First up: yes I did get the M&M 4E playtest and yes I'm working my through it. More to come next week on that.
That said in the lead-up to its release I re-read the 3E rules and then that spilled over to Champions as well and I spent a lot of time seeing where people stood on 4th vs. 5th vs. 6th edition for that game as I had really not paid attention to it up until now as an online discussion. Doing that led me to some other items of potential interest like the Spectaculars game. I was vaguely aware of it but had never really studied it and I don't own it yet.
Now Spectaculars looks interesting so I spent some time poking around for reviews and actual play reports of it and that led me to a now-defunct blog where the writer wrote up some articles about older superhero games leading up to a report on Spectaculars. Now I don't want to turn this into a dispute with an individual so I'm not linking to the blog here but I want to use it as an example of how some of these games are perceived by some people in a more general sense and how some internet groupthink seeps in and how time screws with perceptions as well.
The writer in question started with Marvel Super Heroes - nothing wrong with that, a lot of people did. He credits it with being easy to understand for young players - sure, totally agree. He then turns and says there wasn't much of a character generation system with it being a lot of random rolling and making a few limited choices ... and this is where I veer away hard from this take.
Hmmm, random rolls and limited choices? Sounds a lot like D&D! The dominant RPG at the time! And now! Also Runequest, Traveller, and many other games of the time! We made a bunch of characters with it and played for several years. I wasn't going to but I have to insert a quote here:
"For me it did also set out the fundamental template for superhero RPGs – all fun in different ways, but all having different and significant flaws."
I could not disagree more. This mostly ignores the revolutionary take on task resolution with the color chart system among many other things and the more general fact that superhero RPGs are where you find a lot of the innovation and fresh thinking that happens in RPGs. They have to, because they have to encompass the widest range of possibilities, the widest scope for a game.
"Overall the Marvel RPG was simple and fun, but really lacked any depth and longevity."
I just ... how does one get to this point? It so lacked longevity that people have been maintaining websites for it for almost three decades after it went out of print. It is regularly referenced as an important game and served as inspiration for everything from retroclones to Icons. I played in long loose campaigns with friends and I would run it tomorrow if someone asked. It's a bad take.
I will note that the author does not appear to have gone back and picked up a copy, looked back through other peoples notes on it, or played or run it anytime recently - this was strictly memories of it from the 80's.
He moves on to DC Heroes, calling it "much more technically polished than the Marvel game" - was it? It was more complex but that's a take I haven't seen if we're talking 1st edition DCH. I think it was perceived as a more sophisticated game at the time as in "not aimed at kids as much as the Marvel game" so I'll agree if that's the real take. He seems to like it better than Marvel but then we get to points, gadgets, and this take:
"This would highlight a design pattern bug in most superhero systems involving points: if your super widget can be lost/stolen/damaged then system designers seemed to think that they should always cost you less of your character points during generation otherwise a gadget hero would always be disadvantaged. Then again if this discount is too high then gadget heroes seem to have an advantage over others."
Yes ... a power that can be taken away easily are less valuable than one that cannot. That seems incredibly obvious to me. Yes, it does depend on the kind of system and campaign one is running but it's a fairly common thing in comics. Characters with inherent powers get a points break for things like being vulnerable to green rocks or needing to be immersed in water every other day to retain their powers. That's the flip side of the gadget guys.
He then mentions Golden Heroes which I admittedly have very little experience with. He doesn't like the random rolling for powers much and mentions "power imbalance" within a group" - isn't that exactly what points systems do extremely well? - and "it didn’t give you much scope for crafting a coherent group around a specific sub-genre of superhero themes" - a group theme? Like the JLA? What's their group theme? The X-Men? The Avengers? I think the theme there is who is popular right now or who do the writers like and want to include. Is "we're all mutants" enough of a theme to call a group coherent?
Finally (for the early years part of the review) we get to Champions 4th edition and he seems to have liked it then but he says he wouldn't go back to playing something like it now because character generation is too nitpicky, there are too many acronyms, and combat is slow (the one truly legit complaint in my eyes) but then he goes here:
"It does tend to encourage players with munchkin tendencies to spend ages optimising their characters for specific offensive or defensive abilities at the expense of playability. Also it can make it really hard to balance a party of players unless you lay out specific parameters in advance to discourage anyone from being too highly skewed in any one particular direction."
Any superhero game can result in players going nuts without GM advice and intervention. The 4E Champions book has a section with multiple examples of ridiculously overpowered characters that could break a game with specific advice to not let people do that. And if party balance is a big concern any point-based game will do a better job of it than a random roll creation type game - that's what the points are for! Plus this was written in 2020 - are we still concerned with "munchkin" players in 2020? Who are you playing this with?
Of the early games there's no mention of various editions of these or any mention of Villains & Vigilantes and it's player-based character stats plus random generation so I'm assuming he never played that one.
For later games he discusses Aberrant, M&M, and Savage Worlds via Necessary Evil:
- Aberrant seems to have been one of his more-liked options though he seems put off by player character potentially being really strong or really charismatic - I mean, this one is not my favorite but it is a superhero game so ...
- Mutants & Masterminds he describes as less crunchy than Champions but with less flavor and then describes the setting as very generic and bland. He used a picture of the 1st edition M&M cover so maybe that's what he played and I wouldn't completely disagree there but that was over 20 years ago and the game grew tremendously, as did the setting.
- Necessary Evil he praises for the concept, calls it very setting-specific, then mentions that he didn't actually play the campaign as-is because he wanted to build up to it and then ends with this:
"We played 11 sessions in the end which actually makes it one of my longest RPG gaming runs..."
Ah - that explains a lot, actually. About all of this.
- Marvel is simple and for kids
- DC is more complex, which is a benefit until it gets too complex apparently
- Champions (and point systems in general) are too hard, prone to abuse, and make it difficult to actually run a campaign
- Aberrant is mostly liked for its concept and metaplot more than for it's mechanics or ability to emulate comic books
- M&M ... not sure what to say about this take. I see it get lumped in with Champions as "point systems bad" most of the time and I've never seen the setting described as bland but OK.
- NE - Most people who become aware of it fall in love with the concept instantly because 20 years on it's still damn near unique. People who have tried to play or run it tend to have more mixed opinions, for several reasons in my experience:
- Like this blogger, the GM tries to complicate things by creating an extensive prequel pre-campaign - just run it! It's great! You don't need to play out what the villains did before, the day the heroes died, how they got to the city - at most include a single session of buildup, maybe as part of a session zero, and then get into the campaign!
- GM's also sometimes complicate it by moving it to a different city or setting (guilty here at least once). This creates a bunch of extra work, potentially, and how much does it really add to the campaign if it's happening in Freedom City, or Millenium City, or Paragon City really? Again, just go with the setting! The fun is in playing the game, not making everyone wait to get into the core of the thing.
- It's also a rough introduction to the Savage Worlds system. SW is different enough from most other RPGs - especially today when 5E is the big game - that it takes some adjustment for most players. I think the concept pulls a lot of people in - because it's awesome - and then you get damn near Maximum Savage Worlds with aliens, robots, and superpowers as part of that whole new system to learn. It makes that learning curve steep.
- FATE gets dismissed as requiring a lot of homework and having books built around specific settings. Alright that's a new take on FATE but OK. I'm pretty sure you just need FATE core or FATE light + a super book of your choice and you're good to go and if you're running FATE yo ucan really use any book as a setting - you don't really need a ton of specific mechanics.
- PBTA he mostly describes Masks and while he likes the system he's not thrilled with the setting - yeah, I don't play supers games to focus in on teen drama either. Not my thing but it's not like they don't tell you that up front.
- Have you read it? All of it, not skimmed it?
- Have you made some characters for it?
- Have you run a test fight?
- Have you played it?
- Have you run it?
- And for either of those - for how long?
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