Mob | United | Malcolm | Sheppard » Superhero RPGs

Here, Have the Alpha of the Supers Game I’m Running

Malcolm — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:48:55 +0000

This is the superhero game I’m going to run. It owes a lot to S. John Ross’ RISUS but with enough modifications to be its own thing because I have no sense of humour.

Creating a Character

Purchasing Traits at Character Creation

Use 75 Character Points to purchase your Traits. Give each Trait a Descriptor. Purchase each Trait’s Quality and Level. The total cost for each is the base cost of the Quality multiplied by its level. Check the tables below for reference.

Let’s look at Trait Quality . . .

Trait Quality	Active Dice/Level	Defencive Value and Character Point Cost per Level
Weak	d4	2
Typical	d6	3
Talented*	d8	4
Post-Human	d10	5
Incredible	d12	6
Superlative	d20	10
Cosmic	d100	50

* Maximum non-superhuman, and rare even then.

. . . and Trait Levels

Level	Description
1	Basic
2	Amateur
3	Competent
4	Professional
5	Elite
6	Master*
7	Grandmaster**
8	The Greatest***

* Only one character per PC group can be a Master in a Trait (or a set of very similar Traits)

** Each character can only possess one Grandmaster or better Trait.

*** There can only be one permanent example of The Greatest in a Trait (or group of very similar Traits) per campaign. A new Greatest must be “passed the torch” or defeat the established Greatest. In both cases, the former Greatest loses her status, dropping to Grandmaster. If the contender loses or is not passed the torch, he drops back to Grandmaster instead. Any character who loses Greatest status may try for it again after paying half Character Point cost for that level.

Descriptors

Pick at least two Personal Descriptors and one Power Descriptor to create Personal and Power Traits.

Personal Descriptors are about your character’s life, background, interests and ordinary skills. They’re limited to Typical Quality. If they would have more than Typical Quality they’d be Power Traits.

Power Descriptors are about exceptional abilities and resources such as superhuman powers. They can possess any degree of Quality.

Example Personal Descriptors: Athlete, Fast Car, Bureaucrat, Dockworker, Physicist, Thief, Wealthy
Example Power Descriptors: Fast, Fly, Lightning Blast, Powered Armour, Strong, Tough and any Personal Descriptor with above-Typical Quality.

The easiest way to write it all down together is with the following format:

Descriptor Level (Active Dice/Defencive Value)

Complications

You may purchase up to three ranks of Complications in any combination (one/one/one, one/two, or a single rank three) Complications hose your character in exchange for bonus Effort Points you earn each time you get hosed. (See below for how Effort Points work.)

Rank One Complications (2d4 Effort Points, Max 10)

Ethos: You have a defined personal philosophy of conduct that could be used against you, though you might wiggle out of a jam with clever reasoning. The player and GM work through the ambiguities until they reach consensus.
Minor Hindrance: A specific situation causes you to temporarily lose an Active Die from one Trait.
Misunderstood: The general public is suspicious of you; any fans belong to a slightly controversial subculture like punks or religious fundamentalists.
Nuisance NPC: An NPC makes life more difficult for you, but not too dangerous unless you really screw things up. This could be someone you like who gets into trouble, an annoying guy, or a villain you pretty much outclass.

Rank Two Complications (2d8 Effort Points, Max 20)

Code: You might have rigid morals or you might be a robot. Either way, you have a defined code of conduct that can be used against you but unlike an Ethos, can’t be cleverly interpreted — the GM is the final arbiter.
Global Hindrance: A specific situation causes you to temporarily lose an Active Die from every Trait.
Hated: The general public despises you as if you were a murderer or some kind of Nazi. Being your fan is considered a character defect.
Perilous NPC: An NPC might get you killed because he hates you or because he might haplessly cause you to get into trouble.
Vulnerable: A specific situation suppresses one of your Traits. You can’t bid it to attack or defend until the situation passes.

Rank Three Complications (2d12 Effort Points, Max 30)

Hunted: You’re actively pursued by law enforcement or another vast, powerful group to such an extent that you need to hide most of time.
Total Vulnerability: A specific situation will suppress all of your Power Traits, as per Vulnerable.

Each time you get hosed by a Complication roll the dice to find out how many Effort Points you earned. These accumulate until you reach the maximum for that Complication.

At the start of a new story arc, all of your Effort Points from Complications reset to 0 unless you earned them in the very last game session of the arc.

Sample Character: Lash

A mutant who discovered his powers under the stress of a dangerous job in the labour underground, Lash (also known as Juan de Burgos) fights for migrant workers across North America. Lash can project arcs and tendrils of psychic energy: long, rippling red bands. He’s wanted by the police for his clashes with factory workers, human traffickers and government sponsored heroes.

Personal Traits: Labourer 4 (4d6/8), Fugitive 2 (2d6/4), Truck Driver 3 (3d6/6)

Power Traits: Energy Whip 4 (4d12/24), Energy Grapple 3 (3d12/18), Energy Climb 3 (3d10/15)

Complications: Hunted (Rank 3;2d12 Effort Points, Max 30)

Conflicts

To settle combat, arguments and anything else that pits two characters against each other or a character against anything else, follow this procedure:

Pick an Attack Trait for anyone acting.
Pick a Defence Trait for anyone and anything being acted against.
Roll the Attack Trait’s Active Dice and add them together. If the total beats the Defence Trait’s Defencive Value, reduce the Defencive Value by the difference between the roll total and value.

If the order of actions is important go by the highest Attack Trait Level. Refer to Quality, then put Risky Traits ahead of appropriate Traits, then roll randomly to settle ties. After everyone goes, a round passes, and you get to take it from the top until the situation resolves itself.

Note: You’ll want to be able to switch Defence Traits frequently to avoid a beatdown once your ability to defend with one Trait crumbles.

Appropriate Traits, Risky Traits and Justification

To use a Trait you need to justify it. You’re not going to see Hairdressing prevail over Boxing in a fistfight. But when it does happen you’re going to see extreme results. If you need to come up with a strange justification for using a particular Trait for attack or defence it becomes a Risky Trait for the purpose of that interaction. Here’s what happens:

To use a Risky Trait to attack, roll its Active Dice minus one die. If you succeed you inflict double damage on the opponent’s Defencive Value. If you fail, you inflict your roll as damage on an appropriate Trait of your own.
If you use a Risky Trait to defend, calculate your Defencive Value as if it was one Level lower. If the attack fails against you the attacking Trait suffers damage equal to the difference between the attacker’s roll and your Defencive Value. If it fails, you take double normal damage, or triple if the Attack Trait was itself a Risky Trait.

If you can’t justify the use of a Trait without annoying the other players or damaging the tone of the game, you can’t use it at all.

Multiple and Area Attacks

To attempt multiple attacks in a round, split your Attack Trait’s Active Dice and roll them separately. You can justify actions with any Trait no higher than your Attack Trait.
To attack an area, split your Active Dice into one pool rolled to determine area (each point affects about 4 square meters) and one pool to determine the maximum Defencive Value affected.

Active Defense

If you want to actively defend, your Attack Trait’s Active Dice become a penalty for incoming attack rolls.

Damage and Consequences

If a Trait’s Defencive Value drops to 0 the character suffers consequences appropriate to the attack — usually a knockout, embarrassment or other harsh reversal of fortune. The nature of the attack determines how much time it takes to heal. The victim also loses the ability to effectively bid the injured Trait until at least 1 point of Defencive Value heals.

Permanent Consequences

If you want to kill someone or force some other permanent change, the GM decides the requirements above and beyond dropping a key Defencive Value to 0. It depends on the tone of the game. In some, an extra round of effort will do. In others, it might take as little as the intent to kill or as much as the following optional rule:

Wrecking Traits: Once a Trait’s Defencive Value has been reduced to zero, an attacker can keep hitting that trait. Further damage is applied against a fresh instance of the character’s healed Defencive Value, but the Defencive Value is not used to reduce the power of the incoming attack. It automatically hits. This damage converts permanent Defencive Value into raw Character Points (the victim can gradually spend it on something else) and automatically reduces the Trait’s Level to match that new value, treating the listed standard value as a minimum. The Trait is considered wrecked and can’t heal without a quest or rarely granted boon. If the Trait drops to Level 0, it’s gone and the victim suffers some awful permanent consequence, like death. Remember that the victim still gets Character Points back.

Effort

If you need to do something unusual or extra powerful, you’ll need Effort Points. Get them in two ways:

Earn them after getting hosed by Complications.
Take Defencive Value damage that converts into Effort Points to be used on the spot — you can’t save these up.

Here’s what you can do with Effort Points:

Absorb Damage: Use your points to absorb damage on a one for one basis.
Heal Defencive Value: You can heal your character’s Defencive Value points on a one for one basis.
Improve a Trait’s Active Dice Quality: Improve the Quality of an existing Trait’s Active Dice by paying the difference in Character Point costs between its current and new Quality. Describe why this is happening; that determines how long the benefit lasts for, though it never extends for longer a scene.
Manifest a New Trait: Buy a new Trait for its standard Character Point value. Justify it with narration but remember that it won’t last longer than a scene. (The justification sets a duration of one scene or less.) This can be a Personal or Power Trait.

You need to justify how you use Effort Points and you have to justify taking damage, but you don’t have to justify Effort gained from Complications. The GM should allow pretty loose justifications that fit the game’s feel.

Equipment

Equipment is treated abstractly. If it’s a Trait, it’s a reliable item that can usually be replaced or fixed unless a Complication bars the way or it’s directly damaged.If you have a Trait that would help you use a piece of equipment that is also a Trait, you can Team Up with it (see below for more on Team Ups) whether or not it’s part of your character.

The game assumes that in most cases, you have all the gear proper use of your Traits require. If you don’t have the proper equipment your Quality drops by two ranks (to a minimum of Weak).

Teaming Up

Characters Team Up to improve their chances against a tough obstacle or defend against a big hit. The disadvantage of Team Ups is that you can only team up offensively or defensively in a given round — not both.

Offencive Team Up: Add one die per additional character to thew character with the highest Level Attack Traits and give the team the highest Quality from all contributing Attack Traits.
Defencive Team Up: Calculate a new Defencive Value equal to the highest Level Defence Trait used, plus one Level per Additional character, calculated using the highest Quality Trait in the group. During each round of Defence, a different character may choose to absorb any damage with the Trait she contributed.

You must justify Team Ups (including Traits used) in the story, and if one contribution is Risky, the combined Trait is also considered Risky.

Guardian Heroes, Pt. 2

admin — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 04:41:00 +0000

The second session of Quick20 supers was a lot of fun. To be brief:

The game takes place in a fast and loose version of the Marvel Universe. The PCs are Team Discord: Aerobot (an robot mascot-hero that escaped from Microsoft, with the ability to shoot missiles, fly and change size), Switch (a magical teleporter who switches with objects at his destination — a very neat power, by the way), The Manipulator (a nanite-user much like the Authority’s Engineer) and John Armstrong (telepath and PR man). Th heroes were summoned by Toronto police to deal with hostages (including the mayor) at the CM Tower, held by the obscure Separatism Squad (Fleur De Lis [not other versions of this character, but a flier with forcefields and the ability to shoot sticky plasma bombs like Halo's Covenant grenades], The Great and Powerful Bong [gets people stoned and controls minds with body chemistry] and Stampeder [tough and strong]).

The PCs killed Fleur De Lis and TGAPB and after a huge, dynamic slugfest, captured Stampeder. Only a few hostages died due to henchman gunfire — a C+ grade as far as heroism goes. Toronto’s police chief gave them the privileges to coordinate a Canada-wide investigation into the origin of the Sepsquad. They checked out TGAPB’s Vancouver apartment, which let them know that his powers came from a device called the “Omega Well,” possessed by Stampeder. Armstrong read Stampeder’s mind and learned that she was Preston Manning’s secret older sister, kept in a home because she was thought to have an intellectual disability — a source of shame, considering that the Mannings were pro-eugenics politicians back in the 30s.

They went to AB and confronted Manning with this. In subsequent conversation, he mentioned that a Flag-Smasher initially tried to hook up with Reform to provide uber-tech, but was turned away. Team Discord researched Flag-Smasher on wikipedia, then contacted Captain America. Cap (who was eating lucnh and following with his Blackberry when the team called) agreed to email confidential info about Flag-Smasher.

Quick20′s combat system works well enough. The rules use the three OGL saves as stats and add a 4th (Might) for melee and strength. Superstrength adds bonus damage and lifting/pushing bennies and works OK, though closely matches characters don’t do much damage because their damage saves (a la M&M, but modified) don’t get to fail by much. I eventually want to add some thematic maneuvers (like “team-up”), but don’t want tactical complexity. I will have to deal with relative size, range and area with more detail than the Quick20 rules.

Early on, I changed Quick20′s three class system into these:

Athlete – Athletes are born or highly trained runners, jumpers and acrobats. Add +1 to Reflex. Ninja and parkour experts are both athletes. The Athlete’s special ability is Athletics. Gain an Athletics pool equal to Might + Reflex. This refreshes every 24 hours or after 8 hours of complete rest.
Blaster – Archers, heroes who hurl lightning and deadly gunfighters are blasters. They’re devoted to the art of ranged combat. Add +1 to Reflex. The Blaster’s special ability is Ranged Expertise. Gain a Ranged Expertise pool equal to Reflex + Fortitude. This refreshes every 24 hours or after 8 hours of complete rest.
Bruiser – Bruisers are pugilists, “strong guys,” martial artists and other heroes who like to get “in your face.” Add +1 to Might. The Bruiser’s special ability is Melee Expertise. Gain a Melee Expertise pool equal to Might + Fortitude. This refreshes every 24 hours or after 8 hours of complete rest.
Expert – Experts include scientists, detectives and others who use knowledge and deduction to achieve their goals. Add +1 to Will. The Expert’s special ability is Genius. Gain a Genius pool equal to Reflex + Will. This refreshes every 24 hours or after 8 hours of complete rest.
Fixer – Socialites, fences, politicians and other persuasive characters are Fixers. Add +1 to Will. The Fixer’s special ability is Grace. Gain a Grace pool equal to Fortitude + Will. This refreshes every 24 hours or after 8 hours of complete rest.

As I have a robot character, I’ve decided to use three basic “species” to include that PC and others.

Exceptional – Aliens, genetically modified humans, and magical races are examples of the Exceptional species. Exceptionals with more complex characteristics should be given powers and weaknesses. The basic profile can model members of a “mundane” alien species or human offshoot.

· +1 to a single attribute, -1 to another.
· +2 to skill any two skill checks. Choose these as if they were level-based bonuses.
· +1 to a an attack roll or saving throw. Again, choose these as if they were level-based bonuses.

Human – Humans include standard Homo sapiens as well as characters whose powers are the only thing that deviates from a humanlike set of abilities.

· Add 2 points to attributes in any combination, but at 1st level, this cannot increase an attribute higher than 4 (before class adjustments).
· Humans gain two skill, save or attack roll bonuses, or a combination of two of these. These bonuses work just like bonuses gained with additional levels in that they apply to specific instances.

Unliving – Robots, golems and undead creatures are all unliving, freed from the basic weaknesses of the flesh. This species represents the character’s core capabilities. Exceptional monsters or constructs have powers.

· Unliving characters record staggered, unconscious and dying conditions for the purpose of tracking cumulative damage, but they never suffer the effects of those conditions.
· Unliving minds are immune to telepathic powers and anything that specifically affects a living physiology, for good or ill. For example, a robot can’t be poisoned and doesn’t need to breathe, but can be harmed by acid or a smack in the head with a hammer.
· Unliving characters do not heal naturally. Only powers and external assistance can repair them.

I think this ought to encompass what I need. Right now, the challange is to change the starting power set from “whatever I made up” to a set point value. I’m also going to base the point value of powers on the “price” of an attribute (Might, Fort, Ref and Will, which normally go up by 3/level and absorb attribute, skill and save advancements,). I want to keep powers to a minimum. This isn’t HERO. I want definite areas where GMs can intervene and in the pirit of Quick20, I want to keep the page count down to maybe 20.

Guardian Heroes

admin — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 06:02:00 +0000

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.