Yeah, I know people will react to this by suggesting Their Favourite Game (TM) doesn't suck, and probably give detailed reasons why not, but from a personal perspective I've never really been satisfied with any of them.

There are possibly cultural reasons for this. The superhero genre is essentially an American genre. It has created a modern mythology that encapsulates American values and ideologies, through various ages, and most notable worlds are set in America. They are US centric. This ought not be a big deal, culturally, in the same way that most fantasy settings owe something to medieval Europe. However, I live in NZ now and was brought up in the UK and I'm not sure that, in my upbringing, there was anything like the same enthusiasm for supers settings and games.

The biggest games in the UK, when I began gaming, can be seen in the pages of White Dwarf magazines. D&D, Traveller, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia and latterly the Warhammer games (I suppose you could site Judge Dredd as a reasonably popular GW supers game of a sort, but the tone is more cyberpunk/satirical really). The 90s and 21st century games may have diversified gaming tastes a little, but when Arcane Magazine did a very comprehensive Greatest Ever RPG poll in the mid-90s (link) all the titles above made the top 10, but there wasn't a supers game to be seen in the top 20 (unless Feng Shui counts?). When the American magazine InQuest did a similar thing at the end of the 90s, they chose Champions RPG as their greatest ever.

Champions is an awkward beast for me. It's well noted that it is maths heavy, but it also does things that are just counter-intuitive and over-stipulated in the rules too. As a relative newcomer, Champions Complete was anything but newbie friendly. The whole shopping list approach to character generation may be just a matter of taste or design approach, but it's hard work - and antithetical to a high octane, action-orientated game. It also was one of the original games that went into drive to make themselves a generic, universal system (which is a whole other pet dislike of mine) but there has been a lot of intertwining between generic, universal systems and the supers genre throughout RPG history.

Beyond Champions, there are lots of licensed settings too - DC, Marvel, etc - but they often bring about funky new systems but struggle to last. Mutants and Masterminds is well packaged, but is also fiddly in the way it chooses to implement effect-driven powers. Some supers games deliberately choose to make simpler systems, like Icons, but they seem to then push it in a regressive cartoony direction. Also off-putting. Some games are supers games in disguise as other genres, especially White Wolf games, but these tend to be exceptions that prove the rule: I only like them, probably, because they don't appear as straight supers games.

So, help me out here. Are there any Supers RPGs that don't suck?

No, none of them don't suck.  Sorry, man.  As much as I love my Mutants and Masterminds, but nope, not even the FASERIP system is good.

The problem I have is: What do you want in a Superhero system?

Sorry. The games gont suck. You do.

Quote from: Omega;934808Sorry. The games gont suck. You do.

And the Award for Most Predictable and Flaccid Response goes to.......

I kinda agree, but i think you have to be in the right mindset to get the best out of it, rather than have the best rule-set. We gave Golden Heroes a good few tries back in the day and although chargen was interesting, we all just spent our time fucking about - although the beautifully named Ben Nevis, Man Mountain came out of those sessions, so all was not lost. I think Golden Heroes is available these days as Squadron UK.

Maybe just realise you're not cut out for supers gaming. That's what we decided years ago.

Mindset, not rule-set.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;934807No, none of them don't suck.  Sorry, man.  As much as I love my Mutants and Masterminds, but nope, not even the FASERIP system is good.

The problem I have is: What do you want in a Superhero system?

Generally, I seek intuitive systems. Not simple per se, and not certainly not blandly generic but something that does for the Supers genre just what D&D does for Fantasy, Traveller does for Sci-Fi and Call of Cthulhu, say, does for Horror.

But system isn't the whole thing for me, and I'd like a good open setting basis too. White Wolf's Aberrant wasn't far off it, although it's dated a bit, and Margaret Weis' Marvel Heroic was actually interesting to a degree, but the license didn't last.

The problem with Supers isn't the system, it's the Settings.  They make no sense, have zero continuity, and aren't even internally consistent unless you call 100% lack of consistency "consistent".  The narratives are stale, retcons of a retconned retcon where a quick Identity Metatag Swap is considered fresh writing.  In these settings, Galactus can be defeated by Howard the Duck, and even Superman or Thor can die...no not really, you silly goose. Comic books rely completely and totally on genre convention and story, they are the most ridiculously unbelievable literary form that exists outside the Modern Romance Novel.

No system is going to be able to satisfactorily deal with the reality of a Superhero setting, and no roleplaying game is going to be able to deliver on the only thing that has ever actually mattered in Supers...the current narrative and the story arc.

You could embrace the Story and play the game as both superhero and collaborative writing team by playing MHR, the best comic book simulator there is.  Or, you could leave the standard settings behind and move to something outside the box, like Godbound.

If you make your own setting though, or limit yourself to a certain power range, FASERIP I thought always did the best - it didn't drown in "build your own powers" or fall down the rabbit hole of Narrative Awareness.

Quote from: One Horse Town;934810I kinda agree, but i think you have to be in the right mindset to get the best out of it, rather than have the best rule-set. We gave Golden Heroes a good few tries back in the day and although chargen was interesting, we all just spent our time fucking about - although the beautifully named Ben Nevis, Man Mountain came out of those sessions, so all was not lost. I think Golden Heroes is available these days as Squadron UK.

Maybe just realise you're not cut out for supers gaming. That's what we decided years ago.

Mindset, not rule-set.

It's a fair point, but like you, I've also had a flicker of interest which makes me ask the question. I recall sitting down with a freebie quick play intro to Silver Age Sentinels, generating a few random characters and thinking 'you know, this could be fun..". But few specialist Supers games have really held my attention much beyond the complexities or other issues highlighted above. It's a point of curiosity. Maybe I should try Fate?!

Quote from: TrippyHippy;934811Generally, I seek intuitive systems.

Well, clearly, what's intuitive to me, isn't intuitive to you.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;934811But system isn't the whole thing for me, and I'd like a good open setting basis too. White Wolf's Aberrant wasn't far off it, although it's dated a bit, and Margaret Weis' Marvel Heroic was actually interesting to a degree, but the license didn't last.

Yeah, I can't help you.  White Wolf's system isn't much of a system in my experience, it can barely handle their Vampires.  As for Marvel Heroic, I found it tried to model a comic book, rather than superheroes, so nothing I have in my experience can help you.

I really hope you find something, Happy Gaming.

The short version is Superheroes are Not Quantifiable.

You can run them diceless but it's really a setting which throws the book out the window for Rule Of CoolTM.

Can Superman go faster than light?
Can he push the moon?
How much can he lift?
Shouldn't he be able to knock out just about anything?

How can you have a fight between Superman and Aquaman without the latter being liquefied?

How about Aquaman and Batman?

I *WRITE* superhero fiction and it's hard enough to make believable, let alone roll it out.

I wonder how much of the "suck" is due to different expectations because of different exposure to the source material. I've never been a comic book reader. But I've played supers RPGs for 30 years. I just don't care about comics. Actually, I know a little more about them now than I used to, due to the movies and a little exploration of the comic book titles behind them. But I've played Champions for decades without knowing or caring why people said the Champions universe was Marvel with the serial numbers filed off. Naturally, that might rankle with some comic book fans looking for genre emulation. I don't care at all whether the game unfolds like a comic book, I just like the character creation and tactical combat. Most of the people I've played with have been similar, but that might just be my experience.

Both Supers! and Triumphant are great games. BASH, ICONS. You can run supes using the FATE system, or even the Free Universal RPG (otherwise known as FU Rpg [not kidding here]).

For me, it's not so much the games sucking as I don't think I run them all that well, despite what I consider to be voluminous knowledge of super hero stories, tropes and universes. We've had some great sessions and short runs with low-level supers in highly specific settings (i.e., WWII, Cold War Era), but I never feel like I quite have it right. I think all of the systems, above, do the job fairly well.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;934805So, help me out here. Are there any Supers RPGs that don't suck?

Hard to say. Comics in general tend to suck now, because of their political agendas. And that same media mindset is making the games. I prefer not to use any supers RPG rules for game sessions that may involve supers.

I was never a huge fan of superhero comics (or movies) but I agree that the trouble with such games comes from holding them up to the light of their source material... RPGs aren't books or movies. they don't create or match a literary or cinematic experience, and in the same way they're not comics either. The kind of things I want in a roleplaying game are often antithetical to what I've seen of most mainstream superhero comics and movies.
That said, there are super-powered elements to most all the RPGs I play, and I have enjoyed playing superhero games because I didn't come to them with a load of comic-derived expectations. Superworld and Icons were both good gaming for me... but the people I played them with weren't huge fans of the comics either, so emulating that genre/medium wasn't our goal/measure.
Nowadays, the thing I most want to pull from the superhero genre are the weird characters and costumes... secret lairs and sidekicks. The power fantasy elements are far less interesting to me, I think I could happily go with NO powers... or just a relatively 'street level' wuxia thing ala Batman.

Quote from: CTPhipps;934815The short version is Superheroes are Not Quantifiable.
...
I *WRITE* superhero fiction and it's hard enough to make believable, let alone roll it out.

This.

It's not unlike playing Star Fleet Battles, where game writers took a few hours of disjointed, inconsistent TV narrative and turned it into a set of specific rules.

That said, I think FASERIP captures the 'feel' of Supers genre with its system better than any later rules set. The attribute names/values, the combining of health and fighting ability into one derived stat, and the simple, comic-like generalizations of the action table seem to just flow.

Plus easy chargen and a child-level-of-entry players book (it's the Battle Book!) keep me coming back.