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flowersofedo

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  • RPG Biography
    Chronic GM
  • Current games
    Superworld, Magic World, Hero System, GURPS
  • Location
    North Carolina
  • Blurb
    Interest in the place where mechanics and character mesh rather than clash

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  1. In Charlotte, you say? That's (relatively speaking) just up the road from me. It would be a bit far to drive, but what an odd coincidence. If you keep a journal or some kind of record of your current campaign online, let me know. I'd love to see it and follow along. And I had completely forgotten that Superworld already has rules for four color comics-style shunting of damage. Makes the damage issue even easier to adjudicate. And the fractional armor protection across damage types is an especially clever option. I love Lensman. I have the GURPS 3rd Lensman book, so if I wanted to run a Lensman campaign or something similar to it, I could convert material over from that. I love the ideas being thrown around in this conversation. It is increasing my confidence in using Superworld for high level play and definitely making me excited to GM.
  2. Thanks again for the great conversation, everyone. There are some great ideas and plans being exchanged here. It seems like one of the recurring issues is damage, specific having cosmic damage without obliterating everything. This is essentially a case of making the damage in the game match the way damage is handled in four-color comics, ie. supers can smack each other around without causing a massive body count, either from killing one another or causing massive collateral damage. It occurs to me that this is an issue that might be best handled as a genre convention, a narrative, universal aspect of the setting that costs no points. Given that, the best solution might be to adopt a "killing attacks must be declared" convention, the kind found in M&M, Blood of Heroes, even as an optional rule in GURPS Supers. This means that no matter what damage the character inflicts on a target (whether the target is super or civilian), the worst that will happen to the target is unconsciousness, broken bones, or other nasty but non-lethal injuries. This could be explained any number of ways: the heroes pulled punches (or rolled with impact when attacked), the civilians got lucky or were saved by the heroes' timely intervention, whatever fits. If the character or NPC wants to attack with lethal force and kill someone, they have to declare their intention to kill the target, with all the attendant physical and roleplaying consequences. It's unrealistic, but is an established convention of the genre. It also allows for knock-down, drag out, high-destruction fights without leaving the setting an inadvertent bloodbath...unless that's exactly what the character (or Big Bad) wants, at which point the sheer horror of this level of power becomes apparent. And, if I ever run a game of gritty superhumans, reverting back to the standard damage rules (or something closer to vanilla rules) would make a great point of contrast for a different sort of game. It won't please everyone, but it would satisfy me in a four-color/cosmic superhero game I would run. And it doesn't require nerfing the characters or powers. And as for why I wouldn't just use a different game, BRP/Superworld offers a slew of features I love that aren't found in other games, on top of the great utility of this great system.
  3. This is all great information and advice. I very much appreciate all the responses. After hearing for so long that BRP couldn't do high-end superheroics (which, admittedly, would be a challenge with just the material presented in the BGB) I was pleasantly surprised to see in Superworld what seemed to me to be all the mechanics necessary to play superheroics at any level. Just another game to plan out using this fantastic system. Thanks.
  4. Actually that helps a great deal. This is the first time anyone has been able to give me any real firsthand insight on a cosmic-level BRP supers game. I assumed it would work well, so it's reassuring to hear that BRP can support a game played at that level. Now I just have to make sure that the big bads don't obliterate the planet. Thanks again for the reply. I appreciate it.
  5. I posted this on the BRP subreddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/BRP) a while back, but I wanted to ask here and see what everyone thought. Anyone had any experience running or GMing very high powered/cosmic level superheroes in BRP, either with Superworld (which I think is terrific and underrated) or with the super powers in the Big Gold Book? I know that common wisdom asserts that superheroic BRP games work best from street-level characters up to about Spider-Man power levels, but then breaks down from there (indeed, the example characters in Superworld fall into this power range, and the DC and Marvel characters that were statted out to promote Superworld using during its initial publication were the New Teen Titans and the X-men, all of whom--at least at the time--fit right in that mid-range power level as well). From reading the superhero material created for BRP, I feel like there is nothing intrinsic in the game (especially in Superworld and its companion books) to prevent the creation and effective play of really powerful characters, and that the system could handle cosmically high power levels as well as any superhero system. It's just a matter of handing out the points so PCs can make a Superman or a Silver Surfer or another ultra powerful character, and then making sure that other characters, especially NPCs, aren't overwhelmed by the potential lethality of the power levels (which would be a problem that seems both logical and easily avoidable with basic houserules or general GM fiat). I realize that high-end characters present their own problems in any system; I just don't see anything unique or inherent in BRP/Superworld that would prevent these characters from being workable and fun. However, I haven't been able to test this out for myself yet and I could easily be missing something. Any thoughts or opinions on this?
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