Revisiting Old Haunts

Sunday. Our last day of Easter vacation (kids are going back to school tomorrow) and I, for one, am a little sad for it to be coming to an end. It's been enjoyable for the whole family, despite not really doing much of anything...I think the kids really needed a break from the "grind" of clock-punching for school. All of us are a little more slack these days...the wife even said she's not looking forward to her office reopening (she's been working from home since last February), and I'd imagine there are a lot of folks who feel the same after adapting to the amorphous Covid-induced limbo of "shelter-in-place."

One thing we didn't get to, though, was much gaming. Sad but true...the boy had a full schedule of sports this week (soccer Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday; baseball on Wednesday; and then both a baseball game AND a soccer game yesterday).  Today he's sleeping in...giving those poor legs a rest...but the last couple weeks of the soccer season look to be equally as busy as it continues to overlap with the Little League (and my daughter's first season of LL is slated to start in a week as well). Seems he may have finally been "called up" to a higher tier in soccer (that's the reason for the extra practices)...just as he was getting ready to chuck the thing in frustration. For me, I'm just happy I can watch my kids play in sunny weather. Yesterday was a beaut of a day (and the boy went 3 for 4 with two runs and an RBI as the leadoff hitter...what a stud!).

D&D. I think we'll be playing some D&D today. Need to exercise the "mind muscles," too.

However, while I have the minute to type, I wanted to blog a few words on my superhero side project. Even though I haven't been gaming this week, I have been designing like a bit of a madman. Even done a bit of writing, though most of that's going to need changes. Thing is, I've been tweaking my whole concept, and while I still like the idea of a game focused on the "superteam" I find I need something altogether different for play-testing. Because the fact is, I don't HAVE a "team" of players to draw upon.

But it's not just that. This week, I've found myself going back to an old well that I abandoned far too soon. Specifically I've been revisiting my old DMI (Deal Me In) game system and Legendary Might (my supers version of DMI). Last tinkered with circa 2015, there were a lot of reasons I set the thing aside:

• a lack of "robustness" in game play and character generation
• lack of system for incorporating human elements to contrast with super slugfests
• need for a modified card play mechanic to allow character effectiveness without "breaking the bank"
• need for a more abstract combat system, incorporating power usage and comics/film "violence"
• need for procedural systems that create more than just fight scenes

A lot of these things are interrelated (duh) and while I had ideas for them, they also represented a lot of work (brain sweat) that I just couldn't put together back in 2015, mainly because I was dealing with the upended life and culture shock of moving to Paraguay (not to mention a new baby). Game design in general (for yours truly) was being "backburnered" in those days, and it's not all that surprising I let the thing get all dusty and forgotten on Ye Old Laptop's hard drive.

Stuff happens.

Welp, I've cracked it out of storage and started hammering away again. And with the steady diet of superhero fare we've been ingesting this week (old X-Men films, the Falcon/Winter Soldier series, the old Fantastic Four movies, Guardians of the Galaxy, the entire two seasons of Agent Carter)...well, it's no wonder really. I've got heroes on the brain.

And, astounding as it might seem, it feels like I'm making actual progress (at least, from a design perspective). Much as I was enjoying my MSH-HU mashup of design, the system was feeling far too wargamey for the genre...and the more I wrote, the more I found myself filing off...or amputating altogether...systems that were too specific, and not abstract-y enough.

Because...well, look. When you try to model comics with reality-based specificity (say, something like GURPS, or Champions, or DC Heroes), you find yourself running into all sorts of problems because neither comic books, nor films, give a rip about emulating "reality" UNLESS it is in service of storytelling. How fast is the Flash? As fast as he needs to be. How strong is the Hulk? As strong as is necessary. "Reality" only matters when it makes a decent plot point (like Flash vaporizing himself by pushing past the lightspeed barrier). The laws of physics have never applied to Superman's abilities...only the laws of a "good story."

Yet we know that not all superhuman abilities are created equally. Spider-Man and Luke Cage are plenty strong, but they can't do what Thor or the Hulk can do. Many comic book characters have an agility the equivalent of an "Olympic gymnast;" but even in gymnastics, some Olympians are better than others on a given day (that's why they give out medals). There are super soldiers and there are super soldiers but there's only one Captain America, and it's not really about the shield and costume. 

Going psychotic...as predicted.

Trying to model these things with specificity in a game is a fool's errand. Which is why games like Jeff Grubb's original MSH and Simon Washbourne's Supers! do such a great job: they embrace the abstraction inherent in the genre. Of the two, I think Grubb has the better design, but it still falls down in three areas for me:

• too much randomness/lack of coherence in character generation
• too much procedural fiat rather than direction in adventure design
• too much "wargame" inherent in the game's logistics (in some ways more "board game" than RPG)

[although the last is somewhat corrected in the Advanced MSH system (doing away with the "area" system) it ends up falling prey to the too much specificity pitfall inherent in other games of the genre]

And it's still a pretty darn good game...probably the best for its genre of any I've read/played. At least, so far as system design is concerned. Which, of course, is why I was looking at a streamlined version of MSH for my own system as recently as a couple weeks back.  It just does a lot of things right.

But Legendary Might, especially in its current incarnation, has (I believe) great potential. And its design is all mine, for a change...not drawing from (or knocking off) some other designer's hard work. That has immense appeal to me, a dude who's made most of his money piggy-backing off concepts pioneered 40+ years ago. For that reason alone, I'd like to make the thing work. No, I'm not the first person to use playing cards as a randomizer, nor am I the first to use cards in conjunction with narrative structure...ain't saying that. But the Deal Me In system is still mine, and the way I'm using it NOW in this game...well, it's kind of exciting. 

I kind of want to play-test it. Sooner rather than later. Maybe today, instead of D&D. Maybe.

Happy Sunday to you all. Hope everyone has a good week going forward. Thanks for taking the time to read!

: )

Of Altered Humans and Hi-Tech Wonders

I've written many times over the years of my love-hate relationship with superhero RPGs. I love them because...well, because the superhero genre appeals to that same part of me that the whole "fantasy role-playing" thing does. I hate them because I've so often been frustrated with the actual products.

Yet the list of supers games I've purchased over the years has continued to expand. I've owned the first two editions of Mutants & Masterminds, as well as Green Ronin's DC Adventures. I've re-purchased Heroes Unlimited Revised and picked up Ninjas and Super-Spies as well. And in edition to the hardcopy of Supers! and Supers! Revised Edition, I've picked up a number of PDFs: Champions for 5th edition HERO, Hero High for M&M, Bulletproof Blues, John Stater's Mystery Men, Barak Blackburn's Capes, Cowls, and Villains Foul...even tracked down  copy of Dragon 47 for Dave Cook's Crimefighters game. This in addition to fat hardcovers of Wild Talents, Mutant City Blues, Champions 4E, and all the many other books I mentioned back in 2010. Oh, yeah, and some other random ones like the original Villains & Vigilantes and "for free" stuff pulled off the internet (one was a 286 page book that's still not worth mentioning by name).

All of which, BTW, are nothing but a small handful of all the superhero RPGs (and material) that have been released over the years. Lowell Francis over at Age of Ravens has a great series of posts reviewing all the superhero RPGs published from 1978-2014 (presumably, his review of 2015 games will come out sometime this year). Certainly recommended reading for anyone interested in the genre (either as a player or designer)...but there's a LOT of ground to cover.

However, most of the ground covered is pretty similar. Aside from the specific settings some of them have, most supers RPGs come in a fairly general package. Characters show up as a set of human-ish attributes (abilities, skills, whatnot), and then have powers added (from a provided list), with an attached system for modeling the kind of comic book antics one expects from a superhero RPG. Similar to the superhero genre of film, character is the main facet/draw of the game (exploration of what the character can do in relationship to the adventure/scenario/story the GM crafts)...however, the amount of character development that occurs varies wildly from game to game, from glacially slow (Marvel Superheroes) to ridiculously fast (Mutants & Masterminds).

That being said, of the variations that do help to distinguish RPGs from system to system, the one that most interests me is the one least often seen within the genre: class-based archetypes. Most supers RPGs eschew any type of D&D-style class system (even the D20-derived M&M) in favor of an open-ended system of character creation. I'm not exactly sure why this is, though I know that a lot of the genre's fans also happen to be folks who HATE class-based systems in RPG design (Barking Alien, I'm looking at you!). Maybe it's because so many (comic book) heroes over the years have defied being pigeon-holed by type? Maybe because there IS only "one type" of superhero: the kind that resolves conflict with (super powered) violence?

[to the fighter class, every problem that arises looks like a combat encounter, yeah?]

Honestly, I don't know. I suppose (putting on My Designer Hat for the moment) that having character classes in an RPG helps distinguish one player's imaginary avatar from another...and such is unnecessary when characters are readily distinct based on their various power suites. That being said, it's certainly possible to categorize power suites by archetype, and certain games have done this...City of Heroes (yes, there was a tabletop RPG based on the MMORPG) and Capes incorporate such categories explicitly in their design, while Mutants & Masterminds did it by way of sample, playable archetypes.

These particular categorizations, however...and simpler categorizations like the original Marvel Super Heroes RPG's "origins" (Altered Human, Mutant, Alien, Robot, and Hi-Tech Wonder)...ignores one of the best benefits of class-based RPG play: variation in play style. Consider D&D as a well-known example: playing a fighter is very much different from playing a magic-user and both are very different from playing a thief or cleric. Each class emphasizes different game systems, requiring different sets of rule mastery AND providing different play experiences. Play in MSH doesn't differ from character to character (you are taking an ability or power, rolling on a chart, and trying to get a good "color" result...probably using your best trait, i.e. "the one that will do the most damage" and/or "has the best probability of a good color result"). Capes (as another example) is even more pronounced in its lack of distinction...the systems function exactly the same for each character (regardless of whether or not you are a Brick or a Shooter or an "Animal Avatar"), only the narration differs. The game (like many story-first games) is about how you use the system; the system doesn't offer any variation in form/style of play.

Of the superhero RPGs I've seen, the only one that comes close to delivering class-based play variation on the same level as D&D (or Gamma World or Adventure! or Vampire: The Masquerade or...) is Kevin Simebieda's Heroes Unlimited. And, no, I don't think this is due to any particular forethought or genius of design; instead, it is almost certainly due to the haphazard fashion in which he throws the thing together, marrying different systems that model various comic book tropes while lacking any coherent, unified vision (other than the system for combat). Regardless, the variations in class allow for widely different styles of play...even wildly different styles of chargen!...possibly explaining the longevity of a system that has taken a beating from so many critics of games and design over the years.

Accidental genius? Does it matter?

If it isn't evident from the slant of this post, I should be clear that I am a big fan of class-based design.  It's not the ONLY way to do RPGs...and it's not the only way I design games!...but I think it's under appreciated for what it (potentially) offers. In fact, I should probably write "under appreciated, even by me" because of the three superhero RPGs currently on my design table, two do not utilize class at all, and the one that does does no more than categorize characters by types similar to MSH (normal, mutant, altered human, and non-human). For the first two (both of which are limited in terms of scope and duration), that's okay. For the third, though, I'm thinking I should really reconsider my approach to the thing.

Anyway, I am (as usual) running long on word count and short on time, so I'm going to have to cut off here. However, I do want to leave you with one last thought from my head (which I hope to come back to...perhaps tomorrow). Consider for a moment how the Marvel Cinematic Universe does not own the rights to the X-Men and their associated characters, and how this has influenced the way characters in the MCU are portrayed: there are no mutants. Comic book mutants are a long-running staple of the superhero RPG genre (some RPGs feature them as the ONLY type of character one may play...see Aberrant, Wild Talents, etc.). Do they need to be? Are they necessary for a decent "superhero" RPG? Was it necessary to make the Maximoffs mutants in the latest Avengers film? Do the MCU films suffer for a lack of mutation or "mutant menace?"

But more on that later.

Robot Dummies

There's an episode of the old series Challenge of the Superfriends called R.I.P. Superfriends in which, over the course of the show, the Legion of Doom manages to kill off every member of the Justice League with a potent doomsday weapon in the form of a fairly portable crystal/blasting weapon. The episode opens on a fairly somber note with the Superfriends gathered around the grave of Batman in a cemetery, before doing a flashback sequence to show what happened, and then proceeding with all the 'friends getting hunted down and gaffled.

Of course, good triumphs in the end...at the end of the show it is revealed that the heroes killed were all just robot dummies that had been manufactured to fool the Doom-dudes into thinking they'd killed the Superfriends so they'd get rid of their killer crystal.

[never mind that the imitations exhibited the exact same powers, abilities, and personalities as the real deal counterparts. If one can manufacture Superman clones, do you really need a Justice League?]

For my four year old, this has been particularly fertile ground for his imagination. Over the last several months (since first observing the show), we've played plenty of adventures involving the deaths of superheroes and villains, with the deceased individuals invariably coming back to life upon discovery that the corpses all belonged to "robot dummies."

And it's not a terribly unique "twist" when it comes to cartoon action. We just watched the old (1982) animated film Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All (a cool little gem that needs its own post), in which the defeated (and "killed") Ming the Merciless is shown, at the end, to be a robot dummy. In more recent media, we've been binging on episodes of The Avenger's: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (2010) and there's an early episode where Nick Fury is crushed to death by a raging Graviton only to find it was, again, a robot dummy.

[people probably think I'm a terrible human being and father for showing my young child such violent cartoons. It's even worse than that: last week, I taught my child to play poker (five card draw) and it's now become his favorite game. "Let's play cards, Papa!" is an oft-heard refrain in the household. I am a terrible, terrible person...]

[we play for plastic pirate treasure...gold "Jake the Pirate" doubloons and Mardi Gras beads (which are worth two coins each). My home is a den of iniquity...]

Apply face and power set.

*Ahem* ANYway...the existence (and destruction) of robot dummies in the super-heroic genre, improbable as it might be, serves a practical purpose: it keeps the heroes (and the favorite recurring villain...Doctor Doom anyone?) alive and well. Which is important in an episodic, serial medium where you hope to keep your (cash-paying) audience coming back on a weekly or monthly basis. The reduction of character death to an absurd non-happening is a necessity...if you want your fans hanging around for the long haul.

But for how long should that "long haul" be? Is it cool for a specific comic book character to have a thousand issues under his or her belt? For the company producing the comic (and for the employment of writers and artists and editors) it's a good thing...comics have always been a "for profit" enterprise even before the days of expanded media and merchandising. But is that an appropriate model for an RPG campaign? If each weekly game session is the equivalent of an "issue," than a character like Captain America (with more than 600 self-titled issues) has been "played" for more than 11 years. Which I could imagine for an RPG like D&D where characters are in a constant state of development (moving from dungeon to wilderness to court intrigue and barony management)...but for a genre that's not known for much more than finding creative ways of punching out new bad guys, well...

Maybe Will was right...maybe the superhero genre is just too simplistic for an RPG. At least, in the way that it's been imagined by the major (American) comic book companies [gosh, reading old Jim Shooter blog posts are rather enlightening with regard to that industry]. Anyway, something I'm hashing out in my mind right now (in my limited free time).

Okay...back to the grind (my kid's up). Just a couple things: looking at a very, very old version of my "superhero" RPG for possible re-vamp (the reasons will need to be discussed later), but I've come to the conclusion that (even if the genre is worth doing) one needs a very good mechanic for doing it, even (perhaps) a "gimmicky" one. Otherwise, why not simply use one of the many systems already on the market. Supers! is plenty good enough, for example, or MSH (if you don't need much granularity) or HU (if you like a lot of granularity). My "old school" supers game doesn't "have it" as it's currently written. It's serviceable, but that doesn't make it worthy of publication, you know?

Ok, okay! Kid wants to watch The Avengers...got to go!

Legendary Might - Revisited

Mmm...Monday morning and for a change I had plenty of time. Well, not plenty, but more than usual. And as one might expect, I squandered most of it. Sheesh.

But I've had a lot on my mind. Today is March 10th and, originally, my family was slated to be on a plane back to Seattle Wednesday (arriving the 13th...it is a loooong trip, even by air). Now, it appears that will be pushed back a week or more, at least for my wife. Not sure if D and I are going to be delayed as well; it depends on how much the wife's client wants to spend on changing the tickets...close to four grand a pop (which is disgusting when you consider I haven't broken five figures in three plus years of selling books. Obviously, I picked the wrong hobby for a side job!).

Anyway, this just means that this week's posting will be lighter (especially on content) as we figure out what needs to be packed and what needs to be done (here) while we're in Seattle. Plus, I started working (again) on a new game. No, not a GM-less one...I'm returning to my little superhero opus, Legendary Might. Though I'm considering changing the title to something like "SuperGroup Omega;" I really want to make the game more team oriented.

Legendary Might was a good start...and playable...but it was missing some of the things I'm looking for in a game. For instance, remember me talking about how much fun I find chargen in Heroes Unlimited? There's a proper balance to strike between detail and speed/ease of character creation. The DMI system is cool because it's both specific and abstract; suggestive, yet doesn't pigeon-hole players. Plus, I like the minimalist classes (i.e. "power types") included and the minor tweaks they bring. But I'm not sure I totally dig DMI's normal hit point system for Legendary Might. And I found a way to get a little more specific with the chargen to better pour yourself into the character: the addition of attributes (I considered calling them "abilities" but they represent more than what a character is "able to do"). These don't require any extra dice rolling, by the way, but rather use the cards already dealt, provide narrative value, and act as a refresh/reward system. I statted up 30-40 comic book superheroes this way (278 entries on my spreadsheet), and am quite happy with how it's looking...when you can do Superman down to Robin, the Hulk and the Punisher...well, that's neat. It's a little more work than Marvel's FASERIP, but it has a lot more color and specificity...which to me is getting closer to that granularity I like.

The next step is working on the actual play structure, especially involving plotting (and subplots) and scene construction. I've got a lot of different games to look at for inspiration, including Marvel, With Great Power, and Capes; I'll probably looking at a lot of these collaborative RPGs for ideas as well. Most supers RPGs harken back to a D&D-esque play structure, minus the dungeon (i.e. "no structure other than what the GM uses") which is, ultimately, too much work for Yours Truly, so I need to come up with something a little more mechanical.

Okay...more later.

Legendary Might (Part 2 of 2)

[continued from here]

No, when I talk about the "human element," I’m talking about the character’s actual humanity as expressed in the way they interact with OTHER humans…their relationships with other people, in other words. Their family, friends, and loved ones. It’s their relationships with the other people in their lives, interactions that aren’t necessarily tied to their “superhero aspects” that make them worth reading.

For example, Tony Stark becoming an alcoholic and ceasing his run as Iron Man isn’t compelling to me: there are lots of people who’ve washed out of privileged or high profile careers based on their substance abuse. To members of my generation (and younger), this is no big deal…it’s just a touch of reality in the comic book universe. What IS compelling, though is Stark’s relationships with his friends, especially James Rhodes and Bethany Cabe, and how his alcoholism (and inability to don his superhero persona) affects them. How does Peter Parker being Spiderman affect Aunt May or Mary Jane or Gwen Stacey? For that matter how does it affect his relationship with best friend/arch-enemy Harry Osborne?

I have never been much of a serial comic book collector, but there are a couple series I used to collect. One, during high school (early 90s), was the re-booted Silver Surfer. The Surfer is a humanish alien who has little in common with a real human (like myself), though he has a neat surfboard and a shit-ton of superpowers. However, what I found compelling were his romantic relationships…first with fellow alien sweetheart Shalla-Bal, then that green-skinned tree-hugging Mantis chick. These relationships were fairly central to the first dozen or so issues of the re-booted series, and it was only after both had left the picture (one due to death, the other due to voluntary celibacy) and Surfer became a simple, wandering (sometimes insane) ass-kicker that I lost interest with the comics and stopped buying them.

Yellowjacket is interesting for a number of reasons (with the exception of his lame-ass superpowers), but without his relationship to Janet Van Dyne (“The Wasp”) he loses the “compelling” aspect and just becomes a jerk…like Wolverine or something. But seeing how his relationship unfolds (or disintegrates) is GRIPPING. Part of you wants him to get his shit together…but if he does, the story will suddenly become a lot less interesting.

And while romantic relationships are by far the usual method of compulsion (good and bad: Daredevil and HIS poor taste in women is in some ways the “anti-Yellowjacket”), it doesn’t have to be. The kid sidekick (Robin, Speedy, Bucky) in many ways mimics the Father-Son dynamic (and shout out to Electra Woman and Dyna Girl for the Mother-Daughter thang); meanwhile, relationships with characters like Rick Jones or Jimmy Olson or “Aunt May” Parker or J.J. Jameson all carry their own special type of drama/baggage that help to humanize the otherwise ridiculous weirdness one finds in comics, whether you’re talking the Microverse or Cain and his House of Weirdness.

[I DO like the romantic relationships though, and many of these provide the most enrichment to otherwise “flat” comic book characters: Daredevil and Elektra, of course, but also Iron Fist and Misty Knight, Dr. Strange and Clea, and Scott Summers-Maddie Pryor-Jean Grey are all examples of romantic relationships transforming pretty darn boring, ho-hum characters…elevating them to a point of interest far more than their “super powers” might merit. Laserbeam eyes? Come on!]

Even in a  television show like Arrow, part of what makes the program so interesting is the interaction between the main character and his sister, or his mother, or his bodyguard/sidekick. Same holds true for less “conventional” superhero shows (I’m thinking of the TV show “Burn Notice” where the super-spy main character may as well be a superhero).

Legendary Might is a decent start for a supers game…it has some neat innovations using the DMI card mechanic that allows players to become more engaged with their characters while:

a)     Not requiring a lot of thought/back story

b)     Providing both description AND freedom of choice

Which is cool, especially considering some of the other neat parts (balancing PC participation without “balancing” character types; providing (I think) neat risk/reward mechanics) that DMI provides to the individual. But what it does NOT do, is it doesn’t tap into that human element.

Which isn’t all that surprising when you think about it…there aren’t many (any?) superhero RPGs that do so.  One that dips a toe into the pool a bit is “With Great Power…”, an indie supers RPG that requires players to put various aspects of their characters “at jeopardy” in order to acquire enough currency to beat the bad guys. In a way, it forces you to have/use relationships in order to endanger them (or yourself)…but looked at another way it’s simply repeating the same rinse-repeat formula over-and-over again. On the other hand, Jeff Grubb’s Marvel RPG is probably the first to have tried to tap into this as an actual game mechanic (and the last to REALLY do it prior to With Great Power…no, Champions’ psychological drawbacks/flaws do not count) using the karma mechanic, but it’s just soooo half-assed – or rather, subject to GM fiat, which to me is a type of “half-assed-ness” – that I find it quite unusable outside of pre-written adventure modules: in my long running MSH game I really don’t remember using karma awards for fulfilling relationship commitments.

So, hey, I provide this info as a CAVEAT for those of you downloading Legendary Might in its current format. Yes, I like how the game design’s looking right now. Yes, it all seems to “work.” But no, it’s NOT quite finished yet…mainly because it doesn’t find a way to incorporate that human element into the game.

And the reason it doesn’t is because I hadn’t had a chance to consider all this until after our play-test. As I noted, we had three player characters in our session. They were:

-        Winsome (Wynsomn? Wind Song?) AKA “The Hat” (hero name coined by other players): a big-headed alien (like a 7’ “gray”) with psychic powers dressed in a trench coat and Cat-in-the-Hat hat. He spent a number of decades on a hippy commune in northern California.

-        Kara Ride AKA “Stout”: a personal trainer in the style of those “Biggest Loser” types that shrinks to a Puck-like (as in Alpha Flight) strongman chick with Farah Fawcett hair. She was in a relationship with another mutant/personal trainer albeit one who was NOT a vigilante superhero and is actively irritated with Kara’s nightly excursions.

-        “Dreadnought”: basically Iron Man except less rich (and if I remember correctly, he did NOT own his own company, but worked for some sort of military-industrial complex). No family/relationships that I can recall.

Now this tiny bit of background info was created on the fly by the players based on a handful of pointed questions by Yours Truly during the chargen process: each player brought their own “stuff” to the table in this regard based on the cards they were dealt and their character concepts; none of it was forced upon them. Consequently, only Stout really had anything like a “human element” (we had the impression that The Hat’s human “family” had kind of been left behind in recent years, living in a secluded commune away from the urban sprawl of Los Angeles). 

As a consequence, the game felt a little “flat” to me…like every encounter was set up simply to get to the next encounter…which is kind of the essence of a lot of “modern” RPGs (unfortunately) but the flatness is emphasized when there’s nothing “human” to grab onto…when characters are just flexing their muscles (physical or mental) to “succeed” and “win.” Sometimes just being the biggest, baddest super on the block isn’t enough.

[ugh…I’m starting to sound like I’m going down the premise-addressing narrativist road! I have nothing against indie-gaming, but that’s not my design objective with LMZ, dammit!]

Okay, okay…this post has gotten long enough (you see now why it took me awhile to get this up on the blog!). For those who want to check out Legendary Might, you can download the one-page micro-version from MediaFire here. I’m more than happy to field any questions about the game, and I’d love to hear feedback from anyone who’s willing to play-test it. I’m going to continue tinkering with it myself, trying to incorporate more of that “human element” but like I said, it’s workable right now.  Hope folks enjoy it!

And now I’ve got some D&D stuff to write…

; )

Legendary Might (Part 1 of 2)

All right, all right…after an inward struggle of whether or not to do this, I’ve decided I would provide my readers with a copy of theone-page micro-game of Legendary Might, my new supers game (currently being tested) which makes use of my DMI (Deal Me In) game engine.

Or perhaps I should write Legendary Might™ and Deal Me In™ instead.

That’s the only real debate I had: not “does the system work?” or “will people like it?” but do I distribute, for FREE, my awesome awesome game system prior to selling it in a published (copyrighted) form for cash-money? However, leaving aside the fact that even a free publication still has a “copyright” associated with it, I’ve come to a couple-three conclusions:

1) There are a lot of pros to freely distributing something in this “bare bones” format, including free publicity and possible feedback from play-testers.

2) The game (and DMI system) still has a few bugs and tweaks to be worked out, so a full-on copy of the game would still generate some interested buyers (if there’s any interest at all) and the micro- might actually drum up some interest.

3) Games were made to be played, not kept in a dusty closet.

4) Stop being so f’ing paranoid already!

Anyway, people could already have “engineered” similar systems using the original (even BARER bones) version of DMI using the one-page micro- for Out of Time. Heck, maybe I should make MDR available, too.

So here’s the skinny: I had the chance to play-testLegendary Might (hereafter abbreviated LMZ…no, the Z doesn’t stand for anything, I just prefer a three-letter abbreviation) last Thursday at Gary’sGames in Greenwood. The three players (Greg, Kayce, and Will) seemed to have a good time with the game and (with a few tweaks from the prior week) were able to get through chargen and rules orientation, as well as accomplish some stuff(i.e. “beat up some bad guys”)…which is more than I got through in the prior week's game.

Yes, the players appeared to have fun and the game “worked”– that is, it appears to do all the things you’d expect a supers RPG to do –but for me (full disclosure time) I was dissatisfied. Not terribly, but dissatisfied nonetheless. And the reason for the dissatisfaction was that “justworking” isn’t good enough for me anymore. Most folks can work up some simple rules for an RPG (see Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, AKA “the most boring RPG ever written”)…but can they make it compelling?

I want my games to be f’ing compelling. I want people to be salivating at the mouth to play it again. Hell, forget other people; I want to be the one slavering to play the damn thing. And I just wasn’t “feelingit” at the end of the evening, despite a lot of good things happening in the session.

[full disclosure #2: my lack of enthusiasm might have been caused by several consecutive nights of less than 4 hours sleep, coupled with a long work day and a copious amount of alcohol]

But allow me to digress for a moment: it’s been several days since the play session, and I’ve had a chance to mull things over (not to mention catch up on my sleep) and I’ve come to a couple thoughts/theories.

Anyone remember a guy named Yellowjacket?

Henry “Hank” Pym is a Marvel superhero, one of the original founders of the Avengers super team (along with Iron Man, Thor, Hulk,and Pym’s wife, The Wasp). Like Iron Man, Pym is an inventor, though his specialties are more genetic engineering and electronics. His powers are derived from his inventions, including chemicals that allow for size shifting(growth and shrinking), and his specialization in insect research. He first came on the scene as Ant Man (having the ability to shrink and communicate with Ants using a cybernetic helmet), but then took on the persona of Giant Man(whose ability to grow big and strong was more about Pym’sinsecurities…comparing himself unfavorably to the likes of Thor and CaptainAmerica…then about the team needing yet another “strong man” type member).After, leaving and rejoining the group a couple times, Pym settled in his persona of “Yellowjacket,” whose only noteworthy abilities seem to be zapping opponents with a bio-electric sting, and being kind of a douche.

My first introduction to the Avengers as a child included Pym as Yellowjacket, and as a kid I thought he was pretty cool. I mean, he had a neat looking costume and he zapped people and he seemed kind of smart and,well, I don’t know he was just INTERESTING to me. Iron Man had kind of a tepid personality (in the Avengers comics), whereas Captain America was always so“goody two-shoes” (not to mention lacking real “superpowers”) and the Wasp…comeon, she shrinks? That’s just lame. Thor always had that stupid Winged hat and I just didn’t relate much to a “thunder god” at the time. Wonder Man was a coward. Tigra seemed worthless (a female replacement of the Beast who was also kind of a throwaway). Hawkeye was cool at first, but he came later (and lost his luster pretty quick).

I don’t know what it was, but I liked Yellowjacket. A lot!

But then as a (young) adult who had the opportunity to read the collected serials of my friends rather than a few scattered issues(not to mention the depth and breadth of history and information available to players of the Marvel Superheroes RPG…these days you can find info on the internet and Wikipedia, but back then RPGs were HUGE resources) I learned what a weenie Yellowjacket really was. Not just with regard to his personality: whiny , insecure, abusive, passive-aggressive, etc. No, as a SUPERHERO he’spretty lame. Tony Stark and even Hank McCoy (“the Beast”) are smarter/better inventors, he’s the weakest fighter of the group (with the possible exception of the Wasp), his size control is limited, unstable, and/or unavailable at any given point, and the extent of his insect control is pretty weak, too. He can’tfly, has no armor/forcefield, no super strength or agility; he seems clumsy and ineffectual in comparison to the other members of the Avengers. No wonder he has issues of inadequacy!

[his MSH stats are also pretty weak: his FASERIP scores are something like 60 total for physical/health and 50 or so for karma. That is totally weak sauce for any Marvel icon]

And then he does dumb-dumb, douchebag stuff: inventing Ultron (who becomes a crazy, indestructible super-villain) might be excusable,but then he puts together a robot menace to attack the Avengers so he can “saveeveryone” and redeem himself…and of course it backfires. What a dumb-dumb.

And it’s obvious that the rest of the universe has a degree of disdain (or apathy) for a character who should be an iconic member of the Marvel stratosphere. Pym’s the guy who gets left out of most (all?)Marvel-based video games, unless he’s showing up as some sort of NPC info-source; I don’t recall ever seeing Yellowjacket as a “playable character”in a video game format…he’d get his ass kicked even by “low-powered” characters like Daredevil. Hell, Misty Knight would probably bitch-slap him…and this is a founding Avenger!

However, having said all that, let me just say that these days I’ve come nearly full circle. No, if given a choice of Marvel characters to play I probably would NOT choose Yellowjacket. But once again I find the character to be both cool and compelling. I find myself looking up old Avengers comics I remember from my childhood, in part because I find Hank Pym to be such a fascinating character. I thought the“updated” version of Pym in the first couple ULTIMATES books was both interesting and dead-on in their presentation: self-serving and insecure, while wanting so desperately to be something more than he is. I mean, not everyonehas the abilities of Captain America or Thor and THAT’S OKAY. We all have our part to play in the real world…we’re all granted certain gifts to be used in this lifetime, and the more important question is HOW you use those gifts, notWHAT gifts you have. Fictional Hank Pym is someone who needs to learn that…andas with most REAL WORLD people, he has a hard time figuring it out. The Ultimates adapted long-running character arcs from the70s and 80s into a handful of issues to drive the point home without stringing out the soap opera.

[as I’ve said before, I’m a big fan of those initial two Ultimates series]

ANYWAY…why do I bring up Yellowjacket and what does the character have to do with my superhero game? Especially considering it is titled Legendary Might and Yellowjacket is anything but “legendary” (unlessyou’re talking about a legendary asshole)? Well, when considering what might be missing from my RPG that would make it truly “compelling” I considered what, if anything, made comic books compelling. I mean, besides the premise (people of our own times with phenomenal abilities), and the beautiful artwork, what is it about the stories that made for compulsory reading?

Because when you take your average comic serial of the Silver or Bronze age with an unbiased eye, the product (story-wise) isn’t great shakes. Every couple issues you have a new costumed villain to beat up. Often the villain has some advantage that must be overcome by the hero’s courage or ingenuity, but in the end the hero generally triumphs and the comic world returns to an idealistic state…until the next issue arrives. If this is ALL we had, even with clever plots and creatively sinister villains, the shtick would get old after a few story lines, REGARDLESS of the neat powers a superhero might exhibit. And some comics DO get old after a few issues (some more, some less), feeling tedious and tired, regardless of the pretty pictures. The conclusion I came to (when mulling this over this weekend) is there’s only ONE thing that can consistently make a hero or serial compelling:

The human element.

And no, I am NOT referring to a character’s human frailty, flaws, and weaknesses (Ha! You thought I was going THERE didn’t you?After all that talk about Yellowjacket’s character flaws). No, whether or not Spiderman is broke, or Tony Stark is an alcoholic, or Yellow Jacket is, well,Yellowjacket…all of that is throwaway character color. I mean, a weakness of that type is an ASPECT of the character (like Superman’s vulnerability to kryptonite), but in and of itself it doesn’t make a character (or a story)COMPELLING. In a vacuum it may be interesting (or depressing) but so is a guy who shoots fire or grows claws…frailty by itself is not enough.

[to be continued]

Bumblebee Boy

Welp, finished up my Supers one-sheet micro-game and am considering uploading it to Ye Old MediaFire for wholesale download by the masses. In fact, I might as well since games are meant to be played and yadda-yadda-yadda.

The only thing that brings out my paranoia is my proprietary DMI system being so blatantly present in the one-sheet. On the other hand, who cares?

And really, who does? It seems like a lot of folks (including several regular role-players I know and with whom I game) are not big fans of the superhero genre...for a variety of reasons. Me...well, I grew up taking long road trips with my family before there was such a thing as laptop computers and portable DVD players: the parents would simply buy a bunch of random comics and toss 'em in the backseat with my brother and I, and we'd read them all the way to Montana, thrilling to the likes of Daredevil and Ghost Rider and The Avengers.

Last night, my two year old son was running around the house wearing a cape and pretending to be a superhero. Why? Not because of his weirdo papa or his games or comics or superhero DVDs (all of which are kept well out of reach...Star Wars and show tunes are enough "bad influence" from the Old Man). Nope...the nanny took him to the library yesterday and he came back with a a big picture book called The Amazing Adventures of Bumblebee Boy, a story about a young boy dressing up as a superhero and being pestered by his younger brother until he finally relents and adopts the munchkin as his heroic sidekick. It's a cute book filled with the fun of make believe and echoing the experience of older brother childhoods all over the world.

Anyway, D wanted a cape so he could be "Bumble-Boy," too. I tend to be indulgent when my child shows interest in my own interests.

But my boy is not your average 20-something gamer (he's got a couple decades to go) and to a lot of younger folks who didn't grow up with the Silver Age (or even Bronze Age) of superhero comics they really don't get what all the fuss is about. The movies might make pleasant diversions (or not) but their initial point of reference is more likely to be a cartoon than a comic...the former of which I find to be a pale knock-off of the original medium, nice voice acting or not.

So anyway, just in case I haven't mentioned it, I AM working on a supers RPG for which this micro-game provides a nice little abstract. And the full-blooded RPG already has more that a few pages written for it, though it's far from complete. Here's a couple paragraphs culled from the introduction of the full RPG that (I hope) kind of sums up my reason for bothering to spend time designing a game for this tired genre:

Why Superheroes? 

Fantasy role-playing games exist in a variety of genres including swords & sorcery, super spies, and science fiction. All these games allow players to enjoy the fantasy escape of pretending to be someone different from ourselves, and to experience adventures from the safety and comfort of our gaming table. People in real life don’t get the opportunity to explore strange planets or fight monsters with spell and axe or single-handedly end the Cold War with the help of a few James Bond-style gadgets; role-playing games allow us to do these things, at least in our imagination.

In some ways, playing a superhero is the ultimate in wish fulfillment fantasy. The superhero genre doesn’t take place in a faraway galaxy or some Ancient Time inhabited by dragons…it takes place in the here and now of the 21^st century. And the powers available to superheroes…winged flight or super strength or magical might or incredible inventions or whatever…are limited only by one’s imagination. Comic books provide a huge range of diversity, from aliens to playboy millionaires to sorcerers to living plants to mutants to demigods to super-soldiers to robots, all interacting with the normal folks walking the streets of Any Town, USA.

That’s pretty cool.

In addition, people familiar with the comic book genre know that much of the game revolves around fighting foes and villains that no one else can; adversaries that will, left unchecked, run roughshod over everything good people hold dear: life and love, truth and justice, public and private property. It is the responsibility of superheroes to provide that check on the Forces of Darkness…and in general that means going out and kicking ass. In real life, the problems of the world – poverty, exploitation, tragedy, natural disaster – can’t be solved with a punch in the mouth. Pretending to be superheroes can, at least for an evening’s play, allow us to imagine a world where problems are so easily solved.

And that’s pretty cool, too.

Look, I am fully aware that designing superhero games...especially a game not based on the intellectual property (and built in fan-base) of an established comic book line...is a pretty lost cause. Table-top RPGs themselves are already a niche market, and a "generic hero" game is going to be two stages more "niche" than that. But I find I just cannot help myself sometimes. Just let me at least put together something that I can finally say satisfies my personal biases and design sensibilities; let me just do that and then I can stop messing around with the thing altogether. And I'll go back to working out the details of D&D Mine (something I hope to be writing more about later this week, by the way).

Play-testing is going down on Thursday. Depending on how things go, I'll have something available for public consumption shortly thereafter. We'll see if it's working.

[just BTW, Blogger tells me this is post #1313, which is of numerological significance...to me, anyway]