Do you actively run Supers RPGs at your table

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Do you actively run Supers RPG's at your table? If so - which one?

  • ICONS

    Votes: 5 8.5%
  • DC-Heroes (MEGS)

    Votes: 4 6.8%
  • Champions/Hero System

    Votes: 7 11.9%
  • Mutants & Masterminds

    Votes: 8 13.6%
  • Heroes Unlimited

    Votes: 3 5.1%
  • Supers!

    Votes: 5 8.5%
  • Villains & Vigilantes

    Votes: 1 1.7%
  • MSH (FASERIP)

    Votes: 6 10.2%
  • Other

    Votes: 24 40.7%
  • No

    Votes: 17 28.8%

  • Total voters
    59
  • Poll closed .

tenbones

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So from the Marvel 2022 thread, I thought I'd toss this up here out of interest.

I would have put more options, but I was limited. So my criteria is simple: Do you run Super's RPG's as part of your normal campaigns. So at least a few times a year?

If you choose Other - feel free to post it in the thread.
 
I have not run a Supers RPG, but, as a lifelong comic book fan, I would like to.

We've currently got at least a year left in our non-supers campaign, though, so it will be a while before I get a chance to be a Super-GM.
 
I have not run a Supers RPG, but, as a lifelong comic book fan, I would like to.

We've currently got at least a year left in our non-supers campaign, though, so it will be a while before I get a chance to be a Super-GM.
Well give it a shot!! Supers can be a little tricky until you get the hang of it - but players tend to love it, since they start out ridiculously more powerful than in other genres, typically.
 
Not running anything currently, but I've run a Batman/DC Heroes villain game in the past, and I've run a few V&V 2e one-shots.
 
I try and run Hearts & Souls, or Marvel Saga at least a little every year. Icons and MSH are less common, but that's because my "table" group isn't into it or MSH, Icons they've not tried yet. (Well one of them has, and he likes it, but not the rest.)
 
I mean, I'm running nothing recently. Between the pandemic and my work schedule (which is both a lot of hours, and a really irregular schedule), I haven't been able to do play much of anything lately.

But, when I was playing, yes, I ran several different supers games. Mutants and Masterminds 3e and Marvel Heroic (though if I ran it now I would build it from Cortex Prime) being the last two I played.
 
I run Sentinel Comics RPG for my daughters on Monday nights and sometimes run Mutants & Masterminds for my Saturday group.

I also was running a very engaging Masks: a New Generation campaign for a small group before the pandemic, but I think I'd have trouble continuing that game.
 
Not for several years, but I have run a short Better Angels campaign previously.
 
I've never run a Supers Rpg much less owned one. Back in the mid-80s, I had a friend who had MSH and I remember reading through it. But that's the extent of it.

I've seen and enjoyed plenty of Supers movies over the years, but I never collected superhero comic books. I guess even as a youth I found the standard superhero in tights to be a silly thing.

I don't really understand what you'd do in a Supers Rpg. Looking at things from the outside, the experience seems like it would be very cliché, formulaic, and boring in short order. I'm sure that there's plenty of potential for fulfilling Supers campaigns - I just don't have any exposure to that kind of thing. Of all the gamers I've met over the past 40 years, none of them ever ran Supers.
players tend to love it, since they start out ridiculously more powerful than in other genres, typically.
This quote here is another reason for my distancing from Supers Rpgs. I tend to GM and enjoy playing more gritty, "realistic", and down-to-Earth Rpgs. Call of Cthulhu, various kinds of Dark or Sword & Sorcery Fantasy, harder Scifi. Playing ridiculously more powerful characters isn't appealing. I find the "heroic" in normal, but skilled, people facing challenges that they may or may not overcome.

P.S. I'm not trying to sh!t on this thread. I'm genuinely curious about the appeal of Supers Rpgs. Maybe there's something intriguing or appealing I could learn about the experience.
 
I've run a lot of Golden Heroes. It hits the right nostalgia buttons for me. Not because I played it BITD (I didn't), but because it really apes the late '70s/early '80s vibe of the Marvel comics I read as a kid. It has a few rough spots (character advancement is wonky, but I don't use it often, anyway), and a few blind spots (no weaknesses, doesn't handle speed very well). And it bears mentioning that I use several house rules based on Tweets and Facebook posts by the author. Still, it hits the "sweet spot" between crunch and accessibility, character generation is pretty fast, and it has tactical depth without massive amounts of complicated rules. It's pretty easy to run, once you get used to it.

I have other supers games, and I wouldn't mind running one or two of them. And I'll play just about anything, if someone else is running. But Golden Heroes is my go-to supers game.
 
I've run a lot of Golden Heroes. It hits the right nostalgia buttons for me. Not because I played it BITD (I didn't), but because it really apes the late '70s/early '80s vibe of the Marvel comics I read as a kid. It has a few rough spots (character advancement is wonky, but I don't use it often, anyway), and a few blind spots (no weaknesses, doesn't handle speed very well). And it bears mentioning that I use several house rules based on Tweets and Facebook posts by the author. Still, it hits the "sweet spot" between crunch and accessibility, character generation is pretty fast, and it has tactical depth without massive amounts of complicated rules. It's pretty easy to run, once you get used to it.

I have other supers games, and I wouldn't mind running one or two of them. And I'll play just about anything, if someone else is running. But Golden Heroes is my go-to supers game.
How are ya doing?! Any chance of a PBP? :grin:
 
Back in the day I played and ran Villains and Vigilantes and FASERIP. I‘ve also played Fuzion Champions. TMNT, Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas and Superspies, and Mystic China, like every other Palladium game, were rolled into my Rifts Campaign.

I love the setting concepts of Necessary Evil, but never got to play.

There’s other games with concepts I like, like Unmasked, but the systems are useless to me.

MEGS is the one that got away.
 
It has been a long time since I have run a supers game, mainly because I haven't had any luck finding people who want to play one.

In the past, I ran a LOT of Champions stuff. These days I would probably opt for Savage Worlds with the Super Powers book or some version of Wild Talents.
 
M&M is my supers game of choice, though I haven’t run a straight supers game for years. However, I’ve used it to run what are essentially superhero games with other trappings, namely a Clone Wars game with all Jedi characters, and a gonzo Rifts game.

I’m gearing up to run a Marvel universe M&M game for my son soon, though.
 
I don’t actively run any supers game, although I’ve played in a few. The last one was Masks: A New Generation, and I enjoyed playing Marvel Heroic Roleplay when we did it. I can’t remember if I ran it or played it.

I’ve not really found a supers game I really want to run, although I could do M&M if I needed to. Does Scion count?
 
Not in a long time, but mostly Champions when I have. A little GURPS and Super World (BRP) but only a session or two as we didn't find them to do supers well (1980s). One game of Paladium's supers game (was that Heroes Unlimited?) which was dreadful, I think we got to one fight after chargen and found the PCs so broken that we just quit and did something else. The last time I played in a supers game was probably early 1990s so I only know a lot of the ones on the list by name from reading the forums.

I like the idea of supers games, but I've never actually enjoyed one much beyond chargen as my experience has been that they are just slug fests, almost table top skirmish games.
Probably more a GM issue, but I've tried supers with three different groups over the years with zero cross over of players other than myself, and all basically just ran the games as giant fights. Same groups did not do that with any other genre just supers.
Maybe with a different group, but at this point Supers are pretty much off my table.
 
ICONS is definitely is a go to game. I love the genre, I am very, very comfortable with the system and between the character generator app, the villain collections and adventures, lots of resources to drawn upon even on short notice. In the end ICONS does nothing startlingly new or original (its roots are the authors Fudge conversion of MSH), but it just has for the the right amount of everything. I actually favour the original version with the looser rules and player facing mechanics.

That said I no game the fits the precise definition of "active" givein the the orginal post. There is no one game I run several times a year. I play in group with several GM and we informally rotate the role. I have run an ICONS one-shot recently, but currently I've been running a Western for the past few months. As that comes to a close, I may not have a shot at the GM slot for the rest of the year . And even then, when it comes to selecting the next game to play, it's a group decision.
 
I don't really understand what you'd do in a Supers Rpg.

(snip)
This quote here is another reason for my distancing from Supers Rpgs. I tend to GM and enjoy playing more gritty, "realistic", and down-to-Earth Rpgs. Call of Cthulhu,

A Supers game is exactly like Call of Cthulhu, but at the end of the investigation, instead of going insane, you beat the monster up.
 
(snip)


A Supers game is exactly like Call of Cthulhu, but at the end of the investigation, instead of going insane, you beat the monster up.

Heh, I've just the exact same metaphor (or is it a simile?). Great minds, eh?

But admit when I first approached the superhero genre as a GM, it was a bit daunting. Mostly I didn't want to fall into a supervillain of the week pattern. But understanding that a typical supers adventure is as much investigation (not just un the Batman sense, just the general piecing together who is behind the threat, what they are really after ) peppered with action is what made it click for me. I guess that still harder than drawing a few rooms on graph paper and stocking them encounters from random tables, but I suspect most fantasy GM put a lot more effort into their games than that.
 
I’m not sure the analogy quite fits though, because in Call of Cthulhu your characters can go insane (or die) well before the investigation has concluded.

Whereas superheroes have to be kind of insane to do what they do to start with?

Also superheroes die all the time. It's just never for very long :-) (and in fairness that's comics more than games)
 
It's not an analogy. I've been pilfering Call of Cthulhu modules for supers games for decades,
Well, there is plot lines, but there is also the underlying mechanics and personal vulnerabilities of the games you need to consider. That said, with Pulp Cthulhu rules, the differences become increasingly blurred.
 
Sure, superhero games are enjoyed by almost all of my players.

Marvel SAGA remains a favourite of my main group, but Heroes Unlimited has proven popular in recent years.

I find a good superhero campaign among the most fulfilling and fun to referee, so long as you clearly set the expectations of play. They require little set-up or world building early on, and each scenario adds depth or detail that makes the setting feel cohesive and rich. My players expect this issue-by-issue style of development, and the ones who know the medium well are great at supporting it.

I've got nothing but good things to say about superhero campaigns.
 
On the topic of superhero adventures, DC Heroes (not sure which edition) had a adventure generation, almost flowchart-like system that wasn't bad, largely becuase it did not assume the heroes would win. I still have a photocopy of those pages from a book a friend of mine owned.

I also created for ICONS a set of tables for superhero adventures/encounters. It's gearded torward the more street level, crime focused settings (hence the name "Crime Table" and while it was intended for ICONS (it hosted on the ICONS wiki) the most of it is system agnostic. https://static.miraheze.org/iconswiki/e/ef/CrimeTable+Toolkit.pdf
 
Supers is one of my preferred types of games. I tend to run one shots and shorter mini-campaigns these days (as I don't have the time for a full campaign).
 
So from the Marvel 2022 thread, I thought I'd toss this up here out of interest.

I would have put more options, but I was limited. So my criteria is simple: Do you run Super's RPG's as part of your normal campaigns. So at least a few times a year?

If you choose Other - feel free to post it in the thread.
Last time I ran a supers RPG, it was a FACERIP* one-shot. OTOH, you can certainly argue that these days, as opposed to the days I was starting**, many of my games contain PCs that have, for the lack of a better word, super-powers.
So for purposes of the poll, should I answer "other", "no", or both:shade:?

*I renamed the stats to enable the pun:devil:!
**I was like K_Peterson K_Peterson back then. Then Exalted corrupted me, by attracting me with a setting I loved:thumbsup:!
 
I'm on and off with it. Currently off. But I've ran plenty of supers. My current group struggles with it a little bit, I feel.
 
Sure, superhero games are enjoyed by almost all of my players.

Marvel SAGA remains a favourite of my main group, but Heroes Unlimited has proven popular in recent years.

I find a good superhero campaign among the most fulfilling and fun to referee, so long as you clearly set the expectations of play. They require little set-up or world building early on, and each scenario adds depth or detail that makes the setting feel cohesive and rich. My players expect this issue-by-issue style of development, and the ones who know the medium well are great at supporting it.

I've got nothing but good things to say about superhero campaigns.
I am not trying to troll. I promise. But how in the fuck do you guys go from Marvel SAGA to Heroes Unlimited? Those are literally on the opposite ends of my superhero RPG quality scale, being a massive SAGA fan and thinking HU is one of the worst games I've ever read?
 
I'm running Galaxies in Peril, the Forged in the Dark version of Worlds in Peril (PbtA).

I do work a supers in once a year (for the past 3) because my players are interested in modern settings with powered characters. Mage and Part-time Gods also fits their bill. I almost went with Masks instead of Worlds in Peril, but I like the power mechanics better in WiP.
 
I've run MSH in the past and DCH more recently. A couple years back I was in a DCH campaign (2nd/3rd/BoH editions used interchangeably) that was one of my favorites ever, with all kinds of crazy comics drama. I've got MSH on my radar for running again in the near future, but I think I'll take Basic Revised as the base and add on from there as needed. MSH Advanced and especially Ultimate Powers have some particular bits to the powers that seem fiddly and not as great as just being more free form with it and using power FEATS for stunts and adding tricks, etc. Golden Heroes is on my list for someday, but no solid plans. Even Champions 3E might be my jam if I ever played with the right GM & vibe. I had some fun with the stones-based MURPG, but... it'd need a solid 2nd edition to really clean up for me to be excited to play it again.
 
I wish. I've run M&M before but would like to get into MEGS w/the books. I ran D6 DC Universe once but it turned from X-Men into Mystery Men quickly (ran it not long after the movie came out) and I wasn't into it by the end.
 
Last time I ran a supers RPG, it was a FACERIP* one-shot. OTOH, you can certainly argue that these days, as opposed to the days I was starting**, many of my games contain PCs that have, for the lack of a better word, super-powers.
So for purposes of the poll, should I answer "other", "no", or both:shade:?

*I renamed the stats to enable the pun:devil:!
**I was like K_Peterson K_Peterson back then. Then Exalted corrupted me, by attracting me with a setting I loved:thumbsup:!
Now that I think about it, ~37 yeas ago I had a group of friends that played AD&D 1e like it was a Supers Rpg. Everyone had amazing stats, did amazing things, and had amazing magic items, like Helms of Utter Destruction. (You were the shit if you had one of those).

I guess I have played a Supers Rpg. :hehe: Just one by another name... and genre... and intended focus....
That experience can only escalate so much, IMO, and after middle school it wasn't as interesting (at least to me). Went down another path and never came back.

P.S. If someone posts a thread titled "What White Wolf Rpgs do you actively run...", I can thread-shit again and just copy-paste my answer: "I've never run or GM'd a game of ..." :wink:
 
I mean, if you expand "supers rpg" just to mean power scale I've played quite a few more.

I kind of separate though supers like western superhero stories from just like high powered anime style bullshit. Though there ARE a lot of similarities I tend to structure how the world works and expectations a bit differently between the two.
 
I am not trying to troll. I promise. But how in the fuck do you guys go from Marvel SAGA to Heroes Unlimited? Those are literally on the opposite ends of my superhero RPG quality scale, being a massive SAGA fan and thinking HU is one of the worst games I've ever read?

What can I say? We like them both.

They are very different in almost all respects, but while Marvel SAGA excels at one shots and mini-series, Heroes Unlimited is my preference for a long-term campaign. While Kev's "levels and experience points are totally the most realistic thing ever!" argument is laughable, I have had more success refereeing Heroes Unlimited for longer.

I can't argue against it's faults, many of which are just Kev's quirks as a designer, but I am the referee and the rules are my bitch!
 
If I do Heroes Unlimited ut us freeform, no stats but I gave written up my own stuff for street level.

SW Super 2e for next kevel of power, then M&M for higher power levels. Again most is freeform so there no crunch issue of game mechanics.

I intend at some point soon to run a Lords of Gossamer using M&M powers, but keep LoG stats.
 
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