Quote from: Soylent Green;388651Well you know, if you like MSH but don't like mapping Karma to a character's morality, then just don't. Just give out Karma points like other systems give out Experience Points.

Hmmm I'm not sure about that, in my experience the Karma system is kind of the point of the game as it's not just used for XP.  In a morally ambiguous game where the players are villains I'm not sure it would work.  What I mean is that Karma is a reward for doing good things with penalties for doing bad things, if a villain had a flash of conscience and saved someone he would want rewarding for that in MSH.  

I wonder if it would be a case of altering the Karma awards to represent a grittier feel.  If the mission is to kill a dictator and the person who pulls the trigger loses a crap load of Karma, nobody will off him even though it may actually be the right thing to do?  Not sure about this for another reason as well.  If the Karma system did remain then any players with enough Karma could blow all their Karma and survive the bomb in their head that could be detonated for non-comliance etc..

Quote from: James McMurray;388658I second this. Marvel Superheroes is easy to learn and fast to get started. Not only that, but you can't beat the price (free). The books were released in pdf and are free / legal to download. Check out http://www.classicmarvelforever.com/cms/ (the other stuff menu has the downloads)

Thanks for the link!  I have all those downloaded already and I have a physical copy of the Advanced MSH Boxset.  I'm just not sure it's the right system for what I'm trying to do for this particular Campaign/Group.

Just change the fundamental nature of it (and call it xp). Instead of getting karma for stopping a robbery and losing karma for performing one, you get xp for either of them, assuming it fits the character and mission.

Or don't even tie xp to specifics acts anymore, instead awarding it based on progress towards goals, good roleplaying, etc.

It's been a while, but IIRC there's a section in the advanced book about changing how karma works in less heroic games.

If you intend to make the game transient-player friendly, you aren't going to be awarding any XP or Karma ever, so who cares?

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;388664If you intend to make the game transient-player friendly, you aren't going to be awarding any XP or Karma ever, so who cares?

-Frank

Huh, sorry I don't understand.  Karma powers other stuff in the game so if you eliminate it and don't award it then you can't use big portions of the game so it's a moot point really.  Also I'm in favour of slowcharacter change over time or evolving/changing of powers etc.. but no growth ever!  No that's too far IMHO and not in keeping with the kind of comics I want to emulate or the game I want to run.

Quote from: James McMurray;388663Just change the fundamental nature of it (and call it xp). Instead of getting karma for stopping a robbery and losing karma for performing one, you get xp for either of them, assuming it fits the character and mission.

Or don't even tie xp to specifics acts anymore, instead awarding it based on progress towards goals, good roleplaying, etc.

It's been a while, but IIRC there's a section in the advanced book about changing how karma works in less heroic games.

It's been a while since I read mine.  I will break it out and take a look.  Thanks.

Quote from: EBM;388667Huh, sorry I don't understand.  Karma powers other stuff in the game so if you eliminate it and don't award it then you can't use big portions of the game so it's a moot point really.  Also I'm in favour of slowcharacter change over time or evolving/changing of powers etc.. but no growth ever!  No that's too far IMHO and not in keeping with the kind of comics I want to emulate or the game I want to run.

I'm sorry, I thought you wanted to maintain parity between players who play every week and players who pop in and play once a month or less. There is exactly one way to do that: no advancement.

You can give people a pile of Fate Points or Edge or Karma at the start of each session to burn through to power abilities if you want. But if you let people save anything from session to session you will have the infrequent players fall farther and farther behind. Setting advancement to zero is an inevitable consequence of your design goals.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;388602While I'm not the published game designer you asked, I am also a published game designer, and I can answer that question.

The usual reason is because many games dangle the advancement treadmill before players as an incentive to keep playing. To allow players to come in on every fourth session or so without problems, you're really going to want to play a game without advancement. I mean sure, Ars Magica can give you some benefits for having been sitting around in the lab for the last two seasons - but the amount of accounting involved will likely feel like a punishment to the player in question, or at best a shallow consolation prize (since the players actually showing up will have found Vis and gotten face time experience).

Fortunately, Superheroes as a genre caters well to the zero advancement paradigm. No one is weirded out if Superman doesn't change his gadgets or his powers for eight issues in a row. Outside of origin stories and major summer events, characters are pretty static in what they can do. So really you can take any functional Supers game and just straight up not award any XP. It works fine. HERO system gets a bit... off... after you pump 50 more points into the characters from their start point. Frankly, playing without advancement is kind of better. Certainly better if your players aren't showing up every session.

Remember, WoW is a popular game and it has advancement. But Counter Strike is also popular and characters do not advance between sessions. It's a perfectly viable model.

-Frank

Also, I should point out that advancement in my own games* is by game year - whether or not the character is being played. Thus an occasional  player would not be in the least disadvantaged.

-clash

* Excluding Notice for rank advancement only - not skill/power advancement - in the In Harm's Way series of games.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;388672I'm sorry, I thought you wanted to maintain parity between players who play every week and players who pop in and play once a month or less. There is exactly one way to do that: no advancement.

You can give people a pile of Fate Points or Edge or Karma at the start of each session to burn through to power abilities if you want. But if you let people save anything from session to session you will have the infrequent players fall farther and farther behind. Setting advancement to zero is an inevitable consequence of your design goals.

-Frank

Ahh I see what you mean now.  So basically I'm doomed to failure?  What if advancement is really slow and not expressly tied to rates of attendance but more goal based and inclusive?  Surely no-one would really notice any disparity (not that they would care we're all friends after all).  I really want to de-couple reward from attendance.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;388664If you intend to make the game transient-player friendly, you aren't going to be awarding any XP or Karma ever, so who cares?

-Frank

Ah no, you can't eliminte Karma from MSH - it not just for advancement it's also works like Fate points, except that you really want to use it freely. You can think of MSH as essentially a resource (Karma) based game.

Quote from: flyingmice;388675Also, I should point out that advancement in my own games* is by game year - whether or not the character is being played. Thus an occasional  player would not be in the least disadvantaged.

-clash

* Excluding Notice for rank advancement only - not skill/power advancement - in the In Harm's Way series of games.

Interesting so in my case advancement would occur but a the end of say a campaign arc where a major threat has been removed.  Awards are given based on the achieved goal and the infrequent player who has attended maybe a third of the sessions get's the same as everyone else?  Also any changes are logical ones that fit the arc just finished?

Quote from: EBM;388677Ahh I see what you mean now.  So basically I'm doomed to failure?  What if advancement is really slow and not expressly tied to rates of attendance but more goal based and inclusive?  Surely no-one would really notice any disparity (not that they would care we're all friends after all).  I really want to de-couple reward from attendance.

If you make advancement slow enough that they don't notice it, then the players will not notice it and it will be just like you didn't have it. If you make advancement fast enough that they notice it, then the players who aren't getting it will notice the disparity of not having it.

You can't simultaneously make players who show up to games feel like their characters are better without making the players who didn't get that feel like their characters are worse.

There is nothing wrong with a superheroes game that has no advancement. Nothing wrong at all. There is also nothing wrong with a superheroes game that does have advancement. The first models teams like The Justice League, where the characters are already at their iconic points of ability; and the second models teams like The X Men, where the characters are supposed to be growing as people and as heroes to fit their eventual iconic state sometime in the future. You aren't going to be able to do both at the same time - and you need to nut up to that fact and pick some consistent design goals.

-Frank

Quote from: Soylent Green;388678Ah no, you can't eliminte Karma from MSH - it not just for advancement it's also works like Fate points, except that you really want to use it freely. You can think of MSH as essentially a resource (Karma) based game.

Exactly!  It's a shame there isn't Good Karma to help do good things and Bad Karma for bad.  But then again sometimes good and bad are subjective!

Quote from: EBM;388570Good afternoon from the sunny North West of England.  This is my first post!  Long time lurker though...

It's a great time for Supers rpg's but I'm agonizing over buying a new supers game.  I don't think what I want is available!  It must have the following...
 
1. Simple rules but not too hand wavey!  Light crunch (is that what they call it these day's)?
2. No maps or miniatures (when superspeed and flight are involved maps become irrelevant IMHO).  Something Zonal?
3. Detailed downtime system (for Gadgeteering, Team/HQ building, Investigation/Infiltration and missing players).
4. Fast random character generation (not all players of rpg's read comics) option.
5. Different types of play (Iron Age, Silver Age etc..) so you can play in different era's or do time/parallel travel type games.
6. No "level" based games (enough already).
7. No clutter (card's, tokens, roulette wheels, jenga towers etc..) at the table.  Space is at a premium in our group, Players just have dice, character sheets and a notepad.
8. The ability to die occaisionally (there are loads of games where no matter how idiotic the players actions the pc can't die) or sacrifice yourself for the greater good.
 
Of the current crop I know a little about and am interested in...
 
ICONS fails on 2,3,7.
BASH Unlimited Edition fails on 3,4.
Savage Worlds + Supers Companion fails on 2,3,4,7.
 
Unusually for a GM I don't  like or have the time for house ruling.
 
I don't own any of the books above so my opinions are only based on reviews and forum posts made by other people.
 
Apparently BASH UE will be getting a companion with a random character generator in it (this year?) so that would make BASH UE by default the closest to what I want at the moment.
 
No game I currently own has all these attributes either.

Any suggestions?  Is there a game I've missed?  

The style of campaign I'm planning to run is a gritty "Suicide Squad" analogue.  So it's lower powered(ish) villains vs. similar or more powerful heroes or armed and dangerous normals (usually military types).

There's also Bold & Brave.  Here's a review.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=17533

I haven't played it but it seems to hit all your bullets except maybe 5.  I'm very familiar with the core system and it does gritty and heroic equally well.

Pete

Quote from: EBM;388653Interesting...  how much Super's stuff is in the Basic book?  Isn't there a Supers book out for it already?  Can't remember the name.

There are a variety of 'powers' in the book... some guidelines for supers stuff, I could probably get by fine with just that... but I prefer street-level supers... ala The Avenger, The Shadow, The Spider and The Phantom.

The actual BRP supers game was Superworld... which was a boxed set and a later supplement... maybe some scenarios. It's all still available on Chaosium's site.
The City of Heroes stuff on BRP Central nearly amounts to a new supers supplement... though directed at a specific setting.
There's also the Agents of the Crown... which is a BRP setting with low-powered Victorian-era supers.