What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?
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RE: System for OC Game. Heads up, this is kind of stream of consciousness, so it’s long and rambly. Sorry in advance.
I’ve thought about running an OC game for a long time. I actually ran one ages ago called Sovereign City, back in the Mutants and Masterminds 1E days. Superhero MUs have been my main source of RP for most of my MUing life (since the mid-90s), and most of that time was on blended-universe games. For whatever reason, those just don’t do it for me anymore. I get why they exist and why they’re popular. I just can’t bring myself to play on them these days.
So I keep coming back to the idea of running the game I want to play. The problem is, I’m not sure anyone else would want to play it. Modern superhero comics don’t really grab me either, so if I ran a straight canon game, the canon would basically be the 1990s bumped up to modern day, with some tools bolted on to fold in characters who’ve shown up since. And my worry is that would appeal to exactly one person: me.
The natural fix is an OC game where players can run pastiches of canon characters or build their own. But then I start thinking about all the problems that come with that, and the big one is: what system do you even use?
I firmly believe the bar to entry for any game should be as low as possible. That alone rules out most of the RPGs I actually like (Champions and Heroes Unlimited are two favorites). I’m also not sold on narrative traits for an OC game. You either get the player who doesn’t explain nearly enough, or the one who explains way too much, and somehow both lead to the same problem: wildly different ideas of what that write-up actually means in play. That kind of system works fine for FC games, where you can glance at a character and go, “Oh, I know what they can do.” But on an OC-only game, I think it’d be a nightmare. I picture staff spending more time refereeing arguments over whether a character can do this, that, or the other thing than actually running scenes.
So, long story short: if I were starting an OC game today, what system would I use? Two ideas:
A hack of Aberrant 2nd Edition. I’m a big fan of Aberrant 2E. Well, parts of it. I’d gut the whole nova tech section, which I find basically unplayable. But strip it down to the core system and powers and it’s a pretty slick setup.
A hack of Legends in the Mist. This is my current favorite RPG. For anyone who doesn’t know it, it’s an evolution of City of Mist, which itself grew out of PbtA. You get four themes, each with a “might” scale (I’d probably use 5 or 6 for supers). Each theme has 4 Power Tags and a Weakness. That’s it. It’s very narrative, very flexible, and the bar to entry would be nice and low.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I love the idea of an OC game. I just keep getting hung up on actually pulling it off.
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@Raistlin I don’t know about the systems, FS3 might not be robust enough, it’s numbers always seemed a bit wonky to me. But I can say I would certainly check out an OC type of game like this.
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@Prototart said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
@helvetica said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
@catzilla Narrative power sets (1-2 paragraph explanation of range and min/max impact) with a baseline skill to roll.
the only OC-only game I remember really taking off used Mutants & Masterminds but I didn’t log into anywhere but Shang for a decade so i could be missing dozens of examples
I’m not familiar with that system. In my old age, I defer more and more toward not creating unnecessary activity. Nothing more eye-roll inducing than a system that’s complicated where it could have been simple. I’m here to write.
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My go-to system for Superhero games when they show up at my RL tabletop group is Wild Talents. The One Roll Engine does superheroics really well, and the basic resolution mechanic takes only a few minutes to explain.
Over the years I’ve played HERO, Champions, Mutants and Masterminds (1st & 2nd Editions), Godlike, Capes, Aberrant, Scion (yes, I count Scion as a superhero game), and MSH. I feel like having a solid core system is important for a superhero game as you need to know what the baseline for task resolution is before you start throwing superpowers at the narrative, or you end up with everyone operating on their own idea of what the power scale is.
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@Colette said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
20 on UH, 24 on HAM, 25 on LnL, not a teen.
So, given yhat time advances on UH and HAM, two of them used to be teens.
That player isn’t keen on those.
Ruby’s known for two things. One of them is being an emotionally unstable pathological liar, and the other is the number of sexpest she’s Ghislained for.
Just 1 year
I might be off on 7, but it was definitely more than one. I’ll have to check my logs when I get back from the OR, but I know this because I was the person who got permission to ignore all of Eianna’s stuff.
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@Raistlin said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
Modern superhero comics don’t really grab me either, so if I ran a straight canon game, the canon would basically be the 1990s bumped up to modern day, with some tools bolted on to fold in characters who’ve shown up since. And my worry is that would appeal to exactly one person: me.
I would legit kill for a game set in the early 80s that was actually 80s-vibed or one set in the 90s where I can imply Terry Richardson is being creepy to GenX.
A hack of Aberrant 2nd Edition. I’m a big fan of Aberrant 2E. Well, parts of it. I’d gut the whole nova tech section, which I find basically unplayable. But strip it down to the core system and powers and it’s a pretty slick setup.
I love the setting of Aberrant so, so, so much.
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it’s times like these that i miss old threads from defunct boards because dang we had NUMEROUS threads of these games while the drama was happening
she/her | playlist
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@Roz said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
it’s times like these that i miss old threads from defunct boards because dang we had NUMEROUS threads of these games while the drama was happening
Part of me thinks it’s good that we’ve wiped the slate clean, and everyone gets a fresh start, because honestly 2 decades or however long is a long time to be holding grudges, people do grow and change.
But also damn if it isn’t astounding how much some people absolutely haven’t grown or changed.
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@Kestrel said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
@Roz said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
it’s times like these that i miss old threads from defunct boards because dang we had NUMEROUS threads of these games while the drama was happening
Part of me thinks it’s good that we’ve wiped the slate clean, and everyone gets a fresh start, because honestly 2 decades or however long is a long time to be holding grudges, people do grow and change.
i don’t think this is really happening, though. people still remember. it’s just that now we don’t have the references to actually point to for accuracy.
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Wild Talents is fun. It certainly embraces the wild part of the title.
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@helvetica said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
@catzilla Narrative power sets (1-2 paragraph explanation of range and min/max impact) with a baseline skill to roll.
I did A LOT of forum PBP during my 20s-early 30s so this is what I’m used to.
But…
Why did people turn their nose up at the same idea for a Star Wars game?
Maybe this should be a new topic about freeform vs systems or something? I’d be interested in knowing further on the topic in general.
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@catzilla There’s a Star Wars game out now that uses traits. I don’t play there but not because of the system they use. I think it could work very well. You can check them out at https://swdarktimes.com/
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@Raistlin said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
@catzilla There’s a Star Wars game out now that uses traits. I don’t play there but not because of the system they use. I think it could work very well. You can check them out at https://swdarktimes.com/
This is exactly the game I was talking about. It was mentioned in that dumpster fire game thread and basically was snubbed by person/people because it DOESN’T have mechanics.
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@catzilla Ah. Well, for what it’s worth, I think it’s totally doable. I think for Star Wars, it might even be beneficial, since most RPG/mechanical systems struggle to balance force users and non-force users.
