I released Quick20 not too long ago and it’s been doing pretty well. On top of that, I’ve started a second gaming group, so that I’m running Vampire/Mage on Tuesdays and . . . well, I was running a Ready 2 Run cyberpunk genre game, but as I’d already run one of those my heart wasn’t really in it. It was doing okay, but I told the group I was going to switch games and we chatted. Eventually, we decided on a superhero game.
Now I’ve always had problems with the point-mongering, power-tweaking ends of these games, but I like the genre. The closest that’s come to “my” supers game is Truth and Justice, but I’m the only one with a copy. I own Mutants and Masterminds, Savage Worlds, Aberrant and the MURPG. M&M is good, but takes some time to set up. SW’s powers are a bit too rigid, and the MURPG requires tokens and is a very confusing read. Ready 2 Run has a rough guide to weird powers, but I’m taking a break from running it to concentrate on a number of projects that use it as an engine. (Sounds odd, but this basically means I’d rather test with one shots and short tests than have it take over my weekly game).
So I decided I might as well make my own, using Quick20 as the base. I made up Quick20 characters and made up some rough powers. Then we played. It went very, very well, so I’ve decided I’m going to design my supers game incrementally.
That means that instead of designing from scratch and seeing how the players take it, I’m going to add things as play demands it, then incorporate it into the system after the fact. I suspect that lots of games were designed this way, especially when people were still feeling out what you could play besides D&D.
Quick20 was designed for fantasy gaming (in 7 pages of rules, no less) and uses three classes — Warrior, Expert and Mystic. Guardian Heroes (the supers game) is going to use five classes because when I was making characters, I came to the conclusion that superheroes need a different set of archetypes. Furthermore, I’ve decided that in the context of GH, classes are really packages that give characters cool comic book karma. I denied villains a special ability pool, which made them quicker to run and highlighted the characters’ special, heroic resources quite nicely. After tonight, I’ve also decided to cut down on opposed rolls, since I’d like powers to be reliable. Powers will work more automatically unless there’s a save or attack roll involved.
I started the game by making characters. I asked the players to design their heroes conceptually, and added ad hoc rules to match. I think I’m going to formalize this process a bit by making the negotiation that happened at this stage a part of the character creation process. For example, when Chad wanted an odd teleportation power, we kind of chucked ideas and limits back and forth until we hit our goal.
Anyway, I’ll tell y’all how it goes as I design a bit more of the game after every session.