Gurps Supers

[Kaewin]

Anyone play this? Is the new powers book easy to do or not. i have it but it looks like a bit of work.

[Valdar]

I wouldn't consider GURPS for Supers- the result just wouldn't resemble anything in a comic book. I could see it resembling more realistic takes on superhero worlds- like "Heroes" or similar- but GURPS is just too realistic to work for superheroes.

I may be wrong with 4th edition- they may have balanced things out such that anyone who can pick up a car won't necessarily be doing hundreds of dice of damage with a punch...

[TheRageOfGaia]

I could see it resembling more realistic takes on superhero worlds- like "Heroes"

I agree.

There are lots of "four-color" super-hero games out there. Mutants and Masterminds works off the d20 system. White Wolf has Aberrant, which I have never actually read or played, so I can't recommend it. They also have a game called Scion where you play the offspring of Gods, which looks pretty freaking cool.

Others include: Silver Age Sentinels, DC Heroes, Marvel Super Heroes, Villains and Vigilantes, City of Heroes, Blood of Heroes, Champions, and the Hero System.

I've never played any of these though, so... someone else will have to tell you about them.

[Valdar]

Champions was the best supers game I've played.

V&V was pretty old school- you rolled up your powers, similar to Gamma World, so you could be a god or a gimp depending on your luck with the dice.

Marvel worked well for playing as the characters from the Marvel Universe, but you couldn't really make custom powers, so characters you made up all had powers that were easily recognized as coming from a mainstream Marvel U character.

Silver Age Sentinels is the tri-stat game, using d10 as the base (I believe). Scaling BESM's system to d8 didn't work so well in my experience- I can't imagine that it would be any better in d10.

I played City of Heroes for a bit after its release- it had some interesting ideas, but in the end it was just another MMORPG, complete with level treadmill and punishing solo players.

[TheRageOfGaia]

Yeah, I played the MMORPG as well, and being a comic book nerd, I loved it... but it was also my first MMORPG, once I realized that they were all fairly light on the RP portion of the acronym, the amount of time you had to spent grinding, and the fact that in order to grind I had to group with people I didn't really care for, I got out of it. But there's a table-top version of it, I think.

I have GURPS Supers, and have ran it, once... it has some neat ideas in it as far as stories, powers, etc. go, but system-wise it's a chore.

If anybody starts up a supers game online...

[cliff]

I've never been a huge Supers fan, but I can say that the Hero system is much better for the average Supers game than GURPS. However, GURPS does a pretty good low-point-value "gritty" Supers.

[Verminous Countenance]

My group played Supers for years. Of all the super hero games that we'd tried over the years ( Villians and Vigilantes, Marvel, DC, Champions, Heroes Unlimited, HERO, TMNT, Underground, Aeon/Trinity/Abberant and Brave New World ) we loved GURPS best. Maybe because it had the greatest depth of customization, on par with old school Champions, but the system was easier and used a ( lot ) less dice. Maybe because we were already old hand at GURPS and playing Supers wasn't really that huge a learning curve.

We played 500+ point characters and did full bore 4 color champaigns, often dark, sometimes funny, always deadly. The deadly was by choice, we played a kind of Dark Avengers story-line to put it in todays terms. One thing I can say, fatigue is a killer. We learned very quickly that powers that caused fatigue drain or that used your own fatigue or not having extra fatigue or a good defense for it would get you killed faster than some guy doing 100 points of dmg if he hit.

Plus a GM must always balance his foes so that they are challenging and appropriate for his heroes. An old Adventurers Magazine champaign had a senario called Gilt Complex that pitted your super team against a seemingly very powerful villian group. One villian could hurl tanks or buildings at you, problem was when your tank type went up against him throwing 100 point punches and his fist went clear through him you realized the villian was all streangth and no defense. oops! Now you get to roleplay a hero on the lam or in jail for murder! Other villians in the group had similar defects that went against comic book norms, such as a psychic with no mind shield, or a speedster with no dodge. Really gave the players a jolt, made them concider thier actions.

[Mr_Sandman]

I'm very impressed with the advice on worldbuilding in GURPS Supers. I've been running a GURPS superhero campaign based loosely on Union Dues and the Secret World Chronicle, and everyone seems happy with GURPS for a 800 point, high-power, but not godlike superhero campaign.