Marvel Faserip Clone

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Yeah, I've been familiar with it for a while, I watch for the Faserip clothes. Astonishing Superheroes is a two-book clone of FASERIP, and this is a variant of MSH. Lots of good stuff for us old fans.
 
TristramEvans TristramEvans hates it. I like.it, but it bears mentioning that MSH had never been my favorite system/game, and I will admit that the chargen is wacked, though easily fixed IMO. The actual FASERIP stat generation is what I mean, I actually like the powers generation part. It's not a "straight clone", but has a lot of tof the designer's house rules. I'm a fan of the designer, and don't have a big attachment to MSH, so YMMV.

There is certainly no shortage of MSH clones.
 
Rogerdee said:
Would you rate it as being pretty good then?
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I don't like FASERIP as much as MSH there are some things missing, but I've not seen the 2E (which I think was on its way.) Astonishing Heroes is pretty much a straight clone which I like, but not sure about its legality. It isn't /bad/ mind you. It's pretty solid but it made choices I wouldn't have if I were cloning it.
 
burbles said:
Now I'm worried what image will be posted when you want to comment on something you really don't like!
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4C Expanded is another one - with a Wild West Variant as well. There are a couple of games hanging around that use the system for different genres: Humanish by Arion games is kind of like World of Darkness, and 4Saken, an investigatory horror game. It can be quite flexible, can FASERIP
 
If I remember correctly, combat in Marvel depended entirely on the attacker's stat (Fighting or Agility) without any adjustment for the particular target, so that Daredevil was as easy (or hard) for a character to hit as Juggernaut. A character could dodge but that would use an action. Was that the case, and if so have any retroclones added any sort of passive or active defence?
 
SoManyRats said:
If I remember correctly, combat in Marvel depended entirely on the attacker's stat (Fighting or Agility) without any adjustment for the particular target, so that Daredevil was as easy (or hard) for a character to hit as Juggernaut. A character could dodge but that would use an action. Was that the case, and if so have any retroclones added any sort of passive or active defence?
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Fighting is not a contested roll, if that's what you mean, a character's passive defense is represented by a pool of points, actual Wounds are represented by Attribute Loss (when you're no longer capable of defending against attacks). You can choose to actively defend by Dodging, Evading, or Blocking. There's no action point economy in FASERIP, so you don't "use up an action" per se, but different types of active defenses modify what else you can do that turn (if you are actively Dodging, you have a modifier to other actions you take that round, etc).
 
Yeah, people get the wrong idea about what MSH's "Health" means, it's at least as abstract as D&D's HP, if not more so. I mean the game uses "Fighting" generally considered a skill thing in most games as a pool of points that go into that score so it's pretty obvious that it's abstract. (Also why a 'Red' result from some attacks can ignore entirely and send a character into a death spiral without doing much Health-damage.)

Example: Evilmary has 400 health. She has no defensive powers like body armor or force fields. She gets hit sword blow by the Ineffable Fencer for a whopping 16 damage. But he hit her with a RED result. She must now make an Endurance FEAT or start dying. (Sure her Unearthly Endurance makes it less likely than Mook Mike, but it's still a strong possibility.)


It is also why you have 'talents' not skills because they're basically special narrower foci of ability. You're generally as good at oh--rewiring a circuit board as your Reason score allows. (In fact, examining the tables in the Advanced Judge's Book, makes it pretty clear all your stats are a combination of raw talent+training) if you read where it shows the characters at the rank. A talent just means you're better at it than 'normal' for your level of ability score.


Example: An adolescent age Kitty Pryde has the ability to understand, use and work on 'Advanced 1980s Technology, including computers, programming, and circuit design. " No talent in Electronics is needed she's JUST That capable.
 
Blacky the Blackball (who wrote FASERIP) also wrote Masks (not the PbtA game) which you will find here.

It's essentially a FASERIP clone, but uses FUDGE dice to resolve actions. Because of the way FUDGE dice work you can either have the attacker roll 4dF to attack, or the defender roll 4dF to defend (but not both). It's quite a nice variant of the original
 
TristramEvans said:
So, just The Superlative System again. Which is what turned into Icons.
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Yeah. I believe the author mentioned that this was his reworking of ICONS with a little less Fate DNA. It always struck me a really good piece of work, especially as it's free, but by then I was already hooked on ICONS and there only so many gaming days in a year.
 
Since we're cataloguing FASERIP clones, a couple more are: Universal Heroes by Technohl13 and Phase Four by Random Wizard.

There's also the "Expert Edition" revamp of the Advanced Set on Classic Marvel Forever (located in the Netbooks & Enhancements" section in downloads.
 
The only thing about Faserip I didn't like was the random power generator - I do prefer the M&M / Savage Worlds Supers point buy mechanic.



I am thinking about getting the above from KS pre-order....mulling it over. Has anyone else backed it?
 
Rogerdee said:
The only thing about Faserip I didn't like was the random power generator - I do prefer the M&M / Savage Worlds Supers point buy mechanic.
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I think of the Random Power Generation as akin to something like Traveller's random home world generation (an aid to making something interesting, rather than a straight-jacket) and consider "Character Modeling" the superior of the 3 options TSR Marvel Super Heroes gives for making a character (a.k.a. "Just describe your character, you and the Judge settle on stats that work.") The millions of example Marvel characters make it easy to guess where your stats should fall. I'm surprised more games don't offer it as an option. You get what you want (within reason), you can roll if you want to whatever level you care to to spark ideas (Maybe I'll roll Power Categories, or maybe I'll also roll down to specific power and find a way to make it work), no point fiddling. It's great.
 
Gringnr said:
Blacky the Blackball has released a new edition of his FASERIP. You can get the PDF for free.

DriveThruRPG

preview.drivethrurpg.com preview.drivethrurpg.com
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I really like what I've read so far. I like that it fixes one of my main problems with Marvel Super-Heroes/FASERIP... that is, non-random character creation. That's a really hard sell on players these days.
 
Lunar Ronin said:
I really like what I've read so far. I like that it fixes one of my main problems with Marvel Super-Heroes/FASERIP... that is, non-random character creation. That's a really hard sell on players these days.
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They fixed that in ether a Dragon or Polyhedron article ages ago, and you can now find it on the web. I don't know people still think this is an issue, plus modeling is RIGHT there and its official in the core book and its not random. People just don't read.
 
Silverlion said:
They fixed that in ether a Dragon or Polyhedron article ages ago, and you can now find it on the web. I don't know people still think this is an issue, plus modeling is RIGHT there and its official in the core book and its not random. People just don't read.
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I primarily use character modelling for any game longer than a one-shot these days. It is, across the entire hobby's history, the best character generation system ever published. Simple and Intuitive, there is almost no learning curve, it's simply a negotiation between the players and the GM.

But it only works for two scenarios: when you want to stat up/translate an existing character, or when the player knows exactly what type of character they want to play. It's great for fanfic writer players, if you know what I mean.

And there are at least two other scenarios where it's not always optimal. if the player has no idea what they want to play, or need their imagination prodded. Or if the player wants to create a character independently within the confines of set limits.

I think random roll is generally better recieved by the former, and point-by by the latter. I'd also hazard more experienced role-players tend towards the latter, especially if they've been subjected to Dungeon's & Dragons bizarrely restrictive chargen for any amount of time.

For my house rules I went with more of a "take and modify a template" approach using heroic archetypes, with some prioritization choices ala Ghostbusters/WEG Star Wars/Shadowrun circa 2nd Ed.

I've mostly found that random roll works best in comedy RPGs. The more gonzo the setting, the less there is a, say tactical investment for the players aspect of chargen. The only not-comedy game that I still like the random roll system for is Star Frontiers, and, lol, I could not imagine trying to sell that game to any player who didn't grow up on it.

I never knew about the existence of the Polyhedral article until...turn of the century chatrooms basically. When I started playing MSH, I didn't live in areas where something like Polyhedral Magazine was something I had access to. I could like, bike to the 7-11 and buy comics with my allowance. MSH came from a Waldenbooks in the mall, the collection slowly building across birthdays and Christmases (Christmasi?). I don't recall us ever random rolling characters, but we would model TF out of everything, it became an ongoing thing with my friends at the time. We'd stat up characters and then submit them to each other for critique, entirely outside of playing the game.
 
What do you guys think of G-Core? I think it's another great FASERIP clone.
 
TristramEvans said:
I primarily use character modelling for any game longer than a one-shot these days. It is, across the entire hobby's history, the best character generation system ever published. Simple and Intuitive, there is almost no learning curve, it's simply a negotiation between the players and the GM.

But it only works for two scenarios: when you want to stat up/translate an existing character, or when the player knows exactly what type of character they want to play. It's great for fanfic writer players, if you know what I mean.

And there are at least two other scenarios where it's not always optimal. if the player has no idea what they want to play, or need their imagination prodded. Or if the player wants to create a character independently within the confines of set limits.

I think random roll is generally better recieved by the former, and point-by by the latter. I'd also hazard more experienced role-players tend towards the latter, especially if they've been subjected to Dungeon's & Dragons bizarrely restrictive chargen for any amount of time.

For my house rules I went with more of a "take and modify a template" approach using heroic archetypes, with some prioritization choices ala Ghostbusters/WEG Star Wars/Shadowrun circa 2nd Ed.

I've mostly found that random roll works best in comedy RPGs. The more gonzo the setting, the less there is a, say tactical investment for the players aspect of chargen. The only not-comedy game that I still like the random roll system for is Star Frontiers, and, lol, I could not imagine trying to sell that game to any player who didn't grow up on it.

I never knew about the existence of the Polyhedral article until...turn of the century chatrooms basically. When I started playing MSH, I didn't live in areas where something like Polyhedral Magazine was something I had access to. I could like, bike to the 7-11 and buy comics with my allowance. MSH came from a Waldenbooks in the mall, the collection slowly building across birthdays and Christmases (Christmasi?). I don't recall us ever random rolling characters, but we would model TF out of everything, it became an ongoing thing with my friends at the time. We'd stat up characters and then submit them to each other for critique, entirely outside of playing the game.
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I think it was in one I had, not sure which, but it was easy to find online when I remembered it. I've ALWAYS got ideas to model, and yeah it requires some idea of what you want. When you don't random works well enough.

I don't mind archetypes, maybe we should make some? :grin:
 
Silverlion said:
I think it was in one I had, not sure which, but it was easy to find online when I remembered it. I've ALWAYS got ideas to model, and yeah it requires some idea of what you want. When you don't random works well enough.

I don't mind archetypes, maybe we should make some? :grin:
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My favorite to date is FASERIPopedia (I'm biased of course). :smile: But I do like G-Core quite a bit. Not so much the setting, tbh. But I thought the mechanics were pretty slick.
 
Endless Flight said:
My favorite clone is PHASERIP!
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Mine too, just wish it would grow up and move out of the house already.

I'm going to have something significant to show very soon though.

I'll give a shout out to 4C Expanded and Icons, as my choices for the best designed not-quite-MSHclones that are extant. Icons is very slick, 4C is a very nice adaptation/expansion of the original system while still remaining generally faithful.

I love G-Core's enthusiasm, if not the execution, and Green Dilly Bean Games were the first and I give them much props.
 
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