Any Experiences or Memories of New and Lesser Known Superhero RPGs?

[fdw3773]

So, while perusing the various racks at my local comic and game store, online stores like Drive Thru RPG, and stumbling upon game reviews by lucky chance, I've come across various new and also obscure superhero RPGs. I was wondering if others had experiences reading the rules or playing them and seeing how they match up against Champions. Some examples:

 

Brave New World - Superhero gaming is a dystopian U.S.

 

Aberrant - Published by White Wolf

 

Guardians - This version is based on the D20 system from D&D 1st Edition on the premise of, "What if Gary Gygax focused his energy in the superhero genre instead of the fantasy genre?"

 

Wild Talents - I don't know much about this game, but apparently it's a modern day follow-up to Godlike that took place during World War II where it's "superhero roleplaying in a world gone mad"

 

Truth & Justice - Rules light superhero RPG on the PDQ system

 

Sentinels Comics RPG - Published within the past year after a Kickstarter effort

 

Prowlers & Paragons - Print on demand and more recently an Ultimate Edition was released following a Kickstarter effort

 

Spectaculars - Blending of RPG and board game elements

 

Hearts & Souls - Rules light system by an independent company that's available on Drive Thru RPG

 

Any others worth mentioning??? 🤔

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

I forgot how I ended up with a copy of Brave New World. I never ran it. Though since it’s based on D6, I could run it.

[Lord Liaden]

I played around with GURPS Supers for a little while. I quite liked the history and ground rules for the super-Earth they set up, and some of their characters were interesting concepts. GURPS system itself doesn't scale very well for more powerful supers, though, which is my personal preference. I also dabbled a bit with Palladium's Heroes Unlimited, mostly due to my brief infatuation with Rifts. Palladium RPGs often include cool ideas, but the execution of the system is just so clunky.

[Christopher R Taylor]

The only other supers systems I have tried are Villains & Vigilantes and Heroes Unlimited.  I got the rules for Marvel Superheroes, but never played it.  Ditto for Silver Age Sentinels.

[Ninja-Bear]

Years ago I was given rules for Heroes Unlimited. I did roll up some random characters. It would be fun to roll and then convert to Hero System.

[BNakagawa]

Sketch is a very simple superhero RPG where you draw your character and let the other players vote on what your stats/powers are, so you need to draw your character lifting something if you want them to be strong, or with speed lines if you want to be fast, etc.

 

Super Squadron is a superhero RPG from Australia published in the late 80s? I remember nothing about the game system, but I do recall that quite a lot of the interior artwork was traced from various sources.

 

Stuperpowers! is a comedic RPG about heroes with less than awesome powers.  Kind of the RPG if you wanted to play Legion of Substitute Heroes, I guess.

 

Underground was published by Mayfair in the early 90s and was set in a very grim and gritty superhero world. 

 

Project A-ko RPG was published in the mid 90s. The title character turned out to be hinted to be the daughter of Superman and Wonder Woman. There was speculation that her rival (B-ko) was Lex Luthor's daughter...

 

SuperWorld was the superhero portion of the Worlds of Wonder set. Designed by the recently passed Steve Perrin, it is credited with the inspiration of the Wild Cards universe.

 

Superhero 2044 the first superhero RPG ever.

 

Blood of Heroes from Pulsar Games used a system derived from the DC heroes system with its own setting

 

Tiny Supers is a minimalist superhero rpg based on the Tiny Heroes minimalist fantasy rpg.

 

Scion from White Wolf lets you play the offspring of various gods, which seems pretty much in line with main stream superheroics

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

@BNakagawa, I picked up Supergame 3rd. I mucked about with it. Did you run any of it? 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah I have a copy of Heroes Unlimited but never played.  It has great art, but the world and character building didn't appeal to me.

[Lord Liaden]

8 hours ago, BNakagawa said:

 the recently passed Steve Perrin

 

😳

 

I hadn't heard.

 

I had the pleasure of interacting with him a few times on these forums. Always seemed like a gentleman. And obviously a seminal contributor to our hobby.

[Killer Shrike]

The ones you list that I'm familiar with:

 

Brave New World - I owned it and a couple of its supplements, never played it. Good production values, but not a very good system IMO.

 

Aberrant - Skimmed it, did not care for it at all (system or setting), never played it.

 

Guardians - Heard of it. Not into "retro-clones" / OSR per se...I played "old school" D&D when it wasn't old at all and don't have nostalgia-colored lenses re: early days of game mechanics.

 

Wild Talents - read the books (based on a Superworld rpg campaign, supposedly), owned the GURPS supplement, played very briefly in a Wild Talents game run by someone or other. In a roundabout way Wild Talents is what led me to the Hero System back in the day so while I did not care for the game itself, it is partially to thank for me finding a system I've gotten several decades of enjoyment out of...so there's that.

 

Truth & Justice - I'm familiar w/ PDQ but if I were in the mood for that style of game I'd probably just use Risus or Fate which are pretty similar at root.

 

Sentinels Comics RPG - I own the deluxe leather bound version and have made some characters with it. Pretty similar to Cortex Plus Heroic (and Cam Banks is credited among others on SCRPG so no big surprise there) with some intriguing additions and a semi-random character generation system that I actually don't hate...brought back happy memories of randomly generating characters using FASERIP Marvel + Ultimate Powers Book. I'm a huge Cortex Plus Heroic / Cortex Prime fan, and also a big Sentinels of the Multiverse card game fan, and enjoyed the afternoon I spent messing around w/ Sentinels Comics RPG. I hope to be able to play a small session using it at some point if the stars align. I recommend checking it out.

[Christopher R Taylor]

By the way, there's a pretty enjoyable computer game called Freedom Force (silver age stuff) that's a lot of fun, but tough to play.  Not really on topic but I enjoyed the game quite a bit.

[fdw3773]

17 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

By the way, there's a pretty enjoyable computer game called Freedom Force (silver age stuff) that's a lot of fun, but tough to play.  Not really on topic but I enjoyed the game quite a bit.

Yes, I've played both Freedom Force and Freedom Force Versus the Third Reich and really enjoyed them. I enjoyed the Character Tool the most where I spent a lot of time with the custom skins that I created and used from other fans as art for the Champions characters I created while also creating some custom characters in that game based on them (two samples are below). 🙂

[Duke Bushido]

Golden Heroes was surprisingly enjoyable.

 

Had a player from somewhere in England many years ago who owned it.  I've never seen it anywhere else, except in vintage adds.

 

The version of SuperWorld packed into Perrin's Worlds of Wonder was surprisingly enjoyable, in spite of the really unfinished feel it had.  The same guts ran the other two games in that box as well, though honestly, I thought Magic World was going to be the keeper out of that set.   Little did I know....   

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

City of Heroes had a great character creation tool as well, you can download just that still I think, and it is free to play now with everything unlocked.

[assault]

56 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Golden Heroes was surprisingly enjoyable.

 

Had a player from somewhere in England many years ago who owned it.  I've never seen it anywhere else, except in vintage adds.

 

The version of SuperWorld packed into Perrin's Worlds of Wonder was surprisingly enjoyable, in spite of the really unfinished feel it had.  The same guts ran the other two games in that box as well, though honestly, I thought Magic World was going to be the keeper out of that set.   Little did I know....   

 

 

 

I agree entirely with this.

 

I'm particularly interested in the original version of Superworld at the moment, due to its brevity. Yes, it's incomplete, but there is a lot packed into a small parcel.

 

I also find the Australian Super Squadron interesting. It looks too much like Villains and Vigilantes for its own good, but has its moments.

[fdw3773]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

City of Heroes had a great character creation tool as well, you can download just that still I think, and it is free to play now with everything unlocked.

Yes, I have it as well and use it periodically since I own a Mac and the Freedom Force Character Tool doesn't work on that platform without something like Windows Parallels. 😉

 

There's a pretty active City of Heroes fan community that posts their character creations as well that I've used to draw inspiration now and then.

[Ninja-Bear]

7 hours ago, assault said:

 

I agree entirely with this.

 

I'm particularly interested in the original version of Superworld at the moment, due to its brevity. Yes, it's incomplete, but there is a lot packed into a small parcel.

 

I also find the Australian Super Squadron interesting. It looks too much like Villains and Vigilantes for its own good, but has its moments.

Well apparently you can buy Supergame 1-2 Ed bundled together from Precis Intermedia.

[assault]

46 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Well apparently you can buy Supergame 1-2 Ed bundled together from Precis Intermedia.

 

That would be interesting, but I'm not that big a completist. Even I have limits.

[Ninja-Bear]

2 hours ago, assault said:

 

That would be interesting, but I'm not that big a completist. Even I have limits.

If I understood correctly it’s 1e -2e and a couple of modules all together in one book. I’d have to say check it out cause I could be wrong.

[assault]

I've never read Supergame. Nothing I've read about it makes me particularly curious about it either.

[Ninja-Bear]

40 minutes ago, assault said:

I've never read Supergame. Nothing I've read about it makes me particularly curious about it either.

Oh, sorry, I think I misread your post. I thought you said you wanted it. My bad.

[Ninja-Bear]

Ok two things about Supergame.  I looked at the Different Worlds #23 article. It had Marvel write ups. Fist edition looks much different than the Third edition I ended up buying.

 

Second though is I noticed on the cover of the Third edition having illustrated amongst the other characters, the two original characters from the first two editions. That i thought was nice.

[Certified]

Somehow I missed this thread, and I have no idea how! My best guess is work and the kiddo starting school as stolen almost all my spoons. At any rate, if you are looking at other superhero RPGs, I'm the writer for Metahumans Rising, you can find my posts all over this place about the web enhancements we do. That's actually, what I'm about to do for our comic. At any rate, the PDFs  are PWYW on DTRPG, but you can get physical copies from Studio 2 Publishing, or your local game shop, if they stock us. Links to fun stuff should be in my signature, and  we post new content every week.