I have a question:how can I create my very own golden age super hero role-playing game,and which six attributes can I use?

If you have to ask that question, then you're probably going to ask a lot of other basic questions that effectively means we're making the game for you. Which means it will be our very own Golden Age Super Hero game.

Most of us that play Supers already have that covered.

If it's your game: TELL US what your stats are and why we should consider your ideas.

Quote from: tenbones on November 09, 2023, 10:19:08 AM
If you have to ask that question, then you're probably going to ask a lot of other basic questions that effectively means we're making the game for you. Which means it will be our very own Golden Age Super Hero game.

Most of us that play Supers already have that covered.

If it's your game: TELL US what your stats are and why we should consider your ideas.

My stats are strength,endurance,agility,intellect,willpower,charisma,intuition,and speed.
You should consider my ideas,because this is something original I want to do
Also,it is my game!

Quote from: Ratguy on November 09, 2023, 10:10:01 AM
I have a question:how can I create my very own golden age super hero role-playing game,and which six attributes can I use?

First advice is to read as many existing superhero RPGs as you can get your hands on, think about how they do what they do, and then try to put together a salad-bar list of what you want your game to do.  Some existing games you can check out:

- Marvel Super Heroes
- DC Heroes
- Mutants & Masterminds
- GURPS Supers
- Aberrant
- CRUSADERS
- Truth & Justice
- ICONS
- Champions (and the HERO System)
- Silver Age Sentinels

For a basic attribute matrix, I've always believed that the absolute minimum number of attributes you can get an RPG player character down to is four, using a matrix of Physical vs. Mental and Precision vs. Force, so you get something like:

Dexterity (Physical/Precision)
Physique (Physical/Force)
Intellect (Mental/Precision)
Willpower (Mental/Force)

If you want to have social attributes as well, Social Precision might be Fellowship, while Social Force might be Bearing or Conviction. If you want to separate out offensive force from defensive toughness, you might add Resistance, so Physical Force is Strength and Physical Resistance is Constitution.  And so on.

One point to remember here is that the fewer Attributes they have and the less granular range they have (i.e. ranges of 1-6 vs. ranges of 1-100 or higher), the more likely it is that multiple characters will have quite similar Attribute lineups. Since every player likes to feel their character is unique, this means you have to make sure they have other ways to be distinct.

Quote from: Ratguy on November 09, 2023, 10:32:52 AM
My stats are strength,endurance,agility,intellect,willpower,charisma,intuition,and speed.

Too much stat overlap imo.

Quote from: Ratguy on November 09, 2023, 10:32:52 AM
My stats are strength,endurance,agility,intellect,willpower,charisma,intuition,and speed.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on November 09, 2023, 10:47:52 AM
For a basic attribute matrix, I've always believed that the absolute minimum number of attributes you can get an RPG player character down to is four, using a matrix of Physical vs. Mental and Precision vs. Force, so you get something like:

Dexterity (Physical/Precision)
Physique (Physical/Force)
Intellect (Mental/Precision)
Willpower (Mental/Force)

If you want to have social attributes as well, Social Precision might be Fellowship, while Social Force might be Bearing or Conviction.

To my mind, the question is, what attributes are needed to distinguish between common heroic character types. Physically, it's common for there to be the brute and the swashbuckler as distinct types - so physique and agility, maybe. Splitting up stats more than that isn't necessarily useful. The vast majority of high strength characters also want to be high toughness, for example, so I think that split isn't useful.

The question with mental and social stats is what are the sort of archetypes does one want to support? For example, I'm doubtful about willpower as a useful stat, because basically all heroic archetypes have at least decent willpower. Some people enjoy playing a dumb brute or a weak genius, but no one wants to play a weak-willed pushover.

I'd work up the archetypes (or classes if one wants a class-based system) first, and then go with attributes that are useful to distinguish them.

Superheroes often have an incredible overabundance of one thing, while being pretty normal in some other things.  Superman, for instance, is smart and wise, but it's satisfying to see him figure something out with his mind, because he doesn't have any boost to that- he's a regular guy there, pretty much.  You know, B+ student or something.

This can be represented in a game by having a ton of stats, and having them vary way more than they would in a different game, or you can even go logarithmic with it.  Or, you can use a normal amount of stats, and then have the super thing hook to it.  In the first case, a regular guy might have 10 strength, and a superheroic strongman might have 1000 strength.  Or it might be logarithmic, and a regular guy has 2 strength and a superheroic strongman has 4 strength, or 8 strength, assuming you want him to be anywhere from 100 to 10,000 times stronger than a normal man.  In the second case, they might both have 10 strength, but there's an incredible "superstrength" factor that adds to it separately rated, for appropriate things (perhaps he's only strong when he's punching and kicking, or whatever).

The big problem with a huge number of stats is that you run into more cases where something requires more than one statistic.  If someone is trying to fool an NPC, normally the NPC's resisting statistic is Wisdom.  But wouldn't an Intelligence 4, Wisdom 18 guy be a lot easier to fool than someone with Intelligence 16 and wisdom 16?  Normal games don't handle this situation well or at all.  When you have intellect, willpower, charisma, and intuition as core stats, you will run into issues where something is a meaningful challenge to two of them, or even three- but it's still doable. 

If you want strength, endurance, agility, speed, intellect, willpower, charisma, and intuition, you need to make a solid distinction between strength and endurance (probably easy), between speed and endurance (and how to handle the case where a guy wants to run really fast really far), and obviously corner your four mental stats appropriately and similarly.  Do you have ideas about what superheroic willpower looks like?  Can that bleed over into other abilities, or does it just make the guy immune to Zordbix The Manipumancer?

I mean, for me, I'd say a Golden Age sourcebook... system neutral if possible... would be of more interest.  Not to discourage you from doing your own game, if you've got the bug, follow it.  But I've played CHAMPIONS, ICONS, Villains & Vigilantes, Marvel Super Heroes and DC Heroes... I'd be more likely to use one of those to run a game than a new system unless it REALLY grabbed me.

Avoid what the latest marvel Multiverse RPG has done with the Rank system. Ranks 1-6 and they define what you do for everything as opposed to the traditional 'great at one thing, ok at other stuff' characters tend to be. Of course you have Superman, Captain Marvel, Silver Surfer, Batman and so on who are good at everything they do but for most of us I think playing with characters who aren't all powerful is the draw.

In the Marvel Multiverse game Professor X and Dr Strange (along with others who should be great at that 'one thing' they do) punch harder than Luke Cage and Spider-Man. The saving grace is that they aren't that great at fighting so miss a lot but it's still a flaw of the system.

In terms of Golden Age supers the first thing to be decided is power level - are you aiming for street level? Are guns 'dangerous' to your characters? If that's the case look up Golden Heroes or Squadron UK or the retro clone Codename Spandex. Villains and Vigilantes and Champions also do this level well and overlap into the traditional too.

If you are thinking traditional 4 colour comic books there is the original/advanced Marvel Superheroes game (TSR) and various clones (FASERIP etc), DC Heroes, heck, the list goes on. Pretty much all fall into this category. Some do cosmic level as well as street so you're good to go with any type of campaign.

Bottom line: there's no need to write up a new game from scratch, unless it's an itch you have. Most of the decent supers games have been written and out there for years. Like the Fantasy genre you are spoiled for choice, even if you do have to dig around a little on Drive Thru RPG to find the genre... Nestled in there with LGBTQ+,Comedy, Romance, Anime ...

Quote from: Ratguy on November 09, 2023, 10:10:01 AM
I have a question:how can I create my very own golden age super hero role-playing game,and which six attributes can I use?

I have been informed that Ascendant by Macris is good. Having no interest in superheroes means that I cannot confirm it personally.

You do not need attributes at all.

When I started working on Simple Superheroes back in 2009 the first thing I did was go -- so either you are super or you are a normal guy. (Well you are a superhero so you are above average in everything, but if it's not your "thing" my system doesn't waste time on it.)

Talents in my game cover attributes, skills and powers all in one.

Super strong - great, take a talent, and roll your rank in dice.
Not super strong? - great, roll one die, or find another talent to use in the situation.

Quote from: APN on November 10, 2023, 02:52:59 AM
In the Marvel Multiverse game Professor X and Dr Strange (along with others who should be great at that 'one thing' they do) punch harder than Luke Cage and Spider-Man. The saving grace is that they aren't that great at fighting so miss a lot but it's still a flaw of the system.

Dr. Strange's powers are undefined enough that he could land wherever is convenient on the power spectrum, as long as he's good enough to be plausible in his role.  Luke Cage is pretty different power levels each time he's portrayed, but he's always very strong- you do run into a "fighter versus mage" scenario where in theory a big enough robot or something could beat Luke Cage, but versus the mental / magical guys the bad guys need a specific doodad or something normally.

The more I read this thread the more I think there's a wide variety of approaches to superhero games, especially relative to their (comparably lesser) amount of players.  I think what makes them different is the desire to be able to capture a huge range of power levels- in fantasy, the power level difference comes from the need to progress (aka it's driven from game design), but in super hero games, it's generally statically powerful dudes dealing with plots and interesting enemies and only occasionally powering up.  Obviously, RPGs shoehorn in a progression mechanic, but it seems less the focus than in traditional RPGs.

So that made me think, maybe your points (and I think others have mentioned it too) about picking a power level first are more important.  Like if the goal is to make a game that could account for and map all the Marvel superheroes and all the DC superheroes (the default assumption), the game is  gonna need to do something logarithmic like Ascendant does.  If instead it's just golden age stuff specifically, then do you want something like early superman, where he is as strong as like a dozen dudes and can leap tall buildings in a single bound, or like late superman, where he's invincible and incredibly quick and has nearly infinite strength?  Because if it's more towards the early part, where superheroes were less demigods and more something that is adjacent to hard science fiction, I think a ruleset can be targeted at that without any exponents or whatever.

Quote from: Ratguy on November 09, 2023, 10:10:01 AM
I have a question:how can I create my very own golden age super hero role-playing game,and which six attributes can I use?

Why does it have to be six?

Quote from: Venka on November 09, 2023, 04:20:20 PM
Superheroes often have an incredible overabundance of one thing, while being pretty normal in some other things.  Superman, for instance, is smart and wise, but it's satisfying to see him figure something out with his mind, because he doesn't have any boost to that- he's a regular guy there, pretty much.  You know, B+ student or something.

Isn't he actually incredibly intelligent, but writers make him act like an idiot so that Batman has something to do?

Quote from: Cathode Ray on November 10, 2023, 06:07:24 PM

Quote from: Ratguy on November 09, 2023, 10:10:01 AM
I have a question:how can I create my very own golden age super hero role-playing game,and which six attributes can I use?

Why does it have to be six?

Because most rpgs have six attributes!,and it makes things easier