Quote from: Shipyard Locked;915000I've been given the impression that M&M is THE superhero system of the day; as in actually played more than any other.

Quote from: Celestial;915001Yeah, Mutants & Masterminds seems to be the most played super-hero RPG, with ICONS the second most.

I'm not going to make that claim, I have no evidence.  But for me, I like the mechanics.  But V&V 3e is on my radar.

Superhero 2044 was first.  Anyhow, I worry about modernizing V&V.  Getting rid of the multiplication will mean things won't scale as well.  The random powers are very silver age.  I'll probably pledge.  But I don't want a big heavy points game like Champions.  I want V&V.

I don't recall how Armor worked in first editon but in second it was ablative with a saving throw as it got lower.

Getting rid of the matrix is fine by me but I wonder how other defenses are handled now.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;914995Personally, I think that Mutants and Masterminds 3e (while not perfect) comes the closes to emulating Superheroic adventures myself.

*cough* *choke* *splutter*

Chacun a son gout, I suppose.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;915000I've been given the impression that M&M is THE superhero system of the day; as in actually played more than any other.

I don't disagree, but my impression is that like MEGS and Champions before it, M&M 2/3 had a huge character build culture but relatively few people who actually play it.  Superhero RPGs also being a tiny, tiny niche evaluating this is incredibly difficult.  I know that I've personally seen a measurable number of people playing ICONS but no one ever playing M&M, even when M&M was at its peak.

Quote from: Manzanaro;915005In V&V characters are VERY HARD to accidentally kill (though this is easily house ruled), and that is a key enough facet of genre emulation that everything else works out well enough for me.

That was not my experience, nor was it the experience of the original playtesters; the fact that one of the PCs was accidentally killed during the playtest of Death Duel with the Destroyers made it into the art for the final product.  High Carrying Capacity characters, in particular, can do massive amounts of overkill damage under RAW.

My experience is the exact opposite: I've played a lot of M&M and Champions in the last six years and the only ICONS games I know of happening in my area were ones I'd ran myself. I think I've played more BASH and V&V games than that of ICONS in that same time frame.

Also, IMO, I don't think narrative games suit superhero games at all and the best roleplaying moments were not spurned by the mechanics but by the characters involved. Having played Masks (the PbtA one) and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, I found both extraordinarily immersion-breaking primarily because of their mechanics.

I liked Heroic Roleplaying a lot and I enjoy Mutants & Masterminds (just ran it last Sunday). I also like and run Living Legends, which is Jeff Dee's "other" superhero game. I have run and played a lot of them. But V&V was the first game I ever successfully ran. I think this new version os going to be really good. Oh..and it got funded today on to the stretch goals

That's nice.  It's also completely orthogonal to whether the mechanics of traditional superhero RPGs produce results that resemble a superhero comic book, which is all I'm arguing.

I don't think anyone would argue that "D&D is a horrible emulation of fantasy fiction" and "D&D is an game enjoyed by many people for many reasons" are not true statements, or that they're somehow mutually exclusive.

Quote from: DeadUematsu;915137Also, IMO, I don't think narrative games suit superhero games at all and the best roleplaying moments were not spurned by the mechanics but by the characters involved. Having played Masks (the PbtA one) and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, I found both extraordinarily immersion-breaking primarily because of their mechanics.

Quote from: daniel_ream;915152That's nice.  It's also completely orthogonal to whether the mechanics of traditional superhero RPGs produce results that resemble a superhero comic book, which is all I'm arguing.

And that's the thing for me.  I'm not looking to copy a comic book or it's tropes, I'm trying to emulate super heroes, physics and everything.  Yes, it's a taste thing, and I will echo 'to each their own.' (Chacun son goût, literally translates to 'to each their own taste', I believe.  It's been a while since I spoke French regularly, much to my mother's despair.)

Quote from: daniel_ream;915152I don't think anyone would argue that "D&D is a horrible emulation of fantasy fiction" and "D&D is an game enjoyed by many people for many reasons" are not true statements, or that they're somehow mutually exclusive.

But isn't that effectively what you're saying with your ideal super hero game style?  (Not an attack, just trying to figure out what you're meaning is.)

Quote from: Celestial;915001Yeah, Mutants & Masterminds seems to be the most played super-hero RPG, with ICONS the second most.

All the more impressive is that both M&M and ICONS were written by the same guy!

Quote from: Allensh;915151I liked Heroic Roleplaying a lot and I enjoy Mutants & Masterminds (just ran it last Sunday). I also like and run Living Legends, which is Jeff Dee's "other" superhero game. I have run and played a lot of them. But V&V was the first game I ever successfully ran. I think this new version os going to be really good. Oh..and it got funded today on to the stretch goals

Yeah, I received an e-mail notification that the Kickstarter funded and more stretch goals were added.  I hope they don't go crazy by consistently adding more stretch goals.  They're fun, but they've been the downfall of quite a few Kickstarter projects.

Quote from: Soylent Green;915189All the more impressive is that both M&M and ICONS were written by the same guy!

Indeed!

Quote from: Christopher Brady;915157I'm not looking to copy a comic book or it's tropes, I'm trying to emulate super heroes, physics and everything.

While "physics" and "superheroes" seems inherently contradictory to me, more power to you.

GURPS Supers has some good sidebars on how to calculate realistic g-forces for superspeed turns and catching falling bystanders, if you're interested in that kind of detail.

QuoteBut isn't that effectively what you're saying with your ideal super hero game style?

Not at all.  I want a game that emulates superhero comic books.  Other people may prefer V&V's dungeon-crawl-in-spandex design, or Champions' tactical wargame design, or GURPS' realistic superpowers approach.  Chacun a son gout, and all that.

Whether a game engine produces results that are consistent with superhero comic books, though, isn't a matter of taste.  It's not necessarily cut-and-dried, but I think we can agree that (say) Wild Talents' tendency for superpowers to result in dead people is not consistent with most superhero comics.

Quote from: DeadUematsu;915137Also, IMO, I don't think narrative games suit superhero games at all and the best roleplaying moments were not spurned by the mechanics but by the characters involved. Having played Masks (the PbtA one) and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, I found both extraordinarily immersion-breaking primarily because of their mechanics.

Narrative games answer the question of why we actually need rules.  If the story progresses purely on consensus agreement, why do you need to buy the game?

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;915259Narrative games answer the question of why we actually need rules.  If the story progresses purely on consensus agreement, why do you need to buy the game?

JG

And how have other games not already answered this question? The rules supported what was going on while I perceived it was the other way around with Masks and MHR.

Quote from: daniel_ream;915127That was not my experience, nor was it the experience of the original playtesters; the fact that one of the PCs was accidentally killed during the playtest of Death Duel with the Destroyers made it into the art for the final product.  High Carrying Capacity characters, in particular, can do massive amounts of overkill damage under RAW.

Well, you don't die unless you run out of both power and HP. Unless you have a hero who expends a LOT of power, that isn't likely. I don't know the exact circumstances of your experience or the playtesters' experience, but I've played a pretty good amount of V&V and I'd hazard that those experiences were flukish in nature.

It's rare to see a HtH attack doing much more than 2d8 or 2d10 in the rules as written, though I will admit that there are published scenarios which seem to abuse the hell out of the rules, such as The Shrew villain in Crisis at Crusader Citadel who uses the GM arbitrated Willpower power to receive major and permanent across the board stat bonuses.

Quote from: Manzanaro;915268It's rare to see a HtH attack doing much more than 2d8 or 2d10 in the rules as written, though I will admit that there are published scenarios which seem to abuse the hell out of the rules, such as The Shrew villain in Crisis at Crusader Citadel who uses the GM arbitrated Willpower power to receive major and permanent across the board stat bonuses.

She's actually pretty tame. (Also I think you're misreading the statblock; she's supposed to get one of those boosts at a time, not all three)

Behemoth from Death Duel with the Destroyers does 6-60 points of damage in a HtH attack.  The Mace from Crisis at Crusader Citadel does 1d6+1d12+2d8+3 damage on a successful hit.  Add in the prevalence of Heightened Attack (+1 Damage/level) and Power Blast (1d20 damage), things can get hairy pretty quickly.

The irony of V&V is that good defenses actually make you more likely to get killed accidentally.  Normally damage goes straight to Hit Points, and you only can only divert 1/10 of the current Power score to damage to Power.  But a lot of defensive powers convert all incoming damage to Power damage, meaning that a short run of high damage rolls can easily drop a character to zero HP and Power, when they'd technically have been better off dropping the defense and taking the full hit on the chin (and thus only to HP).