Super Heroic Fantasy Games

[Shakram]

I am a big comic book fan as well as fantasy. But over the years fantasy has always had a better feel to it. While comic books had better characters. How would the avengers handle a fantasy environment or the X-Men? Better yet superman in a fantasy setting battling powerful demons that are just as powerful as he?

I have noticed normal hero's mop the floor with fantasy hero's... Why? Why does fantasy need to be weaker, more limiting, and lame by comparison?

To get to the point I would like to know if anyone else has interest in superheroic fantasy campaigns?

In D&D characters often generate 7-10 level characters instead of starting at first, for a higher challenge oriented adventure.

How about fantasy hero's that start with super heroic starting points to choose the kind of character they want to make?

So does anyone like the idea?

[Gadodel]

Yeah. Why not? Supers tend to have a wide range of personalized, unique abilities that merely branch out further than the typical fantasy archetypes. It's possible to model a fantasy warrior after Superman and have said character stand up, one-on-one to the Dragon terrorizing the region. 'Iron Man' might simply viewed as unusual knight or even Paladin. The possibilities are unlimited. Though, the explanations might take one off course from the typical explainations found in Fantasy. I.E. God granted, magic, racial traits etc....

[BobGreenwade]

I kinda get the impression that The Atlantean Age (scheduled for next year, at least the last time I looked) will be addressing this line of thought.

[Lord Liaden]

Yes, The Atlantean Age is supposed to feature wizards with world-shaking magic, gods walking the Earth, and magical constructs rivalling modern technological marvels.

Frankly, I think Bob Greenwade's own upcoming Space Wizards project falls within the parameters of "superheroic fantasy." I'll leave it to Bob to say more, other than that it sounds exceptionally cool. :cool:

Fantasy and legend are full of beings who are worthy foes for superhuman heroes one-on-one: gods, dragons, giants, demons, and so on. There's no real reason why the protagonists in those stories couldn't be a match for them, in fact the mightiest heroes of legend like Heracles or Beowulf demonstrably were. When you get right down to it, superheroes are really little more than the heroes and gods of myth recast for a modern sensibility, as demonstrated by so many mythic characters having easily been integrated into contemporary comics, alongside the mutants, aliens and super-scientists.

[Jhaierr]

The main fantasy campaign that I run (and/or plan to run) is definitely superheroic. It's influenced by a lot of high-powered media.

I love the genre as well.

[BNakagawa]

Strange, for many years, I had considered the opposite to be true.

Around here, for quite some time, there had been long-running FH campaigns that ran alongside long-running champions campaigns where the FH characters could have defeated the champions characters.

Many of the champions games were AP limited, where the FH games rarely were. Also, there were magic items looted from defeated foes in the FH characters' hands where champions characters had to pay for looted equipment if they made repeated appearances. CVs tended to be much higher on the FH side, defenses on the champions side. Of course, during the earlier years, with 250 points being the standard starting point for a superhero and 150 for a FH character, things started closer together. They're different now.

http://www.animecubed.com/billy/?cattoy

[JmOz]

I am a big comic book fan as well as fantasy. But over the years fantasy has always had a better feel to it. While comic books had better characters. How would the avengers handle a fantasy environment or the X-Men? Better yet superman in a fantasy setting battling powerful demons that are just as powerful as he?

I have noticed normal hero's mop the floor with fantasy hero's... Why? Why does fantasy need to be weaker, more limiting, and lame by comparison?

To get to the point I would like to know if anyone else has interest in superheroic fantasy campaigns?

In D&D characters often generate 7-10 level characters instead of starting at first, for a higher challenge oriented adventure.

How about fantasy hero's that start with super heroic starting points to choose the kind of character they want to make?

So does anyone like the idea?

RE: Avengers: See if you can find a TPB of the first few issues of Vol 3, the reforming story centers around Morganna Le Fey changing the world to a fantacy world...

[Shadowsoul]

The excitement, epic nature and interest of a good story or campaign does not revolve around the power level but it's true that overpowered fantasy is always amusing. You should keep an eye out for the campaign write up that Bismark is threatening for his converted Shadow World Campaign. PC's are 200+ points I think.
There's plenty of source material for this sort of thing, you might want to take a look at 'The Malazan Book of the Fallen' in which God's walk the earth but they're not necessarily safe there, or 'Furies of Calderon' and 'Artefacts of Power' both of which contain characters capable of screwing over entire continents, then there's epics like 'Sword of Truth' and the equally interminable 'Wheel of Time', (ok you've almost certainly heard of that one but you get the idea). 'The Symphony of the Ages' also features plenty of characters who are hard enough to split their sides laughing if a normal soldier actually tries to attack them.
Just the tip of the iceberg really but the basic message is, superheroic level fantasy is very much alive and I'm quite sure that there are any number of high powered fantasy games going on.

[Killer Shrike]

Super Fantasy (http://www.killershrike.com/FantasyHERO/HighFantasyHERO/Paradigms/SuperFantasy.aspx)

[Shakram]

Super Fantasy (http://www.killershrike.com/FantasyHERO/HighFantasyHERO/Paradigms/SuperFantasy.aspx)

Great Job Killer Shrike! You do alot of good work!:thumbup:


One of my ideal fantasy worlds has normal orc's with occasional super orc's, the same as humans, elves etc... But fantastic monsters are always unknown as to their true power level.

Villans and monsters are usually killed to ensure the safty of humanity. Some creatures however cannot be killed, they are special and can be returning villans. For example the litch has a phalactery, the demon can only be killed in his own realm, bust destroy the mummy kings burial chamber etc... So when their outer forms are destroyed by the hero's the villans spirit returns to it's abode to regenerate.

As far as how hero's get their powers?
Heres a few Ideas:

1. Experimental wizard imbues himself with arcane power transforming himself forever.

2. Wizard guild/organization does magical experiments on a normal person.

3. Cosmic/Magic/Elemental/Kinetic/Magnetic energy naturally manifest in you, due to an ancient bloodline, natural evolution, accident, magical explosion etc.

4.Training you have honed your mind or body to superhuman levels.

5. You graduated from the guild of your choice and have mastered your art, no need to train anymore; Green lanterns, Psions, Mages, Clerical, Archery, Sword Manuvers, Unlocking your Mutant Power, Pilot of a Magical Armor with a symbiotic bond to you, Demon Slaying, Transforming yourself, Elemental controll etc...

6. You and a creature have a bond giving you their power.

7. You found a book of summoning, after years of study and practice you can now call the creatures, use their abilitys, or be the creatures yourself!

8. You had a run in with a magical or cosmic creature and it bites you mutating your DNA giving you special abilitys. (Mr. Phenox)

9. Your blessed by the gods.

10. You find an ancient tomb and unlock the power within fuseing with the power.

11. Mom or dad was sleeping with a god, or mom and dad are gods... Wait a sec you are too!

12. Mom and dad were famous adventurers, you found their old stuff and now your just as powerful as they were.

13. Mom and Dad were adventurers and obtained immortality, they endow you with some of their power hoping that you will also become immortal someday.

14. Your from a heaven.

15.Your from another plane of existance where everyone has powers.

16. Your a fantastic creature pretending to be a human wizard for the thrill of adventure.

[Thia Halmades]

Ah, I see the difference now. I run gritty/realistic games (a predisposition well known among the other board lords). I now understand what you want to accomplish.

This is so far out of my jurisdiction that I cannot intelligently comment without saying a whole bunch of things about what I consider fun, balanced, etc. & so forth. :D So I'll let y'all who do the SH thing handle this, and go meander back over to the Heroic level genres. :D

[Shadowsoul]

Great Job Killer Shrike! You do alot of good work!:thumbup:


One of my ideal fantasy worlds has normal orc's with occasional super orc's, the same as humans, elves etc... But fantastic monsters are always unknown as to their true power level.

Villans and monsters are usually killed to ensure the safty of humanity. Some creatures however cannot be killed, they are special and can be returning villans. For example the litch has a phalactery, the demon can only be killed in his own realm, bust destroy the mummy kings burial chamber etc... So when their outer forms are destroyed by the hero's the villans spirit returns to it's abode to regenerate.

As far as how hero's get their powers?
Heres a few Ideas:

1. Experimental wizard imbues himself with arcane power transforming himself forever.

2. Wizard guild/organization does magical experiments on a normal person.

3. Cosmic/Magic/Elemental/Kinetic/Magnetic energy naturally manifest in you, due to an ancient bloodline, natural evolution, accident, magical explosion etc.

4.Training you have honed your mind or body to superhuman levels.

5. You graduated from the guild of your choice and have mastered your art, no need to train anymore; Green lanterns, Psions, Mages, Clerical, Archery, Sword Manuvers, Unlocking your Mutant Power, Pilot of a Magical Armor with a symbiotic bond to you, Demon Slaying, Transforming yourself, Elemental controll etc...

6. You and a creature have a bond giving you their power.

7. You found a book of summoning, after years of study and practice you can now call the creatures, use their abilitys, or be the creatures yourself!

8. You had a run in with a magical or cosmic creature and it bites you mutating your DNA giving you special abilitys. (Mr. Phenox)

9. Your blessed by the gods.

10. You find an ancient tomb and unlock the power within fuseing with the power.

11. Mom or dad was sleeping with a god, or mom and dad are gods... Wait a sec you are too!

12. Mom and dad were famous adventurers, you found their old stuff and now your just as powerful as they were.

13. Mom and Dad were adventurers and obtained immortality, they endow you with some of their power hoping that you will also become immortal someday.

14. Your from a heaven.

15.Your from another plane of existance where everyone has powers.

16. Your a fantastic creature pretending to be a human wizard for the thrill of adventure.

Good list. Of course there's always going to be another character with a weird spin on it.

Here are some more super-fantasy back stories.

1. Daddy was a demon. (That's Merlin's original backstory if you ignore the Welsh antecedents). Or maybe Daddy was an Oni or even a naughty angel.

2. Vampire, werewolf or an abominable mix of the two. Or a Dhampir such as Blade for that matter.

3. The obvious one, you are a dragon. Or someone who can take dragon. Or the descendant of a dragon.

4. You found this really cool sword that has the power of a (insert mythical being here) trapped within it.

5. Fey noble.

6. Member of an ancient and/or super powerful race.

7. You are god.

8. Shape changer.

9. Ancient robot or artificial being created by the Old Ones.

10. (Insert Lovecraftian being here) granted you immense power, you tend to ooze a bit though.

11. Simply the ultimate example of a particular magic art or set of racial abilities.

12. Found a strange new way of doing magic, a whole new type of magic or even the 'true' secret of magic.

13. Bizarre crossbreed. Part troll, part centaur, part demon, part dragon, part sun-elf anyone? Please don't try to imagine that one.

14. Inheritor of mystic destiny tm.

15. Cursed by a dark power and thus forced to fight against the evil within but possessing incredible power.

16. Bonded to an element or possessing elemental ancestry.

17. Immortal for some reason.

18. Inventor who has created a series of powerful mechanisms or a suit of mobile battle armour.

19. Necromancer who can channel the powers of the dead to an incredible degree.

20. Ridiculous martial artist.

21. Alien creature like Superman.

22. So good at their chosen craft that they have ascended to a supernatural or magical level of power.

23. Mystical journey to the underworld or the real of the Fey has granted strange powers.

24. Unexplained. A person or persons unknown has developed strange powers and sets off to discover their origins.

I did once come up with a rather odd setting which was a kind of combination of Tolkien and Underworld based on the idea that Tolkien's orcs were the descendants of elves who had been captured by dark forces and twisted, experimented on etc.

Basically Elves are immortals chosen from amongst the ranks of deserving humans. You die and the Elvish Elders judge you to be worthy, (i.e. exceptional), so they recall your spirit and craft a new Elvish body for you. This is extremely rare, there are only a few hundred Elves at most. Each Elf has inhuman strength, speed, stamina etc + unique powers which may include magic weapons.

Orcs were once Elves who became twisted by the alien power of an evil force from 'beyond the void'. They were defeated in an ancient war and driven out. The corrupted Elves, now referring to themselves as Orcs, were nearly wiped out until they discovered a way to create new Orcs. They recruit the insane, the savage and the powerful. Although less discerning than their adversaries the Orcs are limited by the amount of mystical energy their 'recruitment ritual' requires and so the numbers on each side are about even.

And thus the eternal war between the champions of good and those of evil rages across history. Mortal politics are merely tools in this epic struggle and there are few humans indeed who have managed to slay an immortal.

To put this into perspective three orcs can raid a decent sized and reasonably well defended village and expect little or no trouble. Unless there are Elves waiting to ambush them ...

It would be easy enough to expand that setting to allow for more super-beings such as those mentioned above.

[mayapuppies]

I did once come up with a rather odd setting which was a kind of combination of Tolkien and Underworld based on the idea that Tolkien's orcs were the descendants of elves who had been captured by dark forces and twisted, experimented on etc.

Basically Elves are immortals chosen from amongst the ranks of deserving humans. You die and the Elvish Elders judge you to be worthy, (i.e. exceptional), so they recall your spirit and craft a new Elvish body for you. This is extremely rare, there are only a few hundred Elves at most. Each Elf has inhuman strength, speed, stamina etc + unique powers which may include magic weapons.

Orcs were once Elves who became twisted by the alien power of an evil force from 'beyond the void'. They were defeated in an ancient war and driven out. The corrupted Elves, now referring to themselves as Orcs, were nearly wiped out until they discovered a way to create new Orcs. They recruit the insane, the savage and the powerful. Although less discerning than their adversaries the Orcs are limited by the amount of mystical energy their 'recruitment ritual' requires and so the numbers on each side are about even.

And thus the eternal war between the champions of good and those of evil rages across history. Mortal politics are merely tools in this epic struggle and there are few humans indeed who have managed to slay an immortal.

To put this into perspective three orcs can raid a decent sized and reasonably well defended village and expect little or no trouble. Unless there are Elves waiting to ambush them ...

It would be easy enough to expand that setting to allow for more super-beings such as those mentioned above.This sounds pretty damn cool actually.

[Markdoc]

It's quite possible to run superpowered fantasy games. I ran a game I've described here before, where players started with 250-point characters, but using heroic rules, so all the equipment and cool toys they could find were free. Each character had unique powers so that some of them (Strength, for example) really could wrassle a dragon. In addition, each character was immortal (Power was bought as duplicates, but with lots of limitations including the fact that only one duplicate could be active at any one time). Thus, kill the character and he'd just pop up in a new body somewhere else. It did raise the interesting question of what to do with all your inert duplicates, since the only way to truly kill an immortal was to kill all 256 of his bodies: so you couldn't just leave them lying around.

cheers, Mark

[BobGreenwade]

Frankly, I think Bob Greenwade's own upcoming Space Wizards project falls within the parameters of "superheroic fantasy." I'll leave it to Bob to say more, other than that it sounds exceptionally cool. :cool:No, not really. There'll be some stuff in there that could challenge superhero characters if they were dropped into the setting, and a handful of superhero tropes are present, but for the most part SW is to be a cross between high fantasy and space opera.

[teh bunneh]

I ran a super-powered Fantasy game once. It didn't last very long; several players flaked out on me. The characters consisted of a 10' tall free-willed iron golem, the daughter of the Efriti King, a warrior who's skin was as tough as tree bark, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer-type, a very powerful wizard, and an ordinary street thief (with extraordinary luck). Could've been a fun game if it went further than it did. I had plans for them to eventually join "The Emperor's Guard," which was sort of an Avengers/JLA team.

[Lord Fyre]

I ran a super-powered Fantasy game once. It didn't last very long; several players flaked out on me. The characters consisted of a 10' tall free-willed iron golem, the daughter of the Efriti King, a warrior who's skin was as tough as tree bark, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer-type, a very powerful wizard, and an ordinary street thief (with extraordinary luck). Could've been a fun game if it went further than it did. I had plans for them to eventually join "The Emperor's Guard," which was sort of an Avengers/JLA team.

And the arch-foe was a nigh-omnipotent evil bunny?

[teh bunneh]

And the arch-foe was a nigh-omnipotent evil bunny?

No, I wanted them to fight a foe they had a chance of defeating. :king:

Actually, the main enemy was the king of the fish-people who lived along the coast. The fish-men and the people of the city had been at war for a long time. The heroes managed to stop a giant sea monster (sort of like the Kraken from Clash of the Titans) from destroying the city. The game petered out after that.

[Maur]

I have noticed normal hero's mop the floor with fantasy hero's... Why?

Because guns/explosives in the right hands are huge force multipliers. Think about the smallest effective unit in our military today and just how much sheer damage they can do vs. the smallest effective unit of the medieval ages or roman or greek and what kind of damage could they do.

[Curufea]

I ran a super-powered Fantasy game once. It didn't last very long; several players flaked out on me. The characters consisted of a 10' tall free-willed iron golem, the daughter of the Efriti King, a warrior who's skin was as tough as tree bark, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer-type, a very powerful wizard, and an ordinary street thief (with extraordinary luck). Could've been a fun game if it went further than it did. I had plans for them to eventually join "The Emperor's Guard," which was sort of an Avengers/JLA team.

Actually - I think it'd be interesting to run a game where all the PCs are golems. It would be a variant on the standard "you wake up with no memory" and "you are all in the army" styles of play. There would be quite a bit of getting the character to deal with the setting - and it would be good for introducing a setting to new players.