40K Friday Returns with Chaos Space Marines!

For May I'm going to get back on track with this because there has been some 40K activity here of late. First up:

 Back in November I put up a post about going with the white & green Death Guard scheme for my chaos marine force. I like the look of it but it is taking forever to actually paint, so I am probably going to throw in the towel and go with a more traditional slimy green with rust, bronze, and maybe some purple. This because 1) I can paint it faster, and 2) it's easier to integrate other painted Nugle-y units if I pick up something already painted. I'm experimenting with a lot of inks/stains/glazes and very little regular paint. So far I like the look I'm getting on the plague marines. I mean, green and purple - doesn;t that justlook like "chaos"? I have a solid idea for the bikers, havocs,  and the chaos lord (also Nurgle-marked) and I think a similar process in red would work for the berserkers I plan to add as well. I also have a solid plan for making the bases something different.  Once I have some finished units I'll put up some pictures but here's some work-in-progress for now:

Experimenting begins with the old fat plastic plague marines. This is a splash of old "Ork Flesh Wash" over white primer.

Now with a coat of current "Athonian Camoshade" over that

After doing 4 of them I am pretty happy with the way this look is coming. Now I have to decide whether to throw some Earthshade over that or focus on the details first. 

The colors so far.

For now the structure is the same as what I posted before: Nurgle-Lord in terminator armor with some terminators, sorcerer on a bike with a bike unit (all Nurgle), 2 squads of plague marines, a squad or two of normal CSM's, some missile havocs, some Khorne CSM's/Berserkers, some possessed just because I like the looks, and probably some helbrutes just because I have the models. I do have a daemon prince for them too but he will have to alternate with the bike sorcerer in a normal force org force.

The theme is that they're coming off of a space hulk and so have plenty of infantry, monsters, and even some bikes and walkers, but do not have big tanks and transports. That limitation may be just too crippling to keep intact but I need to play some games first to make that call.

More next Friday!

Friday RPG Grab-Bag

• There's a Deadlands TV show in the works. There's not a ton of detail out there but here's an interview with Shane Hensley. I am cautiously optimistic about this - there have been a ton of gaming license disappointments and non-events over the years but if this comes together it could be a lot of fun. I'm betting the elevator pitch was something along the lines of "Walking Dead with cowboys" and I'd be fine with that as a starting point.

• Here is a surprisingly detailed article about the mass combat system for D&D Next. Ten points for bringing back the "Battlesystem" name - I go all the way back to the 1985 set with that cover up there that seemed like a big box of awesome at the time. I was getting into Warhammer at the time (Second Edition - Salute!) and being able to do something similar with AD&D was amazingly cool. The timing is weird here too because although my Warhammer fantasy interest has cooled considerably, I've been digging into the Pathfinder mass combat rules from Ultimate Campaign because they play a part in Wrath of the Righteous. If WOTC wants this mass combat thing to actually be used I hope they come up with some kind of campaign that features them. The whole "leading an army" angle is one I don't see addressed a whole lot in RPG adventures and it seems like a natural avenue for high-level D&D characters. Maybe that will change.

• I keep finding myself drawn to this.The Emerald Spire is a 16-level dungeon that came out of the Pathfinder MMO Kickstarter. Now a dungeon that size is cool but by itself not that unusual. The designer list is pretty strong though and there is also this. The flip-mat pack is 8 double-sided flip-mats (like their other mats) so it covers every level of the dungeon. I don't think I've run across this particular combo before: a dungeon that big with pre-printed poster maps ready to go for every level. There may have been one in some other kickstarter but this is the first time I've seen it as a normally available product. It's not inexpensive, but the combined set is about as much as a full Adventure Path if I figure $20 (roughly) each for six adventures. It's very tempting, and even though I don't know how it would fit into our rotation, I am seriously considering it. I need to do some more research and see how far it's supposed to go level-wise and then I'll probably make a decision.

Missing Players in an Ongoing Campaign

I've been running two ongoing campaigns the last few years, both more narrative than sandbox. What happens when a player can't make it? We deal with it and the game goes on. But how do you deal with it? OK let's discuss some details. Here are three rules I go by:

1. Never end a session in the middle of a fight
2. Set a minimum number of players who need to show to run your game
3. There's always a plausible explanation why Character X isn't here right now

Another wave?

Reasoning for Rule 1:
(This is really more about avoiding the awkwardness of having a missing player next time)

Say you have a 5-person party in the middle of a huge fight = "alright, it's two in the morning, we're going to have to call it til next time." Sounds reasonable, except that someone won't be able to make it next time - better hope it's not the cleric! Maybe two someones won't. Then another week goes by and someone else has a conflict. Odds are you're going to end up finishing the fight either a man down (or more) or so much time will pass that no one can remember the details from the first part of the fight and spell or power usage, hit points, and maybe even consciousness state are all very fuzzy. It dilutes whatever dramatic impact your fight might have and for me anyway is just an unsatisfying way to handle things.

Most people who give this advice don't do it because its's a nice theory - we do so because we've tried it and found how many ways it can go wrong. After a few years go by you might be tempted to try it again - nope, it still sucks.

Solutions:

• Never start a combat 5 minutes before "quitting time". My weekend night games generally run til midnight, but we've called it as early as 11:35 when it felt right.
• If you know they're starting a good-sized fight and you could freeze-frame before it starts but are tempted to push on, tell your players the situation and let them have some input. They might be cool running over a bit or they may already be running on fumes. 
• If you find yourself in the nightmare of fight-started-with-plenty-of-time-but-now-taking-way-longer-than-expected-and-it-needs-to-stop here are some emergency ideas:
• Bad Guys all beam/teleport/vanish out
• Bad Guys retreat through a hidden secret door to some new room you may need to map before next time. Darkness spells and smoke grenades can help here.
• Bad Guys heads explode and all fall dead - could be real, could be an illusion
• Bad Guys surrender - players never really expect this in the middle of a fight. If you can tie it to the death of a particular bad guy leader or a nasty move by one of the characters, so much the better.

These are much more satisfying without built-in excuses like "but the cleric wasn't here"

Reasoning for Rule 2:

Maybe your sessions are "game night" and you play something regardless of who and how many show up. That's cool and I envy you. Here it's "Campaign X Night" and we either play that or we don't play at all. The concept of the "backup game" has never really taken root with us. That said we very rarely cancel at the last minute, so setting that minimum number lets us figure out in advance whether we're going to run next week or not.

Examples

• I was running Red Hand of Doom in 4E with a party that varied from 5-6 players. If at least 4 can make it we play, if 3 or fewer we don't. It does mean you miss some sessions but it also means you don't have a TPK destroy your campaign because the groups was a man or two short the night they ran into a really nasty dragon. 
• In Wrath of the Righteous I knew I was going to run it mainly for two of my players, so they each made two characters (it's Pathfinder, so it's easy enough). Adventure Paths are written for 4 characters - presto, we're solid. If both of my two can't make it, we don't play that weekend. If someone else can make it on a day we do play, they can make up a new character or continue with the one they had created last time. If someone else starts showing consistently they might get to make a second character if they so desire. It's easier to adjust upwards on the fly than downwards, at least for me. 
• The Exception To This Rule: Superhero games - I've run sessions with only a single player running a single hero and still had plenty of fun. 

Spock's player couldn't make it that night - look at how that worked out

Reasoning for Rule 3:

If you've seen The Gamers then you've seen "Mark". Mark just appears in the background of the scenes, motionless and doing nothing. Then his player shows up and the character goes into action for one fight.  The player then has to go and his character pretty much disappears from the rest of the story. It's dumb but very true to life. 

Speaking from my personal view as a DM, I'm not here to run your character - that's your job and I have enough to manage. So I'm not going to run your character, Spock's Brain-style, in the background just because you're not here. My rule is pretty much "if you're not here then your character's not here". That pretty much eliminates the issue of characters dying in a session the player didn't attend, treasure shenanigans, and "I wouldn't do that!" conversations. 

Practical Considerations for Rule 3

• It's incredibly easy to explain character comings and goings in superhero games - they were "called away" or Lois is in trouble again or they had to go take some pictures for their day job. it's trivial and should never be a real problem. Unless you're running Time of Crisis, then it's a little tricky. 
• Wilderness adventures are great for this kind of thing - communing with nature, following some interesting tracks, leading a hostile monster away from the party, gathering some rare herbs, celebrating a high holy day in private, heading back to watch the road, spending quality time with his new dryad friend, acquiring a new familiar - these are all pretty easy to do. 
• Cities make this even easier - it's not hard to figure something out. Shopping, stealing, or carousing are all popular options.
• In contrast dungeons can make this really painful, especially the big ones. When the party is six levels deep, the DM still checks for encounters even on "cleared" levels, and there's no shortcut back out (Hello Town Portal!) then it can really strain belief to come up with a plausible reason why the fighter suddenly isn't going to fight for awhile. My advice is to think about this beforehand and try to come up with some possible explanations. Some ideas:
• Fell through a trap door into another room or another level - hey megadungeons are supposed to be "living" right?
• Taken prisoner by some group on this level or the next one
• Ran into a rival adventuring party and didn't want to lead them back to the group until he checked them out
• Wizards are studying in that last library/laboratory/summoning room the group discovered
• Clerics are purifying a defiled temple, defiling an enemy temple, or communing with their god in some other room
• Thieves are off sneaking around looking for more loot - you know how they are. A good candidate for "taken prisoner" above. 

Sure, let the DM run your character while you're gone ...

Final Thought: If you're really stuck for ideas ask the player what their character is doing while they are out. Their third or fourth idea is probably good enough to use.

Experience and Advancement in D&D and Pathfinder

I stumbled across this post a few weeks ago and it spurred some thoughts that have been buzzing around in my head ever since. It's about gold and megadungeons and how to manage PC wealth but that's not really the part that started the wheels turning for me. It's really right there in the first paragraph, this:

There are a number of inter-related factors in old school D&D that work together to support the megadungeon as a campaign centerpiece.  Dungeon level equaling monster level and difficulty provides the players the most direct control over danger versus reward during their planning.   XP for Gold means that creative problem solving and ingenuity is more important than combat - avoiding fights and still making it out with the money is the best path to victory.

Down in the comments, John Arendt has a post that adds a little more:

XP for gold is elegant in its simplicity and abstraction - it's fairly objective, transparent to the players, and it covers the gamut of adventurer activities by rewarding the end state and not the process.

One of the complaints I see online about RPG's now is that they only reward killing monsters. The last few versions of D&D, Pathfinder, and lot of similar type games do primarily give XP for defeating opponents. This understandably tends to heavily focus the game on combat encounters. There is a whole system for rating monsters that's tied into a formula of encounters per level to determine how fast a character makes the next level. It makes the whole thing seem very precise and mechanical but leaves it laser-focused on combat as the way to success.

It wasn't always like this. As much fun as has been made of the older D&D advancement system of XP's for gold, the quotes up above show why it was not nearly as limited as some people thought back then and still think today. Experience was awarded for killing monsters back then too, but it paled next to the awards for gold, totaling maybe 10% of a typical run's XP. It doesn't matter how you get the gold (or magic - magic items had an XP value too) what matters is that you came away with it in the end. That encourages a much broader approach to a situation than killing the monster. At a minimum, deception and negotiation are clearly options and the bards, monks, and rogues in the party might find themselves valued for something besides backstabs and carousing bonuses.

Just as a point of illustration, when was the last time you heard someone say in a D&D game "yeah we need him he's really clever" compared to "we need more DPS" or "we need a tank". I don't hear it a lot around the game these days.

Now 4th edition didn't completely ignore this idea. Aside from the math and formulas around the level and experience system in that game it also added the concept of Quest XP, rewarding a party for completing certain tasks aside from killing monsters. There were major and minor quests and based on the level assigned to them they awarded a certain number of XP's. That game also added Skill Challenges to allow for a system for resolving and rewarding non-combat encounters that fit into the larger experience point system. That's pretty solid coverage, but it's still mainly determined in advance by the DM - This is a combat encounter, this is a skill challenge, doing this awards some quest XP. I like it and I've used it for several years but I'm sure it could be improved upon.

Pathfinder doesn't have as formalized a system for going outside the lines on XP but I do see it in the Adventure Path modules. There are plenty of combat encounters of CR-whatever but there are also points in the adventure where there are things like "award a 600XP story award if the players do X". Some of them encourage PC's to behave in class/race/alignment appropriate ways. Many are a lot like the Quest XP from 4E, intended to give players a bonus for running down side-plots or advancing the main thread. Others are a bonus for finishing the adventure and may also be there to ensure the party is bumped up to the next level and ready to begin the next adventure in the series. Given the structure of Adventure Paths I have no problem with this.

It's an odd quirk that Pathfinder, a system with a ton of support for pre-made story/quest type adventures, has a primary XP award system based almost entirely on defeating opponents. It does use story awards but that's extra, not the primary. I suppose it does work though. Using the first adventure of Wrath of the Righteous as an example, the opening sets up the premise of the whole campaign. After that, there is a lot of stuff, but the players can succeed, fail, or ignore quite a bit of it. The climactic encounter is the only other thing that "must" happen to set up the rest of the campaign. In between, as long as the characters are beating up bad guys (and they are bad - it's all demons and demon cultists) they should gather enough XP to be ready for that final encounter even if they skip some set pieces, get their NPC friends killed, and generally blunder along without a clue and without regard to some of the expectations on the part of the adventure. A purely story-based award system would force a lot more railroading on to the party. Basing it on combat encounters does give the team some freedom. Maybe these guys do know what they are doing.

I still wonder if gold-based XP wouldn't work at least as well, but I'm not going to rewrite the whole thing to find out.

Interestingly, D&D type games are the only places I see this kind of discussion/debate. Most other games are structured differently and the XP system built for each game fits what it's trying to do well enough that there's not a lot of call to change it or tweak it. Games without levels in particular seem to avoid this whole segment of RPG talk, maybe because of the lesser emphasis on advancement and more on completing the story. Superhero games are almost entirely story-award based. At the end of each scene there is some kind of reward (it may be hero points and not experience points, but it's there), then at the end of the mission/adventure/arc there is a larger award. No problems there as it fits the genre. Star Trek tends to do the same. Star Wars games tend to follow the same structure thought the d20 versions did have XP for defeating opponents featured pretty heavily.

Another approach I see sometimes is per-session XP. I agree players should feel like there's a reward for being in a game, but I've never liked giving points just for showing up. Ideally, advancement should come from doing stuff in the game. I could see some benefit to this in an open-table type game to reward regular players for taking time to get a group together, but that's about the only situation where I like it.

To me, experience systems in a game should reward the kinds of behavior you expect to see in the game. If the primary reward comes from defeating opponents, that's where the game will center. It's very specific though. Quest/Story XP does mitigate this somewhat but even then it's the exception and not the norm for the system. The XP-for-Gold approach is pretty broad and doesn't worry about the means so much as the end. It encourages play more akin to the Conan/Fafhrd/Gray Mouser stories. A focus on completing scenes/missions quests is going to be more like Lord of the Rings. A focus on killing the opposition as efficiently as possible encourages play more like ... Warhammer 40,000.

I know this post covers a lot of ground but it's not something I see enough of, especially outside of the D&D family. New games come out regularly, especially with Kickstarter, and there tends to be a lot of focus on mechanics from skill resolution to class features, but there's little focus on how experience is awarded. Sure, GM's are going to change it to suit their own tastes but that's true of any subsystem in a game. Having a well thought-out, clearly described system for experience and advancement is incredibly important for driving behavior in a game. As a GM it tells me what the designers were thinking. As a player it tells me what I'm supposed to do. Combining this with in-game rewards (magic, money, other nifty gear) should tell players how to get what they want for themselves and their characters.

Motivational Monday

What's Going On - Pathfinder

Playing
We recently had the third session of our Kingmaker campaign. I'm playing a cavalier and having a lot of fun charging and running things down from horseback. Even underground, without the horse, it's still fun to wade in with sword and shield. We are slowly making progress exploring the region and many bandits have felt our wrath. It's been quite a while since I've been a regular player in a sustained campaign and I didn't realize how much I had missed it.

Running 
I just ran Session 11 of our Wrath of the Righteous campaign and we are very close to finishing up the first book. They're 3rd and 4th level now and everyone seems to be having a good time. It's the first time Apprentice Blaster has been in a regular, ongoing, long-term campaign and he's having an especially good time.It's been a blast for me.

I think book one will end up taking 12 sessions to complete but I suspect the later books will be a little quicker to play through. It took us a few sessions to get on track but we have a pretty steady rotation now. By the time we are finished we should have thoroughly explored the rules for Pathfinder and the Mythic Power rules as well.

I'll try to get the session summaries caught up in May.

The Future
I have no idea how long it will take to play through Kingmaker. I don't think it matters though, as if it takes years we will still have a good time.

I figure we should be able to get through books 2 & 3 of Wrath of the Righteous over the rest of 2014 and then it may take most of 2015 to finish the thing. Hopefully my core players stay on board and no one gets burned out.

Down the road I'd love to run Rise of the Runelords for someone but I'm not sure how we would fit it in right now. I'd love to follow it up with Shattered Star too as it's one of the few published sequels to an AP. Of course, I have to run the Rise first.

Following the Righteous conclusion, I'd like to run the upcoming Iron Gods AP though if I could find a way to work it in early next year I would take that.

It's probably too much to expect to run 3+ campaigns of the same system simultaneously as there is a serious risk of burnout somewhere down the road. That said I do have plenty of good material and interested players. It's a good problem to have.

Super-Conundrum

I find myself stuck and I thought I would throw it to the winds of the web to see if any insight comes back. The problem is this:

• I tossed out an idea to let the Apprentices play some of the DC heavy hitters as a one-shot adventure using the DC Adventures/M&M 3 rules
• I don't have anything prepared to challenge the Justice League, just some vague ideas - it was "hey would you guys be interested in doing this" comment, and they took it as "we're playing this tomorrow so start discussing how many Lanterns we can fit into one team"
• I will be running a "Limited Campaign" set in Freedom City later this summer for some of my other players
• I was planning to run a campaign for the Apprentices using M&M 3 set in Emerald City, likely starting with the Emerald City Knights published adventures, giving me the long-sought two-playing-groups-in-the-same-universe situation
• It occurred to me this week that I could run the ECK advenutres and kill two birds with one stone by setting it (and Emerald City as a location) in the DC Universe

So ...

I am not sure whether to take on the challenge of moving Emerald City to the DCU. On the plus side it gives me a reason to use all that nifty DC info I have in it's natural habitat and let's the characters rub elbows with all of those other characters - and possibly lets my players play some of them. I found some discussion of this on the Atomic Think Tank (apparently I am not the first to think of this) and it was helpful. Admittedly though,my DC knowledge is far less than my Marvel knowledge, but hey - that's what the books are for, right?

However, doing this takes them out of the Freedom City universe and costs me that oh-so-awesome setup of having two hero teams on opposite coasts who can hear about each other's exploits, come into conflict, and work together to stop the truly world-wide threats.  

My homebrew superhero universe is staying out of this one. This is really just a decision between published settings for this particular set of campaigns.

So, if anyone has any thoughts on this, please share!

Overreaction Wednesday

What if these guys ...

D&D

• "Dead in Thay" is the next big D&D Encounters thing, starting next month. I have two opinions on this:
• They always run Encounters on Wednesday nights. In Texas at least, Wednesday nights involve two popular obligations: divorced parents picking up kids and/or people going to church. Either or both of those can get in the way of spending hours at the game store Wednesday night. Even schools know not to schedule activities on Wednesday nights. I think it's cool that they have a national program that's on a set night all the time - I just wish it was on a different night.
• WOTC doesn't get enough credit for D&D encounters. It's been running for years now, giving people a chance to play in-store at a set time on a set night. If you can find a participating store you know you can play D&D at least once a week whether you have a regular playing group or not. That's a big deal. I don't always like what the company does but I do like that they do this. Even during this time of post-4E-but-not-yet-5E they've kept up a steady stream of Encounters seasons. Not that many companies could do this kind of program, and not all of those who could do. Thanks WOTC.
• The once-weekly rules Q&A and other updates on Next have really slowed down. It's about the only steady source of "Next" that we had and now it's a trickle. Ah, well, I was having trouble getting excited about it anyway - this is just one less thing to worry about. 
• The big thing over the weekend was PAX East. The whole Penny Arcade thing has never really done anything for me but their cons have turned into a medium deal and this one had some D&D news. There's a forum thread at EN World about it. It's mainly about the whole "Tyranny of Dragons" thing that's kicking off the new edition. Some people are surprised that WOTC is painting Tiamat as something fresh or as a neglected major villain - she was the big bad in both a big 3.5 adventure (Red Hand of Doom) and WOTC's 4E Adventure Path (Scales of War) - which fits with my view as I think she's showing up way too much, right up there with Orcus. I don't know where it happened but it's started to feel like D&D in general only has about 5 major forces of evil. I'm not kidding, if you look through everything from novels to Encounters to published adventures, almost all of them tie in some way into one of these:

• Tiamat
• Orcus
• Demogorgon
• Lolth
• The Elemental Princes of Evil  

         Maybe we could spend some quality time with some other major evil with 5E? Jubilex? Gruumsh? Dispater?

... were behind this thing ...

Pathfinder

• Nice long two-part interview with Erik Mona here about Pathfinder and D&D
• Preview of Inner Sea Gods here. I'll gush a bit about Paizo's campaign setting: It's been years since I got excited about Yet Another Published Campaign Setting - especially a fantasy one. I think Scarred Lands was the last one that wound me up anywhere close to this and that was over ten years ago. Golarion feels like a world meant to be used in a game, not admired from afar or buried in pointless trivia. I expect this book to continue the excellence and I am looking forward to it.
• An interview with Paizo's James Jacobs here that spends a lot of time on Adventure Paths in general, Iron Gods more specifically, and mixing technology into fantasy in particular. Putting something like Iron Gods out as a full adventure path and not just as a one-off adventure module, is an example of the kind of things I like about Paizo.

... and these guys had to stop it?

Supers

• Plot Points is doing a new adventure for Marvel Heroic that looks pretty promising
• The ICONS line artist is offering to do some custom work at pretty decent prices here.
• Not a lot of new M&M news the last few weeks but there is a nice bit about the DC Adventures Universe book and the Origins Awards here.
• The M&M bundle of holding is still going on for a few more days here. Still a crazy good deal if you're interested in superhero role playing games.

A Look at BASH - Ultimate Edition

I first ran across BASH about 2011 though it's been out in one form or another since 2004. It's a relatively rules-light supers game with a unified mechanic. The system has been adapted for other genres - there is a BASH fantasy book and a BASH sci-fi book - but it started with superheroes and that seems to be its most popular use.  The publisher's website is here. I'm looking at the Ultimate Edition which was published in 2009. The print version is a full-color 140 page softback and it's also available in PDF.

Character Creation
Characters are defined by the following

• 3 basic attributes: Brawn, Agility, and Mind. Each is rated on a 1-5 scale where 1 is typical human, 2 is really good human, and 3-4-5 are increasing levels of superhuman. There is a 0 level that represents an impaired or very limited capability in that area. 
• Powers: There is a list of powers that covers the major areas one might expect and powers are rated the same way as attributes. Categories are Movement, Combat, Bio-Manipulation, Intense Training, Mastery, Mental, and Perception. Some are generic, some are more specific.
• Skills: Each character has physical skill slots = to their Agility rating and mental skill slots = to Mind. There is a short list of fairly broad skills for each type. Spending a slot on a skill gives it a rating equal to the relevant attribute. Spending an extra slot raises that by 1, spending another slot would raise it by another 1, etc. 
• Advantages/Disadvantages - these cover everything from a frightful presence to police powers to having a super vehicle on the upside, and everything from being destitute, having a public ID, to having uncontrollable powers on the downside. 
• Finally there are Hero Points and Setbacks, which allow the user to perform various effects similar to other games from re-rolls to altering a scene in some way. They are presented as a way to balance out characters built on different amounts of points but could really be included in all kinds of ways beyond that.

Characters are built with points which are spent on attributes and powers. Skills are based off of the attributes directly and advantages and disadvantages offset each other directly with no points involved. Point level examples are given for Mystery Men, Street, World-Class, and Cosmic. Just as an example, the World Class level gives enough points to take a 3 in each attribute, or two 4's and a 1, or a 5 and two 2's. 

This whole section covers the first 14 pages of the book. Now the individual power descriptions come later and take up about 20 pages but I was impressed that the basic rundown of building a character is covered that quickly and concisely. 

Mechanics

 The mechanics are pretty simple: 2d6 multiplied by the rating of the attribute/skill/power. Doubles on this roll means roll another d6 and add. If it matches the original dice, then roll again and keep adding until it does not match. 

That allows a pretty good range of results - doubles will come up 1/6th of the time so it's quite a bit more often than a "nat 20" in a d20 game, enough to keep it interesting I suspect. 

The back cover includes a handy dandy reference chart for those who don't want to multiply in their head. 

Attacks are attack roll (Agilty for melee and thrown, Mind for ranged and mental) vs. a defense roll (Agility for most, Mind for mental). If the defense roll is higher, there is no effect. If the attack roll is higher then the attacker rolls for damage (example, Brawn for punching), the defender rolls for Soak (this is almost always Brawn) and then takes the difference between the rolls as damage or suffers whatever condition the attack inflicts. Even if the soak roll is higher, there is chance for knockback but the attack itself does nothing.

Heroes have a set "100 hits" as a damage capability. Tough in this game is reflected in a better multiplier, not more hit points. 

That's basically how the whole game works. There are lots of special rules for things like called shots, slams, grabs, taunts and lots of other comic book staples but that;s the core. There are things that can modify the 2d6 roll. There are rules for extended tests for more complex situations. There are rules for vehicles, chase, and bases. 

The powers section is solid. I'm sure there are concepts that would be tricky to make but it covers the majority of superhero types. Besides the actual powers there are enhancements and limitations that can be applied to each one and that opens up the options considerably. 

The gamemaster's section is solid as well - all the basics of running a supers campaign are here: running villains, the different types of campaigns from golden age to teen heroes to cosmic, running mysteries, including subplots - it's short but it touches all the bases. On the practical side it has stats for a lot of stock character types, from dinosaurs to tanks to dragons to "crowd of bystanders" and giant hunter robots. There's a random events table as well for livening up a session. There is also a good-sized section of archetypal heroes and villains - power armor, sorcerer, master crime fighter etc. 

The cosmic section here runs about 10 pages and is a small expansion of the game in effect to account for this higher power level. It's more than I have typically seen in a superhero RPG core book and is certainly enough to get a cosmic campaign rolling with just the main rule book. 

The book wraps up with a small section on alternate rules mechanics and a 1-page introductory adventure.

So ... what do I think? I like it. I'm going to give it a try with the Apprentices as soon as I can find space for a one-shot introductory run. It's one of the most complete one-book superhero games out there, yet it's mechanically simple and clean enough to be very playable.  

My standard for lighter supers games is ICONS. Comparing the two ICONS has more detail in some ways having more base attributes (6+ vs. 3) and having a more finely grained range of power levels (10 vs. 5) but I'm willing to give BASH a try and see how much that really matters.

I love the art style in this book and I think it communicates the intent of the game well. For a lighter, Justice League animated style short campaign or one-off run, I think it's a strong candidate. For a years-long serious campaign I'm not sure this one has the detail and grittiness that a lot of people want. I started with Champions and still love it but I can see the strengths here of a different approach. If you're looking for that level of detail though, this isn't it. With the multiplication I don't think it's great for younger kids, but for 4th-5th-6th graders I think it could work very well. 

The PDF is $10 from DTRPG here. That's a pretty good deal for this amount of material and a book this good. There is quite a bit of supporting material also, from power expansions to settings to adventures so it has had good support the last few years from both the publisher and some third party companies. I'd say if you're looking for a light supers game it's worth a look.

It looks pretty good - now I want to see how it fares in actual play. I like it enough that I'm going to try running it and I will post a follow up to describe how that went. 

Motivational Monday