Any Tips on Running a Heroic NWoD Game?

[wayfare]

A friend of mine recently asked me to run a more heroic NWoD game as a joke, thinkthing that it would be nearly impossible.

By heroic, he means closer to D&D or Exalted in terms of execution.

I have lattitude to make whatever changes I want, so long as i do not import mechanics from other games (no adding excellencies or anything like that). Basically, I can stretch the core rules of NWoD, but not warp them unrecognizably.

Any Ideas as to what I can do to make this happen?

[The Rose Dragon]

Mirrors supplement has some rules for "heroes" as PCs. It doesn't reduce the assumption of a grimdark universe, though.

[SurlySeraph]

Mirrors and some of the Armory Reloaded combat hacks will be your friends.
I forget what they're called, but in addition to the Hero rules in Mirrors there are rules for a kind of super-specialty thing that let you gain a special power with a skill, like automatically knocking people down with Melee or adding Medicine to Intimidation rolls via elaborate descriptions of what you know how to do to them. Those would be helpful as well.
Second Sight lets humans take some magic or psychic powers as merits. They're reasonably well-balanced, and I'm sure a pyrokinetic would fit well.

And that's assuming that characters are human. You could certainly run one of the more powerful supernaturals, by which I mean Geist or Mage. Either of them can do plenty of ridiculous heroism if they start with plenty of xp, especially if you make regaining Plasm and avoiding Paradox easier.

[Teln]

From what I've heard, the fan-made nWoD game Genius: The Transgression is nice for this. Any game where Nazi super-scientists are a main group of antagonists can make all but the most evil puppy-killers look good.

[wayfare]

From what I've heard, the fan-made nWoD game Genius: The Transgression is nice for this. Any game where Nazi super-scientists are a main group of antagonists can make all but the most evil puppy-killers look good.

Thanks for putting me on to Genius: It seems awesome!

As for heroic feeling stuff, here are a few changes i am considering:

Allowing Defense to apply to both melee and ranged attacks.

Replacing typed damage with untyped damage: this would basically triple the health-track: / = minor damage healed in 15 minutes of rest; X = moderate damage healed with 1 hour of rest; * = severe damage healed with 1 day of rest.

Allowing characters to regain Willpower whenever they gain 5+ successes on a check.

Thoughts?

[SurlySeraph]

Sure, seems good. Making damage untyped is probably a bigger advantage for mortals than for anyone else, and it definitely encourages your players to go around using kung fu instead of weapons. It may lead to a loss of verisimilitude, as hitting someone with a stick or moderately optimized punch will regularly do more damage than shooting them, but that might be fine with the tone you want. The other two suggestions make guns less scary and encourage using willpower a lot, which are both good for a heroic tone.