Talk:Super Heroes

Postmortem discussion

Edmiao I very much liked the episodic nature of supers, and i think that worked quite well. It really captured the comic book genre well, with some villians captured, and others getting away, but us being too busy to spend all our time in a particular episode trying to track down a bad guy from a previous episode. they were out there in the mist somewhere, or in jail stewing. I agree, the episodic nature means a fast paced plot, which means a lot of preparation, but also a more fun game for me. I get bored trying to weasel information out of some reluctant NPC for too long.

One way to use the hero system to allow characters to be more flexible in their superness would be to allow VPP to all characters, and be generous about their use in game as folks think up a new power. trick would be not not slow down the game, but i think if the focus stays on cinematics rather than exact power construction it's doable. All the big superheroes essentially have VPP.

Some of the sessions where we really shined were when there were only two people present, i think at that small census it really lends itself to a faced paced session, which is genre appropriate. one thing about having more folks around is that characters scatter to the wind to investigate this or that, and it's hard to keep up the pace.

i enjoyed the villians and the combats. there was often a hint of something bigger going on in the background, and many plots started to intersect each other. interesting for a building plot with an episodic nature, but true episodic plots may have disconnected storylines.

I quite enjoyed Viho, and put a lot of time into making him, i think this is thanks to the fact that he's recycled from exemplars, so i had a lot of time to mull over his persona in my head. he was also very super-like because all his powers were essentially VPP: followers bought with multiples, vehicles bought with multiples, super-scientist gives every science skill. one worry i had was that he would over-dominate the game world because he had the base and he was rich and he was well known; this made him the de-facto leader/spokesman of the group. I tried not to let him overrun the plots and I think it worked out ok. very entertaining to play him.

GABE: I actually didn't know we were just gonna stright cancel the game... Um anyway, I liked the game. I liked most of the villains, and the whole those with power vs. those without.

While not having huge arcing stories is nice, I fealt maybe the episodic nature maybe wasn't episodic enough? Does that make sense? The fights went pretty well as far as the Hero system is concerned.

I'm going to be blunt, one of the biggest problems was GM cancelation. Too many times for this game it would end up being canceled, so it made me wonder if the game would even run and not really get hyped for it, I don't like being disappointed so I worked on the idea it would be canceled.

I think the whole this story will run for X meet ups is a great idea. But overall I really enjoyed the game. Although I'd love to find another system for supers that is a bit easier.

Edmiao I'd be up for bringing the game back for one shots or short arcs. folks could try out new characters in the gameworld as desired.

GABE: I think that is a great idea Ed. The world is fairly well established with known villains, and lots of room for new heroes. I really did like the world Matt made.

--Dieter the Bold 11:17, 28 July 2009 (MST) Matt, don't blame yourself in any way for me not playing. I was just super(hah)-unenthused about a game that wasn't all serious. Which is rather crazy, since even our serious games have a lot of humor. Honestly, even if you had worked with me 1-on-1 to set up a character and nemesis, I would have had to work myself up for the game each night. And I'm a lazy, lazy man. Looking back on it, I might have been able to do it if you had gone with your 3-episode arc. While I normally love great big arcing campaigns, if I'm not too enthused about something, I'd have a better chance getting my energy up if I knew I only had to focus on some specific plot or issue for 3-sessions or so. And then when we got together next it would be something different.

One-Shot discussion

--Gdaze 14:52, 27 July 2009 (MST) Well, I've been reading M&M. I have to say that sometimes the rules aren't very clearly written, but I haven't even gotten to the powers section yet. That said, we are looking at a system where you roll ONE DIE for everything. More dice is nice (oho!) but I think we've agreed that we want hero combat to be simple.

I actually think the idea of no HP is neat. I disliked Hero because unless you had assloads of defense you'd get stunned all the time, that doesn't happen in comics. Characters take a beating. In hero, even with the power limits, characters would take either no damage, or tons of it. Or at the very least be stunned. I hate the stun rules in hero. Nothing is fun about being taken out of combat by one hit, and to me it just doesn't seem superish.

M&M has limits on powers and stats built into the system, yay!

I'm all for hero one shots, I was even gonna run a one shot with M&M if you weren't. But I'm going to be pouring over the rules tonight, I'll post with my findings.

Edmiao all for it, any way you roll/role play it. I suggest that if we do some one shots, and some folks were not enthused by their characters that they could make up some new ones, or assume an NPC from the game.

JASON: Just to make a suggestion here, the stunning happening too often is not a knock on the system, its the characters. This has never happened in a game I have played in or run. The problem isnt your defenses being too big or small, its the attacks being too big. This is why campaign limits are important. And as for stunning in comics, it does happen: anytime its story appropriate.

--Gdaze 09:45, 28 July 2009 (MST) Really? Killing attacks tend to do assloads of stun as well. Also talking about how stunning does happen, when its story appropriate is not the point I'm talking about. I'm saying it doesn't happen every other panel. I would say that if a system has that come up, it is partly the system as it has no built in ways to help this. Far as I know the hero book doesn't suggestion anywhere how to help doing 8 billzillion stun. The system you came up with worked, but a system should at least suggest something. Of course I have an old 5th edition book, not revised. I like the hero system for stuff like fantasy, or sci-fi, even super spy stuff would be great. But when it comes to heros, I think there is too much stuff to keep track of.

Anyway, been reading through M&M. And so far I'm liking what I'm seeing. It has Feats, which are not powers but give you neat little things. One of my favorites is Master Planner, which is if you pick the location of the encounter ("We'll jump them here!") and you make some skill roll, you give you and all your allies bonuses for a number of rounds, then the bonuses slowly drop off round by round. It also happens during the encounter when you want it to.

However one thing is that values seem to change a lot. And certain feats allow you to switch things up but you still have to take into account the power limits. I'm just starting to read up on powers but it seems pretty neat. For example, if you buy light control, you can add a power to it that gives you a blast, then you can either use the light, or the blast, and this way you don't have to buy a completely different power.

JASON: You cant compare a game to a comic, same with a movie. In both you have a writer who has full control of all characters and doesnt have to listen to their players whine when things arent their way. Everything only happens when its story appropriate. In games, that doesnt work. It just doesnt work to compare games with stories or comics or movies or anything. They are incompatible genres.

With killing attacks, its a superhero game, you shouldnt be using them. Superheroes in the vast majority of cases dont use killing attacks, and those that do are anti-heroes. The problem is players are gaming it, making guys that do the most for the points, not guys that make sense given the concept. Had those characters purchased more appropriate powers the stunning thing wouldnt be an issue. Another way to severely limit getting stunned is to buy damage reduction instead of large defenses. A character with 15 PD, 20 CON and 25% damage reduction gets stunned on damage rolls of 47 or greater, which isnt very likely. You could also buy 50% damage reduction with the limitation (-1) only to prevent stunning, or what is probably a better deal 15 extra CON only to prevent stunning (-1).

Be careful with M&M and all of the feats and powers. There is one, the one that makes you rubbery, which pretty much makes you immune to damage. There are plenty of others that are ridiculously overpowered. Read them all carefully and disallow the ones that are broken. I know the game is popular, and for some reason well liked, but its got flaws. I hope it all works for you!

Edmiao I think in the hero system it is just very important for the gm to make firm limits and redirect character creation to make it more genre appropriate. i think a gm should feel free to tell a character that they need more defense and another that they have too much defense. i think in our oaaaa game we are getting dangerously close to that precipice with prevalent killing attacks, some characters with insane resistant PD and others with none. recipe for escalation of enemy attacks and lethal outcomes on weaker characters. ie, ben should tell me to buy more resistant PD. which i think i will do with my xp before the next session. I'd hate to see my character die at the hands of Brandon's rPD.

--Matts 21:59, 28 July 2009 (MST)I should mention that my issues with the hero system have nothing to do with balance, really, and more to do with how much combat tended to drag. Ideally, we'd have a system that moved quickly, and worked in favor of big, flashy, punchy fights. If it's a system that has a large playerbase and is well-tested, then that's good, because it means that big issues are probably identified already and we can anticipate them.

--Gdaze 10:44, 29 July 2009 (MST) I don't think you could become totally immune in M&M because of the built in limits. And yes, that was the major problem with the hero system, combat dragged on, but not really because the fight was taking long, in fact most fights only lasted 24 seconds. But because having to calculate out everything and taking into account all the rules really dragged it out. Like draining or aiding someone? I'd buy my powers so they wouldn't affect figured charateristics, just because it was too annoying to deal with.

I'm just trying out M&M because of a lot of people who had the same issues with Hero suggested M&M. I'm not totally sure M&M will be the system we are using for a supers game, but may be worth a shot.

BEN: I'm a storyteller, not a WoW AI. Enemy attacks, and who they are directed at, line up with the story I want to tell. it being a heroic epic, nothing that will turn Aefra into paste is likely to come her way, barring gross errors by the PCs (see "Galen gets stabbed in the throat for 24 body", episode??). And even then, there will usually be an out. That being said, I do like balanced characters...

--Gdaze 12:07, 29 July 2009 (MST) Well right, and thats what I mean about the hero system. But then again that is a Fantasy game, not a hero game. I think hero works well for fantasy, sci-fi, but when it comes to supers, there is so much going on, it just bogs down combat.

--Brandon 14:28, 29 July 2009 (MST) That's it. Next time I play I'm totally attacking Aefra with my rPD! Ben, you should anticipate this and look up how I should roll that.

--Gdaze 12:54, 28 August 2009 (MST) MATT! Would you like to try running a M&M one shot, sometime soon? I have a question and was wondering if maybe you knew the answer. When you buy the alternate power feat, do you then get that alternate power for only one point? As in you don't need to buy it up? It seems so cheap, but on the other hand if you DO have to fully buy the alternate power, it seems pointless as you can't use it at the same time. Your take on this?

Thematic Clarification

A clarifying (as in butter) discussion from Dieter's talk page:

--Dieter the Bold 17:11, 10 June 2008 (MST) Let me rephrase it this way: Are we like (1) Fantastic Four/Spider-Man (lone superheroes in the world but everyone seems to like us and be all cool, for the most part), (2) Batman (where no one really knows too much about us, passes us off as kinda' a myth, but those in the know thinks us a threat), or (3) X-men (feared and reviled)? I'm all for helping people and the like, but a lot of the mythic stuff superheroes do is only vaguely connected with "helping people". Usually, saving the planet from alien domination or destruction. There are definitely lots of "help small group or lone individual", and definitely guardians of a specific place stories, but in terms of mythic, at least how I understand it, it really doesn't have too much specifically to do with particular people.

JASON: I dont know anything about your game theme, but I do have an understanding of the game mechanics of this idea. When I said symbiote and organism before, I meant those as abstractions. In reality, your character is an extremely powerful and elegant collection of machine code that exists within the electronic framework of whatever device it inhabits. You could make a robot body for convenience, or you could jump into one of the PCs phones and be in their pocket, that wouldnt matter. In game terms you have Mind Control vs electronic class of minds, automaton power doesnt take stun from physical attacks (the host device does, however), and Extra Dimensional Movement only through electrical circuitry. You could hack into opposing computers (using mind control), sabotage devices carried by enemies (Body Drain vs electronic devices) or look through security cameras (Clairsentience).

--Edmiao 17:34, 10 June 2008 (MST) matt wrote: "Theme-driven: The best heroes are quasi-mythical, and are about something - they have themes. Heroes for this game will have primary themes, the essential story of the character. The theme of the overall game is about "outsiderness" (since everyone will be neccessarily different), either fore- or backgrounded by the intersection of the themes of all the heroes. Which is to say, I'm sure the group's heroes will share some very interesting themes, and I'd rather have the game be about stuff the players have built into their characters than something I've arbitrarily decided." Thus, i would interpret this to be, if you want to play batman darker setting, make batman. if you want to play lighter, make spider man. He will adapt the game world to you. I would interpret that the world will react to the characters based on their actions. if they are heroes then they will be seen as heroes. if they wreak damage all over the city blithely during combat then they might be viewed in a darker tone. Matt, this correct?

--Matts 17:48, 10 June 2008 (MST)Perfect, thanks Ed!

--Dieter the Bold 18:02, 10 June 2008 (MST) Okay, definition understood. Explanation needed on how, as random example, my Captain Marvel character's theme will be fitting in with Gabe's Daredevil's character's them and Ed's Tony Stark theme? (I know those are totally not (except for maybe Ed) the heroes we're theming our characters off of). I'm still seeing a disconnect between group loyalty and activities (which can be simply arranged) vs. the actual themes (I must crawl among the scum of the sewers to protect that little boy over there vs. I fight the grand Illuminatus in a battle of the minds for control over the Worldstone and the fate of humanity). I hyperbolize because I'm not sure how to shrink it down to more specifics. Also, Jason, you're nailing it on the head for what I'm thinking. Thanks, and awesome.

--Matts 21:23, 10 June 2008 (MST)What you're describing is basically the JLA or the Avengers - How does the agenda of a Norse God line up with that of an abusive scientist and a cold war relic? The answer, at least as I see it, is this: Each story arc, a hero could be highlighted - Batman calls in the JLA cavalry when the heat gets high in Gotham; Aquaman can't just can't take it anymore and has to be retrieved from the depths of the sea; Wonder Woman is castigated by her Amazonian whatevers and drags the team along on a vision-quest.

Translated to the context of this game, think of it this way. I'm gonna take all the themes for all the characters and put them in a bag. Each story arc, I'll pull out themes until I feel I've got a good basis for a story, choose some villains for it, and build a scenario. As the game progresses, a history will develop, and I'll pull from that too.

So, to directly answer your question: Sometimes the group will be examining the ravages of capitalism courtesy of Tony Stark, and sometimes the group will be slogging through the mud protecting homeless babies. Hopefully, Captain Marvel gets some needed perspective out of helping clean up the streets, and Daredevil can't believe it when he helps defeat Proctor Maximus Devourer Of Worlds.

If everyone's theme was the same, then every session would be the same. I'm sort of forcing at least one common theme (you are different from the common man), but to me the more themes the better, kind of like how a five color deck is fun: the interactions between discrete elements can be surprising and entertaining.

--Gdaze 21:28, 10 June 2008 (MST) Yeah... we are a super TEAM, thus I believe there should be a theme that covers all of us kind of, while allowing times for each person's own theme to come to the front. As long as we aren't always just digging stuff up all the time! Kekeke.

--Dieter the Bold 17:44, 17 June 2008 (MST) My vote for name: The Gemini League. As much a danger to each other as to our enemies.

--Edmiao 20:37, 17 June 2008 (MST) don't even joke about that.

GABE: No... that would be every other group we have, lets work together this time. That said, what is gonna be our name? It should incoperate magic and technology. The Technocrats!