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digiman619
2016-03-08, 06:33 AM
I was wondering, other than M & M, can you guys suggest a good RPG to run a superhero campaign with?

neonchameleon
2016-03-08, 07:19 AM
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.

Belial_the_Leveler
2016-03-08, 07:33 AM
DnD works if you have a DM that likes epic games and can convert superheroes to DnD stats. For example, this is my basic Kryptonian conversion: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?480860-Kryptonians-high-CR-DnD-conversion


It does end up with higher values than Mutants and Masterminds, but much lower than GURPS 4E that I tried. Poor Kara ended with a Strength of 2000 and an IQ of only 15 in that game. While using linear number progression is more realistic, it also makes for very poor game balance.

SimonMoon6
2016-03-08, 11:19 AM
It depends what you consider a "good" game.

Do you want to simulate actual comic book superheroes? If so, the only game that works for me is Mayfair's "DC Heroes RPG". With its logarithmic scale for attributes, even the pre-Crisis Superman is easy to create (he only has a STR of 50), while the post-Crisis Superman is even easier since he's so much less powerful (only a STR of 25). An average person has a STR of 2. And it's a game system that is very "simple" (no worrying about lots of dice ever-- you only ever roll 2d10 for anything-- and no modifiers to have to keep track of or anything else that would slow down gameplay), while at the same time being just complicated enough to handle everything with just enough "crunch" in the rules, so that things aren't all vague and up to the GM (as many other games that try to be simple have issues with). And any character ever can be made in DCHRPG without worrying about "How do I make Deadman? How do I make Rogue? How do I make Green Lantern? How do I make Parasite? How do I make Beast Boy?" And it's easy and simple. The main drawback: it's long out of print (as is its successor, Blood of Heroes).

But if you just want street-level characters who are barely superheroic, maybe you want something else like Champions. It's not my style, making things unnecessarily complicated so that low-powered characters have a lot on their character sheets, but it's very popular, or at least used to be. Making characters can be rather tedious though.

Forrestfire
2016-03-08, 01:40 PM
I actually enjoy GURPS Supers a lot for superhero stuff. Mind, it's only good if you enjoy GURPS, but it functions fine and isn't nearly as fiddly as the system's reputation would make you think.

Does break down at higher points values though, so it's better for street-level supers I've found.

JoeJ
2016-03-08, 01:40 PM
It depends what you consider a "good" game.

Do you want to simulate actual comic book superheroes? If so, the only game that works for me is Mayfair's "DC Heroes RPG". With its logarithmic scale for attributes, even the pre-Crisis Superman is easy to create (he only has a STR of 50), while the post-Crisis Superman is even easier since he's so much less powerful (only a STR of 25). An average person has a STR of 2. And it's a game system that is very "simple" (no worrying about lots of dice ever-- you only ever roll 2d10 for anything-- and no modifiers to have to keep track of or anything else that would slow down gameplay), while at the same time being just complicated enough to handle everything with just enough "crunch" in the rules, so that things aren't all vague and up to the GM (as many other games that try to be simple have issues with). And any character ever can be made in DCHRPG without worrying about "How do I make Deadman? How do I make Rogue? How do I make Green Lantern? How do I make Parasite? How do I make Beast Boy?" And it's easy and simple. The main drawback: it's long out of print (as is its successor, Blood of Heroes).

I'll second this if you can find it, although the equipment rules in the 1st edition had some problems (fixed in 2e). Combat is very fast, which feels right for superheroes. And you can put Batman-type and Superman-type heroes in the same adventure without either one of them being useless. With just a little bit of experience, I could generate stats for an NPC, super or not, as fast as I could write them down; nothing to look up or calculate. Then it took about another five minutes to figure out how many hero points to give villains, so that they would be balanced against the PCs.

Velaryon
2016-03-08, 01:57 PM
The only system I've played for superheroes is Aberrant... which I really can't recommend for a standard superhero game because its combat is very lethal.

neonchameleon
2016-03-09, 09:39 AM
It depends what you consider a "good" game.

Do you want to simulate actual comic book superheroes? If so, the only game that works for me is Mayfair's "DC Heroes RPG". With its logarithmic scale for attributes, even the pre-Crisis Superman is easy to create (he only has a STR of 50), while the post-Crisis Superman is even easier since he's so much less powerful (only a STR of 25). An average person has a STR of 2.

This depends what you mean by "simulate actual comic book superheroes". DC Heroes is a physical simulator of comic book supers. If you want to know what Superman can lift, Champions works well.

On the other hand Marvel Heroic is a genre sim rather than a physics sim. Hulk might be the strongest one there is - but what's normally important is how useful his strength is. If you want characters whose power has the sort of relevance normally depicted and who behave on the page the way normally depicted, Marvel Heroic works.

SimonMoon6
2016-03-09, 11:19 AM
This depends what you mean by "simulate actual comic book superheroes". DC Heroes is a physical simulator of comic book supers. If you want to know what Superman can lift, Champions works well.

I don't understand what you're saying here. If I want to know how much Superman can lift in DC Heroes, it's really easy. The pre-Crisis Superman with a 50 STR can lift 2^50 * 50 pounds, and since 2^10 is approximately 1000, 2^50 is about 1000^5 = 1,000,000,000,000,000 = 10^15, so Superman could lift 50 * 10^15 = 5 * 10^16 pounds. You want it in tons? No problem. Divide by 2*10^3 and we get 2.5 * 10^13 tons. And that's without looking at a chart which makes things even easier.


The post-Crisis Superman with only a 25 STR can only lift 2^25 * 50 pounds.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-09, 03:27 PM
I don't understand what you're saying here. If I want to know how much Superman can lift in DC Heroes, it's really easy. The pre-Crisis Superman with a 50 STR can lift 2^50 * 50 pounds, and since 2^10 is approximately 1000, 2^50 is about 1000^5 = 1,000,000,000,000,000 = 10^15, so Superman could lift 50 * 10^15 = 5 * 10^16 pounds. You want it in tons? No problem. Divide by 2*10^3 and we get 2.5 * 10^13 tons. And that's without looking at a chart which makes things even easier.


The post-Crisis Superman with only a 25 STR can only lift 2^25 * 50 pounds.

*awkwardly mentions that time when Post Crisis Superman lifted a book with infinite pages, and thus, infinite weight.*
http://m.imgur.com/a/PiG0j

JoeJ
2016-03-09, 07:18 PM
*awkwardly mentions that time when Post Crisis Superman lifted a book with infinite pages, and thus, infinite weight.*
http://m.imgur.com/a/PiG0j

The actual abilities of Superman, or anybody else in comics, fluctuate depending on the writer and the needs of the story. Game stats have to pick something and stick with it, and so they will invariably not match something that happened in the comics.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-09, 07:53 PM
The actual abilities of Superman, or anybody else in comics, fluctuate depending on the writer and the needs of the story. Game stats have to pick something and stick with it, and so they will invariably not match something that happened in the comics.

I know. It just doesn't make sense that post-crisis supes would be weaker at this point, after Lift Infinite Weight Book happens.

Of course, I have no dog in this fight because I don't actually care. It just struck me as funny.

JoeJ
2016-03-09, 11:21 PM
I know. It just doesn't make sense that post-crisis supes would be weaker at this point, after Lift Infinite Weight Book happens.

Of course, I have no dog in this fight because I don't actually care. It just struck me as funny.

I don't know when lift infinite book thing happened, but "post-crisis Superman" usually refers to the period when John Byrne was writing him, when he was portrayed as very much weaker than he had just before the Crisis on Infinite Earths. That was decades ago, of course, and a lot has happened to the character since then. I'm not certain how strong he is right now.

digiman619
2016-03-09, 11:46 PM
Then again, Pre-Crisis Supes literally juggled planets, so being less strong is definitely a good thing.

neonchameleon
2016-03-10, 07:02 AM
I don't understand what you're saying here. If I want to know how much Superman can lift in DC Heroes, it's really easy. The pre-Crisis Superman with a 50 STR can lift 2^50 * 50 pounds, and since 2^10 is approximately 1000, 2^50 is about 1000^5 = 1,000,000,000,000,000 = 10^15, so Superman could lift 50 * 10^15 = 5 * 10^16 pounds. You want it in tons? No problem. Divide by 2*10^3 and we get 2.5 * 10^13 tons. And that's without looking at a chart which makes things even easier.


The post-Crisis Superman with only a 25 STR can only lift 2^25 * 50 pounds.

The thing is that I neither know nor care about exactly how much Superman can lift. And I have no human scale to picture 10^13 tons. Looking at Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(mass)) for 10^16 kg that means he's strong enough to lift a large asteroid (never mind the effects of space) or the carbon content of the world's oceans. Wait, what?

And never mind that that's nowhere near strong enough for pre-Crisis Superman. Earth is 6*10^24 kg - meaning that Superman is off by a factor of 10^8. He's off by a factor of 10^6 for the Moon. Which means that by your numbers Pre-Crisis Superman stands about the same chance of lifting the moon as I do of a fully loaded space shuttle.

And I have several questions about that.
1: Is that really the right value?
2: Do we really want to bookmark the Wikipedia page for Orders of Magnitude for mass? And if not, how do you know how heavy things like the Eiffel Tower are? Do you actually stop to look it up?
3: Do you think that this is how people actually work out whether Superman is strong enough in Superman stories?

GrayDeath
2016-03-10, 11:47 AM
Depends on what you want.

You want an X-Men-Style Experience (outside the real big events), aka "realistically powered"?
Take Aberrant, great customization, relatively fast, and balanced.
But quite deadly.

You want the Comic Logic, Style and Scenelike nature to dominate?
Take Marvel heroic RP.


Somewhere in between? Champions (a bit clunky at times) or older DC Titles.

Scots Dragon
2016-03-10, 03:56 PM
The thing is that I neither know nor care about exactly how much Superman can lift. And I have no human scale to picture 10^13 tons. Looking at Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(mass)) for 10^16 kg that means he's strong enough to lift a large asteroid (never mind the effects of space) or the carbon content of the world's oceans. Wait, what?

And never mind that that's nowhere near strong enough for pre-Crisis Superman. Earth is 6*10^24 kg - meaning that Superman is off by a factor of 10^8. He's off by a factor of 10^6 for the Moon. Which means that by your numbers Pre-Crisis Superman stands about the same chance of lifting the moon as I do of a fully loaded space shuttle.

The rules also include the option to reduce effective movement ranks to add to your lifting strength while pushing objects, and Superman has 45 ranks of flight. Enough to essentially boost his effective lifting ranks by about 20-25 (increasing his effective by a factor of over a million) and still have enough movement speed to pretty effectively move a planet or moon out of its orbit.

SimonMoon6
2016-03-10, 05:04 PM
*awkwardly mentions that time when Post Crisis Superman lifted a book with infinite pages, and thus, infinite weight.*
http://m.imgur.com/a/PiG0j

An infinite number of pages does not imply an infinite weight. If each page has half the weight of the page before it, then the total weight of the book would only be twice the weight of the first page... well, plus the weight of the cover, of course.

And this is the post-Crisis Superman, but in a mind-blowing Grant Morrison story, so there's no reason why the weights couldn't be as I suggested, especially since the book clearly takes up a finite amount of space.




And never mind that that's nowhere near strong enough for pre-Crisis Superman. Earth is 6*10^24 kg - meaning that Superman is off by a factor of 10^8. He's off by a factor of 10^6 for the Moon. Which means that by your numbers Pre-Crisis Superman stands about the same chance of lifting the moon as I do of a fully loaded space shuttle.

I should have mentioned that in this game system, you can "push" your stats, so in a pinch, Superman can lift more. The planet has a mass of 75 APs, which he can lift if he pushes his STR without too much difficulty. You can effectively double your STR for short periods... and that's doubling the actual stat, not the amount you can lift. So, pre-Crisis Superman can push to get a (temporary) STR of 100 and post-Crisis Superman can, with a push, lift as much as pre-Crisis Superman.



2: Do we really want to bookmark the Wikipedia page for Orders of Magnitude for mass? And if not, how do you know how heavy things like the Eiffel Tower are? Do you actually stop to look it up?

You can usually guesstimate.


3: Do you think that this is how people actually work out whether Superman is strong enough in Superman stories?

No, but the stats in DCHRPG were created through heavy consultation with people at DC comics, to verify that the numbers were reasonable. They mention asking questions like, "If Superman, Wonder Woman, and Captain Atom were being zapped by a powerful ray, who would fall unconscious first?"

But the great thing about DCHRPG is that it takes into account the vagueness and arbitrariness of comic book writers by making things flexible and fluid.

Segev
2016-03-10, 05:34 PM
I find that BESM 3e or TriStat dX (using X=10) is a good system for superheroics.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-10, 06:08 PM
An infinite number of pages does not imply an infinite weight. If each page has half the weight of the page before it, then the total weight of the book would only be twice the weight of the first page... well, plus the weight of the cover, of course.

And this is the post-Crisis Superman, but in a mind-blowing Grant Morrison story, so there's no reason why the weights couldn't be as I suggested, especially since the book clearly takes up a finite amount of space.


Ah yes, everyone remembers the time when Shazam and Superman struggled to lift a 5 pound book while working together.

Come on. It's obviously implied to be infinitely heavy, not the weight of 2 pages and a leather cover.

Also, there was the time when Supes lifted The Spectre. Who is made of Eternity. Meaning Superman lifted Eternity. Aka, he lifted Infinity.

It has happened a lot. Let's not try to pretend that Superman isn't hilariously overpowered. The entire point of his storyline is that he is basically a God trying to be like a Man. He is as strong as is required for the story. There's no number attached.

JAL_1138
2016-03-10, 06:16 PM
TSR's "Marvel Superheroes," a.k.a. MSHRPG, a.k.a. FASERIP. Sadly out-of-print. Note: not the same as "Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game," which was also from TSR but not on the FASERIP system.

SimonMoon6
2016-03-10, 06:47 PM
Come on. It's obviously implied to be infinitely heavy, not the weight of 2 pages and a leather cover.

It's implied to be heavy, but it couldn't be infinitely heavy, because that implies infinite mass which implies an immense gravitational field which was obviously not in effect.


Also, there was the time when Supes lifted The Spectre. Who is made of Eternity. Meaning Superman lifted Eternity. Aka, he lifted Infinity.

Um, no. If the Spectre had infinite weight (or even excessive weight), he would fall through the ground everytime he tried to walk around. Clearly, that doesn't happen.


Let's not try to pretend that Superman isn't hilariously overpowered.

I know he is vastly powerful, but he has limits. Even the pre-Crisis Superman encountered at least two creatures that were more powerful than he (Validus and the Galactic Golem... and maybe Mongul, but all anybody remembers about Mongul was his second story, with the black flower thing). So, he's not the most powerful being anybody can ever be.


The entire point of his storyline is that he is basically a God trying to be like a Man.

I disagree with this statement.


He is as strong as is required for the story. There's no number attached.

Not in the stories, but in a game, there can be a number attached. And that's the whole point of a superhero RPG, to attach numbers to superheroes. Superman isn't always going to be stronger than everything he encounters. He meets people who are stronger. There are things he can not do. He is not an all-powerful god. He has learned humility on several occasions.

But at least he's way better than Batman.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-10, 11:09 PM
It's implied to be heavy, but it couldn't be infinitely heavy, because that implies infinite mass which implies an immense gravitational field which was obviously not in effect.

Yes, all these comic books with their strict exactness to physical laws. Zounds! Foiled again by the accuracy of Comics Physics!



Um, no. If the Spectre had infinite weight (or even excessive weight), he would fall through the ground everytime he tried to walk around. Clearly, that doesn't happen.

See above



I know he is vastly powerful, but he has limits. Even the pre-Crisis Superman encountered at least two creatures that were more powerful than he (Validus and the Galactic Golem... and maybe Mongul, but all anybody remembers about Mongul was his second story, with the black flower thing). So, he's not the most powerful being anybody can ever be.

The existance of multiple hilariously overpowered entities does not make one of them NOT hilariously overpowered.



I disagree with this statement.

Ok. It's still pretty obvious, though. It's kinda the DC thing.



Not in the stories, but in a game, there can be a number attached. And that's the whole point of a superhero RPG, to attach numbers to superheroes. Superman isn't always going to be stronger than everything he encounters. He meets people who are stronger. There are things he can not do. He is not an all-powerful god. He has learned humility on several occasions.

As Strong as the Story Requires. Which sometimes means "inexplicably less strong than x for reasons."



But at least he's way better than Batman.
*rumble of engraged nerds stampeding in this direction*

OH *@&$%@*@^%#*!!!! RUUUUN!!!

[EDIT]
On the actual topic,
FATE is good for pulpy action stuff for pretty much anything. So long as it's pulpy.
You can also try Masks or Silver Age Heroes for a more social, narrative-first approach

Bohandas
2016-03-11, 12:57 AM
Toon has a superhero setting detailed in the second rulebook

SimonMoon6
2016-03-11, 04:47 PM
Yes, all these comic books with their strict exactness to physical laws. Zounds! Foiled again by the accuracy of Comics Physics!


See above

Well, you were the one who was hypothesizing that things that clearly do not have infinite mass somehow do have infinite mass. Nowhere it is explicitly stated that they do, so if you have a complaint about the fact that Superman is lifting things of infinite mass, the source of your complaint is not the comics themselves.



Ok. It's still pretty obvious, though. It's kinda the DC thing.

And again, I disagree. These sound like the complaints of a Marvel fan who isn't well-acquainted with DC and who wants all his favorite characters to be mere street-level nobodies like Spider-Man, Daredevil, the Punisher, Cyclops, and so forth. But I don't know you, so I don't know if that's the case here.

Let me explain more about my disagreements. You stated that "The entire point of his storyline is that he is basically a God trying to be like a Man."

My first source of disagreement is the very concept that there is an entire point of Superman's storyline, implying that there is only storyline (and perhaps only one Superman). The many vastly different versions of Superman have vastly different underlying concepts.

Secondly, I would say that for most versions of Superman, the underlying concept is "adolescent power fantasy" (not that that's a bad thing, mind you). Even from the earliest days when Superman was a rampaging force for liberal socialism, who would beat up a wife-beater because beating up wife-beaters is a cool (though irresponsible) thing to do, Superman was a man, not a god, just a man, with all of the flaws of a man, but a man with great powers. Not a man with godly powers, just a man who is superior to other men, but not unbeatable. Back then, he was tough, as nothing less than a "bursting shell" could penetrate his skin... but something *could* penetrate his skin. And many evil geniuses devised weapons that could incapacitate or even defeat Superman. So, he was far from a god. He was just a guy, trying to do the best he could, with the powers he was given, since with great power comes great responsibility, even if he did act a little recklessly at times with no consequences. And as he was written to be more and more powerful, the same was basically true, though all the popular heroes became more heroic and less reckless (and perhaps more generic).

But with the iconic Silver Age Superman, I would say that the real point of the character is just the "power fantasy". The reader can easily identify with Clark Kent, who has to act the fool so nobody will guess his real identity, but always present is the underlying message of "You may think I'm just a nerdy geek, but if only you knew who I really was, what I'm really capable of...," which is very much the appealing adolescent power fantasy.

He's not a god pretending to be a man. He's a man first.

Marvel's Thor is a god who occasionally pretends to be a man, but that is totally not Superman's schtick.

Now, the post-Crisis Superman lost a lot of what made the pre-Crisis Superman a character for the reader to identify with. No longer was he a nerdy geek. Instead, he was a popular high school football player. People liked him as Clark Kent. Clark didn't have to act nerdy or geeky. Plus, he lost all the tragedy in his life which helped to humanize the pre-Crisis Superman: he didn't lose his adopted parents (Superboy basically accidentally killed his parents pre-Crisis and not all of his powers could save them) and while he lost his birth parents (and home planet), the post-Crisis Superman wasn't losing much there, as the post-Crisis Krypton was a sterile, dead place that nobody would miss, whereas the pre-Crisis Krypton was a place of infinite wonder... and the post-Crisis Superman didn't have memories of his life of Krypton either, so again, he had little reason to care that Krypton was gone, whereas the pre-Crisis Superman could remember his early childhood (toddler-hood) on Krypton and could "catch up to" light rays from Krypton to see what life on Krypton was like (or even time travel to visit Krypton, though he couldn't change history).

So, the post-Crisis Superman was far less of an character for the reader to identify with. No tragedies. No failures. No great losses. Nobody picking on him in his Clark Kent guise. But he was still just a man, not a god. And his great powers were less ultimately powerful than they had been before, knocking him down a rung, making less absurdly powerful. No longer would he casually move planets around (The Pre-Crisis Superman as a boy managed to breath at the Earth hard enough to move it around.) And with more of life's adventures being challenging for him, he was even less god-like (while at the same time being less human?).

Classic Superman is great at what he does. His power is nigh-unimaginable. But he's an inspiration to all because of his humanity, not his godliness.

And as for being "DC's thing", I would say "gods pretending to be human" is definitely *not* DC's thing. DC's "thing" is legacies, with the heroes of the past giving way to the heroes of today, without invalidating the heroes of the past (well, until the new52, but the new 52 is not playing to DC's strengths in any way, shape, or form.) DC's other "thing" is classy heroes, who tend not to get sullied by the moral relativity found in Marvel comics... again, until fairly recent years, where the people in charge don't know (or don't want to) play to DC's strengths.

Sure, DC's characters tend towards being higher powered than Marvel's... well, on average, for Earth-based characters who are major marquee characters (no trotting out Silver Surfer as an example)... though they both have quite high powered characters somewhere in their universe. Does that make them less interesting? I don't think so. I think it just means that they have different stories that can be told with them.



As Strong as the Story Requires. Which sometimes means "inexplicably less strong than x for reasons."

And this is what a good superhero RPG needs to take into account. And I claim that the DCH RPG is a great superhero game because it does exactly this. Superman can move the Earth today? Okay, he was "pushing" his strength. Oh, today, Superman tries to kill Batman and only manages to hurt him a little bit? Okay, well Batman was spending Hero Points to boost his stats, while Superman wasn't spending to boost his own (probably because he ran out of Hero Points when trying to resist being mind-controlled to think Batman was a villain who just killed Lois Lane). There are very few game systems with this same flexibility, a game that can account for bad writing.

Arbane
2016-03-11, 08:17 PM
The indie game Truth and Justice was fun the one time I got to play it - it's a 'genre' game, not a 'sim' game, as was mentioned above.
FASERIP and Champions were already mentioned, those are the other superhero games I'd recommend, but they're a LOT math-heavier.
There's a new one coming out soonish called 'Prowlers and Paragons' that seems pretty good.

I wouldn't recommend Aberrant ("THIS IS NOT THE SUPERFRIENDS") or Brave New World ("Want to know the backstory? TOO BAD, wait for the next eight books!"), though.

ZamielVanWeber
2016-03-13, 09:33 AM
A bit old school (and expensive to get into now) but the Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game is awesome. Unfortunately you need to buy the deck that goes with it and that gets costly.

Incanur
2016-03-13, 10:39 AM
Let's not try to pretend that Superman isn't hilariously overpowered. The entire point of his storyline is that he is basically a God trying to be like a Man. He is as strong as is required for the story. There's no number attached.

That's typically how fictional characters work, especially comics characters. (It goes both ways; characters are also as weak as required for the story, like when Batman gets knocked by a keyboard bash or whatever.) Comics hardly ever take the logical implications of established powers seriously. If they did, for example, a competent Thor would just immediately defeat most Avengers villains. Etc. If you're running a setting with similarly powered character, you have to think about these things.