Inspired by Pundit's Blog (http://rpgpundit.xanga.com/756316741/item/), I was curious what everyone thought would be the best rpg for a Golden Age superhero game. To me, it should handle the original Superman and Batman, as well as Doc Savage and the Green Hornet.
In general, I think the average power level would be a bit lower than modern supers. Say a modern hero would be 100 points, the Golden Age hero would be 80 points. I'd also expect to see more guys with no powers but plenty of guns and being good with their fists.
A good question. What kind of gaming do you want to get from the Golden Age? What aspects of play do you want? Pure fisticuffs and crime fighting? Morally/Political stances on things?
Superhero games are easy to come by, so common you can hit them with faceless tennis racket and hit ten of them.
My suggestions in general. First what not to use: Villains and Vigilantes. Hand to Hand generally blows without powers to back you up.
Golden Heroes/Squadron UK
It always gave me a Golden Age feel, but its mechanics are a bit odd and dated..
Icons
Can handle it very well especially since one type of origin works very well for Golden Age.The "Trained" origin gets one power and a lot of skills. This works very well for a lot of Golden Age types. Other types can be emulated as well.
I used it to create "Steel Thunderbolt" who is a very Golden Age PC that I randomly rolled both the name and powers (I rerolled a few times to get something that fit the name, admittedly.) A slightly superstrong hero with steel "thunderbolts," javelens that look like your archetypical representation of a lightning.
It might take some oversight and tweaking to get it there.
Savage Worlds+Supers Companion (or Necessary Evil)
Can work great, powers tend to be lower powered on the base level and without attack powers some heroes will want to pick up guns.
Hero
Can handle it of course, mechanically. Its just not very inspiring.
My own Hearts & Souls is more "Silver Age," and I feel Truth & Justice is much the same.
Heroes Unlimited
I might get booed for this--but as a superhero aficianado, there is another game I'll bring up: Heroes Unlimited. If you keep careful watch on allowing things like "Invulnerability" and don't allow mega heroes, it should work wonders. (Keep things like Body of Steel out, or power down a bit--most the "Body of'" tend to be more powerful in general than other powers.)
I'd almost suggest the previous version. Revised, instead of 2E, or whatever (Blue cover.) Simply because psionics and magic were a bit more workable, and were somewhat more superpowered. But the newest edition works.
Things like "Stage Magician," "Hunter/Vigilante", the occasional Mutant/Alien whatever works. You'd need to drop or limit cyborgs, and robots would be more androids and mind transferred than pilot ones (At least on the hero side) and Hardware heroes would be less common. (Many people had guns but few did so with fervor.)
Then again its a hoary system, and not ideal for nigh any gaming but low powered supers, and despite knowing far better games, I think its can do that ideally.
Marvel Superheroes
(The Advanced Set) also worked well for back in the day, just drop the "no killing" karma loss (but don't award for it either.) And it would work fine. Do "model" characters rather than roll, or keep power ranks low (rolling on the "Mutant" chart instead of the Robot one for ranks) and keep all heroes generally on that single chart.
Spirit of the Century or Adventure!,
Both pulp games might work very well. Since Golden Age Supers were often simply artistically rendered pulp heroes. (Rather than literary ones.) I can't decide which would be better, Adventure has a lot of the "powers," but has scene editing which some people don't care for. SOTC has meta too, but less intrusive if done right via Aspects, but its powers stack in such a way to make Superman a slightly tough build. Not impossible though, just careful decisions.
Mutants & Masterminds
Lots of people love M&M, and 2E did have a Golden Age Supplement, which is (as of this post date, on sale for $3 USD (http://www.greenronin.com/store/product/grr2507.html) regardless of what game you get, it might be worth getting that book.
4 Colors
You can also take a look at Cynthia Celeste Miller's 4 Colors (//4crpg.homestead.com) I'm not as familiar, due to bad memory but I seem to recall it being awesome.
You also might look up reviews of Supers! Sadly my memory of it is dim, and I need to get print copy so I can fix it firmly in my mind
There is another who I can't think of right now but it had a very Golden Age feel, and if I think of it later I'll share it.
Quote from: danbuter;488011In general, I think the average power level would be a bit lower than modern supers. Say a modern hero would be 100 points, the Golden Age hero would be 80 points. I'd also expect to see more guys with no powers but plenty of guns and being good with their fists.
You know, I don't think this is really true to the spirit of Golden Age characters. I mean, sure, Golden Age Superman was a shadow of what he eventually became in terms of power, but there were plenty of characters like Ibis the Invincible and the Specter who could do pretty much whatever they damn well pleased.
With Hero, you almost have to know what you want before you begin character creation - The rule-book is so wide-open that you can't just "look at the options and pick ones that look neat".
That may or may not be a problem for you. :)
Regarding the Spectre or IBIS the invincible, what they really prove is that point-buy is again a massive fail for RPGs in general and supers RPGs in particular.
Dan is absolutely right that there were incredibly (ridiculously, even) powerful heroes in the Golden age. The difference, however, and what lead the OP to suggest the "80pt instead of 100pt" thing is that there were also far more heroes in that era than in the modern era that had nothing other than "a costume and a good left hook". So the answer is that the statistics, the PROBABILITIES of the Golden Age are skewed in comparison to the other "ages".
In my ICONS game I reflected this by having a much higher chance than normal of getting Trained or Gimmick, and less chance of things like Birthright, Transformed, or Artificial. I didn't remove any possible origin, just shifted the odds. So there was a chance you might be the Spectre, but odds are that you'll just end up being the Crimson Avenger instead .
And I could do this because I didn't run a fucking point-buy game.
RPGPundit
Godlike is set *in* the Golden Era. Maybe it might be worth a read.
Quote from: RPGPundit;488250Regarding the Spectre or IBIS the invincible, what they really prove is that point-buy is again a massive fail for RPGs in general and supers RPGs in particular.
Dan is absolutely right that there were incredibly (ridiculously, even) powerful heroes in the Golden age. The difference, however, and what lead the OP to suggest the "80pt instead of 100pt" thing is that there were also far more heroes in that era than in the modern era that had nothing other than "a costume and a good left hook". So the answer is that the statistics, the PROBABILITIES of the Golden Age are skewed in comparison to the other "ages".
In my ICONS game I reflected this by having a much higher chance than normal of getting Trained or Gimmick, and less chance of things like Birthright, Transformed, or Artificial. I didn't remove any possible origin, just shifted the odds. So there was a chance you might be the Spectre, but odds are that you'll just end up being the Crimson Avenger instead .
And I could do this because I didn't run a fucking point-buy game.
RPGPundit
I can do that in Hero. "Bob, you're playing Batman, so all your superpowers have to be gadgets and you can't buy anything over 50 AP. Also, you get all the skills. Bill, you're playing Superman, so you can't buy more than ten skills, you don't start with a bajillion dollars and your limited set of superpowers is capped at 120 AP."
And Hero supports this without any modding.
Quote from: Tetsubo;488285Godlike is set *in* the Golden Era. Maybe it might be worth a read.
True, but by default, it's incredibly gritty. I'm not sure it would be a good choice for that reason.
Yeah, it doesn't feel very super if you can get taken out by some mugger with a knife. I like the idea of going with a pulp game, and just making the characters extra tough. They are usually pretty limited on what powers are available, though.
I will have to second the nomination of Marvel Super Heroes. If you leave the Superman level stuff to NPCs, you can assign them Shift X, Y or Z powers and abilities, and there are always the Class 1000, 3000, 5000, and Beyond categories for the truly cosmos/reality warping entities. I think a fairly mundane level of characters would fit into Golden Age stuff better anyway.
Just make sure you keep a firm hand during chargen, or you may end up with a group of stupid assholes (http://www.cracked.com/article_16547_the-7-crappiest-super-heroes-in-comic-book-history.html). :D
Quote from: Tetsubo;488285Godlike is set *in* the Golden Era. Maybe it might be worth a read.
It is, but its not really standard "superhero" stuff. The characters generally don't go around in costumes, from what I recall, and the whole thing is meant more to be a sort of "realistic" examination of an alt-history sort; its more a "WWII game with superpowers" than a game about golden age superheroes.
RPGPundit
Quote from: Narf the Mouse;488291I can do that in Hero. "Bob, you're playing Batman, so all your superpowers have to be gadgets and you can't buy anything over 50 AP. Also, you get all the skills. Bill, you're playing Superman, so you can't buy more than ten skills, you don't start with a bajillion dollars and your limited set of superpowers is capped at 120 AP."
And Hero supports this without any modding.
Yeah, but will Bob be happy with the GM telling him he's getting 50 points while Bill is getting 120? With random generation, on the other hand, both players get to roll the dice to see if they get lucky.
That's right. Its cosmic fairness.
RPGPundit
Quote from: Dan Davenport;488295True, but by default, it's incredibly gritty. I'm not sure it would be a good choice for that reason.
The Golden Age was pretty gritty and violent. This is the time when Batman carried a gun, and shooting bad guys in the head was common practice for "superheroes".
The thing is, There's really two "Golden Ages"...the actual one, which was excessively violent and dark, and the idealized version that's been put forth in comics themselves since the 80s, supported mainly by writers like Waid and Robinson. This version is bright, four-coloured, and extremely moral and goofy.
Quote from: RPGPundit;488398It is, but its not really standard "superhero" stuff. The characters generally don't go around in costumes, from what I recall, and the whole thing is meant more to be a sort of "realistic" examination of an alt-history sort; its more a "WWII game with superpowers" than a game about golden age superheroes.
RPGPundit
That's true. godlike has no costumes and is not about stopping crimes. In a way its a game about a superpowers without being about superheroes. But I do like how all the powers are based on willpower; the characters actually alter reality around themselves via their will.
Godlike's setting is all window-dressing though. The system can be used to run "regular" supers with pretty much no customization necessary.
Quote from: TristramEvans;488651The Golden Age was pretty gritty and violent. This is the time when Batman carried a gun, and shooting bad guys in the head was common practice for "superheroes".
I have no problems with the heroes offing criminals. My issue is that they shouldn't have to worry about getting killed by your average mugger, which could easily happen in Wild Talents/Godlike.
Quote from: TristramEvans;488651The Golden Age was pretty gritty and violent. This is the time when Batman carried a gun, and shooting bad guys in the head was common practice for "superheroes".
The thing is, There's really two "Golden Ages"...the actual one, which was excessively violent and dark, and the idealized version that's been put forth in comics themselves since the 80s, supported mainly by writers like Waid and Robinson. This version is bright, four-coloured, and extremely moral and goofy.
The latter is pretty much a perfect description of the Silver Age.
Oh, and on topic: ICONS.
Quote from: Aos;488716The latter is pretty much a perfect description of the Silver Age.
The Silver Age is characterized, especially with the advent of Marvel, by the deconstruction of a lot of Golden Age tropes: teenagers were allowed to be superheroes themselves instead of just sidekicks, superhero teammates with divisive personality clashes, personal drama involving stuff besides two women fighting over Superman, etc. The Silver Age also introduced several concepts that are nowadays mistakenly associated with the Golden Age, such as the "superheroes don't kill" meme (which was most likely originally a conceit to appease the Comics Code Authority).
Quote from: TristramEvans;488843The Silver Age is characterized, especially with the advent of Marvel, by the deconstruction of a lot of Golden Age tropes: teenagers were allowed to be superheroes themselves instead of just sidekicks, superhero teammates with divisive personality clashes, personal drama involving stuff besides two women fighting over Superman, etc. The Silver Age also introduced several concepts that are nowadays mistakenly associated with the Golden Age, such as the "superheroes don't kill" meme (which was most likely originally a conceit to appease the Comics Code Authority).
I was thinking more of DC* silver age than Marvel (I prefer the latter, myself.
*with shit like super pets or superman waking up one morning with rings like saturn around his waist or (pre Kirby) Jimmy Olson's monthly transformations/weirdo temporary super powers.
Quote from: The_Shadow;488537Yeah, but will Bob be happy with the GM telling him he's getting 50 points while Bill is getting 120? With random generation, on the other hand, both players get to roll the dice to see if they get lucky.
I suppose I should have explained what "AP" is - It's a cap on how powerful your powers can get, individually. (In Hero, gadgets are just powers defined as gadgets. It works rather well).
The basic idea, though, is Batman gets a lot of not-so-powerful stuff and Superman gets a few very powerful stuff. Should work for any kind of point-buy superhero game.
Quote from: Narf the Mouse;488868I suppose I should have explained what "AP" is - It's a cap on how powerful your powers can get, individually. (In Hero, gadgets are just powers defined as gadgets. It works rather well).
Minor non-OP-relevant question. Do the rules make any provision for made-up-on-the-spot gadgets? The old Mayfair DC Heroes RPG had Omni-Gadgets. Savage Worlds Super Powers Companion has the Invention power. Simon Washbourne's Supers! (my current go-to supers RPG, and not a bad choice for Golden Age gaming, BTW) has the Super-Science power.
This might seem a tad silly, but it's a great asset to emulate crazy prepared gadget-using heroes and villains like Batman and Lex Luthor.
Quote from: The Butcher;488874Minor non-OP-relevant question. Do the rules make any provision for made-up-on-the-spot gadgets? The old Mayfair DC Heroes RPG had Omni-Gadgets. Savage Worlds Super Powers Companion has the Invention power. Simon Washbourne's Supers! (my current go-to supers RPG, and not a bad choice for Golden Age gaming, BTW) has the Super-Science power.
This might seem a tad silly, but it's a great asset to emulate crazy prepared gadget-using heroes and villains like Batman and Lex Luthor.
Not only does Hero support that, it, like usual, has more than one way to do that. :)
First is a Variable Power Pool, which allows you to create X points worth of powers of no more than Y AP. Provided a little time, you can create any power which fits the concept of the VPP - Gadgets, Magic, Psionics, Necromancy, Mad Science, etc.. With one Advantage (a type of power modifiers), you can have your "power creation" take no time and require no skill roll for rushing.
Second is as a "special effect", or "what it looks like 'on TV'" of a Skill. If Batman has Lockpicking, he can simply be assumed to have lockpicks. If he has Disguise, he can be assumed to have a disguise kit.
Second and a half, if you have a skill roll of 18- (Roll-under on 3d6), your skill can now do things that would normally require a power; more exceptional things for every +10 to the roll-under. So Batman's cape could be a SFX (special effect) of a Breakfall roll of 28-.
Second and three-quarters, a Skill VPP, while requiring GM's permission, is certainly possible.
Third, the Hero System Advanced Player's Guide II introduces the Object Creation power, which is essentially "Prestidigitation meets Conjure Object", only without the implied SFX.
Fourth, if all else fails, use the Transform power, which can be found in the core 6e1: Character Creation rulebook. Transform (Severe, Anything to Gadget) would be one way to simulate Batman's gadgetry. A Severe Transform can easily add and alter powers.
And there may be more.
Oh yeah - Extra-Dimensional Movement with a SFX of "The character 'travels' to the 'dimension' where they 'possess' the desired object." It's a variation on the default way of doing "Wish" in Hero System. :)
Wow,this is so cool,which systems should i use for golden age supers?,just asking.
Quote from: Ratguy on August 09, 2023, 03:46:54 PM
Wow,this is so cool,which systems should i use for golden age supers?,just asking.
B/X Gangbusters has rules for super powered characters in the back of the book. It is random generation so you can't vector your hero, or min/mad with point buy.
My favorite superhero game was Villains and avigilantes. That was set in the "current era" which was the 1980's. It also had random power generation, as well as weaknesses that were built into the system. Character generation was math-heavy and it was really hard to die.
Prowlers and Paragons.
My goto is always MSH (Advanced). But for Golden Age I'd seriously consider Savage Worlds Supers Companion.
It can handle the street-level all the way to godlike level that is representative of Golden Age era, without having to haul in all the godlike assumptions of a setting that would make it *not* appropriate for the era. (But you could if you wanted.)
The abstraction between the power-level assumptions of the Golden Era is far less noticeable than in say, MSH. You can have your Sandman running around with Superman, just fine in Savage Worlds with little problem.
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on August 10, 2023, 01:17:13 PM
Quote from: Ratguy on August 09, 2023, 03:46:54 PM
Wow,this is so cool,which systems should i use for golden age supers?,just asking.
B/X Gangbusters has rules for super powered characters in the back of the book. It is random generation so you can't vector your hero, or min/mad with point buy.
My favorite superhero game was Villains and avigilantes. That was set in the "current era" which was the 1980's. It also had random power generation, as well as weaknesses that were built into the system. Character generation was math-heavy and it was really hard to die.
Cool,man,which edition of gangbusters has rules for super powered characters in the back of the book?
Quote from: Ratguy on August 10, 2023, 03:50:17 PM
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on August 10, 2023, 01:17:13 PM
Quote from: Ratguy on August 09, 2023, 03:46:54 PM
Wow,this is so cool,which systems should i use for golden age supers?,just asking.
B/X Gangbusters has rules for super powered characters in the back of the book. It is random generation so you can't vector your hero, or min/mad with point buy.
My favorite superhero game was Villains and avigilantes. That was set in the "current era" which was the 1980's. It also had random power generation, as well as weaknesses that were built into the system. Character generation was math-heavy and it was really hard to die.
Cool,man,which edition of gangbusters has rules for super powered characters in the back of the book?
B/X Gangbusters
Now, we need to talk about forum ettiquette: You now have people answering you in 3 threads, two you resurrected and one you created new. All with the same theme, questions.
Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 10, 2023, 04:00:49 PM
Quote from: Ratguy on August 10, 2023, 03:50:17 PM
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on August 10, 2023, 01:17:13 PM
Quote from: Ratguy on August 09, 2023, 03:46:54 PM
Wow,this is so cool,which systems should i use for golden age supers?,just asking.
B/X Gangbusters has rules for super powered characters in the back of the book. It is random generation so you can't vector your hero, or min/mad with point buy.
My favorite superhero game was Villains and avigilantes. That was set in the "current era" which was the 1980's. It also had random power generation, as well as weaknesses that were built into the system. Character generation was math-heavy and it was really hard to die.
Cool,man,which edition of gangbusters has rules for super powered characters in the back of the book?
B/X Gangbusters
Now, we need to talk about forum ettiquette: You now have people answering you in 3 threads, two you resurrected and one you created new. All with the same theme, questions.
i am very sorry about that!,it wont happen again.
If I was to run superheroes right now, it would be Tiny-D6 Supers, with the Fallen Justice expansion book.
It's easy, while allowing you to create pretty much any hero you can think of. Fallen Justice is more about street vigilantes, almost to the point that fall Fallen Justice is the Batman expansion. Fists and attitude, with gadget belts and tricked out vehicles.
The downside is the vague nature of the game. People who like crunch and rules for everything should go elsewhere. After all there are only three dice rolls. 1D6, 2D6, or 3D6, and you win if you get a 5 or 6 to show up. That's 33.3%, 56%, or 70%.
I like rules lite stuff, so it's for me.
I already answered this in another thread, but Guardians (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/172576/Guardians) is the best superhero roleplaying game. While it is best at recreating Bronze age, it is great for Gold and Silver age as well. It uses old school DND rules reinterpreted for the superhero genre, is easy to pick up and play, and has a surprising amount of depth for the size of the book.
A great resource is also "The Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes" available on Amazon and elsewhere, by Jess Nevins. Short encyclopedic entries on most of the heroes from the comics and strips of the era, along with citations for their run in whatever comics (including many references where there were guest appearance crossovers and such).
Quote from: GamerforHire on August 11, 2023, 09:35:13 AMA great resource is also "The Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes" available on Amazon and elsewhere, by Jess Nevins. Short encyclopedic entries on most of the heroes from the comics and strips of the era, along with citations for their run in whatever comics (including many references where there were guest appearance crossovers and such).
wow,that is so cool
Mayfair's DC Heroes, 2nd edition (also the Batman RPG from the same company, which uses the same rules basically)
My vote would be on Light City, which is a rules light framework/class system you use with another OSR system, it's free, so that plus something like Basic Fantasy and you got a complete rules system.
Though it's more built around War Era comics or Silver Age, so you know nothing on the scale of superman sneezing away the solar system or anything like that.
The Adventure I ran: I ran a oneshot using Light City + Basic Fantasy, they played the "Knights in Tights" featuring memorable characters like Lady Liberty, a woman who took a super soldier serum that made her on-par with a male athlete. Killdozer, the reincarnation of said bulldozer in human form. Nightshade, who was a batman knockoff but had two glocks and a severe case of schizophrenia. And Triton, who was basically aquaman meets Wonder woman, she had the Net of Sorrow which made people really depressed when you threw it on them.
They faced off against a AD&D Beholder that was magically displaced from Faerûn and sent across the multiverse. where it ended up in a superhero reality and basically murdered a cities' local PD and proceeded to level half a block in a blind rage. everyone survived (somehow) except Nightshade who got vaporized. they managed to kill the Beholder when they lured it into a bank and proceeded to drop a shelf of gold bars on it, killing it instantly.
The team shortly disbanded thereafter.
Quote from: MerrillWeathermay on April 01, 2025, 01:45:51 PMMayfair's DC Heroes, 2nd edition (also the Batman RPG from the same company, which uses the same rules basically)
The World at War Sourcebook for DC is specifically meant for this.
Quote from: Tristan on April 01, 2025, 09:31:07 PMQuote from: MerrillWeathermay on April 01, 2025, 01:45:51 PMMayfair's DC Heroes, 2nd edition (also the Batman RPG from the same company, which uses the same rules basically)
The World at War Sourcebook for DC is specifically meant for this.
It even has stats for Hitler!
I'll always say MSH.
DC Heroes is fantastic. The only problem with it is low-powered characters can feel a little samey. But that doesn't mean it's a bad choice. Golden Age supers can scale high, depending on your constraints.
I was like AOS showed up?! then I saw the date of posts..... Read at least 20 actual funny books from 1930 to 1950 before deciding things about this topic.