"Old School" Superhero RPG Experiences...Guardians....Villains & Vigilantes/Mighty Protectors?

[drunkonduty]

I'd still play Marvel FASERIP. It was a fun, simple system. I had all, and I mean ALL, the Marvel Universe Handbooks. I had stats for every character worth noting, and many who weren't. (Looking at you, Stilt-Man.) 

[Ninja-Bear]

3 hours ago, drunkonduty said:

I'd still play Marvel FASERIP. It was a fun, simple system. I had all, and I mean ALL, the Marvel Universe Handbooks. I had stats for every character worth noting, and many who weren't. (Looking at you, Stilt-Man.) 

Just curious how would handle (in Hero terms) OAF and only OAF. I mean I get their overall  feel. But I believe that if you use the optional character creation then OAF should be worth something.

[Jhamin]

On 5/11/2021 at 12:37 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

Just curious how would handle (in Hero terms) OAF and only OAF. I mean I get their overall  feel. But I believe that if you use the optional character creation then OAF should be worth something.

 

The thing about the old Marvel FACERIP was that there was *no* consistency from those optional character creation rules.  You might roll up Rick Jones with a shotgun, you might roll up Colossus, you might roll up The Invisible Woman (at least as far as power levels went).  They defended it at the time by pointing out that Thor and the Black Widow were on the same team so you should be able to play with widely disparate power levels in the group.  
I knew no one who did that.  Most the FACERIP games I saw back in the day that had original characters have everyone roll, but then basically "normalized" power levels by letting everyone reset their main power to whatever the group had agreed on beforehand for power level.
I wouldn't read a Hero book or discover the concept of OAF gear for years to come, but looking back on it, I might let people reset a couple powers to a higher level than "normal" for the group in exchange for them being OAF.

[Spence]

To comment on Marvel FACERIP, I really don't have that favorable of an impression.  Of course my group only tried it for a short, not fun, fiasco of a run. 

My recollection of the game, from WAY back in the day, was "high value won" depending if it was in the green or blue or I can't remember.  Period.  No nuance, no range of effect.  Simply the higher relevant value won.  No need for dice or anything.  The character with the higher relevant value (strength, etc) would win the contest. 

 

Now that assessment is probably not completely accurate, but it is all I remember after 25+ years. 

We were playing several RPG's at the time including Champions, Villains and Vigilantes, AD&D and so on.  And we most likely were judging it against the games we liked and found it wanting.  

[zslane]

Are you guys misspelling it FACERIP on purpose?

[Ninja-Bear]

@Jhamin, yeah that’s what I was thinking about. The FASERIP clone I have has “limitations” in which you can take a power at one level less.  So yeah I might just make a custom limitation for it.

[tkdguy]

How well do Villains & Vigilantes and Mutants & Masterminds play? I've heard of those games, but I never even saw a copy of either one.

[Ninja-Bear]

I figured out a base but system for FASERIP. Also as to it being swingy, I ran a sample battle with agents versus a Speedster, Stretching and a Brick. Agents got lucky against Speedster and took him out in two hits. Now I did forget to spend Karma which would have adjusted the battle and could’ve change the outcome.

[Spence]

2 hours ago, tkdguy said:

How well do Villains & Vigilantes and Mutants & Masterminds play? I've heard of those games, but I never even saw a copy of either one.

 

It has been years since I played V&V and don't remember much on details except we had fun, but Champions was "better" and we went with it.  Though I bought a lot of V&V adventure for inspiration and conversion to Champs adventures.

 

Now M&M I tried to get into it through the last two revisions.  Character building really reminds of Champions 3rd edition.  It is a point buy system and is almost Champions with everything renamed.  Power Effects that are modified by advantages or limitations, but keyed to power levels rather than dice.   It doesn't use damage in the traditional sense, instead you apply "conditions".  And this is where I fell off the wagon.  I am apparently slow and could never wrap my head around the "condition" based damage effects.  The basic concept is easy as in how to determine if the super's succeeds and whether or not the "condition" takes effect.  The problem (for me) is that conditions have a hierarchy of effect depending on severity and you recover from conditions from most severe to least severe.  The problem (again, for me) is that there doesn't appear to be anything defining the hierarchy.  IN the rule book it says "So a damaged character recovers from being Incapacitated, then Staggered, Dazed, and finally removes a –1 Toughness check penalty per minute until fully recovered".  So if a player was Staggered, upon a recovery they become Dazed and so on.  So the hierarchy is Incapacitated - Staggered - Dazed.  But no.  Things change and it appears the recovery order changes at a whim of undetermined magic.  Add in that there are somewhere around 30 "conditions" and for me it quickly went to horse biscuits. 

 

Of course I haven't been able to find anyone that plays it so I have had no real world example.  I tried the games old forum but unlike here, they reacted to my questions like I was trolling them or something.  Apparently not understanding the "condition" system is a sensitive subject.

 

So I moved on.  I suspect that the system is good because of the number of people that play it, If you can decode it. 

But I have given up, I suspect I do not have the flexibility I had when I was young and so I'm missing something simple that I just don't see.

 

  

[drunkonduty]

On 5/11/2021 at 3:37 PM, Ninja-Bear said:

Just curious how would handle (in Hero terms) OAF and only OAF. I mean I get their overall  feel. But I believe that if you use the optional character creation then OAF should be worth something.

 

There's (optional?) rules for taking disads to get increases to power level. You take X disad you get +Y column shifts to the power, with a maximum power level specified for a given disad. Exactly what you'd get for the equivalent of an OAF is very much judge's (GM) call. 

 

FASERIP isn't that nuanced. <shrug> What ya gonna do?

 

If I want nuanced and plenty of room to tinker - I play Champions. If I want a quick pick-up game, FASERIP is fine. Of course all of this is purely theoretical since my current gaming groups are only interested in DnD style fantasy.

[Ninja-Bear]

33 minutes ago, drunkonduty said:

 

There's (optional?) rules for taking disads to get increases to power level. You take X disad you get +Y column shifts to the power, with a maximum power level specified for a given disad. Exactly what you'd get for the equivalent of an OAF is very much judge's (GM) call. 

 

FASERIP isn't that nuanced. <shrug> What ya gonna do?

 

If I want nuanced and plenty of room to tinker - I play Champions. If I want a quick pick-up game, FASERIP is fine. Of course all of this is purely theoretical since my current gaming groups are only interested in DnD style fantasy.

With the FASERIP clone, yes there is some ( a little) nuance. And then I added to that.  Because I can.

[zslane]

Out of curiosity, what is an example of a "FASERIP clone"?

 

The only game I've ever encountered that uses the "FASERIP" system is the Marvel Super-Heroes RPG, which basically makes "FASERIP" and "MSH" synonymous, with "MSH" having the virtue of being faster (and easier) to type.

[Spence]

5 minutes ago, zslane said:

Out of curiosity, what is an example of a "FASERIP clone"?

 

The only game I've ever encountered that uses the "FASERIP" system is the Marvel Super-Heroes RPG, which basically makes "FASERIP" and "MSH" synonymous, with "MSH" having the virtue of being faster (and easier) to type.

 

I'd second that question.  I know that there is a FASERIP rulebook on DriveThruRPG, but I couldn't find anything else.

 

[Ninja-Bear]

FASERIP is the name of the Retroclone.(yeah that one makes it harder to search for sure.)

[HeroGM]

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/177913/Faserip

 

https://rpggeek.com/rpgsystem/27275/faserip

[zslane]

Interesting! I didn't know that existed. I do respect the effort that went into the FASERIP clone book; it is rather well done, IMO. However, they didn't have to go out of their way to rename everything since the only protectable IP elements in MSH were the Marvel characters.

[Ninja-Bear]

4 hours ago, zslane said:

Interesting! I didn't know that existed. I do respect the effort that went into the FASERIP clone book; it is rather well done, IMO. However, they didn't have to go out of their way to rename everything since the only protectable IP elements in MSH were the Marvel characters.

He even had permission from Storn Cook for the artwork!