Super Hero Thread

these threads will never be successful. Not because I don't like them, but because no one plays them.

Why does no one play M&M? Is it because people aren't attracted to the genre, or because M&M isn't good enough to keep engaged the players?

I don't like M&M because I don't like western superheroes or it's tropes (especially these days).
Sure that might be because I'm a self admitted weeaboo that likes watching people in bug masks kick each other, but also I just find the way health works to be really pointless and dumping it's head into the "Oh nobody ever dies in comic books" theme. Which, yes, I am aware that is also a thing in Tokusatsu via the heroic Second Wind, but at least people have actually died and stayed dead outside of "I cameo as a ghost now" so at least the ILLUSION of tension is there.

...Also I'm bad at building powers, if I had to be honest. Not a fault of the system so much as me being a dumbass. Everytime I try to put together a Heisei Era Rider like Faiz I just end up feeling unbalanced in the bad way and tripping over myself.

With MnM system I had played a tokusatsu inventor hero with heavy theme of being anime fan.

Best part of him he had invented a gun that can transform clothing into maid uniform and he had used it on female drows.

I don't really like western superheroes either, but to be fair I don't like eastern ones either.

I love Kamen Riders(east), and I love Worm(west), but beyond that I don't really like superheroes. Specially the no kill rule like you mentioned. What system do you use to play your Sentai rpgs?

Okay between this and the paladin guy earlier is there just a surge of D&D shit in MnM suddenly?

Also it's only because I've played a game of MnM with a person who played a Naruto style Ninja Dog with Mountain Dew powers that I find what you said to be believable at all.

That's the thing is I don't. The closest I've gotten is MnM, and while BESM 2e does have the Sentai template that's really all there is.

There is no good tokusatsu games and that's the really depressing thing that makes you want to discuss and hope someone has an idea.
The closest I can think of is like...playing Werewolf the Apocalypse and pretending it's GARO.

>playing Werewolf the Apocalypse and pretending it's GARO.
That's hilarious and sad at the same time.

>Have ran 3 games of MnM, not a single one being a western superhero game, running one right now that's a ERP modern fantasy crime game
>Played in two others not counting the two other times the Jojo game got canceled due to shitty flakers

Mutants and Masterminds at its core is pretty damn flexible for any game that has a moderate amount of power, yet I always see people that assume it's purely for capes and spandex games when there's AN ENTIRE FUCKING BOOK, if not more if you count 2e's countless supplements, that introduces entirely different themes.

>Beetleborgs
One of the very few things I liked better in English over the original B-Fighters.
And for no particularly good reason either.

What's the logical reason for heroes with superspeed only being able to attack once per turn?

Not him btw, just wondering. Also, I heard on another thread a complain about Hero Points but I don't really remember it that well. Are Hero Points bullshit?

I want to hear complains of people that run the game, and what workaround people used to deal with them.

You mean the Gadget Book? I mean I've used that when I've tried, or else I wouldn't be able to do Rider stuff at all! I'm not ignorant to what it has available, I'm just stating from my personal experience it didn't mesh with me. Nor does this change the problem with the health system I inherently have.

Also I know about the 2e book explicitly for more anime themed stuff and actual Mecha with some level of depth, but converting that up into 3e is a huge god damn hassle. I don't want to effectively have to make a character twice every time I want to be a Power Ranger.

The logic is they attack more than once but their multi-attack is one attack.

Cause that's not fucking confusing and unnecessary, or make the name of the skill "Multi-Attack" completely misleading.

Onyx Path is working on what amounts an Ishinomori pastiche for Chronicles of Darkness. That'll probably be pretty lethal. I'm actually surprised more people on hear aren't talking about it in those terms, especially considering that its influences are pretty obvious and Tokusatsu stuff is so popular around here. I guess there's just not a lot of crossover between Tokusatsu fans and WoD players?

As far as M&M, it's my opinion that you can do Tokusatu style games just fine. I will say that the system does require a certain degree of internalization of its theory and logic to get the most out of it, but less than, for example, Fate. I will also say that low PC lethality is a standard part of the system. There are ways around it, like the lethal damage options, and some of them are ok, but it's not going to be a perfect fit if you want the PCs to be in real danger of dying in most fights. Might try Champions. It's pretty GURPSy. Or just use GURPS itself. Or, I dunno, something really wonky like Aberrant? There'll be a new version of that coming out in a few years, too. Might be good.

They get the same number of actions per turn for the sake of action economy balance, but that usually doesn't represent literally one punch. It represents how much the character can narratively and mechanically accomplish in a somewhat abstract time unit. They could use that action on an Area, Multi, or Split attack to hit a bunch of people or a Multi-Attack to hit one person a bunch of times.

>Everytime I try to put together a Heisei Era Rider like Faiz I just end up feeling unbalanced in the bad way and tripping over myself.
I know how you feel buddy. I have gone through like a dozen toku hero ideas to try and fit that Heisei aesthetic, but I am never satisfied with the product, either I can't think of a gimmick or theme that really sinks well, or I get all jumbled up with the heroes gear and trying to make it neat and fun, but also not a giant, toy centric clusterfuck

>Are Hero Points bullshit?
Nah, man, they're great. They're a resource that lets the players exercise mechanical and narrative control over the game in exchange for following genre conventions. You can even mix up what those genre conventions are without causing much (or usually any) trouble as long as you're clear about it with your group and know what you're doing. The hero point mechanic is the soul of the game, really.

If you're one of those people who hate "bennies" and other such soft "narrativist" mechanics, you're going to hate it and this system is really not going to be for you and I really don't know a good fix for that. I'd recommend just playing another game. For myself, though, I think they're great.

I think the reason Deviant hasn't gotten a lot of traction is because it's not going to come out until 2019, at the earliest. And honestly if half the homebrew Toku stuff hadn't been trolled and laughed off of Veeky Forums years ago, we wouldn't even be having this thread, and instead be talking about why Rider The Transformation is dumb.

Champions has the problem of nobody wants to play it because it's even thicker than GURPS is. GURPS is a maybe...I've...never actually gotten to play it before.

The closest I got to a working Rider that I didn't need help with ended up more like Megaman but he knows Karate...or Kamen Rider Delta I guess if you want to humor me, and that's not great because..."Gun" Riders.

The closest I got to a Rider I really enjoyed, well, two really. One was a simple Rider, nothing complex, who didn't have extra fiddly bits, but could change forms, and got new ones based on his emotional state (like his second form was Violence, and it was super edgy) the other one was an animal themed Rider who had different forms based on various animals (lion, great white shark, snapping turtle, vulture, dung beetle, crocodile) and I liked that one, even had some jingles for the forms, but I couldn't figure out where to take him really, after crocodile.

But recently my mind has wandered to stuff like Winspector or Gavan, a simple, solo hero, a robot officer with a variety of tools rather than swapping forms, pretty much Showa era Riders too. I had posted about my idea in the last super hero thread too.

I'll look through some of my games, see if there's something I think might be something that's a good fit for Rider stuff. I should say up front that I'm a pretty casual viewer, though. I think I have a decent sense of the tone, concepts, and general oeuvre and what games probably won't work. I know right off the bat that Amp isn't going to be a great fit, for example.

I may also be able to help with Mutants and Masterminds stuff. I'm pretty good with the system. If there's a particular thing in Mecha and Manga you'd like updated or a character you'd like help to stat I could spare some time.

Like you say, though, player lethality is pretty low by design. You can do it, especially if the players are on board and are willing to let their characters die, but it's not the default. Did you look at the alternate damage rules? I think they're maybe in the Mastermind's Guide in 3e. They were the default option in 2e. I don't think they're going to get you where you want, but you might at least like them better than the 3e default.

Yeah it's a lot easier to do earlier and more simpler stuff than have to worry about the gimmicks and toys of post Den-O. Like, when I make an original Rider I've always wanted to emulate Kuuga? But I also want to keep the dark edgy themes of Showa Cyborgs so it's a weird balancing act there.

That is a legit offer but I always feel like I'm bringing people down with my ineptitude, just off the fact I didn't KNOW there were alternative damage rules might prove.

Nah, it's cool. This is a system that comes really naturally to some people and not to others. What's more, the more experience you have and the more you internalize the system and its design, the easier it get and not everyone is going to have to to get the experience it takes to get really good at it. As for the alternate damage rules, they aren't in core in 3e, thought they were the default in previous editions. No way you could know that if you haven't read those books, which there's no reason for you to have done.

More importantly then that, at least as far as standard superheros go, they're working on a second edition of the trinity continuum. Granted aberrant won't be coming out till like 2019 probably but hell if I'm not going to shill it in the hopes that it gets more popular.

I can't tell if those are Power Rangers or Beetleborgs or what.

I've done a hero game in BESM 3E before, can confirm. I also did a game with... I think it was some DC rpg that actually worked pretty well. Or maybe it was Marvel. I forget. Blast. I remember a bunch of examples where they statted a bunch of the actual heroes and villains, to they point had to split it into two books.

Yeah, I'm pretty excited for the Aeon Continuum (or whatever they're calling it) core. I know that it'll have cyborgs in it, too, though I think the default will be Six Million Dollar Mans rather than Kamen Riders. Might be something there, though, even before they get to Aberrant.

Well shit I completely missed that you mentioned aberrant in the end of your post, fuck me
Uhhh, let me try to save this
>Might be good.
We have the full storypath systems that are supposedly going to be the base for trinity and scion right here. Granted there will likely be some changes for trinity but its a start.
If its aeon you mean then thats sci fi psionic heroes. Stuff like controlling electricity of healing people or using telepathy and so on.

They are called Winspector, the one on the left is Bikel and the one on the right is Walter, they are robots, and the one in the middle is Fire, he's a human. They are cops.

Yeah especially not a GM's guide.
I mean even for my faults and biases I do enjoy play and would love attempting to GM a more serious and heavy system, but I'm just way too scatterbrained to buckle down and read rules on how to be a tard wrangler for murder hobos.
After my being warned off from Scion and reading it's problems, I hope they fix that for the newer version you're implying.

Also it seems like Storyteller is a good system for transforming heroes, but then again Storyteller in my opinion is kind of a good generic system, and I wonder why they haven't just made a generic book for it yet instead of people having to reverse engineer shit.

Oy, Veeky Forums, Is the d20 version of Silver Age Sentinels worth playing?

Yeah, I hope to one day get a chance to play out a Rider in a game, or at least this robot cop I've been mulling over. I think it would be pretty great to not be some earth shatteringly powerful super hero, but just a really skilled crime fighter, with lots of tools and utilities, and the strength of a machine that can help his allies. Though with my love of Riders I have let 'form changes' bleed into his idea, not in extreme ways. Mostly a 'super' form where his core goes into overclock and his chest armor pops open, giving him increased speed and strength at the risk of exposing his most vulnerable point. Also been tossing around a possible upgrade form, or something that connects over his base body, and something like a 'Rescue Form' or 'SWAT Form' with more tools and abilities to fit for more extreme conditions, like wings to fly around, heavier armor to protect him, stuff like that.

>If its aeon you mean then thats sci fi psionic heroes.

No, I mean the one set in the present with the conspiracy and adventure stuff. One of the Allegiances they previewed, The Transcendent Alliance, makes, among other things, cyborgs.

Yeah 1e was just...like pretty much unplayable past early levels. The scaling thing they've done here seems to have cleaned that all up
Transforming heroes seems easy enough to do. I would imagine it would either be something as simple as rolling/spending a resource to transform, or if you really wanted to get in depth then the suit itself would be a higher tier item then the user, meaning they get all sorts of bonuses when wearing it but it still all depends on the skill of the person inside.

I remember the alien cop from Power Rangers rather fondly, so I may actually have to look that up.

Also, I feel slightly embarrased now. I thought the file name was meme-y or something. I never would've guessed that was the ACTUAL name, sorry. I'll put on the dunce cap and sit in the corner now.

While i am not here exactly for super hero games, i could use your help.

Among all tokusatsu heroes, which one you guys think has the most " firefighter" style in it? Winspector? Solbrain?

Thinh is, i am DMing a common D&D campaign wirth a little more technology on it, and i want to create some sort of 'powered firefighter armor' so to speak, but i am having trouble finding one with a more medieval style.

Dont worry, i know it is sort of goofy for a d&d campaign. It is supposed to be, i want one of my pcs to be the first 'super firefighter' in the setting.

You guys know any tokusatsu (or similar) i could check to find pictures and draw inspiration?

I don't think anyone will fault you for assuming Japan has a good ability at naming things with english...much less for a children's show about robot police.

Tomica Hero Rescue Fire.

Thank you kindly!
Will check it out right now.

Yeah that makes sense, I mean some form changing is fine, even Black RX had different forms.

I think another problem with Toku is having the tension of the possibility you can't transform, if you want to do people whose tools aren't just stuck in their body to do it. Even for people who know the system it seems like the handicap of transformation items is a hard one to cobble together and excuse.

I absolutely love superhero stuff and but its been almost impossible to get people to

A] Commit to playing the game
B] Actually play Superheroes and be heroic

The best ive ever been able to get is guys that tried a couple games but half of them dont "get" the superhero thing and quit after a few sessions.

I had a game derail when an idiot insisted he was a Jedi from the Star Wars universe and Star Wars had to exist all in his beloved prequel glory. Another time a furry wanted to ERP an animal themed introductory villain. Another game one player apparently bullied the others into playing Government agent antiheroes and after he lost interest after one session nobody wanted to play that style of a game

Wow that's some shit luck friendo.
Although with a group I have currently in real life where any game we do just grinds to a halt after a month or two at best, I absolutely understand your problems. People just...don't want to commit or try to understand something that isn't memey murder adventures and it's infuriating.

Transforming in M&M runs into the same problem as every other drawback in M&M: If you can meet your caps anyway, there's little mechanical incentive to take a drawback.

Something like
>his chest armor pops open, giving him increased speed and strength at the risk of exposing his most vulnerable point
is actually fairly feasible with the all-out attack advantage and a little math to shift your numbers around, since both forms will still be capped. Going from an undercapped regular dude(/robot) to a PL capped form is usually a mistake, though.

Yeah, I just worry if I include an expansion form like I am thinking of it will roll into the robot walking around with a shit ton of stuff stuck to him, I want to try and keep him simple but effective for his job.

You could always enforce a time handicap on their transformation items. Like, they can't just swap on the fly, they have to actually stop what they are doing and swap out, so they are vulnerable in the moments when they change, as long as they don't have an anti-anti-transformation effect, like a big glowing symbol

Yeah I would like to run a long term game and even had an old group that was successful for years back around the early 2Ks. I built up a whole original setting cool themes and enough comic bookey stuff to run any style even though I do prefer embracing Silver Age silliness Id love to run it again but every time ive gotten a chance the games have run shorter each time

If anyone is curious about what my robot cop loadout is, and weren't around when I tried another super hero thread the other day.
>Blinder Beams- A pair of bright lights on his head to light up areas and blind targets
>Vacuum Grill- Ports on the face that allow him to suck up fumes in case he encounters toxic gas environments or other airborne dangers
>Taser Wave- A high powered taser gun on his left shoulder
>Tool Arm- A series of miniature tools located on the right forearm, includes things like a hacking tool, glass cutter, repair tools, ect
>Medic Hand- A health scanner in the right palm
>Rocket Punch- Left forearm, self explanatory.
>Cable Reeler- Rocket Punch, but with a metal cable of up to 20 feet, for repelling up and down buildings
>Spin Hand- Left hand can spin at high frequencies
>Cuff storage- Left thigh, contains a compartment with a number of special malleable alloy handcuffs, which can shape to fit any body type, and can even shape to attach atomically to objects, allowing suspects to be cuffed to any object or surface.
>B-Magnum- Stored on the right thigh. A high powered energy based handgun, capable of packing a serious punch, but unlikely to leave lethal damage.
>Magna Soles- High powered magnets in the bottom of his feet
>Blazer Baton- His choice of weapon when lethal force comes up. A solid heat club, a weapon capable of burning on brief touches, and melting through metal when prolonged contact is made.
>Foam Shooter- A small gun located in the left elbow, shoots containment foam to take down targets that mere cuffs can't
>Open Mode- Overclocking his core to increase the limits of speed and strength, causes the chest armor to pop open, exposing his core in exchange for this boost
This is his loadout, I added a foam gun and the power up mode. I think I wanna call him Ziren (as in siren)

>Have these guys as toys growing up
>Vague memories of playing with them
>As adult try and find them as some generation or sixth ranger of Power Rangers, cant' find them
>Try and find them as Beetleborgs, no luck
>Stumble upon them on Veeky Forums

I love you so fucking much right now user. Is there a white one? I vaguely remember there being a white motercycley looking one with like wheel shoulder pads or something? I think his toy was seethrough.

Listen as long as you don't go full (non SPD) Battlizer or Hyper Kabuto, you should be fine if you want to move the transformation up by one.

There is a sort of white one but it's in a different series. I can't remember the name off the top of my head but it's also in the Metal Heroes series.

Ok, poking around a bit at what I’ve got, I’m seeing a few possibilities. I still think GURPS and Champions might be closest to getting the “feel” it sounds like you’re shooting for without modification, but they are pretty complex and there’s some stigma attached.

The Icons games might be workable, but they are very much designed for Western style comic book superheroes and they look kinda hard to try to adapt to a different genre and scale. The first Icons is a descendent of FUDGE and Assembled Edition uses a single d6 roll for conflict resolution. Basic Action Super Heroes (BASH) is similarly designed to run Western superheroes and looks a little harder to modify, but from taking a quick glance it looks like it might scale better than Icons. Masks is another FUDGE descendent and looks similarly hard to scale to Tokusatsu stuff out of the box.

Powers & Paragons looks to have a core engine that could probably run a Tokusatsu game just fine, but the game doesn’t seem all that concerned with the things that genre is about. I’d have to take a closer look to tell for sure.

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (which uses Cortex Plus) might actually be a really good option, especially for Sentai stuff. The major flaw is that there is literally zero support for characters other than existing Marvel characters and you kinda have to know the system to work around that. Also, they don’t sell it anymore, so you’d have to buy used or unsold book. Or, you know, pirate it.

The only Super Hero thread I've remembered is the one I made yesterday about Power Rangers HyperForce and speculating about the system (and being glad Paul Schrier is a Ranger).
I had to go to sleep before that thread really kicked off and I was at work today so I didn't catch if it went anywhere or died.

But holy shit that's a load out and a half.

Amp is right out. It’s designed specifically for its own setting and, while fairly easily divorced from the specifics, really only works for Gen 13/X-Men/Teen Titans type things.

Fuzion might actually be a pretty good option. There’s no explicit support for the Tokusatsu that I know of, but there’re plenty of anime adaptations. It’s an acceptable system, kinda GURPSy in feel if not in necessarily in specifics.

Maybe someone else can answer this question: Could Magical Burst be adapted to work for Rider type games? I'm not really very familiar with the system, but at a casual glance it looks like there's some stuff there that could work.

I had the same experience user, I had a toy of Bikel (the yellow guy) when I was a kid and thought he was just a power ranger toy, only to find out who he really was like three days ago.

So as someone who likes Pretty Cure (yeah I'm the whole trifecta of Super Hero Time over here) and Symphogear (haha kill me), I think a magical girl game where Melee is an actual option for play could be reskinned for a Sentai/Magic-Based Ranger game. Or even an anime game would be easier to adapt than a supers game because anime loves to reference Tokusatsu within itself and the fandoms crossover a bit.

-ranger
*Rider
haha jesus christ I'm garbage.

>But holy shit that's a load out and a half.
Yeah, thats the intention. He isn't some super powerful fighter, or super fast, or even indestructible, but he has a load out to handle various criminal situations. That's not covering the various sensors and scanners I want him to have available so he can read every situation and have up to date info for criminals he's facing. The idea behind Ziren is he is a prototype law enforcement robot, and is programmed to be the best he can be at his job, while also testing out new tools for officers to use in the line of duty against super powered criminals.

M&M has an expansion about manga and mechs, even has rules about building mechs of various kinds, including combining and transforming mechs.

I am aware, and the book's been discussed before, but again is the 2e thing...

Mechs are a separate thing I'm into but I am not currently thinking about them these days.
Especially because I find the combining mecha of Sentai to be...difficult for team play in concept. Like do you take turns rolling? Do you say fuck it and make multiple robots? When it comes to Mecha I'm definitely more for SRW than I am Sentai.

Yeah, that's why I recommended Fuzion. I think that, GURPS, Marvel Heroic Roleplay, and Chmpions (or maybe Dark Champions) are the best options I saw "out of the box". I'd recommend a slightly modded Mutants & Masterminds above all those options (except maybe MHRP, though that has a higher barrier of entry), but finding alternatives was the entire purpose of this exercise. I should add that I would not recommend Fate for this unless the group in question really understands the system. Savage Worlds would surely be a possibility, but it'd require a whole lot of work, so I didn't bring it up above.

Oh, and hypothetically Storypath and Deviant: The Renegades as promising, but we won't know for sure until actual books come out.

Nostalgia is a beautiful and powerful thing. I hope you find your toy.

...

So
Gold age, Silver age, Bronze age, or Dark/Modern age?

Does anyone have a rip of fate core or fate accelerated? I need to sell my gm on a cape themed fate game.

For games, I like Bronze Age, Iron Age, and things set in current time or slightly before or after, but not necessarily in the style of the comics of our time.

The games are pay what you want.

evilhat.com/home/fate-core-downloads/

I love doing Modern age that had all the Silver Age silliness in the background. Oh sure times have changed and the world is a very different place but at one point the President was kidnapped by a commie space ape

I think the two shows on the top right got turned into VR Troopers. Loved that show.

(I admit, I've really only seen English versions of stuff until now- Power Rangers, Beetleborgs, Masked Rider, etc.)

You should give the original material a shot, especially Kamen Rider

Anyone happen to know where I could try to find prowlers and paragons? Or silver age sentinels for that matter?

Pretty sure I saw them in Da Archive. Might mosey on over to that thread.