I love the idea of Marvel's FASERIP system.  It was one of my favorites growing up, and it's likely still my favorite Supers system.  I'll admit, though, I haven't done much with it or the Public Domain 4C as of late.

I think it could do kitchen-sink fantasy or post-apocalyptic well, but what about other genres?  Any potential shortfalls?

Links:  See here and here.

James Bond+ with gadgets and organizations and lairs type spy stuff if my memory of the rules isn't too hazy. I'm thinking Ninjas & Superspies type territory here.

One friend of mine won't touch it 'cos a normal strength human punch does more damage than a rifle bullet or somesuch so I doubt it'd do anything gritty or non-powerz too well.

It could possibly do something like modern occult horror since Dr. Strange etc. can slip sideways into that category. Can't recall how well the system does non-human esque monsters though.

Edit: Oh and 4C seemed to have lost something in the process. The attribute name changes for starters, and their first letters don't string up to anything memorable like FASERIP. I think some of the other work done for 4C is helping but I still prefer the MSH freebies.

My feeling is that the colour-coded tables of MSH need to work in conjunction with Karma. Without Karma the results can be a little too wild, full of odd resutls and with even fairly competent characters having pretty good chance of failing.

Karma works best for a heroic genre in which the protatgonist can to a limited degree (or to the specifically to the degree earned by his actions - Karma has to be earned after all), he can beat the odds and push beyond his normal limits when it matters.

So for anything heroic it could be made to work. For games in which the player's helplessness or the harshness of the world is a big theme (say, Call of Cthulhu), maybe not so much.

Also the color-coded tables tend to make the odds and results very obvious to the players. I like that. However GM who like to roll the dice behind the screen and keep target difficulties secret may not take to it.

Karma should flow like water.

I love the game it was quite literally my favorite superhero game for a long time. I do feel that Karma was a patch for a bit skewed system but that it was an elegant and well performed patch.

Then someone made me realize that the other way was really the intent. The game is resource (Karma) driven and the table is only a cost discount chart for the effect.

Primary problems other people have are mostly solved by application of the rules, or tactics offered to characters in the game.

I'm going to utilize a clone (loosely based on 4C but more robust.) for SMITE! D&D meets SWAT team in a heavily corrupt and criminal city of 3 million people (and who knows what else, alligators I know are the least sewer issue. They only killed a few dozen Kobolds a year. )

Quote from: Silverlion;363234Then someone made me realize that the other way was really the intent. The game is resource

That's a really interesting way to look at that!

I played it for quite a while, but something about it never clicked for me. i think it may have had something to do with the fact we used the Marvel U, which for reasons I've gone into before (feels forced, PCs are pale ghosts of established characters, or playing established characters, all the stories have already been told, and secret lands discovered) did not work for me.
It was kind of like eating food that is over rich. Except I'd eat chocolate mousse again, but I don't think I'd play fasrip.

Quote from: Aos;363389I played it for quite a while, but something about it never clicked for me. i think it may have had something to do with the fact we used the Marvel U, which for reasons I've gone into before (feels forced, PCs are pale ghosts of established characters, or playing established characters, all the stories have already been told, and secret lands discovered) did not work for me.
It was kind of like eating food that is over rich. Except I'd eat chocolate mousse again, but I don't think I'd play fasrip.

Nothing stops one from making big bad heroes of your own. Or ven making your own universe! (I've done that a few times.) I never quite understood that myself, and its a good reason why I've tried to keep certain NPC's in my published superhero setting "deceased" or "vanished" so that the current era is all open for the PCs.

I have negastolgia*  in regards to fasrip.


*this is my neologism for possibly unjustified negative feelings about something based upon past experience. I now declare it to be open gaming content.

When I started my MSH camapign, my plan was to try for a Marvel-light using mostly less well known charcters from the books as NPCs (none of my playes were big Marvel fans)  and keeping away from the more iconic ones. My gut feeling was it would feel a bit jarring and corny to have appearances of Spiderman or Wolverine.

In practice it did work that way. The player's themselves keep drawing into the adventures more and more iconic figures and getting a  real buzz from it, so I just followed suit. And soo it was pretty Marvel intensive.

One thing though I never protrayed the party as 'the B Team' of the Marvel Universe, they were up there with the best; saving Thor from Hell, beating up a mind controlled Captain Amerca and helping the Fantastic Four contain invaders from the Negative Zone.

I think the FASERIP system of attributes was the first I encountered beyond the usual fantasy stats and was completly taken by them. Here was an attempt to verbalise numbers (Amazing, Incredible etc...) and make a rather successful superhero role-playing game, that I still believe is miles better than Mutants & Masterminds.

The main difference being that you can actually create a character in FASRIP in under a year.

Quote from: Lawbag;363433that I still believe is miles better than Mutants & Masterminds.

I consider that MSH still has fans, years and years and years after its publication ending. I'm not sure M&M will stay true to that in the long run. I know Steve Kenson has gone to make another superhero RPG, with a different focus. I don't know if that is a sign or essentially just a desire to offer something else to super fans.


I tried to do something similar to MSH with my model of stats. I'm going to try and make it more graspable and elegant in 2E, without being the same.