Looking for a gaming system

[Astral Avenger]

I just finished reading wildbrow's Worm series a few weeks ago and haven't been able to get it out of my mind. I was wondering if there were any game systems around that would allow the feel the series has, where people get super powers that range from incredible to terrible and everything in between, while also having powers that operate on vastly different orders of power.

Spoiler: Power Examples (also spoilers about specific people's powers)

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Tinker: The person with the power can make things years ahead of their time. One of the tinkers in the story manages to create a bomb that has the destructive power of a small nuke and would have had an EMP blast that would destroy every hard-drive within 500 miles of the blast from household cleaning supplies (yes, physics spends considerable time crying in a corner in the story), another created an entirely self-sufficient compartmentalized suit of armor and vivisected himself to gain immortality by way of life in suit.
Master: The person gains control of other creatures in some form. The protagonist Tyler has complete control over small invertabrates (arachnids, insects and worms) and can to a limited degree hear what they hear and see what they see. Regent can cause spasms in human's muscles, or with about an hour of close proximity to his target, take control over human's voluntary muscle movements.
Stranger: The term for powers that excel in subterfuge and misdirection. One character classified as a stranger is completely ignored by everyone who she encounters so that they don't even know she is there. Another stranger has the power that by meeting someone's eyes they are stunned and confused for a while afterwords
Breaker: Someone who's power violates the laws of physics directly (primarily conservation of mass/energy). One Breaker can make metal spikes grow out of any solid surface, while another can phase into a shadow state that is massless, but sill can interact with physical objects.
Brute: Someone with enhanced physical capabilities, think super-strength, invincibility, invulnerability, biological redundancies (ex. having 2 hearts so you can keep functioning if you get stabbed in one of them).
Blaster: Think artillery, anyone who can shoot lasers or any sort of ranged attack is a blaster.
There are a handful more classifications of powers (there are 13 total), here is a link for more information on the powers and the rest of the powers (has lots of spoilers for Worm).

[Rhynn]

GURPS, Mutants & Masterminds 2E/3E.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Mutants and Masterminds is your go-to for anything superpowered or cinematic. It's incredibly versatile, pretty fast in play, and surprisingly well balanced for what it does-- you'll be as versatile as you build to be, but everyone at the same Power Level operates on, well, the same power level in combat. You can certainly put Green Arrow and Green Lantern together and not see the game suffer too much. And trust me, you can do anything with the system.

If you want characters to be on radically different points of the scale power-wise, FATE is the only system I can think of that can handle it with much grace. At least in the Dresden File version, there was a constant trade-off between in-game and metagame power that meant you could put a pure mortal in a group with a full wizard and come out OK. I don't know how it handles high-level superpowers, though.

You could also try my homebrew system, STaRS, which can handle just about anything through a pretty rules-light lens.

[ngilop]

I am actually going to disagree with Grod here for once.

while a decent game Mutants and Masterminds is in my opinion not anywhere close to the go to superpower game.

You need to look up Champions here a wiki page for ya :)

I don't think they come out with a new edition sicne 5th ( 2003 or so )

if you wanna shell out 25 bucks you can buy a character generoator but ugh.. thats crazy.

[CombatOwl]

I just finished reading wildbrow's Worm series a few weeks ago and haven't been able to get it out of my mind. I was wondering if there were any game systems around that would allow the feel the series has, where people get super powers that range from incredible to terrible and everything in between, while also having powers that operate on vastly different orders of power.

Spoiler: Power Examples (also spoilers about specific people's powers)

Show

Tinker: The person with the power can make things years ahead of their time. One of the tinkers in the story manages to create a bomb that has the destructive power of a small nuke and would have had an EMP blast that would destroy every hard-drive within 500 miles of the blast from household cleaning supplies (yes, physics spends considerable time crying in a corner in the story), another created an entirely self-sufficient compartmentalized suit of armor and vivisected himself to gain immortality by way of life in suit.
Master: The person gains control of other creatures in some form. The protagonist Tyler has complete control over small invertabrates (arachnids, insects and worms) and can to a limited degree hear what they hear and see what they see. Regent can cause spasms in human's muscles, or with about an hour of close proximity to his target, take control over human's voluntary muscle movements.
Stranger: The term for powers that excel in subterfuge and misdirection. One character classified as a stranger is completely ignored by everyone who she encounters so that they don't even know she is there. Another stranger has the power that by meeting someone's eyes they are stunned and confused for a while afterwords
Breaker: Someone who's power violates the laws of physics directly (primarily conservation of mass/energy). One Breaker can make metal spikes grow out of any solid surface, while another can phase into a shadow state that is massless, but sill can interact with physical objects.
Brute: Someone with enhanced physical capabilities, think super-strength, invincibility, invulnerability, biological redundancies (ex. having 2 hearts so you can keep functioning if you get stabbed in one of them).
Blaster: Think artillery, anyone who can shoot lasers or any sort of ranged attack is a blaster.
There are a handful more classifications of powers (there are 13 total), here is a link for more information on the powers and the rest of the powers (has lots of spoilers for Worm).

Fate Core can get hacked for superpowers very easily. The System Toolkit provides guidance on one way to do it. It's not the only way.

Savage Worlds works for superheroes well too, because of the similarities between pulp action heroes and superheroes. There are some power books for it that give you rules on how to do powers, and a big section on powers that actually describes a fairly wide range. Also, Necessary Evil is a great idea for a superhero game.

Heroes Unlimited is okay if you can bring yourself to look past the problems and failings of Palladium's system. It's not even remotely balanced though. Some people still start with the equivalent of butter knives, and others still start with giant robots (or their equivalent).

[Astral Avenger]

Thanks everyone, the champion and STaRS systems are both getting some scrutiny from me to figure out how they'll work/which one will work better.

Happy 2 days after winter solstice, the days are getting longer again (in the northern hemisphere at least)

[Zavoniki]

Wild Talents does all of that fairly easily.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Thanks everyone, the champion and STaRS systems are both getting some scrutiny from me to figure out how they'll work/which one will work better.

Let me know what you think-- I'm looking to put together a new draft (though probably not new rules) soon.

[Wildbow]

The problem with game systems and Worm is that Worm's universe is inherently unfair. It's a bastard of a world where powers like "You can make any object punch through anything (including stuff that's otherwise explicitly immune)" exist. Some win the powers lottery, others fall behind.

There was interest in Weaver Dice (coined from the game that's played in the Drone arc) and I made more comprehensive rules to allow people to make up their own characters with a fair bit of Worm's 'life sucks' aspect. You don't pick your trigger event or power, you learn to deal with what you get. There are basic gameplay rules outlined, but you could also pick another system and try to adapt the character you wind up with to the rules in question.

The rules: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

Trigger Event List: (Community driven) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...UE&usp=sharing

[CarpeGuitarrem]

D&D 3.5?