While I eagerly await my copy of the new version of Strike Force, what Superhero Game that I can buy in PDF format has the best advice for setting up and running a Superhero Campaign?

BASH has an excellent section on settings & tropes.

Thanks I will get that

As an avid superhero gamer for thirty years, let me say this: no superhero RPG gets superhero comics right.  No, not even BASH, which repeats howlers like "Superheroes and even Villains of the Silver Age never killed anyone."

If you want to run an authentic superhero campaign, throw away all the superhero RPGs you own and go read a bunch of actual comic books.  You'll discover pretty quickly that superhero RPGs are full of crap.

Quote from: daniel_ream;905560As an avid superhero gamer for thirty years, let me say this: no superhero RPG gets superhero comics right.  No, not even BASH, which repeats howlers like "Superheroes and even Villains of the Silver Age never killed anyone."

If you want to run an authentic superhero campaign, throw away all the superhero RPGs you own and go read a bunch of actual comic books.  You'll discover pretty quickly that superhero RPGs are full of crap.

Then how are you an avid superhero gamer for 30 years if you have no game to play?

Quote from: daniel_ream;905560As an avid superhero gamer for thirty years, let me say this: no superhero RPG gets superhero comics right.  No, not even BASH, which repeats howlers like "Superheroes and even Villains of the Silver Age never killed anyone."

If you want to run an authentic superhero campaign, throw away all the superhero RPGs you own and go read a bunch of actual comic books.  You'll discover pretty quickly that superhero RPGs are full of crap.

No, that's generally true. Just because there's an exception doesn't mean the trends do not exist.   And ditto on Matt's question.

Speaking of, what is it you think super hero games get wrong? I find it's players who usually have stupid ideas about supers (trying to play them like D&D characters, for one thing).

I'll throw Mutants and Masterminds 3e onto the fire.

Quote from: cranebump;905538BASH has an excellent section on settings & tropes.

I second this.  It has excellent advice on how to tailor your game for various super-hero settings, from the street-level Daredevil type to the cosmic Legion of Super-Heroes type.

I may have to pick it up.  I wasn't impressed with the system, but good advice is always something I want to check into.

Now, if only there was a good Iron Age game...  But then, I'm a freak, and I don't expect anyone to ever cater to me.  Except me.

Quote from: cranebump;905565No, that's generally true. Just because there's an exception doesn't mean the trends do not exist.

Are you having trouble seeing how a universal statement like "Superheroes...never" and a general statement with exceptions are mutually exclusive?  It didn't happen often, and it wasn't cavalier like it was in the Iron Age, but heroes and villains did occasionally kill.

QuoteAnd ditto on Matt's question.

I try most (I won't claim all, because I don't have that much time) available superhero RPGs; some require more hacking and modifying than others to accurately represent actual comic books.  The closest I've seen yet mechanically to being a Good Super Hero RPG is Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, but since it has no campaign advice I didn't mention it as useful to the OP.

QuoteSpeaking of, what is it you think super hero games get wrong? I find it's players who usually have stupid ideas about supers (trying to play them like D&D characters, for one thing).

There's more than a little of that built in to a lot of superhero RPGs.

There's how superhero RPGs get things wrong mechanically, which I don't think is worth getting into because wankers, and there's how they get basic facts about superhero comics over the years wrong.  That latter is, at least, objectively verifiable.

Broadly: equating the Silver Age with the 1963 Batman TV show/Challenge of the Super-Friends; confusing tropes of solo books with tropes of group books (superhero teams rarely if ever had a particular attachment to the specific city the team was located in, instead being globally mobile); keeping the scope of the game world smaller than it is in most superhero books; ignoring the mystical aspects of superhero comics, or worse, sticking them off in an inaccurate genre ghetto; failing to note the basic original conceit of the two major comic book universes (DC started out as Detective Comics; The Marvel bullpen started out writing teen romance comics) and how that affects the way the books were written.

And so on and so forth.  I'll reiterate: ignore what any superhero RPG tells you about how comics are and just go read a bunch of comics.

You have to get used to just rolling with things a lot.  Within a group of super hero PCs, you will have a wide array of capabilities that players can and will come up with all sorts of novel ways to use and combine.  They will come up with all sorts of crazy plans and have the skill and powers to make them work.  You are going to end up just going with what they are doing a lot.  It's best to just set up a situation, give the enemies goals they are trying to achieve, decide what the enemies can do and then turn the players loose on it.

Quote from: daniel_ream;905560If you want to run an authentic superhero campaign, throw away all the superhero RPGs you own and go read a bunch of actual comic books.  You'll discover pretty quickly that superhero RPGs are full of crap.

That's what I was going to say.

Before you start, you want to think about exactly what kind of super hero game you are going to be running.  Super hero systems generally give players a great deal of latitude in how they will make their characters.  It's important that you tell them just what sort of game you are going to run and that they buy into it before making characters.  Player buy-in is really important in super hero games because of the huge variety of styles and tones possible and the huge variety of characters that can be made.

Here's the trick: "superhero" isn't a genre, its a character archetype that features in multitudes of genres all with their own tropes/cliches. Getting players on the same page as the genre you want to run vs their preconceived notion of superheroes is really the only major hurdle to running a successful supers game.

At what level of power do you intend to play ?

- Batman level (apex of humankind) ;
- Dardevil/Captain America (low level superpowers) ;
- Wolverine (middle level superpowers) ;
- Superman (high level superpowers) ;
- Jean Grey/Phoenix Force (Higher level superpowers).