To anyone who's played Double Cross, is it any good? I'm thinking about running it for my group

To anyone who's played Double Cross, is it any good? I'm thinking about running it for my group.

I ran a game for a group of 4. It was reasonably fun. It is one of those games though, like Mutants and Masterminds, where you have to work with the players while creating characters to keep things from getting broken.
Most important advice is "know your players". If they're the type that like super-animu-style stuff, they'll probably get a kick out of this. Otherwise, probably not their thing.

Sweet! Yeah, they're all weebs so I figured they might like this. How's the mechanics during play? Is it a solid system when put into practice?

So what are the differences supposed to be between the standard "Core" rules and the "Advanced" rules?

Not really. A prime example of failed game design compounded by incompetent translation.

You gonna tell us why or what? Nobody's gonna be convinced by some drive-by shitpost like that.

The mechanics definitely take some getting used to, that's for sure. I'm sure a dedicated min-maxer could break things very easily but the same is true with most systems.

It's a bit slow to get started but it ramps up quick. Plus it forces people to role play and not murderhobo everything because of Syndrome side effects.

I had a load of fun with it. It was my group's go-to supers system until we found AMP. It's very very VERY anime, and it takes some real cooperation between players and GM, especially with loises and side effects and stuff.

The game system is terrible to run, but the setting is great if you buy into it. Encroach is one of those mechanics that are very flavorful and discourages just throwing out your highest damaging attacks.

The game does not shine when balance is brought up, however. You really want to be on top of what your players can do, because it's easy to have a disparate power level difference. Black Dog, for instance, has some really weak powers and I'd mostly recommend it as a double with some other syndrome.

Boss creation has a good amount of flexibility both mechanically and in-setting, and you can even have them use multiple forms for the video game final boss feel. Don't be afraid to do something stupid; bosses are flexible, and the players can die until they get pushed over 100% encroach.

Something I wish I knew when starting out running is to know how much encroach the players' attacks they stat out use. This really is important, because an attack that doesn't seem as powerful as another's might end up being very strong simply because it can be spammed safely.

On the flip side, getting more encroach is a benefit because of all the stacking bonuses, plus it unlocks the use of some powers (though I honestly don't find many of them worth it). Players risk actually going insane and losing control of their character at the end of the session, but some people find that fun as well.

Most powers across Syndromes are repeats of each other with insignificant differences and their layout is atrocious thanks to the translator's incompetence.

PCs start out with enough powers to make exactly one combo which they will use over and over again, because upgrading their existing powers is much more XP and Encroachment-efficient than buying a new, marignally different power.

The system pretends HP are meaningful, but invalidates them with Resurrection, making Encroachment the actual "stay alive" resource. Not to mention that the sample scenario enemies are made to fairly reliably one-shot PCs regardless of their health.

Defensive powers are useless because they cost as much Encroachment as the Resurrection they very unreliably prevent, so cutting short combat by going full offense is the only sensible strategy.

And those of us who were stupid enough to buy a physical copy, because the translator said there would not be a PDF, will never have a proper errata, because the translator didn't bother to maintain one and has now fucked off entirely.

That sucks. Is DX fixable, or is there a different system that can handle the setting with the same general mechanics?

The layout of the book is preeeetty bad, but the game itself is very good.
If you or any of your players are into anime (or chuunibyous such as myself) you'll probably overlook the dreadful core book and just start shouting shit like "I amplify my Black Hammer attack with Pagan's Dark Heart to rupture the atoms surrounding my target, heheheh".

It's not fixable short of re-writing the system from scratch.
The issue is not that the content of the game is bad, it's that the game presents a lack of content as content.

If you want the same general mechanics, you just need to look for other games based on the SRS, which usually suffer from the same problems as DX. The only one to not make the same mistakes (that I am aware of) is Tokyo Nova, and that system is mostly incompatible with DX's setting.

Kamigakari may or may not work for DX. Similar themes, many elements reminiscent of SRS, and I haven't actually played it, but from reading it and trying to summarize the powers, it seems to suffer from a similar lack of meaningful content.

By the way, the reason people say DX is good is because the setting is interesting and rolling massive exploding D10 pools is kinda fun on its own. But if you actually take a closer look at the system, it doesn't hold up.

The part about defensive powers being useless, I'd argue is wrong to some extent. Though going full offense IS often a lot better.

To what extent?
They're practically useless. Sure, there's one edge case or another where they kind of work, but by and large, they don't.

I've run DX normally and another, low-powered game, in Fate. Fate's very, very different from the actual game's mechanics, but can work with the setting in a pinch. Just slap a free aspect for a syndrome.

I will tell you it's in some ways easier to run, but in others requires a more active approach. Since there's nothing that can really represent encroach worsening, you'd have to double down on the compels.

it's fun but retarted
don't take it seriously

>Since there's nothing that can really represent encroach worsening
Why not just add a new stress track for that?

The Advanced book is a set of optional rules and expansion content, not a separate playable game.

It's an SRS system. It's bad.

Got a pdf for it?