13 Things learned about supers gaming

[phoenix240]

An interesting blog I ran across and thought I'd share. It discusses the author's thoughts on running supers games after running several sessions. The game engine was Mutants and Masterminds but would be just as applicable to Champions, IMO.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

What? No Link?

 

Bad Poster!

 

QM

 

PS: First viewed on my smart phone.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

Click on the word: "blog" in the first sentence. I can't always tell the difference between dark blue (the link color) and black against a white background at first glance either.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

This guy must be a Monty Python fan. There is no rule six.

[kahuna's bro]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

or he forgot to write down#6

[Guest steamteck]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

His fights are dull?????

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

Fights are about pace and being in the moment. Player who do not bother to learn the rules slow things down. GMs and Players who do not think of creative combat options slow it down. The Rules are great. (IMOHO), but only a baseline for the gamers to have fun. Rough battle maps are important and an early description of the battlefield is neccesary. Too much planning and the fight might never start. The best fights are fast and fun for the players. The GM needs to meet those expectations. Preparation in important.

 

Only one Rule ever needed, Have Fun!

 

QM

[Peter M Ball]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

Perhaps "lacking in tactical variance" would have been a better way of putting it than dull. Fights break out and there's usually a very clear optimal choice for both players - the blaster blasts things, the brick punches things - and they're both pretty light on options beyond their basic attack. The system we're using has a bunch of tactical options, but there's rarely a reason to use them in the fights I've presented thus far.

 

Couple that with the results that I noticed when I ran a villain audit on the campaign (lots of solo villains with either blasting or punching powers) and it results in fights feeling a bit repetitive, especially compared to some of our non-supers games.

 

Which isn't to suggest that a fight breaks out and we all sit there bored out of our skulls, just that they rarely seem to be a memorable part of the campaign. It's something for me to work on for the next thirty sessions more than anything else.

 

(And point 6 has been added in - it was victim to a sloppy html tag on my part. The short version - having your players trust you matters a lot more in superhero games)

[psyber624]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

Welcome to the forums! Interesting Blog.

 

One of the things I would say about your "fights being boring" is try to design your opposition so that whatever the players "standard" tactics are simply will not work. Force them to look outside of the box. Now, this should only be done with major villains, not your average mook (and I don't know the M&M system at all so if any of this does not apply sorry about that.) If they tend to just punch or blast, give him really high defenses (so they have to find ways to combine attacks, or increase damage, or find a weakness or some sort). Or make him REALLY hard to hit (DCV in Hero system, not sure what M&M uses) forcing the hero's to work together to actually hit him (In Hero one possibility is one player distracts him while another sneaks behind him getting a surprise attack bonus which enables him to get off a grab, holding him still while the rest of his teammates hit the guy) etc. No offense to you but making things like combat interesting is all up to the GM. Most players will take the easiest path to success, and if you allow this path to work for all of their opponents there is no reason for them to vary their tactics which would definitely lead to boring combat.

 

Of course, after doing this once be ready to adjust again the next fight. Keeping things interesting means that the same tactic should not become a standard solution.

 

This does go back to your rule #6 of course. If the players are not trusting of the GM, they may get frustrated or upset, or accuse you of trying to kill them because they cannot find the path that works. You can be sneaky and have lesser villains use tactics that you think would be good against your Big Bad against the players themselves earlier in a campaign, thus exposing them to the benefits of a particular tactic and hoping that they will pick up on it. It all comes back to trust.

 

And I think one of the main trust issue differences between Supers and other genre's comes down to the amount of variance you can have in your opponents. In D&D (as an example) you have a certain number of classes, and pretty much every member of that class looks VERY similar (Note i havent played the latest version, so that may have changed). While you can tweak things around somewhat, for the most part a warrior is a warrior, a cleric is a cleric, and a mage is a mage. And most of the opponents in such a system come from long standing, well defined concepts that the players are familiar with. No one is likely to cry foul when a troll regenerates, a dragon breathes fire, or a wight drains strength when it touches you. These things are known by the players (even if the characters shouldn't necessarily know them) and as long as the GM is remaining true to the general concepts of an adversary, players will be less likely to suspect him of targeting them specifically (the GM doesn't give Trolls the power to regenerate, that's just part of what fighting trolls entails). In a supers game however, there are really no set concepts that define what your adversary is. The players can't look at villain X and go "hey, we need to use fire on him" or "hey, watch out for his breath attack" especially on their first encounter. And especially if a GM has designed his own villains (much more likely in Supers IMO than in fantasy) then he is held more responsible for what they can do.

 

Anyway, I feel like I am starting to ramble, so going to stop here.

[Peter M Ball]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

It's a well-timed ramble for me though - it kinda reinforces some of the stuff I've been thinking about over the last couple of weeks (e're on a three-week hiatus while one of the players is overseas, and I've used the time-off to tackle the lackluster combat problem). I did an audit on all the fights and action scenes in the campaign thus far, looking for patterns, tactics, and archetypes I've overused, so my plan for the next half-dozen session is to bring in a little more variety (which became a follow-up blog-post, if anyone's interested; it's fairly system-light and about half the entry-types are lifted from the Champions genre-book). There's now a list of a dozen or so general concepts/tactical approaches I want to use before I fall back on old habits.

 

My next step is creating a cheat-sheets for each upcoming combat that'll cover things I'm currently weak on - a half-dozen verbal jabs the villains can throw during the fight so they have some personality to them (I'm generally okay with banter, but find I slack off when running combat due to the nubmer of other things I'm doing); setting up a couple of interesting tactical things the villains can do instead of swinging for the fences; listing three terrain qualities that I'd like to see factor into the fight a little.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

Re: Supervillain Monologues

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/40161-Supervillain-Monologues

[Barwickian]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

An interesting blog I ran across and thought I'd share. It discusses the author's thoughts on running supers games after running several sessions. The game engine was Mutants and Masterminds but would be just as applicable to Champions' date=' IMO.[/quote']

 

Repped.

 

That's perfect for me. I've run Hero System for years, but only just got Champions Complete and Champions Universe (and a couple of other Champions supplements).

 

I've run precisely one superhero game before - a single session of Golden Heroes, back in the '80s. It did not go well.

 

In fact, I was coming into this area of the forum (hey, so this is where you all hang out when Fantasy Hero and Star Hero is empty!) looking for just such tips is the blog is offering.

 

If anyone has more advice, or disagrees with the blog, keep it coming.

 

Does this mean I need to buy more superhero comics than just Watchmen and The Killing Joke?

[kahuna's bro]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

i'd say yes

[wrestlinggeek]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

Repped.

 

 

Does this mean I need to buy more superhero comics than just Watchmen and The Killing Joke?

 

Or at least watch the Avengers movie and animated series (the one currently running on Disney XD), JLU, and Young Justice. As well as any of the Warner Direct animated DC movies.

[psyber624]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

Really any superhero cartoon/movie is helpful (although you may want to read up some on the "Ages" of comic books). Also, I will point out one thing. Remember that a game is not a comic book or a movie. Just because it works there doesn't mean it works in the game. (I think Ball might have pointed that out too, its been a while since I read his blog).

[Tasha]

Re: 13 Things learned about supers gaming

 

Really any superhero cartoon/movie is helpful (although you may want to read up some on the "Ages" of comic books). Also' date=' I will point out one thing. Remember that a game is not a comic book or a movie. Just because it works there doesn't mean it works in the game. (I think Ball might have pointed that out too, its been a while since I read his blog).[/quote']

 

That's the real trick, Remembering that you are creating a scenario for 4-7 creative people that you need to entertain with your scenario. That in a comic the writer has total control of all of the character. In a RPG the GM only has control of the NPC's. So you have to deal with the fact that certain scenarios NEVER work RPG's.