How can I create my own dc/marvel crossover role-playing game,and limit it to my own personal use only,and which attributes can I use?

If you don't talk about it online, you can do whatever you damn well please.

If you do talk about it online, but don't publish anything meaningful, you can still do whatever you want.

If you want to host some information online, that's where you may run into problems. If they notice.

Quote from: migo on October 27, 2023, 11:06:13 AM
If you don't talk about it online, you can do whatever you damn well please.

If you do talk about it online, but don't publish anything meaningful, you can still do whatever you want.

If you want to host some information online, that's where you may run into problems. If they notice.

Thank you for telling me this,you make a good point

There is literally zero problem with this unless you try to make money from the thing.

The absolute worst thing that can happen is that someone else will critique it as "fan w*nk*".

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/177913/Faserip

Quote from: Ratguy on October 27, 2023, 10:59:21 AM
How can I create my own dc/marvel crossover role-playing game,and limit it to my own personal use only,and which attributes can I use?

You just write it dude! Steal whatever rules and art you like from other games because it's just for you, right? I'd use Strength, Endurance, Agility, Intellect, Willpower, Charisma and Intuition. Maybe a Speed stat because a lot of games have everyone moving at the same pace which never made sense to me. You could go old-school mathy like Villains & Vigilantes for calculating lifting weight and speed or use a table describing what ability ranks accomplish like TSR's Marvel Super Heroes or Mutants & Masterminds.

What kind of core mechanic do you want (d20, d100, d6 or something else)? Some people like die pools but (for me) they add an unnecessary level of complexity.

I like Mutants & Masterminds' (2e) skill list but tossed a few that didn't work (for me). Heroes Unlimited has a longer list of skills to pick from also if you want more a more specific list. Wealth-level and languages are included in a lot of games but they could be just background fluff for characters since superheroes really don't use them much in the comics (saying "Captain Zap is rich so he can afford the fancy HQ and tech toys" might be enough).

The Ultimate Powers book from TSR's Marvel Superheroes has the biggest collection of powers to choose from along with M&M 2e's Ultimate Power supplement. You'd have to decide if you want a game that has pre-fab powers like V&V and MSH or powers get built using effects and modifiers like M&M or Champions. Powers is probably the most important section so give it some thought.

Combat. Is it ability-based, skill-based or some combination? However you do it, making it easy and fast works better I think. Take a look at how M&M and Savage Worlds handles it because those games make it faster than most. Also make sure you have good combat options other than "punch & shoot": Champions and GURPS Supers have very good collections of combat options to steal from. But keep the actual act of determining combat actions simple and for examples of UN-simple look at Shadowrun and Palladium (which are still fun, just more complex than they need to be).

M&M has Complications which add a lot of that comic-book flavor to the game: things like how weaknesses, personality quirks and identity status impact a character's life. GURPS Supers and Champions have Disadvantages that are similar. Most importantly is a character should have some kind of mental or physical weakness that limits them in certain situations. I like how Villains & Vigilantes has players roll on a weakness table to ensure each character has some kind of limitation.

That's my $2 

If I was serious about such things I'd probably do a game with only 9 stat values.

1 Inferior Human
2 Ordinary Human
3 Exceptional Human
4 Peak Human/Minor Metahuman
5 Middling Metahuman
6 Top Metahuman
7 Cosmic Wanker
8 Cosmic Power
9 Ultimate Cosmic

Really, any greater detail would not simulate what we see in the comics.  Dice mechanics would probably be along the lines of roll opposed 1d6 + rating.

For stats, I think you'd want fighting skill, strength, toughness, physical science, arcanna, medical, biological science, piloting skill, willpower, and tactical ability.

Using an ability successfully would give you a win.  So, if Captain Primerica got a tactical win against his opponent he'd win that round and his foe would be forced to purchase a life insurance / savings plan.

A defeated foe must either escape and flee, surrender and be captured, be knocked out and captured, or deliberately killed with the understanding that they'll be back and more powerful than ever in a session or two.

First part of writing a RPG is reading and playing lots of them...

M&M is quite good for carefully building your heroes.

FASERIP was fun. There are multiple DC and Marvel RPGs out there, one of them quite new.

I'd go for something minimalist, myself, as suggested above.

You can always adapt existing marvel/DC wikis and encyclopedias to an RPG system - they often have "stats" for the powers.

Come to think of it, old school D&D with its classes and multiple attacks against HD<1 creatures could work too.

Quote from: Theory of Games on October 28, 2023, 09:27:32 AM

Quote from: Ratguy on October 27, 2023, 10:59:21 AM
How can I create my own dc/marvel crossover role-playing game,and limit it to my own personal use only,and which attributes can I use?

You just write it dude! Steal whatever rules and art you like from other games because it's just for you, right?

This is my take. I'm just playing about with borders and graphics/art at the moment. Nothing decided (heck I'll probably scrap both these and go with something else). Larger font, colour on every page, different layout, hardback book but basically the same as the DC Heroes 3e game albeit split into three books. Done when it's done. I've already done something to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the game but this is mk2 of that project. if I wanted marvel Stats I'd refer to Writeups for their take on Spider-man, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Thor etc.

Or make a Marvel version as well.

Same page, just playing about with the look...



One of the Superman images looks a bit squished, I'll sort that. Different page number layout, border etc. Even longer than formatting the chapters will be plucking art to use but I'll get there.



I have a borderless printer that can churn pages out as the screen shows, can bind the books myself into a hardback (I have much less practise with softbacks so tend to stick to hardbacks) and can add/take away things as required when I have the book in hand and see how it reads.

cool,man,when will it be finished?,by the way,will you have copies of the hardback ready to be sent to anyone?

Thanks for the advice

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 28, 2023, 01:17:39 PM
First part of writing a RPG is reading and playing lots of them...

M&M is quite good for carefully building your heroes.

FASERIP was fun. There are multiple DC and Marvel RPGs out there, one of them quite new.

I'd go for something minimalist, myself, as suggested above.

You can always adapt existing marvel/DC wikis and encyclopedias to an RPG system - they often have "stats" for the powers.

Come to think of it, old school D&D with its classes and multiple attacks against HD<1 creatures could work too.

How can I adapt existing marvel/dc wikis and encyclopedias to an rpg system?

Depends on the system, but here are the batman stats for the DC heroes RPG, for example:

https://www.dcheroesrpg.com/search?q=batman

I'm guessing batman is peak human mind and will, so his 12 translates to 18 or 20 in most versions of D&D, and so on.

This table suggests strength comparisons for marvel heroes:

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Strength_Scale

But, come to think of it, there are plenty of good DC and marvel RPGs out there. Probably M&M (and the DC version) is the best choice if you like crunchy games.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on November 16, 2023, 10:30:13 AM
Depends on the system, but here are the batman stats for the DC heroes RPG, for example:

https://www.dcheroesrpg.com/search?q=batman

I'm guessing batman is peak human mind and will, so his 12 translates to 18 or 20 in most versions of D&D, and so on.

This table suggests strength comparisons for marvel heroes:

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Strength_Scale

But, come to think of it, there are plenty of good DC and marvel RPGs out there. Probably M&M (and the DC version) is the best choice if you like crunchy games.

Cool,man,I should use dc heroes

Yeah, I did this with M&M 2nd edition.  It was pretty easy to Stat Batman, Superman and Spider-Man (for example) all with the same system.  I created a backstory for these heroes being in the same world: easy enough, it just always was that way in this particular world.  Chose the heroes I liked and got rid of the ones I didn't.   

Never got to test run it though.