Well, according to Wikipedia:

"Forbeck has won Origins Awards for Best Roleplaying Game for Deadlands and The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game, Best Miniatures Rules for Warzone and The Great Rail Wars, Best Roleplaying Adventure for Independence Day, Best Fantasy Board Game for Genestealer, and Best Short Story for "Prometheus Unwound" from The Book of All Flesh."

Looks like a pretty good sort of mediocrity to me.

Quote from: Tantavalist on June 08, 2021, 08:17:54 AM
I'm never averse to looking at a new RPG system and seeing if it works better than one I'm using now or has ideas that I can steal. This is especially the case with Supers systems, since none of them has ever 100% worked for me. Lots of them have concepts I like but tied to other things I don't.

MHR handled the idea of team power imbalance better than any other Supers RPG but failed on some other levels for me. The old Mayfair DC Heroes had that power ranks table but too much crunch on top of it and I didn't like the D&D relic of enforced power levels for M&M in any edition. Champions looks like something that's great if you're willing to put in the time needed to write up the stats in between sessions and FASERIP... Um... Why do people like this thing again?

Power Levels in M&M is just a different expression of Champions' longstanding "Rule of X" that limited active points, attributes and OCV/DCV. They don't work at all like D&D levels, instead the GM sets a PL to reflect the tone of the campaign; 7-8 for Pulp/Golden Age, 10 for an X-Men/Team Book campaign, 12-14 for a Justice League-ish campaign and 14+ for a Cosmic-level campaign.

It really helps with the disparity between "Bat-books" and "Justice League" Batman for example. If the GM wanted a "Bat-books" campaign he'd set the power level at 7-8 and the players would build appropriately; Batman has his utility belt, the Batmobile and his Batcave and Wayne Enterprises is a dominant regional company. In a Justice League campaign the GM sets the PL at 14 and Batman has orbital spy and kill sats, all the Bat-vehicles, drones, a secret Moon Base with a transporter, and Wayne Enterprises makes Apple/Google/Amazon/Facebook/Microsoft/Warren Buffet/Elon Musk combined look like paupers (It was pointed out in one of books that Batman's operating budget is a rounding error in Wayne Enterprises' financials so it's basically hidden in plain sight).

So I've never associated PL with D&D since I moved from HERO 5e to M&M in terms of my superhero RPG gaming.

My personal fix for my own biggest issue with M&M 3e is to dump the True20-style Toughness saves that make combat too swingey for my tastes for heroes/villains having 50 hit points and mooks having 10 with damage dealt being 1d20 + damage ranks - target's Tougness modifier.

But other than that I have generally found M&M to have the character building crunch of Champions I love with a smoother and quicker game engine in actual play.

Quote from: Anselyn on June 08, 2021, 01:38:12 PM
Well, according to Wikipedia:

"Forbeck has won Origins Awards for Best Roleplaying Game for Deadlands and The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game, Best Miniatures Rules for Warzone and The Great Rail Wars, Best Roleplaying Adventure for Independence Day, Best Fantasy Board Game for Genestealer, and Best Short Story for "Prometheus Unwound" from The Book of All Flesh."

Looks like a pretty good sort of mediocrity to me.

Yeah I've heard of the Origins award. You'll note I said it was given out at Gencon. He and a couple of others had parroted this on twitter some years ago. It was for some short story he wrote.

But the guy does love him some awards.

Quote from: Pat on June 07, 2021, 08:44:11 AM

Quote from: Toran Ironfinder on June 07, 2021, 02:45:23 AM
It would seem to me the big problem for comic book RPGs is the team problem, mechanically it is difficult to balance characters from published media; Batman in Batman comics must be portrayed differently from Batman in Justice League comics simply because he has to hold his own with the Martian Manhunter and Superman.

That's an interesting theoretical question, but it doesn't seem to be a real problem, because it's not something people complain about when it comes to actual games.

Depends on players. Old days, in WEG a jedi and smuggler had different power levels, certainly, but rile protection and fear of Vader keeping Jedi to play low key. Same with old school dudes, from what I understand, the thief has a weaker role in combat, but he had skills that gave him a spot light elsewhere, unless he was an elf and half fighter.

Not sure how that works with younger people today in a supers game. In the RCR WOTCs Star Wars, People seemed to like point buy for egalitarian reasons.

Well, in M&M that sort of role-protection was handled by Power Level trade-offs.

The gist is the total of your dodge and toughness can't exceed twice the campaign's power level. Likewise the total of your fortitude and will can't exceed twice the power level and an the total of an attack's accuracy and effect can't exceed twice the power level.

So you can be agile or a brick or be okay at both (the Superman-expy at PL 10 has Toughness 12, Dodge 8, the Hulk-expy has Toughness 14, Dodge 6, and the Speedster has Toughness 5, Dodge 15). You can be physically tough (vs. gasses, poisons and other things that bypass armor/impervious skin) or mentally or a mix. You can have really accurate but weak attacks, really strong but inaccurate attacks or a mix.

But you can't be the best at all of those at once compared to others in your power level (outside your power level is another matter; actual Superman is PL 15 with Toughness 20, Dodge 10 so his toughness is the maximum a PL 10 character could have with a 10 dodge on top).

Quote from: Anselyn on June 08, 2021, 01:38:12 PM
Well, according to Wikipedia:

"Forbeck has won Origins Awards for Best Roleplaying Game for Deadlands and The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game, Best Miniatures Rules for Warzone and The Great Rail Wars, Best Roleplaying Adventure for Independence Day, Best Fantasy Board Game for Genestealer, and Best Short Story for "Prometheus Unwound" from The Book of All Flesh."

Looks like a pretty good sort of mediocrity to me.

He participated in writing them. By that standard, Pundit designed 5e.

Out of curiosity - do you play any of these games? I don't. But I do own several things Forbeck has written for, and they're "okay" at best. I'm not hating on him - dude is out there and working it. I'm saying that he's largely unknown for pulling off good design on his own. And this whole thing reeks of a typical poorly thought concept from Marvel and they got a guy with some name-recognition to prop up the house of cards.

Given Marvel's lack of commitment to its own IP - I have *zero* faith that this project is going to get any traction because Marvel is a dog chasing a car on this. I'll go one further - Forbeck could make a fantastically great system. He could magically get the MEGS system from DC, and do an update for Marvel - and it will still fail.

MEGS, MSH, ICONS, V&V, M&M, Hero - To their playerbase are *all* great systems. In totality, they make up a sliver of the RPG market. And half of these systems are *dead* in terms of active support. The Marvel brand is obviously a big attractor to the Super RPG genre, but it's going to take a lot of innovation and support to win people over. And there is zero reason to believe Marvel will do it, especially given that this is being apparently done in-house.

I don't go to International House of Pancakes to have my new car built, even if they hire Mr. Goodwrench to do it.

Remember the Marvel Universe RPG and how that game was the last time Marvel produced an RPG in-house...

I am cautiously optimistic. My ten year old daughter might want to play a superhero game and this would be her first.

Quote from: tenbones on June 10, 2021, 10:22:35 AMThe Marvel brand is obviously a big attractor to the Super RPG genre, but it's going to take a lot of innovation and support to win people over. And there is zero reason to believe Marvel will do it, especially given that this is being apparently done in-house.

If they try to make a tactical, combat focused RPG, the game will be DOA as Crisis Protocol already does this and is fairly popular (from my understanding). And abstract, story game would be different enough but that's a tough design goal.

I actually like the SAGA game that TSR produced years ago. I know that it wasn't popular but I thought the mechanics worked for the most part and it played closer to what I imagine an ideal superhero RPG would. [It had a big problem with characters like The Hulk though]

Has there ever been a superhero game that successfully recreated the style of comic books? I guess the same question could be asked about any genre RPG. For supers almost every comic story concluded with a fight that is won by not using powers but from some plot element brought up in the earlier part of the story or some twist. I don't know if any Spiderman story ends with him just using his webs and strength to beat Sandman or Doc Ock, but always found something else to use. Might be difficult to add as a mechanic, but if the GM has to make a big point of it earlier in the session then it becomes a too obvious advantage.

Or that last Avengers Movie which required they ***spoilers*** build a $^^$&@(*$%$(* to defeat the bad guy. Would one of the PCs need Artificer or something similar, how would you guarantee that they would think up that idea?

Seems like a genre that would be very difficult to create scenarios for which would entertain players and GM. But maybe I know nothin'!

You guys are making my point for me.

1) Nothing prevents *anyone* from using the half-dozen (and more) Supers rules that are out there, without me even pointing fingers at which ones are actually great/good/okay/shitastic.

2) Everyone knows if we whittle them down to top 5, lets say, there is *no* fucking way Forbeck backed by Marvel will design something in the caliber of those top 5 systems. UNLESS....

3) He cribs one of them wholesale or in part. At which point he *may* have the design part covered... but the marketing issue is *gigantic* because of the current political climate and the fact that very few modern comic fans actually read comics *and* play RPG's centered around Supers.

Mutants and Masterminds 3e is a great example. It had the DC license and it's a *very* good system (which I dont' use because I can't convince my players who I've addicted to MSH to let it go and try something else) - but even with the limited DC license (not to mention competing against previous editions of M&M which 2e has its fans) did it get the longevity it deserved, though it's pretty complete.

Marvel is not going to back this thing with the drive that TSR did when they made MSH. And what company outside of Marvel itself could afford that license longterm enough to make it worthwhile? No one outside of WotC - and I'm not convinced they would waste their time.

Quote from: Khazav on June 10, 2021, 12:46:04 PM
Has there ever been a superhero game that successfully recreated the style of comic books? I guess the same question could be asked about any genre RPG. For supers almost every comic story concluded with a fight that is won by not using powers but from some plot element brought up in the earlier part of the story or some twist. I don't know if any Spiderman story ends with him just using his webs and strength to beat Sandman or Doc Ock, but always found something else to use. Might be difficult to add as a mechanic, but if the GM has to make a big point of it earlier in the session then it becomes a too obvious advantage.

Or that last Avengers Movie which required they ***spoilers*** build a $^^$&@(*$%$(* to defeat the bad guy. Would one of the PCs need Artificer or something similar, how would you guarantee that they would think up that idea?

Seems like a genre that would be very difficult to create scenarios for which would entertain players and GM. But maybe I know nothin'!

I've been running, and currently running MSH since it dropped. So we're talking 35 years?!?!? sweet jesus... of running it. And I've *never* considered it my main system, but by dint of use, it's probably been the most consistent thing I've run by player demand. I've also worked in the comic industry, and written comics, and collected comics with a pretty ginormous collection.

Is MSH perfect? helllllllll no. But with a few tweaks you can run that sucker with fidelity to any aspect of the Supers genre. My current campaign has Batman-style characters easily playing alongside Thor-level super-thugs. But I'm confident I can do this with M&M, or ICONs, or MEGS too.

The conceits of running a Supers game is in understanding what is needed to allow things to scale. Mechanically it's less about people wanting to play Daredevil and another wanting to play the Hulk, than it is understanding how to thread the needle between the challenges posed by having two such characters specifically working alongside one another. This means contextualizing them at the chargen level and enforcing those things throughout play.

And no it's not easy for a new GM to simply pull off without that experience and understanding - but there are ways to mitigate this too, where you set a power-level standard (which is what a lot of modern Supers games do), but even then you as a GM need to understand what is required to play at those levels respectively. They're almost sub-genres in their own right.

Quote from: tenbones on June 10, 2021, 01:00:18 PM

Quote from: Khazav on June 10, 2021, 12:46:04 PM
Has there ever been a superhero game that successfully recreated the style of comic books? I guess the same question could be asked about any genre RPG. For supers almost every comic story concluded with a fight that is won by not using powers but from some plot element brought up in the earlier part of the story or some twist. I don't know if any Spiderman story ends with him just using his webs and strength to beat Sandman or Doc Ock, but always found something else to use. Might be difficult to add as a mechanic, but if the GM has to make a big point of it earlier in the session then it becomes a too obvious advantage.

Or that last Avengers Movie which required they ***spoilers*** build a $^^$&@(*$%$(* to defeat the bad guy. Would one of the PCs need Artificer or something similar, how would you guarantee that they would think up that idea?

Seems like a genre that would be very difficult to create scenarios for which would entertain players and GM. But maybe I know nothin'!

I've been running, and currently running MSH since it dropped. So we're talking 35 years?!?!? sweet jesus... of running it. And I've *never* considered it my main system, but by dint of use, it's probably been the most consistent thing I've run by player demand. I've also worked in the comic industry, and written comics, and collected comics with a pretty ginormous collection.

Is MSH perfect? helllllllll no. But with a few tweaks you can run that sucker with fidelity to any aspect of the Supers genre. My current campaign has Batman-style characters easily playing alongside Thor-level super-thugs. But I'm confident I can do this with M&M, or ICONs, or MEGS too.

The conceits of running a Supers game is in understanding what is needed to allow things to scale. Mechanically it's less about people wanting to play Daredevil and another wanting to play the Hulk, than it is understanding how to thread the needle between the challenges posed by having two such characters specifically working alongside one another. This means contextualizing them at the chargen level and enforcing those things throughout play.

And no it's not easy for a new GM to simply pull off without that experience and understanding - but there are ways to mitigate this too, where you set a power-level standard (which is what a lot of modern Supers games do), but even then you as a GM need to understand what is required to play at those levels respectively. They're almost sub-genres in their own right.

Yeah, I think the key is, few people who are running games have the chops for the genre. I'd be interested in trying a Mutants and Masterminds game, but looking through the system, with my limited experience, I'd never try to GM one, too complex for my skill levels, meager as they are. As a player, I'd want to know the GM knew what he was doing first.

Quote from: Toran Ironfinder on June 10, 2021, 05:40:48 PM

Quote from: tenbones on June 10, 2021, 01:00:18 PM

Quote from: Khazav on June 10, 2021, 12:46:04 PM
Has there ever been a superhero game that successfully recreated the style of comic books? I guess the same question could be asked about any genre RPG. For supers almost every comic story concluded with a fight that is won by not using powers but from some plot element brought up in the earlier part of the story or some twist. I don't know if any Spiderman story ends with him just using his webs and strength to beat Sandman or Doc Ock, but always found something else to use. Might be difficult to add as a mechanic, but if the GM has to make a big point of it earlier in the session then it becomes a too obvious advantage.

Or that last Avengers Movie which required they ***spoilers*** build a $^^$&@(*$%$(* to defeat the bad guy. Would one of the PCs need Artificer or something similar, how would you guarantee that they would think up that idea?

Seems like a genre that would be very difficult to create scenarios for which would entertain players and GM. But maybe I know nothin'!

I've been running, and currently running MSH since it dropped. So we're talking 35 years?!?!? sweet jesus... of running it. And I've *never* considered it my main system, but by dint of use, it's probably been the most consistent thing I've run by player demand. I've also worked in the comic industry, and written comics, and collected comics with a pretty ginormous collection.

Is MSH perfect? helllllllll no. But with a few tweaks you can run that sucker with fidelity to any aspect of the Supers genre. My current campaign has Batman-style characters easily playing alongside Thor-level super-thugs. But I'm confident I can do this with M&M, or ICONs, or MEGS too.

The conceits of running a Supers game is in understanding what is needed to allow things to scale. Mechanically it's less about people wanting to play Daredevil and another wanting to play the Hulk, than it is understanding how to thread the needle between the challenges posed by having two such characters specifically working alongside one another. This means contextualizing them at the chargen level and enforcing those things throughout play.

And no it's not easy for a new GM to simply pull off without that experience and understanding - but there are ways to mitigate this too, where you set a power-level standard (which is what a lot of modern Supers games do), but even then you as a GM need to understand what is required to play at those levels respectively. They're almost sub-genres in their own right.

Yeah, I think the key is, few people who are running games have the chops for the genre. I'd be interested in trying a Mutants and Masterminds game, but looking through the system, with my limited experience, I'd never try to GM one, too complex for my skill levels, meager as they are. As a player, I'd want to know the GM knew what he was doing first.

Yeah I hear you. As someone that has delved deep into 3.x design, and GMed it - M&M has always been a little daunting for me to get into. But I plan on doing it at some point.

Quote from: tenbones on June 10, 2021, 12:50:56 PM
You guys are making my point for me.

1) Nothing prevents *anyone* from using the half-dozen (and more) Supers rules that are out there, without me even pointing fingers at which ones are actually great/good/okay/shitastic.

2) Everyone knows if we whittle them down to top 5, lets say, there is *no* fucking way Forbeck backed by Marvel will design something in the caliber of those top 5 systems. UNLESS....

3) He cribs one of them wholesale or in part. At which point he *may* have the design part covered... but the marketing issue is *gigantic* because of the current political climate and the fact that very few modern comic fans actually read comics *and* play RPG's centered around Supers.

Mutants and Masterminds 3e is a great example. It had the DC license and it's a *very* good system (which I dont' use because I can't convince my players who I've addicted to MSH to let it go and try something else) - but even with the limited DC license (not to mention competing against previous editions of M&M which 2e has its fans) did it get the longevity it deserved, though it's pretty complete.

Marvel is not going to back this thing with the drive that TSR did when they made MSH. And what company outside of Marvel itself could afford that license longterm enough to make it worthwhile? No one outside of WotC - and I'm not convinced they would waste their time.

So judging a book before it even exists, without even a cover, just based on your assumptions? I am not saying you should be optimistic about it or expect it to be good or anything, but you've literally set up an impossible scenario where it can never be decent merely because it will exist. Kinda a shitty standard don't you think? Shouldn't there be SOME room for it to exceed your expectations?