RPGaDAY2015 Day 19: Favourite Supers RPG

#RPGaDAY2015 is the brainchild of game designer Dave Chapman. Basically, each day in August there is a question about RPGs. This is day 19.

Favourite Supers RPG: I really wish I could say Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, but I haven’t played or ran it nearly enough to make that claim.

It’s going to have to be Mutants & Masterminds. I had a real blast with M&M back in my True20 days. We had a pretty cool campaign that was based on Planetary but became more like the Authority by way of Nextwave Agents of Hate. It didn’t matter because the system was fun and worked great, keeping the powers in the forefront but very streamlined mechanically.

Playing Highlander

Highlander was not only a go-to movie through much of high school and university, it was the inspiration for more than a few campaigns, most of which fizzled out. Much like James Bond, Highlander was a lone-wolf story, unsuited to group play. And unlike James Bond—wherein the central character can be divided into respective roles for each member of the group—the Highlander was a lone-wolf not because he could do it all, but because the central premise was that all immortals eventually had to kill each other.

Not great for group cohesion.

And back in the day, everyone wanted to play the immortal if we were going for a “Highlander and Pals” kind of game.

The one thing that we got right back then amid all the silliness and mistakes, was that one doesn’t need a special set of rules to play Highlander.

There is nothing intrinsic to the Highlander world—not skill, technology, or particular abilities . . . other than immortality—that requires specific mechanical systems to mimic.

I’ll come back to immortality, just let me run with this.

I haven’t played a huge number of RPGs, but I’ve played enough. I could run Highlander in all of them.

Highlander is about immortality and the culture of immortals. Those are abstract notions. Could they be replicated using mechanical rules? Of course they could. Do they need to be? Not any more than the differing cultures of Tudor England and post-Golden Horde Russia (what is that period called?) require differing mechanics.

For the most part, the “rules” of the immortal culture can be broken. The fact that even the Kurgan respects them means nothing. If he really wanted to, he could. The fact that he does not is the only shading in an otherwise black & white, simplistic portrayal of evil.

“But,” you say—or at least, the voice in my head says . . . shut up voice in my head before I hurt you by jamming this pointy stick in my ear! . . . ow!—“But immortals only die when their heads are cut off. That needs to be represented mechanically!”

Ah, immortality. There’s the rub!

Wait. Really? Why? Every game I’ve played has rules for death and dying. The only difference is the narrative explanation of death. Damage from wounding did slow down immortals. They might even appear to be dead for a few moments should the injuries prove traumatic enough. Immortals feel pain, after all. So as they are being damaged, apply the rules for damage. When the immortal character reaches the death threshold for the rules, the head comes off.

Simple.

“But,” you say, “the system I use has hit locations/targeted strikes/aimed shots and what if character makes a called shot to the neck? That cuts off the head and game over!”

Actually, no, and the reason for this is right there in Highlander. Let me give you a hint: “My cut has improved you voice.”

The hit was scored. Damage was done as per the rules. If the rules say that’s an insta-kill, sure, why not—insta-kill. Follow the rules, and if it is not an insta-kill, there is an explanation for why not. For added points, have a call back to that. If it’s an NPC, have the cut improve his/her voice, à la the Kurgan!

So go ahead and play that Highlander game, use whatever rules system you are comfortable with.

And playing contrary to myself, if you want something that might smooth out the mortal-immortal tension, consider using something like Muntants & Masterminds 2E (or, even better, the recently released DC Adventures! Pure awesome!), in which the immortal character must actually pay for invulnerability and immortality, while the other characters can spend those points making their mortal character uber-cool.

My thoughts on Highlander here.

Go buy DC Adventures here.

The Osiris Campaign: System and Style

I am two sessions into my first Mundus Novit campaign using Mutants & Masterminds (Second Edition). It’s interesting how a rules set and player interest can change a game’s direction.

I know True20 pretty well. I’ve run a few different games with it (so far, two “historical/alt history” and one modern spec ops) and I like the feel of True20. While I don’t think the Powers as presented in True20 Revised fit my conception of Mundus Novit, it certainly could fit yours. The odd thing is that with just the inclusion of a -2 penalty on actions for being Wounded, True20 feels more “gritty” than M&M. Not actually gritty, just in comparison.

For my games, I made it a -1 cumulative penalty, so if a character has 3 Wounds, the character has a -3 on all checks, including Toughness. That gave me a level of grit that made me happy.

But I digress.

I gave my players a bunch of choices for playing Mundus Novit. The decision was to go super-hero. I did stipulate it would be without bright costumes and such, but gave the group a choice between the Authority and Planetary as campaign paradigms. While the campaign adventures are Planetary flavoured, the crew is more the Authority.

Here’s what I mean. By now, everyone should be aware of my love for Warren Ellis. While Nextwave indoctrinated me, it was Planetary that made me the raving fanboy that I am. His work on the Authority just reinforced that.

For me, Planetary was about powerful individuals while the Authority (at least during Ellis’ run) was about intense situations. That is not to say that Planetary did not have intense situation nor that the Authority did not have powerful individuals, but these were secondary.

To me, Planetary is about the characters and the story while the Authority is about the powers and hitting stuff. Because the Authority focuses so much on the powers, it seems like the Planetary characters are less powerful by comparison. In raw power, this is absolutely untrue. However, the powers are not the focus of Planetary, so one tends to focus on the characters and the plot.

Mutants & Masterminds is perfect for the Authority. I don’t know if the shift in our campaign flavour is due to the system or just the characters created using it. It may be a reflection of the power level at which I set the campaign.

I set the power level at 10 for a few reasons. One was that I test-built a few characters. To get the kind of character I wanted, level 10 seemed to be the sweet spot. The characters weren’t uber-powerful, but they could do a lot. Thing is, I could not test or even understand all of the powers. I still don’t.

There are some powers that don’t cost much that can really affect specific parts of the campaign. Ranges and speeds can get pretty silly at rank 10. One of the characters has Datalink with a range “to the moon!”

Now, when I built my test characters, I didn’t understand about things like Alternate Powers. That’s kind of a big thing. All the characters in the game have alternate powers. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does change how one plans the game, and how the game moves.

This is yet another example of how one really needs to run a game to understand how it works. I still say that there is value in a review of a game that the reviewer has not played, as long as that fact is clear in the review.

Stick around. I’ve got more to say about the Osiris campaign.