Superhero games

[ORtrail]

Allowing those dodge rolls in other BRP games, especially the Wild West ones, would help characters survive... at least longer. If the GM hates Fate points, and the players don't happen to be time travellers with kevlar vests, you don't have that many options. Note: Other then a bit of Boot Hill (where thrown knives always seem to hit groins), my only western adventures have in fact been with characters as armored time travellers*.

Unless the character is taking careful aim, I'd assume they are side-stepping, ducking, using any bit of cover (hitching post, water trough, kick over a table, boulder, etc.) to make themselves a harder target. All while trying to get off a few shots of their own, of course.

Smart characters will try to ambush and/or choose fights carefully. Use a rifle when they have pistols, take out the guy with the shotgun first, etc. If a player wants to stand in middle of the street, well, live and learn I guess.

In that Batman example? I'd really expect the player to be smart about how he went after those guys. Take a few out from the shadows with your batarangs, sneak up and hit one or two from behind after distracting them with a noise, call in a swarm of bats, use Robin as a human shield... er, well, you get the idea. I was always willing to work with the players when they gave me any little reason to give them an advantage.

Of course, that should apply to every game.

*The Alamo counts as a western adventure, right? I mean, 1836, black powder pistols, rifles, bayonets, bowie knives? Close enough? They were there as observers of events, to stop that guy with the modern sniper rifle from killing Santa Anna, and run like rabbits to the time portal inside the Mission as the Mexican army came over and through the walls. One of my players DIDN'T know how the whole Alamo thing was going to end. I still chuckle about that.

[Atgxtg]

One thing that could and should make a different if movement. If a character is actively trying to make ones self a hard target, halving the attack skill chance is appropriate. Cover would be another big plus.

I'm not a big fan of doging in a Western game. It just gives the wrong feel. Doding firearms is more of a sueperhero thing. But I'll happily use Haro/Fate points for a similar effect.

On fact, the old LUC roll from the FASA Star Trek game might work. In that game if a character got hit by a phaser if they made a LUC save they were only "grazed" and took only a fraction of the normal damage, roughly a third. A luck roll to take half damage or so might just work. Or a LUC roll to downgrade the Sucess level by a grade.

Another solution would be the "Flashing Blades" method. In Flashing Blades most weapon only did about 2 points of damage of an attack. But on a roll of half skill or less it added 1D6 to the damage. If we had normal hits only do 1 point of damage unless under half skill it would make flunkies less threatening without really hurting the PCs or big villains.

[FunGuyFromYuggoth]

It becomes hard to scale a known superhero b/c all of their powers were presented by different artists/writers across decades with wild swings up and down depending on where the story needed to be. They weren't developed by game designers with point buy systems. My suggestion would be to rejigger the point buying system to a maxed out character with points appropriate for an Epic Level campaign as a goal and to put that to one side, but to place the player somewhere in the middle or the bottom, and add and subtract power across an entire campaign (so that a cerain budget of points can be reallocated). They could occasionally borrow/leverage these other powers depending on need (Fate?). This would hopefully keep the player and the GM invested in a storyline that challenges and inspires them.

[Nightshade]

There's also another issue that comes up in Superhero games that A refers to above at one point: how much a premium you place on versitility. In a game that charges full value for all powers, you're putting quite a premium on it, as two offensive powers cost full cost even though its anything but clear that the second one actually increases the capability of the character as much as the first did; sometimes a Blast is useful and sometimes a Snare is useful, but having both is probably not worth twice as much as just having one. At the other end, something like Mutants and Masterminds (and to a lesser extent, Hero) places versitility at a heavy discount over raw power. Where you want a superhero game to sit tends to turn on your perceptions of the genre and the sorts of characters within the genre you want to support, because any decision tends to encourage some and discourage others.

[p_clapham]

Is there anyone of you who plan to use Basic Roleplaying to play a superhero game? If so, how do you game such a setting? Superhero stuff have very little appeal to me, but I would like to hear how other people are planning to use this part, and how the setting would be.

SGL.

Well my plan is pretty much... Call of Cthulhu + pre Golden age of Superheros. It's going to be a globe trotting, cult smashing kind of game. Depending on how long the campain goes on the players may even have a chance to smash some nazis too.

Fate points are going to be key for the game. I may even consider using some mook rules as well.

[Atgxtg]

Well my plan is pretty much... Call of Cthulhu + pre Golden age of Superheros. It's going to be a globe trotting, cult smashing kind of game. Depending on how long the campain goes on the players may even have a chance to smash some nazis too.

Fate points are going to be key for the game. I may even consider using some mook rules as well.

Sounds like Spirit of the Century.

Depending on how skilled your PCs are you can get away with thingk like 10/50% Mooks and 12/60% mooks quite easiley. Even a +5 or 10% pile on bonus for mutiple attackers, instead of the normal method. So 4 10/50% goons would get one attack at 80% (50+30) and one guy would drop for each 10 HP of damage (or major wound).

Simple, but it works for the genre.