I'm currently running the "superhero" game in two separate groups, one at the local game store on Thursday nights and the other in a person's basement (so no, that one's not public, sadly). They are their own campaigns, set in different cities, with different cosmologies and different threats facing them.
When it came time to set up the first group, many years ago, I had Hero Designer and not a whole lot of experience with 6th Edition. Still, I created serviceable characters for them which they've stuck with for the most part. (It's interesting to note that the one of the players in that group who I had played with before, and knew the most about the Hero System, created the character that most quickly became ungainly and clumsy for him, necessitating a recent switch.)
I let them decide what they wanted in their character, and entered their choices in Hero Designer. I got serviceable characters out of that, and they've managed the occasional combat I've thrown at them. Fortunately they're easily amused by the unusual situations I throw at them (currently they're trying to reason out why the CEO of a small security company got car-bombed, how it was done with an explosive so small it fit in the fuel line, and what a pistachio-eating teleporting undead ninja has to do with any of that. Unfortunately they seem a little selfish and cowardly, concerned with what I'm going to throw at them next and how they can defend against it. Let's face it, anyone who feels the need to take Life Support (Eating: Character only has to eat once per year; Immunity: All terrestrial poisons; Longevity: 200 Years; Safe in High Pressure; Safe in High Radiation; Safe in Intense Cold; Safe in Intense Heat; Safe in Low Pressure/Vacuum; Self-Contained Breathing; Sleeping: Character only has to sleep 8 hours per week) and eyeing putting even more points into it is trying to hedge his bets.
Group #2 got a little faster start, because by that time I had the Champions genre book. Have you ever taken a good look at that thing? Toward the back there's a collection of templates called the Superhero Gallery, and it contains skill groups, complication groups, and twenty different prefabricated mix-and-match character archetypes. That allowed for faster character creation, except for the one guy who had some idea what kind of character he wanted, and I built that for him. And he seems happy with it. Combine it with the Hero Designer package for that sourcebook, and you can crank out characters pretty darned fast.
I will say, though, that neither group really gets it. The one group hangs onto my copy of the Champions Powers book (and the Hero Designer package for that is a must too) and uses it as a power sourcebook instead of a book of worked examples of what the power system is really capable of. They play enough other games that they sometimes forget the whole 11+OCV-3D6=DCV Hit thing, and that they roll 3D6 and aim low to succeed at skills, but what they do for playing the game they still manage to enjoy immensely, almost to command-performance levels. And they are learning how to count Body and Stun, so there's that. And yes, I seriously doubt it's because I'm That Good.
tikiman got a reaction from Burrito Boy in Good Pulp Movies to watch
