I'm looking to run a superhero game where I have characters who can punch the supervillains, but can't punch the "real" problems.

So they have trouble with their relationships, with their dad's cancer, with paying their mortgage.

Or maybe after a point, when they're rich and famous and their daily problems are small, they realize they can't punch poverty and racism. (If, later in the campaign, they try to take over the world...I'm fine with that.)

On the one hand, I want a game with decent combat mechanics. Partially because there will occasionally be actual supervillains to fight, and partially because I want them to feel powerful and powerless at the same time and tempted to just go shooting into the White House.

On the other hand, it's possible that we might have a couple sessions in a row with no combat whatsoever, and I don't necessarily want to handle all of that freeform. I can, I like freeform and I'm good at it, but the players I have in mind would panic.

First I thought of M&M, because I quite like it. Three problems there. One, building villains will take me a day each time. Two, players with utility powers can render a lot of issues moot. (It's shockingly cheap to build a character who can broadcast messages to the entire world, for example.) Three, the focus of the system is on combat. I mean, not THAT much, as the system is really quite light once you're done with character creation. Still though.

I thought some jRPGs and animes/mangas actually deal with stuff like this, the old "high school student saves the world" thing, so I took a little look at OVA and BESM.(Admittedly, not a very detailed look.) But they seem to be very heavily focused on combat as well. (I'd say MORE than M&M, in fact.) At least, nothing popped out that would make me pick them over M&M. (Well, I suppose it would be a little less work for me, but I don't mind.)

I don't want something as light as, say, Icons. If I went there I may as well just run it freeform.

So does anyone have any suggestions as to a better system, or should I just stick with M&M?
This message was last updated by a moderator, as it was the wrong forum, at 15:14, Fri 15 Apr 2016.

There's more story game stuff like "With Great Power..." that might be worth at least taking a look at to maybe crib some ideas from.

But since you're looking for a system with a bit of crunch, you might try Savage Worlds, using the Super Power Companion.  The power scale is quite a bit smaller, skills are useful rather than being a thing you take as an alternative to having a power, and there's even a simple Social Conflict system in the main book.

Might be a direction you can go that will still provide players with the ability to feel "Super" but due to the low key nature of the system as a whole avoid the temptation to mind control an entire city or level entire blocks of buildings with their energy blasts.

Check out Worlds in Peril (Powered by the Apocalypse).  It has mechanics called Bonds that are about the relationships you have with other people, even your city.  Sometimes you have to "burn" those bonds to guarantee success (IOW, you make your relationship with them suffer for it).

You can certainly use your powers to save the day, etc., but it's not focused on the power building minutiae.  Powers are more or less expressed in tiers, e.g. if you have super-strength, then what would be Simple, Difficult, Borderline, Possible, Impossible?

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/150013/Worlds-in-Peril

From what I recall of it, the Smallville RPG might work very well for what you're looking for!

Smallville is absolutely a CW drama system that happens to have super powers. First suggestion. Worlds in Peril is a Powered By The Apocalypse game about superheroes having to choose what to sacrifice to save the day. Second suggestion. Capes is a GMless story-building game that can have as much or little emphasis on punching things as you like, as the whole story and mechanics system is player driven. Hearts and Souls seems to be very feels-centric, but I haven't gotten a real look at it yet. Aaaand I'm outta suggestions.

MnM, Savage Worlds, and most other systems I've seen have a massive emphasis on face punching your way through problems, but really any of them could have the punching be the A plot and any girlfriends, school, family, etc being B plots in any system. It'll work out if you structure it the way you want it.

Well, it depends on what you want here:  Do you want the mechanics of the game to influence the plot directly or do you just want a game that will give you a satisfying combat resolution engine without it taking so much time to prepare, roll etc.?  Those are two different things and I'm not sure which one you want.

If you want a narrative/fiction driven engine, some of the suggestions like Worlds in Peril and Smallville are going to do that.

If you just want a game that will handle the combat without GM prep work being ornerous or the combat being hard to run mechanically, something like Savage Worlds is a good pick.

Marvel's FASERIP did have a Karma mechanic to reward roleplaying, so you'd get Karma points for meeting your civilian identity's obligations, holding down a job, relationship, social life, etc. then you could spend your points on feats and rolls, or lose them doing OOC stuff that went against Good alignment.

It was an interesting idea to try and encourage players to play Peter Parker and Matt Murdock as well as Spider-Man and Daredevil, and keep them in character.

The downside was, explicit killers like The Punisher have massively negative Karma. A fix I considered was having the rewards and penalties apply to a more complex alignment system, like what D&D uses, as an example, so you get rewarded or penalised for behaviour relating to your specific alignment. Like everybody is the hero of their own story, even the villains.

I could even do a Heroes Unlimited game like this.  Easy.  Just most players don't want this kind of game.

I posted about this game on another supers thread here and thought you might like to take it outside the normal superhero with everyday problems, it uses the one roll rules from wild talents so the combat system is solid but I suggested it because of the love hate relationship between the players and their demons .....anyway just a thought :)



Better Angels: Basically you play a person that makes a deal with a demon to give you powers the only thing is the demon is part of you but the actual demon character is played by the person to your left round the table. Character generation is collaborative and the person playing your demon has a say in what he / she is like and what powers they have. It all sounds complicated but the rules are set up to give a lot of checks and measures to stop people making life too difficult for each other.

If the mechanics actually influence the plot, that's very nice. Because otherwise I'm just running a freeform game with a combat system. And that's...acceptable, mainly because the players will get sick of philosophizing and will want to punch stuff occasionally. It's just not optimal.

I definitely don't want slow combats. I am not in favor of long preparation either, but I can live with that. (So for example M&M is acceptable though not great, because the combats are not that complicated.)

I know Savage Worlds(although not that particular expansion) and that's not really what I want, but I'll look at the other suggestions. Thanks guys.

It's not a superhero RPG, but Enter The Shadowside is completely narrative-driven. It'd probably need some hammering to fit into a campaign, because it uses no GM, and a system of cards with prompts to get the players to drive the narrative flow themselves...

I tend to be a GURPSer myself, because I love its non-combat mechanics...but I know that some people find it too crunchy.

So when I want to go super rules light, my go-to is the Over the Edge system...which has been made a bit generic and called WARP.

There's a gumshoe variant along those lines. Mutant City Blues.