled narrative was pretty special. I really really liked the system, and have adopted it to one of my games at one point. I wish support for the Saga System among the player bases would have been better.

Also, what is it with all the people wanting to play the lame X-Men characters? I mean, under TSR’s MSH system, my top three picks for characters are Black Knight, Wolvesbane, and probably Cloak. Not that Cloak is all that interesting power wise, but he’s a really interesting character. There are a lot of really good characters in the universe that are pretty good in depth characters when going to solve mysteries and crisis. I’d almost always rather call upon the Fantastic Four over the X-Men Blue or Yellow teams anyday.

Overall, it’s been an interesting ramble, even if you haven’t seen many Super RPG games. Look forward to part 2.

I’d rather be Robin than Batman. Fuck Batman, Dick Grayson for life!!!!

I have to disagree with you, Spoony One. Heroes don’t have to be one-dimensional. They can be, if you let them, but they don’t have to be. Even a hero who basically has one power and one power only – say energy manipulation – can still contribute to a situation in other ways via things that might not count as out-and-out super powers, but still help define the character. Say, said energy manipulator may also have a very strong spirit, and thus have the tendency to inspire others, or he may be good at thinking on his feet and thus help come up with loop holes on the fly.

I just don’t get this coming on the heels of the Bardic Knock. Remember your own description of it – the Bardic Knock is not a super power. It’s not magic or even a “skill,” per se. It’s clever thinking reflecting the personality of the character outside of any combat powers or skill sets or stat bonuses. That’s kind of the point of an RPG – that you develop a real person who’s identifiable by more than just his class or his race. I recall one of your old vlogs chastising people for saying “Dward, go fight that thing!” and encouraging remembering actual character names. That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?

And I really just have to say I disagree on your desire to play established super heroes in an existing setting. To each his own, obviously, but I’d always rather create something I can call my own than just ape Batman or, worse still, BE Batman. I don’t even LIKE Batman. Sure, the Marvel Super Heroes arcade game was a lot of fun and I did enjoy a lot of the characters (mostly the Juggernaut), but I’d sooner play one I created that takes traits from multiple sources and crowns them with a unique personality than just take someone else’s character for a ride. It’s why I enjoyed City of Heroes so much – because the signature characters are not prominent and leave much room for original creations.

I tend to like your Counter Monkey episodes for the awesome anecdotes insights into pen and paper RPGs, but this one just seems to go counter to all the others, and not because of the rifling through the book.

Eh, I thought it was a good ep, Spoony, even though I disagree with you on some of it.

I played and ran Champions (Hero System) for many years and had a blast. It *is* complicated, but most of that is character creation… it’s required when you have a system that will pretty much let you design any character with any power(s) you like. If you want to do a shapeshifting electricity-powered superstrong ape who can teleport through hell, you can. Or you can specialize and become REALLY good at one thing. Your choice. It was great for creativity. It really does require is a good GM who knows the system and can help the new player out. “So, what do you want your character to do? OK, here’s how to do that.” The book intimidated people, but really it wasn’t any thicker than if you stacked the books required for D&D together. Just like D&D, the player didn’t need all that information.

Personally, I’ve never had any interest in playing someone else’s character, even when I tried out Marvel Superheroes (which I liked, even though I preferred Champions). I didn’t wanna play Spiderman, I wanted to create my own superhero. If I remember correctly (it’s been a long time), TSR come out with an advanced character creation system for the game that added a lot of flexibility and new powers to the system.

Looking forward to the next part.

The mocking subtitles saved this one from being “bad”. I got a good laugh out of those, and the fact that Oreo was trying to sleep made it even funnier.

So this was still fun for unexpected reasons, heh.

Spoony, I always watch you. But man, I enjoy DCUO immensely, or did until they screwed with the payment options, and secondly hated the TSR Marvel game. As a DM I simply could not get that thing off the ground. There was so much errata and inconsistency in it. If you got it to work, you’re definitely smarter than I am—and I went to Princeton. And my friend who played in it and looked over the system and just despised it—and he went to M.I.T.

Hey whenever you say something is terrible, you’re bound to hurt someone’s feelings. I hate the Beatles, so I know this well. However, this response is not a personal attack or “hurt-feelings” so please keep that in mind. I am not a very good writer, and sometimes my tone (coupled with my nerd rage) comes across as overly caustic, when it is not. The reason
for this response is, I am simply gobsmacked you like TSR Marvel that much. Even the old Batman RGP (Publisher: Mayfair Games [1989] ISBN: 0923763082) was much better than that broken “system” from Marvel.
Now much of this is from memory, as your review seems to be. It would be unfair to Google the book and type out the problems. Just off the top of my head, the game-designers either knew nothing about Marvel characters or did not care to. Remember the Juggernaut example? In it he is an altered human. Remember how you could have things like fire only effect
certain things? For instance: Mutants. In the very next example it reads:
The Juggernaut has kidnapped Aunt May. And a hero (Osprey?) uses his fire that only effects mutants on him. The Juggernaut takes damage (although I don’t see how this is possible as he is not a mutant) and Aunt May does not.

They obviously did not give squirts of piss about the example, or clearly
illustrating something to the reader.

KARMA system a good system!? You’re joking right? I remember it like this. Spider-man is going to save Aunt May she’s strapped to a bomb, he passes a burning building. Sees
people trapped inside, but cannot stop to save them since he is going to save Aunt May. So he loses Karma. But, it turns out, he saves Aunt May. So he also gets some Karma. Of course, minus the stuff he lost for not helping. That is an incredibly convoluted system. Just
imagine, “Hey it’s September 11th all over again. You are headed towards the WTC towers, but you see someone jay-walking so deduct some Karma.” I mean, one shouldn’t do that as a GM, but why include it unless you want to be factitious? But maybe they wanted to be, after all they included stats for Death! But how could, you of all people, who quotes George Lucas “no one ever thinks their actions are evil” and “orc babies are good/neutral” subscribe to docking players Karma for missing a date? You do realize that missing a date with your girlfriend could theoretically make you lose all the Karma you have acquired for stopping a global conspiracy.
Think about that.

I didn’t understand the attempts and powers. I simply could not grasp it. So I changed it. My friend, the one from M.I.T., read it and was horrified with how the system worked, and liked my idea much better. To use D&D terms, it would be like if your character picked “fireball” as a spell and then couldn’t throw a fireball, until he practiced and eventually got enough lucky rolls to where he could attempt it regularly. That’s something you might see in a video game more than a RPG. And even now, that’s going away. As the Skyrim designers put it, “why do you
have to keep practicing jumping or running to get good at it?” They realized how boring it was, and rightfully so, abandoned it.

I get certain role playing games and systems aren’t for everyone. But fuck, this game?! But hey, some men like getting their nuts cracked in a vice. Some men seek out HIV and bugchase. And some play TSR Marvel.

And didn’t he use the cyclops example before, nearly verbatim. Man, Spoony hates that guy.

Were you trying to think of Spirit of the Century? The pulp comics RPG? Played it a few times, really fun system. Our GM ran a campaign with this system that used a world a lot like the Watchmen.

Really I find the best system Spoony for Super Heroing is the Hero
System using the Champion Verse books that are present to help you. I
was able to run a very satsfying campaign for my players using that
system for nearly 8 months. Till we ran into a problem, people loosing
jobs, had to leave to other cities to get them and other issues like
that. One early issue is that someones schedule shifted so badly he
couldn’t join us and I killed his character so he was non too
intreasted.

In anycase the champions system is very verstile.
It’s a bit complicated with all it’s rules but it needs to be given you
can play any damn thing you want. Let me give you an example with my
party which was all over the board.

The face of my group was a
supercalled Infinite, he was a speedster/thief. Well he only really
stole back the money he would use to bribe people. Hes day job was a PI
and he would say here’s a 50, can you help us now and then using sleight
of hand and his super speed steal the same 50 back over and over again
to get the info he needed. He also stole a special artifact from lock up
from the Shield of the verse that belonged to a super villan but he
didn’t know that at the time he just though it was a hero that’s why he
took up the villans mantle as well. The ring allowed him to duplicate
into 4 more of himself.

Another character in the party was called
Jedi Boy. Basically he was a techie who was so into Star Wars that he
used his tech knowledge to make himself a jedi! Made himself a
lightsaber, telekentic wristbands, and tech augments so he could run and
jump and some suggestive mind control. His Arch Nemsis was The D’Har
Master who is out to prove Star Trek is vastly superior to your stupid
Star Wars!

Another guy was basically the Thing but he was a
bussiness man who wore Tux’s into battles and smoked Cigars. I also
helped him so he could not only pick up any big thing around and use it
as weapon, but to grab the guy in power armor trying to blast him and
use him as a club against the other guy in power armor. It was
hilarious.

Then my fourth guy was well basically an alchemist
from Full Metal Alchemist, he had the whole clap thing going for him, he
was able to rearrange stuff which sometimes made things hard. It’s like
giving an early level group in D&D stone shape and telling them to
go through these obstacles. I had to think outside the box a lot like
putting them on a ship or a plane since he can’t transmutate too much of
the material from said plane without putting the group in danger.

Personally
I would say it’s the systems you might have been playing that just made
it that way. But really you should check out Hero system. Everyone it’s
my favorite system for anything outside of Fantasy RPG playing though
you can do a fantasy game with it.

Old time marvel superheroes player/GM here. Have to disagree, i played that same version s you. I really disliked it, it had inherent problems in it whereby what should be a ‘good’ stat (such as Ex or Rm) were really quite poor in play and to really be adept at a stat/power you had to have it at a stupidly high stat such as IN-AM or MN.

the best old system for superheroes to my group was always DC Heroes 3rd edition

I agreed with you 100% on the old TSR Marvel Super Heroes game, until recently.

I discovered “Mutants and Masterminds”, published by Green Ronin Games, under the D20 Open License.

IMPORTANT NOTE: the only reason this game falls under the D20 Open License is because it used the skill check mechanic and the basic concept of Feats (called Advantages in M&M 3rd). Aside from that, this is FAR from a normal D20 product.

No classes. No character levels. Levels exist, but as Power Levels, and these dictate the caps on powers, skills, and stats your characters possess. Power Level also sets the general level of the campaign. A normal Supers games is PL 10. a “teen Supers” game is PL 8 or 9. A street-vigilante supers games, like Punisher or a the Nolan-Batman is PL 6. A Cosmic Supers game would be PL 12 or 14, depending on how mega awesome you want the cosmic gameplay to be.

The game actually manages to solve the problem of Bricks crushing Agile characters through its Power Level system. It’s actually amazing. Game Balance is easy to maintain. PLs set limits on characters “maximum” potential. Improvements are bought with Power Points. 1 PP for 3 skill points. 1 PP for 1 advantage (aka feat). Powers are bought at PP/per Power Rank. some are cheap (like super strength) others are expensive (like super speed). And the system is all about customization. You know all those little power quirks superheroes can have so one flying brick can be differently from another? Game system totally accounts for that. If its a minor boon it might be a one time point increase. if its a minor penalty or complication it makes the power cheaper.

All in all, this is one of the best RPGs I’ve ever seen, and its 2nd Edition actually put out books for adapting it to other genres like Mecha-Style anime, and comic-book-esque fantasy. I’ve neer seen a system so open ended and flexible. It remains to this do, one of my all time favorite RPGs. I suggest tracking down a copy of Mutants and Masterminds 3rd Edition and give it a read.

Wow! Glad to see some fellow Marvel superhero players here! My brother introduced me to that game when I was like 10 and I Still play it when I can now at 33! I have almost every character sheet, judges material and campaign books that ever came out through it’s entire publishing run. I think from 1988-1992 or so. So if anyone is missing some material, or characters (including you Spoony), hit me up and I’ll be glad to scan them in!

And those complaining it was hard? No way! i learned how to DM it when I was 10. Very quick and easy, if not a little simplistic. But I always recommend this to anyone who is a fan of superhero’s and is checking out starting into RPGs.

The new Marvel Heroic seems to address every issue Spoony has with superhero games.

If nothing else the superhero arcs of KODT showed me the possibilities of a supers game.

Oh my god, unremarkable but can breathe under water?
Thats Guybrush Threepwood man :D

I remember playing Mutants and Masterminds d20 superheroes for the first time, and our GM wanted to do the sort of “school for newbie super heroes.” So we had a group and we all had to come up with what our superhero concept really -was-. I picked the good ol’ fashioned Silver Age guy, where a high schooler basically inherited the powers of Superman. Flight, invulnerability, super-strength.

Now, in Mutants and Masterminds your stats aren’t randomly generated at all, you have points based on your power level. I had enough points to give myself all of the above powers and to such degree that I was immune to anything that didn’t hit -as hard as I did-, I hit so hard -I could melt steel-, and I could fly at Mach 1.

That game didn’t last more than a week because the GM had to invent characters that were basically more insane than our walking nuclear missiles, and it became unfun when the guy who was invulnerable was down nearly every fight from critical damage.

I’m currently in three PbP games of Mutants and Masterminds, and I’ve never had any of these problems.

Of course, we never play with randomly generated characters, which seems to be the real problem Spoony is addressing.

For being a guy who likes to emphasize the “Role Playing” aspect of RPG’s, Spoony doesn’t seem very creative with superheroes. That’s fine, he should probably just stay away from games he’s not interested in.

About the MMOs. I don’t really mind not being the big super heroes; I do mind being their flunky and always remaining that way. If I play in the DC universe, or Marvel universe, I want to BREAK those universes. I want to surpass Batman, become stronger than Superman, I want to kick the Joker’s and Lex Luthor’s asses, not their flunkies and then watch a NPC super hero beat up the final villain, etc.

I suppose there is no such powers in the DC Universe, but then, that’s why I want to have them in the DC Universe; ki/chi based super hero. There’s one in Marvel, Iron Fist, but he remains basically still just human. On the other hand, I know these guys with powers based upon that and they annihilate cities, or even planets; yeah, most notably Dragon Ball Z. I would like to be able to do something new; that is start out as a batman level fighter, and at the end, being able to kick Superman’s ass.

As a villain, I’m not going to work with other villains, well, maybe the occasional team up, as an equal, but I have no interest in being a henchman, I want to be the actual villain.

As a hero, I might choose to kill a truly grave threat, and I might have to fight the Justice League because they or the authorities have decided I’m a villain now. I have no interest in remaining a Justice League errand boy no matter how high I level up.

It’s ok spoony, it’s still fun to hear you talk about the stuff you love.

I love your commentary! You bomb, but it’s still funny. The Pool Boy idea is kinda true, if you go hard core Heroes Unlimited. You definitely almost always get at least one major power, and one or more minor powers. There’s one option where you get like six minor powers. You can definitely rack up some crap powers. I still like it, though. The random tables are old school, and the idea is you roll up your powers and YOU figure out what the character is, how the powers unify. The characters didn’t get to pick the powers fate bestowed, they just have to deal with it. The game, like all Palladium games, is open to house rules to the point of needing them. So usually you should get a chance to change one power to what you want, or something like that. My favorite game is Mutants & Masterminds, which has the DC license for it’s 3rd edition.

I like how Oreo got excited when you mentioned a heightened sense of smell

I actually really hate MMOs that don’t allow full character creation.

And concerning character roles, I regularly make my fighters very diplomatic. Who’s a better face man than the valiant knight in shining armor?

Actually, I tend to usually make very diplomatic characters. I made a Sorcerer who never fought if he didn’t have to (and thanks to some well selected spells, and a ridiculous bluff/diplomacy he almost never did.)

OH DUDE, you played Marvel Superheroes??? I actually did play in a campaign of that which lasted for a good couple months- it WAS pretty screwed up, but that wasn’t really the game system’s fault, it was mostly because our GM was a horny bugger (and being the only girl player made that a bit awkward, really…) But anywaaaaay… long story short, us players unintentionally made Tony Stark’s life hell in various ways- the guy with electricity powers shut off his suit mid combat, and I got mind controlled by the villain into seducing him, then beheading him… I kid you not. *nervous laugh* Good times?

Anyway, had to Nostalgia Rant there… I enjoyed your take on the superhero RPG genre:) Also, I was impressed you’d heard of Scion, not everybody has- I had a pretty good long game of that a while ago.

people were writing entire books in the comments I’m just eating poptarts

seems like uneducated assumptions of Cyclops, he’s more than a fighter, he’s a leader; perhaps in a comparison for a game sure. The character’s experiences and personalities are what make them special, not entirely their powers. The downfall of the movies was how the creators only used the heroes’ powers and not their characteristics from the comics.

Um, where is part 2?