Well, they have realeased a statement that marvel is trying again. I saw threads on other forums so i wanted to start one here:
https://www.marvel.com/articles/gear/marvel-to-launch-official-marvel-multiverse-tabletop-role-playing-game-in-2022
This may not be the place to discuss this game, cause it sure as heck is not osr related, but its kinda news. I believe it would be the 5th time they are releasing a marvel tabletop, so naturally the 5e dnd comparisons about. Matt Forbeck is involved and its slated for 2022.
Anybody got any opinions? Asking cause i feel nothing typing this, i wrote this more for posteritys sake. Still, am a bit curious.
It's a different world we live in, when the main character on the cover of the playtest book is Groot.
There are references to a new "D616" system, but nothing beyond that. Matt Forbeck did the Brave New World RPG, back at the start of the millennium, though I don't really know anything about the system. Otherwise, he's mostly written supplements. And lately, he's mostly been an author. That doesn't seem like the strongest credentials.
Quote from: Warder on June 06, 2021, 08:27:09 AM
This may not be the place to discuss this game, cause it sure as heck is not osr related, but its kinda news.....
What? We're not discussing anything but OSR here now? Discuss any RPG you like.
Introducing GAS, the RPG.
What? We're not discussing anything but OSR here now? Discuss any RPG you like.
[/quote]
All righty. There is just nothing about this except the cover art, name of the system, a tease of the main stat names. And a lot of implied nothing. At this point i guess ill wait until theres anything substancial to talk about. To sum this up, its a teaser meant to drum up interest. The problem is that this ip has never had the sucess people behind it wanted, at least in the last iteration. So im a bit skeptical if their intentions are for a line or just a short term cash grab(at best;/)
On the other hand, i really want to start a game of Marvel superheroes and strand them in SLA Industries verse. Confronting supes with that unrelenting darkness and dark humour would be fun for a one shot or two.
Hard pass, I'm afraid. I'm sure the people writing the RPG are fine people and all, but Marvel and Disney have utterly obliterated any interest I have in their properties. I'm not a connoisseur by any means, but I've moved on to buying from indie presses and manga for my comic book fix these days. So I hear about a new Marvel rpg and all I can muster is a yawn.
Quote from: SavageSchemer on June 06, 2021, 11:57:37 AM
So I hear about a new Marvel rpg and all I can muster is a yawn.
And, it appears, a post.
Quote from: Pat on June 06, 2021, 09:13:32 AM
There are references to a new "D616" system, but nothing beyond that.
Yeah, I'm sort of bummed that there aren't more details. Often I can tell something about a game based on the system's name (the d6 system, 2d20 system, d20 system, or whatever) but it's hard to imagine what d616 might represent. Maybe something that combines a d6 and a d16? Hmmm.
Quote from: SavageSchemer on June 06, 2021, 11:57:37 AM
Hard pass, I'm afraid. I'm sure the people writing the RPG are fine people and all, but Marvel and Disney have utterly obliterated any interest I have in their properties. I'm not a connoisseur by any means, but I've moved on to buying from indie presses and manga for my comic book fix these days. So I hear about a new Marvel rpg and all I can muster is a yawn.
Much the same here, although I prefer European comics to Manga. I've been a bit of Disney fan since childhood, chiefly the old hand-animated stuff, but I refuse to give even a cent to the company where it currently stands. I think they have to fire almost the entire leadership for that to turn around. Example : https://www.dailywire.com/news/disney-admits-passing-on-scripts-for-diversity-we-said-pass-on-show-about-white-family
FASERIP or bust.
Quote from: finarvyn on June 06, 2021, 02:19:16 PM
Quote from: Pat on June 06, 2021, 09:13:32 AM
There are references to a new "D616" system, but nothing beyond that.
Yeah, I'm sort of bummed that there aren't more details. Often I can tell something about a game based on the system's name (the d6 system, 2d20 system, d20 system, or whatever) but it's hard to imagine what d616 might represent. Maybe something that combines a d6 and a d16? Hmmm.
I don't own any d16s. Anybody have some?
Oh the stats spell out MARVEL in this one. Isn't that clever.
Quote from: HappyDaze on June 06, 2021, 02:58:31 PM
Quote from: finarvyn on June 06, 2021, 02:19:16 PM
Quote from: Pat on June 06, 2021, 09:13:32 AM
There are references to a new "D616" system, but nothing beyond that.
Yeah, I'm sort of bummed that there aren't more details. Often I can tell something about a game based on the system's name (the d6 system, 2d20 system, d20 system, or whatever) but it's hard to imagine what d616 might represent. Maybe something that combines a d6 and a d16? Hmmm.
I don't own any d16s. Anybody have some?
I assume the box set will come with a d616.
It'll be a big box.
More seriously, it's a reference to Earth-616, the main world in the Marvel universe. The system probably involves d6s, but I don't think we can draw any more conclusions, because the name is clearly an attempt to be clever instead of direct reflection of the mechanics.
Honestly? I welcome it. It will finally shut up the idiotic rabid Cortex fans.
This one will actually be a full RPG with character generation. Something Cortex didn't have at all.
The d616 is a play on the comic dimension beeing designated 616 in the comics. Almost all the threads on other forums make fun of the d616 thou. So this is the second wink at the audience this blurb has, besides the marvel spelling stats. Hmm.
Quote from: Thornhammer on June 06, 2021, 03:15:19 PM
Oh the stats spell out MARVEL in this one. Isn't that clever.
That explains Vigilance. Which I assume is a perception stat.
I remain cautiously optimistic. Big fan of Marvel Faserip though it might be good to get a modern marvel rpg.
As for the name kind of a cheesy play on words though Faserip ain't better IMO. When I first heard that I though my friend had sneezed.
Quote from: Darrin Kelley on June 06, 2021, 03:22:35 PM
Honestly? I welcome it. It will finally shut up the idiotic rabid Cortex fans.
Must have been somewhere else. I'm the only Cortex fan I know of here, and the best thing I think I've ever said about MSH is that it works, mostly, but in a Rube Goldberg machine type manner. "Okay, this whole thing is kind of flowing like I'd imagine a comic book to, but . . . there's gotta be an easier way."
Cautiously optimistic about the new game. The artwork looks good. The nod to 616 is nice. I didn't catch the stats spelling out MARVEL, but the names don't seem too ridiculous. I just hope they have a better sales model and more realistic expectations going in. I can't fault MW too much because they were largely just doing what they were told. But it sold like hotcakes from the news I saw and still got canned for under performance. Marvel didn't seem to understand that RPGs are a niche, and superhero RPGs exponentially more so no matter how famous the property. A really successful RPG venture is only going to be a drop in the bucket compared to the profits they get from other ventures, and it's not anyone's fault. It's just reality of the market. Like I said, I hope they can be more realistic with their expectations this time so maybe a Marvel RPG can survive more than a few months.
And yes, FASERIP is awesome.
I'm surprised that this is being made by Marvel Entertainment and not just another licensed game. The upside for an RPG is pretty low. But, they are charging money for the "Playtest" rulebook so they are going for maximum monetization.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on June 06, 2021, 07:39:29 PM
But, they are charging money for the "Playtest" rulebook so they are going for maximum monetization.
FFG made it work, and if anyone can make money this way, it's probably Disney, since anything Marvel Cinematic Universe generates big $. Who knows, if they make it work, maybe they'll put out a Star Wars version of the ruleset too.
Quote from: HappyDaze on June 06, 2021, 07:47:19 PM
Quote from: hedgehobbit on June 06, 2021, 07:39:29 PM
But, they are charging money for the "Playtest" rulebook so they are going for maximum monetization.
FFG made it work, and if anyone can make money this way, it's probably Disney, since anything Marvel Cinematic Universe generates big $. Who knows, if they make it work, maybe they'll put out a Star Wars version of the ruleset too.
Look at the art. The new RPG appears to be based on the comic universe, not the cinematic universe. That not the MCU's Thor, for instance.
Quote from: Pat on June 06, 2021, 07:52:30 PM
Quote from: HappyDaze on June 06, 2021, 07:47:19 PM
Quote from: hedgehobbit on June 06, 2021, 07:39:29 PM
But, they are charging money for the "Playtest" rulebook so they are going for maximum monetization.
FFG made it work, and if anyone can make money this way, it's probably Disney, since anything Marvel Cinematic Universe generates big $. Who knows, if they make it work, maybe they'll put out a Star Wars version of the ruleset too.
Look at the art. The new RPG appears to be based on the comic universe, not the cinematic universe. That not the MCU's Thor, for instance.
Good point. I wonder if Disney will release a competing MCU RPG.
Quote from: Thornhammer on June 06, 2021, 03:15:19 PM
Oh the stats spell out MARVEL in this one. Isn't that clever.
If I can't spell FASERIP, which has all sorts of Karma loss implied (but not necessarily!) I don't want it.
Honestly I can't conceive of anything Matt Forbeck is going to make under the careful eye of SJW Marvel to pry me from MSH which I still run to this day. Good luck.
It's sourcebooks will be based in nu-SJW-Marvel, so, yeah. Hard pass.
I'll play MSH using Hero System and fond memories of how Marvel Comics' main line of superheroes were in the 70s and 80s.
If you read carefully Forbeck is listed the "writer and co-designer." The lead designer hasn't been named.
Also, you should all play Ascendant. It's the best superhero RPG in the universe.
It would seem to me the big problem for comic book RPGs is the team problem, mechanically it is difficult to balance characters from published media; Batman in Batman comics must be portrayed differently from Batman in Justice League comics simply because he has to hold his own with the Martian Manhunter and Superman. M&M would have been a more interesting choice, if only because you could finally have the DC/Marvel matchups everyone wants to be able to play.
Quote from: Toran Ironfinder on June 07, 2021, 02:45:23 AM
It would seem to me the big problem for comic book RPGs is the team problem, mechanically it is difficult to balance characters from published media; Batman in Batman comics must be portrayed differently from Batman in Justice League comics simply because he has to hold his own with the Martian Manhunter and Superman.
That's an interesting theoretical question, but it doesn't seem to be a real problem, because it's not something people complain about when it comes to actual games.
Wendy's was the test case.
Marvel Entertainment is the demonstration.
And everyone in the RPG business who is currently publishing or seeking to publish licensed IP should be paying rapt attention.
IP holders have learned that it is no longer necessary to license out their IP to a third-party RPG publisher. They can produce an RPG in house by using freelance talent.
This is potentially a major shift in the RPG industry.
Quote from: amacris on June 07, 2021, 02:02:10 AM
Also, you should all play Ascendant. It's the best superhero RPG in the universe.
BOLD CLAIMS...
Quotethe all-new D616 System, an accessible and easy-to-learn system for newcomers to tabletop RPGs and a natural evolution for those familiar with the most popular tabletop role-playing games on the market.
That sends up some red flags to me. It sounds like it may just be a modified D&D5E system and not something more fitting for a supers game.
As for the Cortex version of MHR not having character creation, that's not true. Page 110 of the core book gives you the rules for making characters of your own. There aren't HERO levels of detail and options and you may not like them, but they are there. I've had players make a few dozen unique heroes for the game.
Threads like this remind me of just what a wonderful system FASRiP was.
We need an OSR FASRiP Superhero RPG.
Quote from: Torque2100 on June 07, 2021, 11:07:43 AM
Threads like this remind me of just what a wonderful system FASRiP was.
We need an OSR FASRiP Superhero RPG.
There are a couple.
Phil Reed made 4c, but I recommend against supporting the game. It was a very early case of crowd-funding, long before Kickstarter. Reed raised the money, then got a job at SJG, and basically said fuck off I have a real job to the backers, and didn't get around to releasing the game for years.
Blacky the Blackball (the guy who made the Dark Dungeons clone of the Rules Cyclopedia) also made one called FASERIP. It's not a pure clone, though I haven't looked it over to see what changes have been made.
Quote from: Torque2100 on June 07, 2021, 11:07:43 AM
Threads like this remind me of just what a wonderful system FASRiP was.
We need an OSR FASRiP Superhero RPG.
There is already a really good retro-clone: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/177913/Faserip (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/177913/Faserip)
You can get it for free on DrivethruRPG and it is available in hardcopy. I have 2 hardcopies. The changes are fairly minimal, just fixing some of the shortcomings of the original system. The biggest thing is they had to change the names of the power ranks but it is still so similar it is really simple. You can get away with just using the original names for the power ranks from the TSR game if you like.
Images of the power ranks table and the ranks themselves are below:
https://ibb.co/5v9PJLc (https://ibb.co/5v9PJLc)
https://ibb.co/t2RjJtT (https://ibb.co/t2RjJtT)
D616?
Wassat? A D6 and 3D6 -2 (D16)? Maybe the 3D6 -2 is for general rolls and the D6 is a wild die thing.
Time will tell. Hopefully it won't turn into something like Cortex. Wanted to like it but couldn't bring myself to enjoy it no matter how much I played. The killer for the system for me is I never felt like I wanted to run it.
It looked great though, with superb layout and Marvel art.
To me, thing is, I know i can FASERIP with ultimate powers book and random character generation and come out with an incorporeal version of groot with super surgery powers that let me literally rip a villains head off and attach it to their ass...i don't see how they can hope to top that shit.
Quote from: amacris on June 07, 2021, 02:02:10 AM
Also, you should all play Ascendant. It's the best superhero RPG in the universe.
That's a bit tricky when it hasn't been commercially released yet. Or have I missed something?
I'm wondering if 616 won't use 3d6? If I remember it in 2022 I'll check it out.
Quote from: amacris on June 07, 2021, 02:02:10 AM
Also, you should all play Ascendant. It's the best superhero RPG in the universe.
I'll bite. :) It looks very MEGS inspired, but possibly more complex. What would benefit me from learning Ascendant rather than DCH/BoH?
(Since we don't know anything really about the Marvel game until next year)
I'm never averse to looking at a new RPG system and seeing if it works better than one I'm using now or has ideas that I can steal. This is especially the case with Supers systems, since none of them has ever 100% worked for me. Lots of them have concepts I like but tied to other things I don't.
MHR handled the idea of team power imbalance better than any other Supers RPG but failed on some other levels for me. The old Mayfair DC Heroes had that power ranks table but too much crunch on top of it and I didn't like the D&D relic of enforced power levels for M&M in any edition. Champions looks like something that's great if you're willing to put in the time needed to write up the stats in between sessions and FASERIP... Um... Why do people like this thing again?
So I'll be looking at the game just to see if the system is any good. If the setting is all the shit from the current comic universe then that can just be ignored. I mean, we're talking about Superhero RPGs here. Anyone who's read one that's not an official license has seen the parade of cringe-worthy example NPCs they all include. Do you feel obligated to use them if you run the system? No, and the fact that in the upcoming game the fact that these people have appearances in comics by a big name company doesn't change that.
I mean, the official press release there has done one thing right. It's made sure that every gamer who reads about it will look up more about the game just because we want to know WTF a d616 roll looks like.
Matt Forbeck is a preening mediocrity. I remember there was some writing award (from Gencon maybe?) that he and a couple of other winners of kept on calling the "prestigious (whatever the name is) award" like it was supposed to mean something.
But whatever, preening mediocrity is appropriate for Marvel.
Well, according to Wikipedia:
"Forbeck has won Origins Awards for Best Roleplaying Game for Deadlands and The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game, Best Miniatures Rules for Warzone and The Great Rail Wars, Best Roleplaying Adventure for Independence Day, Best Fantasy Board Game for Genestealer, and Best Short Story for "Prometheus Unwound" from The Book of All Flesh."
Looks like a pretty good sort of mediocrity to me.
Quote from: Tantavalist on June 08, 2021, 08:17:54 AM
I'm never averse to looking at a new RPG system and seeing if it works better than one I'm using now or has ideas that I can steal. This is especially the case with Supers systems, since none of them has ever 100% worked for me. Lots of them have concepts I like but tied to other things I don't.
MHR handled the idea of team power imbalance better than any other Supers RPG but failed on some other levels for me. The old Mayfair DC Heroes had that power ranks table but too much crunch on top of it and I didn't like the D&D relic of enforced power levels for M&M in any edition. Champions looks like something that's great if you're willing to put in the time needed to write up the stats in between sessions and FASERIP... Um... Why do people like this thing again?
Power Levels in M&M is just a different expression of Champions' longstanding "Rule of X" that limited active points, attributes and OCV/DCV. They don't work at all like D&D levels, instead the GM sets a PL to reflect the tone of the campaign; 7-8 for Pulp/Golden Age, 10 for an X-Men/Team Book campaign, 12-14 for a Justice League-ish campaign and 14+ for a Cosmic-level campaign.
It really helps with the disparity between "Bat-books" and "Justice League" Batman for example. If the GM wanted a "Bat-books" campaign he'd set the power level at 7-8 and the players would build appropriately; Batman has his utility belt, the Batmobile and his Batcave and Wayne Enterprises is a dominant regional company. In a Justice League campaign the GM sets the PL at 14 and Batman has orbital spy and kill sats, all the Bat-vehicles, drones, a secret Moon Base with a transporter, and Wayne Enterprises makes Apple/Google/Amazon/Facebook/Microsoft/Warren Buffet/Elon Musk combined look like paupers (It was pointed out in one of books that Batman's operating budget is a rounding error in Wayne Enterprises' financials so it's basically hidden in plain sight).
So I've never associated PL with D&D since I moved from HERO 5e to M&M in terms of my superhero RPG gaming.
My personal fix for my own biggest issue with M&M 3e is to dump the True20-style Toughness saves that make combat too swingey for my tastes for heroes/villains having 50 hit points and mooks having 10 with damage dealt being 1d20 + damage ranks - target's Tougness modifier.
But other than that I have generally found M&M to have the character building crunch of Champions I love with a smoother and quicker game engine in actual play.
Quote from: Anselyn on June 08, 2021, 01:38:12 PM
Well, according to Wikipedia:
"Forbeck has won Origins Awards for Best Roleplaying Game for Deadlands and The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game, Best Miniatures Rules for Warzone and The Great Rail Wars, Best Roleplaying Adventure for Independence Day, Best Fantasy Board Game for Genestealer, and Best Short Story for "Prometheus Unwound" from The Book of All Flesh."
Looks like a pretty good sort of mediocrity to me.
Yeah I've heard of the Origins award. You'll note I said it was given out at Gencon. He and a couple of others had parroted this on twitter some years ago. It was for some short story he wrote.
But the guy does love him some awards.
Quote from: Pat on June 07, 2021, 08:44:11 AM
Quote from: Toran Ironfinder on June 07, 2021, 02:45:23 AM
It would seem to me the big problem for comic book RPGs is the team problem, mechanically it is difficult to balance characters from published media; Batman in Batman comics must be portrayed differently from Batman in Justice League comics simply because he has to hold his own with the Martian Manhunter and Superman.
That's an interesting theoretical question, but it doesn't seem to be a real problem, because it's not something people complain about when it comes to actual games.
Depends on players. Old days, in WEG a jedi and smuggler had different power levels, certainly, but rile protection and fear of Vader keeping Jedi to play low key. Same with old school dudes, from what I understand, the thief has a weaker role in combat, but he had skills that gave him a spot light elsewhere, unless he was an elf and half fighter.
Not sure how that works with younger people today in a supers game. In the RCR WOTCs Star Wars, People seemed to like point buy for egalitarian reasons.
Well, in M&M that sort of role-protection was handled by Power Level trade-offs.
The gist is the total of your dodge and toughness can't exceed twice the campaign's power level. Likewise the total of your fortitude and will can't exceed twice the power level and an the total of an attack's accuracy and effect can't exceed twice the power level.
So you can be agile or a brick or be okay at both (the Superman-expy at PL 10 has Toughness 12, Dodge 8, the Hulk-expy has Toughness 14, Dodge 6, and the Speedster has Toughness 5, Dodge 15). You can be physically tough (vs. gasses, poisons and other things that bypass armor/impervious skin) or mentally or a mix. You can have really accurate but weak attacks, really strong but inaccurate attacks or a mix.
But you can't be the best at all of those at once compared to others in your power level (outside your power level is another matter; actual Superman is PL 15 with Toughness 20, Dodge 10 so his toughness is the maximum a PL 10 character could have with a 10 dodge on top).
Quote from: Anselyn on June 08, 2021, 01:38:12 PM
Well, according to Wikipedia:
"Forbeck has won Origins Awards for Best Roleplaying Game for Deadlands and The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game, Best Miniatures Rules for Warzone and The Great Rail Wars, Best Roleplaying Adventure for Independence Day, Best Fantasy Board Game for Genestealer, and Best Short Story for "Prometheus Unwound" from The Book of All Flesh."
Looks like a pretty good sort of mediocrity to me.
He participated in writing them. By that standard, Pundit designed 5e.
Out of curiosity - do you play any of these games? I don't. But I do own several things Forbeck has written for, and they're "okay" at best. I'm not hating on him - dude is out there and working it. I'm saying that he's largely unknown for pulling off good design on his own. And this whole thing reeks of a typical poorly thought concept from Marvel and they got a guy with some name-recognition to prop up the house of cards.
Given Marvel's lack of commitment to its own IP - I have *zero* faith that this project is going to get any traction because Marvel is a dog chasing a car on this. I'll go one further - Forbeck could make a fantastically great system. He could magically get the MEGS system from DC, and do an update for Marvel - and it will still fail.
MEGS, MSH, ICONS, V&V, M&M, Hero - To their playerbase are *all* great systems. In totality, they make up a sliver of the RPG market. And half of these systems are *dead* in terms of active support. The Marvel brand is obviously a big attractor to the Super RPG genre, but it's going to take a lot of innovation and support to win people over. And there is zero reason to believe Marvel will do it, especially given that this is being apparently done in-house.
I don't go to International House of Pancakes to have my new car built, even if they hire Mr. Goodwrench to do it.
Remember the Marvel Universe RPG and how that game was the last time Marvel produced an RPG in-house...
I am cautiously optimistic. My ten year old daughter might want to play a superhero game and this would be her first.
Quote from: tenbones on June 10, 2021, 10:22:35 AMThe Marvel brand is obviously a big attractor to the Super RPG genre, but it's going to take a lot of innovation and support to win people over. And there is zero reason to believe Marvel will do it, especially given that this is being apparently done in-house.
If they try to make a tactical, combat focused RPG, the game will be DOA as Crisis Protocol already does this and is fairly popular (from my understanding). And abstract, story game would be different enough but that's a tough design goal.
I actually like the SAGA game that TSR produced years ago. I know that it wasn't popular but I thought the mechanics worked for the most part and it played closer to what I imagine an ideal superhero RPG would. [It had a big problem with characters like The Hulk though]
Has there ever been a superhero game that successfully recreated the style of comic books? I guess the same question could be asked about any genre RPG. For supers almost every comic story concluded with a fight that is won by not using powers but from some plot element brought up in the earlier part of the story or some twist. I don't know if any Spiderman story ends with him just using his webs and strength to beat Sandman or Doc Ock, but always found something else to use. Might be difficult to add as a mechanic, but if the GM has to make a big point of it earlier in the session then it becomes a too obvious advantage.
Or that last Avengers Movie which required they ***spoilers*** build a $^^$&@(*$%$(* to defeat the bad guy. Would one of the PCs need Artificer or something similar, how would you guarantee that they would think up that idea?
Seems like a genre that would be very difficult to create scenarios for which would entertain players and GM. But maybe I know nothin'!
You guys are making my point for me.
1) Nothing prevents *anyone* from using the half-dozen (and more) Supers rules that are out there, without me even pointing fingers at which ones are actually great/good/okay/shitastic.
2) Everyone knows if we whittle them down to top 5, lets say, there is *no* fucking way Forbeck backed by Marvel will design something in the caliber of those top 5 systems. UNLESS....
3) He cribs one of them wholesale or in part. At which point he *may* have the design part covered... but the marketing issue is *gigantic* because of the current political climate and the fact that very few modern comic fans actually read comics *and* play RPG's centered around Supers.
Mutants and Masterminds 3e is a great example. It had the DC license and it's a *very* good system (which I dont' use because I can't convince my players who I've addicted to MSH to let it go and try something else) - but even with the limited DC license (not to mention competing against previous editions of M&M which 2e has its fans) did it get the longevity it deserved, though it's pretty complete.
Marvel is not going to back this thing with the drive that TSR did when they made MSH. And what company outside of Marvel itself could afford that license longterm enough to make it worthwhile? No one outside of WotC - and I'm not convinced they would waste their time.
Quote from: Khazav on June 10, 2021, 12:46:04 PM
Has there ever been a superhero game that successfully recreated the style of comic books? I guess the same question could be asked about any genre RPG. For supers almost every comic story concluded with a fight that is won by not using powers but from some plot element brought up in the earlier part of the story or some twist. I don't know if any Spiderman story ends with him just using his webs and strength to beat Sandman or Doc Ock, but always found something else to use. Might be difficult to add as a mechanic, but if the GM has to make a big point of it earlier in the session then it becomes a too obvious advantage.
Or that last Avengers Movie which required they ***spoilers*** build a $^^$&@(*$%$(* to defeat the bad guy. Would one of the PCs need Artificer or something similar, how would you guarantee that they would think up that idea?
Seems like a genre that would be very difficult to create scenarios for which would entertain players and GM. But maybe I know nothin'!
I've been running, and currently running MSH since it dropped. So we're talking 35 years?!?!? sweet jesus... of running it. And I've *never* considered it my main system, but by dint of use, it's probably been the most consistent thing I've run by player demand. I've also worked in the comic industry, and written comics, and collected comics with a pretty ginormous collection.
Is MSH perfect? helllllllll no. But with a few tweaks you can run that sucker with fidelity to any aspect of the Supers genre. My current campaign has Batman-style characters easily playing alongside Thor-level super-thugs. But I'm confident I can do this with M&M, or ICONs, or MEGS too.
The conceits of running a Supers game is in understanding what is needed to allow things to scale. Mechanically it's less about people wanting to play Daredevil and another wanting to play the Hulk, than it is understanding how to thread the needle between the challenges posed by having two such characters specifically working alongside one another. This means contextualizing them at the chargen level and enforcing those things throughout play.
And no it's not easy for a new GM to simply pull off without that experience and understanding - but there are ways to mitigate this too, where you set a power-level standard (which is what a lot of modern Supers games do), but even then you as a GM need to understand what is required to play at those levels respectively. They're almost sub-genres in their own right.
Quote from: tenbones on June 10, 2021, 01:00:18 PM
Quote from: Khazav on June 10, 2021, 12:46:04 PM
Has there ever been a superhero game that successfully recreated the style of comic books? I guess the same question could be asked about any genre RPG. For supers almost every comic story concluded with a fight that is won by not using powers but from some plot element brought up in the earlier part of the story or some twist. I don't know if any Spiderman story ends with him just using his webs and strength to beat Sandman or Doc Ock, but always found something else to use. Might be difficult to add as a mechanic, but if the GM has to make a big point of it earlier in the session then it becomes a too obvious advantage.
Or that last Avengers Movie which required they ***spoilers*** build a $^^$&@(*$%$(* to defeat the bad guy. Would one of the PCs need Artificer or something similar, how would you guarantee that they would think up that idea?
Seems like a genre that would be very difficult to create scenarios for which would entertain players and GM. But maybe I know nothin'!
I've been running, and currently running MSH since it dropped. So we're talking 35 years?!?!? sweet jesus... of running it. And I've *never* considered it my main system, but by dint of use, it's probably been the most consistent thing I've run by player demand. I've also worked in the comic industry, and written comics, and collected comics with a pretty ginormous collection.
Is MSH perfect? helllllllll no. But with a few tweaks you can run that sucker with fidelity to any aspect of the Supers genre. My current campaign has Batman-style characters easily playing alongside Thor-level super-thugs. But I'm confident I can do this with M&M, or ICONs, or MEGS too.
The conceits of running a Supers game is in understanding what is needed to allow things to scale. Mechanically it's less about people wanting to play Daredevil and another wanting to play the Hulk, than it is understanding how to thread the needle between the challenges posed by having two such characters specifically working alongside one another. This means contextualizing them at the chargen level and enforcing those things throughout play.
And no it's not easy for a new GM to simply pull off without that experience and understanding - but there are ways to mitigate this too, where you set a power-level standard (which is what a lot of modern Supers games do), but even then you as a GM need to understand what is required to play at those levels respectively. They're almost sub-genres in their own right.
Yeah, I think the key is, few people who are running games have the chops for the genre. I'd be interested in trying a Mutants and Masterminds game, but looking through the system, with my limited experience, I'd never try to GM one, too complex for my skill levels, meager as they are. As a player, I'd want to know the GM knew what he was doing first.
Quote from: Toran Ironfinder on June 10, 2021, 05:40:48 PM
Quote from: tenbones on June 10, 2021, 01:00:18 PM
Quote from: Khazav on June 10, 2021, 12:46:04 PM
Has there ever been a superhero game that successfully recreated the style of comic books? I guess the same question could be asked about any genre RPG. For supers almost every comic story concluded with a fight that is won by not using powers but from some plot element brought up in the earlier part of the story or some twist. I don't know if any Spiderman story ends with him just using his webs and strength to beat Sandman or Doc Ock, but always found something else to use. Might be difficult to add as a mechanic, but if the GM has to make a big point of it earlier in the session then it becomes a too obvious advantage.
Or that last Avengers Movie which required they ***spoilers*** build a $^^$&@(*$%$(* to defeat the bad guy. Would one of the PCs need Artificer or something similar, how would you guarantee that they would think up that idea?
Seems like a genre that would be very difficult to create scenarios for which would entertain players and GM. But maybe I know nothin'!
I've been running, and currently running MSH since it dropped. So we're talking 35 years?!?!? sweet jesus... of running it. And I've *never* considered it my main system, but by dint of use, it's probably been the most consistent thing I've run by player demand. I've also worked in the comic industry, and written comics, and collected comics with a pretty ginormous collection.
Is MSH perfect? helllllllll no. But with a few tweaks you can run that sucker with fidelity to any aspect of the Supers genre. My current campaign has Batman-style characters easily playing alongside Thor-level super-thugs. But I'm confident I can do this with M&M, or ICONs, or MEGS too.
The conceits of running a Supers game is in understanding what is needed to allow things to scale. Mechanically it's less about people wanting to play Daredevil and another wanting to play the Hulk, than it is understanding how to thread the needle between the challenges posed by having two such characters specifically working alongside one another. This means contextualizing them at the chargen level and enforcing those things throughout play.
And no it's not easy for a new GM to simply pull off without that experience and understanding - but there are ways to mitigate this too, where you set a power-level standard (which is what a lot of modern Supers games do), but even then you as a GM need to understand what is required to play at those levels respectively. They're almost sub-genres in their own right.
Yeah, I think the key is, few people who are running games have the chops for the genre. I'd be interested in trying a Mutants and Masterminds game, but looking through the system, with my limited experience, I'd never try to GM one, too complex for my skill levels, meager as they are. As a player, I'd want to know the GM knew what he was doing first.
Yeah I hear you. As someone that has delved deep into 3.x design, and GMed it - M&M has always been a little daunting for me to get into. But I plan on doing it at some point.
Quote from: tenbones on June 10, 2021, 12:50:56 PM
You guys are making my point for me.
1) Nothing prevents *anyone* from using the half-dozen (and more) Supers rules that are out there, without me even pointing fingers at which ones are actually great/good/okay/shitastic.
2) Everyone knows if we whittle them down to top 5, lets say, there is *no* fucking way Forbeck backed by Marvel will design something in the caliber of those top 5 systems. UNLESS....
3) He cribs one of them wholesale or in part. At which point he *may* have the design part covered... but the marketing issue is *gigantic* because of the current political climate and the fact that very few modern comic fans actually read comics *and* play RPG's centered around Supers.
Mutants and Masterminds 3e is a great example. It had the DC license and it's a *very* good system (which I dont' use because I can't convince my players who I've addicted to MSH to let it go and try something else) - but even with the limited DC license (not to mention competing against previous editions of M&M which 2e has its fans) did it get the longevity it deserved, though it's pretty complete.
Marvel is not going to back this thing with the drive that TSR did when they made MSH. And what company outside of Marvel itself could afford that license longterm enough to make it worthwhile? No one outside of WotC - and I'm not convinced they would waste their time.
So judging a book before it even exists, without even a cover, just based on your assumptions? I am not saying you should be optimistic about it or expect it to be good or anything, but you've literally set up an impossible scenario where it can never be decent merely because it will exist. Kinda a shitty standard don't you think? Shouldn't there be SOME room for it to exceed your expectations?
Quote from: Mistwell on June 10, 2021, 10:10:19 PM
So judging a book before it even exists, without even a cover, just based on your assumptions? I am not saying you should be optimistic about it or expect it to be good or anything, but you've literally set up an impossible scenario where it can never be decent merely because it will exist. Kinda a shitty standard don't you think? Shouldn't there be SOME room for it to exceed your expectations?
1) I literally did not judge any book by any cover as the "book" doesn't exist. What I did was look at the landscape and made an informed prediction based on available facts using basic logic.
2) I didn't set up an impossible scenario. I outlined the exact circumstances of the project. That's what you do when you're trying to bring a product to market from the perspective of a Corporation. This is *not* the same thing as an individual or small game-studio, this is a corporation that has to allocate resources for a purpose. And in this case it's a corporation engaging in creating a product completely out of its wheelhouse.
3) There is always the possibility that Forbeck will produce a system that will be better than MSH, M&M, MEGS, V&V, Champions etc. That chance is probably less than 1%. The chance that Marvel will support this endeavor to the depth that *any* of those other systems have is less than that.
4) The only shitty standard in this scenario is the one set by the company that currently has cut its own throat in the name of virtue-signaling and ruining its own IP in the name of that ideology. This isn't Marvel Studios behind this. This is Marvel Comics. They are *not* the same (the jury is out on the MCU in the next phase).
And of course whatever this game will be is going to have to be good enough backed up with enough content to dethrone an intensely ensconced player base that has spent literal decades honing their game of choice to their liking across most of those systems. You know where you have fans that have cross-statted and created entire supplements of professional caliber (some not so professional) that transcends Marvel, DC, and pop-culture entirely.
So sure, there's always a Jim Carrey chance (https://youtu.be/gqdNe8u-Jsg).
But you know, as someone that works with numbers, it's not a bet I'm going to make.
I can't get interested about this. There's no appeal.
Quote from: tenbones on June 11, 2021, 10:07:38 AMThis isn't Marvel Studios behind this. This is Marvel Comics. They are *not* the same (the jury is out on the MCU in the next phase).
It looks like this is being produced by Marvel Entertainment, who are Marvel Comics' parent company. Which is a good sign. Since Marvel Entertainment is also responsible for all Marvel related products (t-shirts, toys, etc) it makes more sense for them to be doing is although I would still like to know why they want to make an RPG. Is this a serious product? A throwaway product? Or just a marketing ploy?
Quote from: tenbones on June 11, 2021, 10:07:38 AM
This isn't Marvel Studios behind this. This is Marvel Comics. They are *not* the same (the jury is out on the MCU in the next phase).
It's really not related to the Marvel Comics group.
Marvel is out of it's collectivelly ass locked heads.
Most comic book fans are droping their shit, the MCU is dead, and they want to sell me the playtest? Good luck with that.
Now, they might make a killing getting some rubes money but I doubt it will be any good or have any staying power.
My money is in it will be even more woke than anything Woke of the Coast, Baizuo or Evil Fedora have ever done.
Quote from: Tristan on June 08, 2021, 02:59:58 AM
Quote from: amacris on June 07, 2021, 02:02:10 AM
Also, you should all play Ascendant. It's the best superhero RPG in the universe.
I'll bite. :) It looks very MEGS inspired, but possibly more complex. What would benefit me from learning Ascendant rather than DCH/BoH?
(Since we don't know anything really about the Marvel game until next year)
Well, we live in an era where games get marketed on the basis of fluffy story-text, woke claims, celebrity youtubers, or fancy covers. I don't really care about any of that. I care about game design. I wanted a game that played as fast as FASERIP but was as crunchy as Champions. I want a game that was as elegant as DCH/BOH but as realistic as GURPS. If that's the sort of thing you'd want, too, then Ascendant is for you.
Ascendant is a rules-as-physics game where the physic engine is the best in any tabletop RPG. It was inspired by both FASERIP and MEGS and I dedicated the game to the designers of those two systems:
If we have succeeded, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Two particular giants deserve special acclaim: Jeff Grubb, the designer of TSR's 1984 RPG Marvel Super Heroes; and Greg Gorden, designer of Mayfair Game's 1985 RPG DC Heroes. Grubb's Marvel Super Heroes RPG (sometimes called the FASERIP system) was our inspiration for the color-coded Challenge Action Resolution Table, which enables any and all actions within the game to be resolved with a roll of 1d100. Meanwhile, Gorden's DC Heroes RPG (sometimes called the MEGS system) was our inspiration for the logarithmic mathematics that power our physics-based design. We have sought to synthesize what was best about these two games into one cohesive system that surpasses both in robustness, comprehensiveness, and verisimilitude. Whether we have, in fact, succeeded is for you to judge.
What motivated me to design Ascendant was the realization that MEGS wasn't truly taking advantage of logarithmic math. It used them to set the scale and to handle simple factors like speed, time, and distance. Ascendant fully embraces logarithmic design in every aspect of the game. That enables the game to do amazing things.
Imagine the most complex thing you can imagine, and the game can handle with 2 seconds of addition and subtraction.
Fire-fighting? How long will it take a water-controller to deliver enough water to put out a fire before it burns down a skyscraper?
• TIME TO EXTINGUISH FIRE = FIRE MAGNITUDE – WEIGHT OF WATER (+ THERMAL PROTECTION)
OK, but how long will it take for the building to burn down?
• TIME (BURNED OUT) = 3 + STRUCTURE TOUGHNESS/2 + THERMAL PROTECTION/2 – FIRE INTENSITY/2 – FIRE VOLUME/3
If you don't have enough time, you can make challenge checks to do it faster, or power stunts, etc.
Asteroid strikes? Can Superman stop the asteroid from hitting the Earth?
• AVAILABLE TIME = DISTANCE TO EARTH – ASTEROID SPEED
• REQUIRED TIME = ½ X [ASTEROID WEIGHT +17 – (MIGHT</>FLIGHT)]
• DISTANCE CLOSED WITH EARTH = ASTEROID SPEED + REQUIRED TIME
• DIVERT ASTEROID: MIGHT</>FLIGHT + AVAILABLE TIME + AVAILABLE TIME VS. ASTEROID WEIGHT + 17
I even used it to model super-COVID ("Eglebia") using the Pathogen Synthesis and Pandemic rules, and then let the super-genius heroes super-genius a cure.
Eglebia: Complex Viral, Direct/Droplet Transmission, Infectivity 3, Pathogenicity 6, Virulence Green (Slain), Incubation Period 16 (2.5 days), Morbidity Period 15 (36 hours), Convalescence Period 18 (10 days), Condition Caused - Exhausted, Prone, Staggered; Cost 207 CP. Treatment: No current treatments.
• TRANSMISSION: INFECTIVITY VS. EXPOSURE TO DISEASE
• PATHOGENICITY (ATTACK): PATHOGENICITY VS. MIG; IF COLOR RESULT => VIRULENCE THRESHOLD, DISEASE IS MORBID
• IDENTIFY UNKNOWN DISEASE: BIOCHEMICAL ANALYSIS + TIME VS. PATHOGENICITY + INCUBATION PERIOD + 10
Every game mechanic is as simple as one sentence in a bullet point.
Because everything is physically modeled, you can improvise a solution with your powers and instead of just story-gaming/making it all up, you can actually assess exactly what will happen. So it can model the fluid fighting of comic books, it can do Thunderbirds disaster relief.
And it plays as fast as FASERIP. Every action is resolved with a simple roll of 1d100. You find your Action Value, subtract the Difficulty Value, to get a Resolution Value, and then you roll on the Challenge Action Resolution Table (CHART). The CHART itself has been designed such that the outcomes it outputs are *also* logarithmic. If I have Agility 10, and you have Agility 9, that means I am twice as agile as you (MEGS-style logarithm). And my expected value against you will, in fact, be twice as high as your expected value against me. And that relationship works at all intervals.
Because it's truly logarithmic it's scale-free. You can model 10,000 soldiers or the Death Star, or a couple thugs in a VW. You can model a disease, a tsunami, a volcano, a car chase. Nuclear submarines vs Godzilla. SDF-1 vs. Zentraedi. Whatever you want.
Quote from: amacris on June 12, 2021, 04:13:23 AM
Imagine the most complex thing you can imagine, and the game can handle with 2 seconds of addition and subtraction.
Fire-fighting? How long will it take a water-controller to deliver enough water to put out a fire before it burns down a skyscraper?
• TIME TO EXTINGUISH FIRE = FIRE MAGNITUDE – WEIGHT OF WATER (+ THERMAL PROTECTION)
OK, but how long will it take for the building to burn down?
• TIME (BURNED OUT) = 3 + STRUCTURE TOUGHNESS/2 + THERMAL PROTECTION/2 – FIRE INTENSITY/2 – FIRE VOLUME/3
If you don't have enough time, you can make challenge checks to do it faster, or power stunts, etc.
No offense intended, but while that might look like "two seconds of addition and subtraction" to you, I see division in there and no one in my gaming circles could do those equations in under a minute without a calculator unless all those variables were single digits. I think you seriously underestimate your skill with math relative to the general public.
You know what looks faster at least as you've described it here? Water controller rolls 1d20+their Water Control Rank vs. DC 10+ Fire's Power Rank. Done.
How long does the fire take to destroy something? Building makes a Toughness saves vs. DC 15+Fire's Power Rank and suffers some damage with each failure. So it could, in theory, go at any time (which feels more real and tense for a rescue situation). Done.
I applaud your efforts and am glad the system you described works for you, but your present implementation doesn't look remotely as simple as FASERIP or either 2e or 3e of M&M and possibly not even Champions to me if calculations like those you've laid out must be done in actual play.
QuoteNo offense intended, but while that might look like "two seconds of addition and subtraction" to you, I see division in there and no one in my gaming circles could do those equations in under a minute without a calculator unless all those variables were single digits. I think you seriously underestimate your skill with math relative to the general public.
Nah. The numbers ARE single digits or close to it. That's the whole point of using logs. And the formulas are GM-facing. You use them to set up scenarios. The players are simply comparing an action value to a resolution value. Having now run the game for dozens of sessions, I can comfortably assert it's the fastest superhero RPG I've ever played. I've played with FASERIP, MEGS, and Champions players, and it just hums. I also played it with my M&M group, and it's vastly simpler in play than M&M while making the GM's job a lot easier.
QuoteWater controller rolls 1d20+their Water Control Rank vs. DC 10+ Fire's Power Rank. Done.
That level of simplicity only works if you hand wave anything of substance. E.g you assume the water controller has unlimited access to water, the building doesn't matter, and that you know what the fire's power rank is. Where did you get that information? What if the building is fire-resistant or flammable? What if there's not any water nearby? If you don't care about that stuff - if you just want Drama and Narrative -- you're welcome to make up those variables or ignore them. On the other hand, maybe you think "it would actually be awesome if superheroes could do what they really could do if superheroes are real". And then Ascendant has your back 100%.
Let's imagine Bob is playing a character with 8 SPs of Fire Control. (SPs are "supermetric points", e.g. logs). He literally want to use a challenge check to turn off the fire. Here's the actual challenge check formula for putting out the fire:
• EXTINGUISHING FIRE: TIME + FIRE CONTROL VS. FIRE MAGNITUDE - 3
Time means the time you have to spend on it. Like everything else, it's a log. Time 0 SPs = 1 combat round. Time 1 SP = 2 combat rounds. Etc. So anytime you are doing an action in one combat round, you ignore Time. (The game calls these Instant vs Extended Actions). So that gives:
• EXTINGUISHING FIRE: FIRE CONTROL VS. FIRE MAGNITUDE - 3
The GM sets the Fire Magnitude. The formula is Fire Intensity + Fire Volume. Both values are benchmarked with the GM with lots of examples, just like DC Heroes benchmarks Weight and so on. So if you want to do the towering inferno versus a kitchen fire cause nana overcooked the bread, it's right there.
Let's image Bob arrives at a house fire. He says "I use my Fire Control to put out the fire. I have 8 SPs of Fire Control". And the GM says "The Fire Magnitude is 6 SPs" and so Bob rolls on the CHART at +2. (The CHART is a color-coded FASERIP/ZEFRS style chart.) That's your example above. Easy.
Now let's imagine that the fire is a raging inferno on a skyscraper (Fire Magnitude 20 SPs). Bob is not going to succeed at 8 vs 20 on the CHART because that's a -12 RV. But all that means is he can't do it in one combat round (3 seconds). Bob could, if he wanted, roll every combat round. That's tedious and boring and frustrating. And that's where most games just halt.
But in Ascendant he can use an Extended Action and add the Time spent (logarithmic) to his action value. Let's say Bob spends 1 hour (10 SPs). Now Bob is at an action value of 8+10=18 vs. 20. He's at -2, which is hard but doable. You can't do that in DC Heroes/BOH because the resolution tables aren't actually logarithmic; adding Time fucks things up.
Or, Bob could say "I can't put out the entire skyscraper, but can I just put out the fire at the front entrance?" The GM knows that the Fire Magnitude is 20. A Skyscraper has Volume 15 and the Fire Intensity is 5. The volume of a lobby is just 3 SPs. So now THAT Fire Magnitude is just 5+3 = 8. So to just extinguish the lobby fire, Bob is now at 8 vs. 8, which is doable.
The game is exactly as simple as you want, it just is also comprehensive enough to handle literally anything you throw at it. Since EVERYTHING is logarithmic you can do any combination of team, team-ups, portions of areas or volumes, etc etc. It Just Works.
QuoteHow long does the fire take to destroy something? Building makes a Toughness saves vs. DC 15+Fire's Power Rank and suffers some damage with each failure. So it could, in theory, go at any time (which feels more real and tense for a rescue situation). Done.
But you can do it that way if you want. From the rules: "Structures suffer Thermal Damage from a Special Thermal Fog with SPs equal to the fire's Intensity. Damage is reduced by the structure's Thermal Protection." You can just do damage to the building each round. Now let's say you have *a city* on fire. Do you want to sit there and roll for 4000 buildings? Or do you just want to know how long the city will take to burn down? You can hand-wave it. But Ascendant can handle it in moments.
What if a bunch of fire fighters show up to help? What does that do? Does it matter if they have one fire hydrant or two? You can hand wave it. Or Ascendant can handle it in moments.
QuoteI applaud your efforts and am glad the system you described works for you, but your present implementation doesn't look remotely as simple as FASERIP or either 2e or 3e of M&M and possibly not even Champions to me if calculations like those you've laid out must be done in actual play.
Please hold the applause as you don't yet understand the true glory of the system! :)
The system can do anything those games can do as simply as they can. And it can do anything that a high-complexity game like GURPS can do far simpler than GURPS can.
"Calculations must be done" - no, you can just hand wave it and it's as simple as X vs Y, roll.
"Calculations CAN be done" - YES, and those calculations are easy.
A lot of game design these days is based on "roll your skill vs target number" and then advises the GM to make up the target numbers as he deems appropriate. I find that unpalatable. There's no balance, playability, and verisimilitude, UNLESS the skills and target numbers are appropriately benchmarked.
But what is the appropriate benchmarked? I find that sort of "wave your hand and make it up" system is tolerable when working with ordinary human ranges where our intuitions can roughly guide us. Yeah, Arnold Schwarzenegger can pick up a motorcycle but not a tank. But nobody "intuitively" understands what a telekinetic can do. If he can pick up a jetliner and fling at 30mph, what else can he do? Can he halt the entire NASCAR Daytona 500 with a sweep of his hands? Ascendant could answer that. Let's answer that!
Let's say our villain Telekhan has 20 SPs of Telekinesis. A jetliner weighs 15 SPs. He can throw the jetliner at a Speed of 20-15 = 5 SP. 5 SP = 30mph.
What about stopping a car dead in its tracks? The challenge check to stop a rolling object is TELEKINESIS VS. OBJECT WEIGHT + OBJECT SPEED -6
A NASCAR car weighs 1625lbs (7 SPs) and goes at a Speed of 180MPH, or (7 SPs). So that's 7+7= 14 SPs. 14-6 is 8.
Telekinesis 20 vs 8. That's a +12 RV, which is an automatic success. If Telekhan can throw a jetliner, it's trivial to halt the racecar.
But Telekhan wants to halt ALL the racecars. There's 43 race cars. That's a 43-target multi-attack, which imposes a -10 penalty. Now we're at 20-10 = 10. 10 vs. 8. That's a +2 RV, and quite doable. Wow! Telekhan really can just halt the ENTIRE NASCAR 500 with one sweep of his hand. That's really cool.
Now, you might not care about that. You might just say "I'll just decide if it's dramatically appropriate for Telekhan to halt the race cars" or "I'll make up a number I think will be fun" or "I will make the decision based on my experience reading comics". That's fine. You can do that in Ascendant. The GM could just say "uh, we'll call it Difficulty Value 7" or "12" or whatever number he wants. But he can also work out the real physics.
The game is fractally comprehensive. You can play it as simple or complex as you want. The point is that it can handle tremendous complexity with great ease. There is literally nothing else that can do what Ascendant does, while Ascendant can do anything those other games can do.
[deleted double post, sorry]
Quote from: GeekyBugle on June 11, 2021, 11:30:51 PM
|Most comic book fans are droping their shit, the MCU is dead, and they want to sell me the playtest? Good luck with that.
They want to sell it to you twice. Once as a $40(?) playtest and again as an...oh, let's say $60 full game.
And they'd REAAALLLY like to sell it to you as an Extra Special Ultra Mega Limited ULTIMATE SUPERFAN edition, no doubt limited to
just 616 copies (preorder now!!!), for the pittance of $200. This version has an invisible rustproof undercoating. Plus you get dice.
Quote from: Thornhammer on June 12, 2021, 02:06:00 PM
Quote from: GeekyBugle on June 11, 2021, 11:30:51 PM
|Most comic book fans are droping their shit, the MCU is dead, and they want to sell me the playtest? Good luck with that.
They want to sell it to you twice. Once as a $40(?) playtest and again as an...oh, let's say $60 full game.
And they'd REAAALLLY like to sell it to you as an Extra Special Ultra Mega Limited ULTIMATE SUPERFAN edition, no doubt limited to just 616 copies (preorder now!!!), for the pittance of $200. This version has an invisible rustproof undercoating. Plus you get dice.
Then there's the Non plus ultra special edition... It includes all of the above plus 10 stl files for you to print your miniatures for the very modest price of $400 pre order now!
Well now I'm hyped!
NOT.
BTW, someone mentioned Marvel didn't NEED to sell thye rights to make an TTRPG to third parties when they can hire freelance talent...
Is that a smart bussiness move?
Lets see, they sell the rights to WotC for a few millions, WotC now has to also eat the costs of development, publicity, art, etc.
Disney profits if the game flops and if it's a hit, because the rights are for a very limited time, zero risk pure profit, while WotC (or whoever) eats all the risks.
I think nobody wanted to buy the rights and thus they decided to develop/publish in-house.
Bold move, lets see how it works out.
IMHO it won't be a huge hit, it's too late to ride the MCU wave, the right time was well before End Game. I would have thought right after Avengers.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on June 11, 2021, 03:22:44 PM
It looks like this is being produced by Marvel Entertainment, who are Marvel Comics' parent company. Which is a good sign. Since Marvel Entertainment is also responsible for all Marvel related products (t-shirts, toys, etc) it makes more sense for them to be doing is although I would still like to know why they want to make an RPG. Is this a serious product? A throwaway product? Or just a marketing ploy?
I'm not so sure this is a good sign.
Seeing as how 'Marvel Entertainment' has presided over Marvel Comics march into comics irrelevance, and done nothing to change their course.
I'll wait until we have system info before I can have a real opinion about it as a game, but if they are basing the RPG on the current Comic universe and not the popular iconic characters, they are already making things harder for themselves than they need to.
I wonder what their expectations are as well. Because only D&D does D&D numbers...
Quote from: GeekyBugle on June 12, 2021, 03:00:57 PM
BTW, someone mentioned Marvel didn't NEED to sell thye rights to make an TTRPG to third parties when they can hire freelance talent...
Is that a smart bussiness move?
For another company, I'd say no. But, Marvel's history is in publishing. They know how to get things on paper and get them in front of buyers. They have all the art they need. They just need to pay for a different kind of writer and editor. I'd have to assume they crunched the numbers and thought it was worth taking a stab at it.
Jaeger's point that only D&D does D&D numbers is probably the bigger problem for them. With the popularity of print comics in the past and the movies now, it seems like there should be a bigger market for a Marvel or DC game. There's a good chance they'll overestimate, overproduce, and take a bath on it, instead of growing a smaller and sustainable fan base.
Quote from: Almost_Useless on June 13, 2021, 10:22:47 AM
Quote from: GeekyBugle on June 12, 2021, 03:00:57 PM
BTW, someone mentioned Marvel didn't NEED to sell thye rights to make an TTRPG to third parties when they can hire freelance talent...
Is that a smart bussiness move?
For another company, I'd say no. But, Marvel's history is in publishing. They know how to get things on paper and get them in front of buyers. They have all the art they need. They just need to pay for a different kind of writer and editor. I'd have to assume they crunched the numbers and thought it was worth taking a stab at it.
Jaeger's point that only D&D does D&D numbers is probably the bigger problem for them. With the popularity of print comics in the past and the movies now, it seems like there should be a bigger market for a Marvel or DC game. There's a good chance they'll overestimate, overproduce, and take a bath on it, instead of growing a smaller and sustainable fan base.
They've done this before. The Marvel Universe RPG (the one with stones) was published in-house, and fizzled. There have been endless licensed RPGs based on major properties, from Marvel to James Bond, Star Wars, and Star Trek. None of them have ever managed to break D&D's lock on the market, and the non-D&D RPG market is too small to get the sales figure they seem to expect.
I didn't care for it, but I think the one with the stones just came out at the wrong time. If they had released that as the wave of hippie story games rose, it probably would have sold better.
You're right about licensed games' sales in general. If they use Star Wars or Lord of the Rings as a yardstick, they should end up with more realistic expectations.
Quote from: Almost_Useless on June 13, 2021, 10:59:00 AMIf they had released that as the wave of hippie story games rose, it probably would have sold better.
I think history will repeat itself as Marvel cranks out an RPG based on the all the buzz about D&D 5e but it looks like they'll release it a year after the whole 5e bubble bursts.
That being said, I don't think beating D&D should be used as a measure of this product's success. It seems more like a low effort attempt to create a product for the hobby games market just to fill that hole.
Quote from: amacris on June 12, 2021, 01:56:47 PM
QuoteWater controller rolls 1d20+their Water Control Rank vs. DC 10+ Fire's Power Rank. Done.
That level of simplicity only works if you hand wave anything of substance. E.g you assume the water controller has unlimited access to water, the building doesn't matter, and that you know what the fire's power rank is. Where did you get that information? What if the building is fire-resistant or flammable? What if there's not any water nearby? If you don't care about that stuff - if you just want Drama and Narrative -- you're welcome to make up those variables or ignore them. On the other hand, maybe you think "it would actually be awesome if superheroes could do what they really could do if superheroes are real". And then Ascendant has your back 100%.
Yet instead of accounting for these variables you replace the provided example with a far simpler Fire Controller. And who's to say that ability can be used to
suppress fires anyway?
The issue here is not one of hand waving anything of substance, but deciding on the specifics and degree of abstraction. There are always more variables to consider in a simulation. and Logarithmic scales don't make a game more realistic, but more consistent.
Quote from: Anon Adderlan on June 13, 2021, 05:43:28 PM
Quote from: amacris on June 12, 2021, 01:56:47 PM
QuoteWater controller rolls 1d20+their Water Control Rank vs. DC 10+ Fire's Power Rank. Done.
That level of simplicity only works if you hand wave anything of substance. E.g you assume the water controller has unlimited access to water, the building doesn't matter, and that you know what the fire's power rank is. Where did you get that information? What if the building is fire-resistant or flammable? What if there's not any water nearby? If you don't care about that stuff - if you just want Drama and Narrative -- you're welcome to make up those variables or ignore them. On the other hand, maybe you think "it would actually be awesome if superheroes could do what they really could do if superheroes are real". And then Ascendant has your back 100%.
Yet instead of accounting for these variables you replace the provided example with a far simpler Fire Controller. And who's to say that ability can be used to suppress fires anyway?
The issue here is not one of hand waving anything of substance, but deciding on the specifics and degree of abstraction. There are always more variables to consider in a simulation. and Logarithmic scales don't make a game more realistic, but more consistent.
Well, as far as it goes, mechanics which enable people to transfer real-world experiences and knowledge into a game (when the world of the game follows the same expectations as the real world) do make a game more "realistic." So a case can be made that amacris is correct. As far as logarithmic mechanics allow players to accurately predict the outcomes of situations better than other mechanics, they do make the game more realistic.
I'd argue that doing calculus to run your supers game is not comic book accurate. Hand-wavey is actually much more accurate. I don't think any comic book writer or movie director Do calculations to decide for sure if Hulk can lift an object or how long it will take Superman to blow out a raging fire with his Superbreath.
Quote from: amacris on June 12, 2021, 01:56:47 PM
QuoteWater controller rolls 1d20+their Water Control Rank vs. DC 10+ Fire's Power Rank. Done.
That level of simplicity only works if you hand wave anything of substance. E.g you assume the water controller has unlimited access to water, the building doesn't matter, and that you know what the fire's power rank is. Where did you get that information? What if the building is fire-resistant or flammable? What if there's not any water nearby? If you don't care about that stuff - if you just want Drama and Narrative -- you're welcome to make up those variables or ignore them. On the other hand, maybe you think "it would actually be awesome if superheroes could do what they really could do if superheroes are real". And then Ascendant has your back 100%.
All those things matter in M&M though; they just don't need formulas and ultimately come down to the GM's call.
Tell me true, if it were an OSR game would you make the presumption that the situation couldn't be arbitrated based on those conditions listed even if there were no express formulas for calculating them? Or would you presume the GM is more than capable of deciding those those things on their own?
Access to water? GMs call if there's enough around. Default in a city with a fire department is "Yes" for me though since the whole point of the fire hydrants is to make sure the fire department has a enough water to fight fires with. If there's a shortage of water though, the GM can just throw a penalty on the check for there not being enough water to just outright drench the entire place.
If there's no water at all nearby then obviously they can't use water control. The entire point of it being water control (which in M&M would be "move object" with a "only water" limitation) is that it only works on water. What if a D&D character tried to light a fire underwater? Would you presume a roll is even needed there too?
The building matters and has stats, they're just not especially relevant to putting out a fire; just to how quickly its going to burn down. Its only two stats are basically size and toughness. A building with paper walls (toughness 0) is going to burn pretty quick... a building built of reinforced unobtanium (toughness 30+) isn't on fire in the first place, at worst its coated in accelerants that will burn off eventually leaving it unharmed.
The fire's rank? Again GM's call based on what's burning... just like they'd assign a difficulty to any task a PC attempts its a judgement call; there's various guidelines out there.
How does the player have this information? They don't any more than you'd expect a D&D PC to know the precise DC to detect the hidden door. Doesn't mean they can't roll though; The player doesn't need to know the fire's rank, its just determining what DC the Water controller needs to actually succeed.
If the building is flammable its probably got a very low toughness (see paper above) or if its resistant to everything but fire for some reason then the GM can give it vulnerability... which just means its toughness is lower against fire. It could also be given resistance or immunity to fire if far more resistant to that than other forms of damage... which means its toughness is higher versus fire or it doesn't need to make checks at all. If its very flammable, the GM is probably going to give the fire a higher rank that will determine how hard it is to put out...
All of that though ultimately comes down the very basic PC rolls 1d20+water control vs. a DC based on the fire's intensity/rank and the GM doesn't need in depth formulas for that because it ultimately comes down to the GM setting the stage as whether the want the Water Controller's efforts to be easy or hard, fluff or impossible.
Everything else is just flavor text used to justify the final DC the player is rolling against just like every other RPG ever.
Has any Marvel RPG come close to the original RPG?
Also, is this a Marvel comics RPG or a Marvel "cinematic universe" RPG?
Quote from: Spinachcat on June 13, 2021, 09:52:46 PM
Has any Marvel RPG come close to the original RPG?
Also, is this a Marvel comics RPG or a Marvel "cinematic universe" RPG?
Looks like at least artistically it's Marvel Comics, but while it's got fairly classic standbys with Storm, Wolverine, Spider-Man, Captain Marvel and Iron-Man, its also got Carol Danvers, Groot, Rocket and some dude I don't even recognize and a blank spot presum for your hero.
I'm guessing bait and switch and the actual signature characters included will be a wokapalooza of "diversity and inclusion."
Quote from: Jaeger on June 12, 2021, 04:56:05 PM
Quote from: hedgehobbit on June 11, 2021, 03:22:44 PM
It looks like this is being produced by Marvel Entertainment, who are Marvel Comics' parent company. Which is a good sign. Since Marvel Entertainment is also responsible for all Marvel related products (t-shirts, toys, etc) it makes more sense for them to be doing is although I would still like to know why they want to make an RPG. Is this a serious product? A throwaway product? Or just a marketing ploy?
I'm not so sure this is a good sign.
Seeing as how 'Marvel Entertainment' has presided over Marvel Comics march into comics irrelevance, and done nothing to change their course.
I'll wait until we have system info before I can have a real opinion about it as a game, but if they are basing the RPG on the current Comic universe and not the popular iconic characters, they are already making things harder for themselves than they need to.
I wonder what their expectations are as well. Because only D&D does D&D numbers...
They care very little about the comic book business and they don't really "preside" over it. ME mostly runs the licensing for Marvel IP. That's their focus. They've done very well with it.
QuoteTell me true, if it were an OSR game would you make the presumption that the situation couldn't be arbitrated based on those conditions listed even if there were no express formulas for calculating them? Or would you presume the GM is more than capable of deciding those those things on their own?
Hey now -- you began by telling me that my estimation of people's math skills was too high. Now you are telling me that my estimation of people's improvisation is too low. To answer your question, I presume people can do math, and I presume GMs want rules so they don't have to decide everything on their own.
I believe that the average player can do the math in Ascendant because *I have playtested it* for 2 years. It plays fast and easy and no one has problems.
I believe that many GMs do NOT like to have to improvise answers for complex situations. They don't want to "make it up". They want to get it right. I believe this because I run a thriving community of ACKS judges, and the most frequent questions I get as a game designer is to answer how to resolve complex situations in order to best simulate reality.
The history of every RPG system (and every wargame) is to trend towards more rules, because as the game is played more, people want to know how those situations get resolved. So to answer your question, when I design OSR games, I give the rules for the GM so he *doesn't have to* improvise the answers. That's why I designed ACKS, and not e.g. Dungeon World or OSE. And Ascendant and not ICONS.
QuoteAccess to water? GMs call if there's enough around. Default in a city with a fire department is "Yes" for me though since the whole point of the fire hydrants is to make sure the fire department has a enough water to fight fires with. If there's a shortage of water though, the GM can just throw a penalty on the check for there not being enough water to just outright drench the entire place.
If you're happy with everything being a GM's call, then my games are "over-designed" for your purposes. It's the equivalent of offering Dwarf Fortress to someone who just wants to play Bard's Tale.
The people who buy my games love that they can pick up a book by me and find the answer to questions that come up in their games and know the answer will be *right* from the point of simulation and verisimilitude. In ACKS, you can pick up the books and find out "how long would it take a siege engineer to build a catapult?" "how many 1st level henchmen can I hire in a city of 4,000?" "how much does it cost to buy a baby wyvern and how long will it take to grow to maturity?" All those answers are in the books. Sure, a GM *could* make them up on the fly, but I've done the work for you.
For good or ill, I am an exceptionally meticulous designer and world-builder. When I built Capital of the Borderlands (for ACKS), I went through the entire city of Pompeii to map every type of building down to the whorehouses. Then I made an Excel spreadsheet of the number and size of each type of building, and then used that to guide the building of the city of Cyfaraun. It took probably 40 hours of research just to do that. You may never care that the number of whorehouses in Cyfaraun is the correct amount for the population of an ancient ersatz Roman city, but I care, and people who buy my games care a lot. It's "real".
So, turning back to this. I would never, ever, run a scenario involving fire-fighting as a major event where I hadn't thought all this through. And I like games that afford me *rules* for that. I don't like games that expect the GM to just make it up. Your mileage varies, and that's fine. My games aren't going to appeal to you.
QuoteThe building matters and has stats, they're just not especially relevant to putting out a fire; just to how quickly its going to burn down.
That's fine... if you don't care about reality. But in reality, that's incorrect. The flammability of a building absolutely determines how hard it is to put out a fire. Buildings are categorized by fire departments based on material used and contents contained within, which is used as a variable in the official firefighting guides. I know this because I researched it and modeled it. The mechanics of Ascendant are such that if you model an actual fire engine using an actual fire hydrant's flow rate, against various buildings of known size, material, etc., the fires get put out in the time the fire-fighting manuals say they would.
I'm guessing you don't care, and that's fine. I do care. And this level of coherence is awesome if you care about it.
QuoteIts only two stats are basically size and toughness. A building with paper walls (toughness 0) is going to burn pretty quick... a building built of reinforced unobtanium (toughness 30+) isn't on fire in the first place, at worst its coated in accelerants that will burn off eventually leaving it unharmed.
The fire's rank? Again GM's call based on what's burning... just like they'd assign a difficulty to any task a PC attempts its a judgement call; there's various guidelines out there.
Pause for a sec. Imagine if people ran D&D5E the way you're talking about running a fire-fighting scenario. "How hard is it to hit the dragon?" "That's just a judgment call for the GM." "What's the intensity of a fireball?" "That's just a judgment call for the GM." And so on. But that doesn't happen! Why? It certainly could.
I have a heuristic: You can tell what a game is about based on how many pages of rules it devotes to the topic. A typical RPG is about combat, and you can tell, because it has a huge combat chapter. A typical RPG has almost no real rules for anything else, because all it's about is combat. In my opinion "that's a judgment call for the GM" means "we don't think this is important". Anything a game thinks is important, it provides rules for. Cyberpunk, humanity loss, head shots, shock saves. Call of Cthulhu, sanity checks. Etc.
One of the things Ascendant is "about" is saving the day. So it takes saving the day, like fighting fires, or stopping earthquakes, as seriously as D&D 5E takes combat. It has 50 pages of rules for dealing with emergencies ranging from fighting fires to stopping floods to diverting asteroids to defusing bombs to settling hostage crises. We've done entire sessions of Ascendant that are just superheroes doing emergency response - massive earthquake strikes Haiti, with fires, collapsed buildings, etc. And it plays with as much detail and mechanical support as D&D5E can give to a combat, for instance.
So to my ears, your answers are just different ways of saying "I don't think saving the day is worth having rules for". And that's fine. But one of my design goals was to have rules for saving the day. Rules as robust as combat rules.
QuoteAll of that though ultimately comes down the very basic PC rolls 1d20+water control vs. a DC based on the fire's intensity/rank and the GM doesn't need in depth formulas for that because it ultimately comes down to the GM setting the stage as whether the want the Water Controller's efforts to be easy or hard, fluff or impossible.
Ah-hah! Now we come to the crux of it. This is where I part ways with you philsophically. I don't run games based on "whether I want the [player's] efforts to be easy or hard, fluff or impossible." Never, ever. I don't take that into consideration at all. The world is what the world is. It doesn't change for the players. What happens is what would happen given how the world is. (I hate to bring up the awful Forge/GNS theory, but it provides a useful heuristic here. You sound like you are a "gamist". I'm a simulationist.)
QuoteEverything else is just flavor text used to justify the final DC the player is rolling against just like every other RPG ever.
See above. I couldn't disagree with you more philosophically. There's all the difference in the world between a DC that is realistically grounded in the physics of the world, and just making shit up -- if, like me, you care about simulation. If you don't care, and it's all fluff to you, then Ascendant's not the game for you.
Please note I'm not trying to claim your philosophy is wrong. It's just not mine, so you and I aren't going to see eye to eye. Thanks for the discussion.
Quote from: Anon Adderlan on June 13, 2021, 05:43:28 PM
Quote from: amacris on June 12, 2021, 01:56:47 PM
QuoteWater controller rolls 1d20+their Water Control Rank vs. DC 10+ Fire's Power Rank. Done.
That level of simplicity only works if you hand wave anything of substance. E.g you assume the water controller has unlimited access to water, the building doesn't matter, and that you know what the fire's power rank is. Where did you get that information? What if the building is fire-resistant or flammable? What if there's not any water nearby? If you don't care about that stuff - if you just want Drama and Narrative -- you're welcome to make up those variables or ignore them. On the other hand, maybe you think "it would actually be awesome if superheroes could do what they really could do if superheroes are real". And then Ascendant has your back 100%.
Yet instead of accounting for these variables you replace the provided example with a far simpler Fire Controller. And who's to say that ability can be used to suppress fires anyway?
The issue here is not one of hand waving anything of substance, but deciding on the specifics and degree of abstraction. There are always more variables to consider in a simulation. and Logarithmic scales don't make a game more realistic, but more consistent.
Realism requires consistency. I agree it's not sufficient, but it's necessary. Chris and I are definitely disagreeing on hand waving. He explicitly took the position that everything I've mentioned is just fluff that masks the real question of whether the GM wants it to be hard or easy for the player. I disagree. I agree with Eirik, who said "mechanics which enable people to transfer real-world experiences and knowledge into a game (when the world of the game follows the same expectations as the real world) do make a game more "realistic."
Quote from: Spinachcat on June 13, 2021, 09:52:46 PM
Has any Marvel RPG come close to the original RPG?
Also, is this a Marvel comics RPG or a Marvel "cinematic universe" RPG?
It's Marvel Comics, not the Cinematic Universe.
Quote from: Chris24601 on June 13, 2021, 10:17:18 PM
Quote from: Spinachcat on June 13, 2021, 09:52:46 PM
Has any Marvel RPG come close to the original RPG?
Also, is this a Marvel comics RPG or a Marvel "cinematic universe" RPG?
the actual signature characters included will be a wokapalooza of "diversity and inclusion."
No doubt about it. Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker, etc.
Quote from: Batjon on June 13, 2021, 06:58:35 PM
I'd argue that doing calculus to run your supers game is not comic book accurate. Hand-wavey is actually much more accurate. I don't think any comic book writer or movie director Do calculations to decide for sure if Hulk can lift an object or how long it will take Superman to blow out a raging fire with his Superbreath.
Well, it's hard to argue with that. We live in a world where multibillion dollar movie franchises get created with less effort put into canon and continuity than your average RPG Site DM puts into his home campaign for his buddies. They didn't even bother to figure out the plot line for the SW sequels before making them. So, yah, I doubt they have any idea what Hulk can do.
But there is a large community of nerds who, like me, hate that. The sort of people who create wikis to compare the power of characters, or read Star Trek Technical Manuals, etc. That's my tribe.
Quote from: amacris on June 14, 2021, 04:20:30 AM
Pause for a sec. Imagine if people ran D&D5E the way you're talking about running a fire-fighting scenario. "How hard is it to hit the dragon?" "That's just a judgment call for the GM." "What's the intensity of a fireball?" "That's just a judgment call for the GM." And so on. But that doesn't happen! Why? It certainly could.
I have a heuristic: You can tell what a game is about based on how many pages of rules it devotes to the topic. A typical RPG is about combat, and you can tell, because it has a huge combat chapter. A typical RPG has almost no real rules for anything else, because all it's about is combat. In my opinion "that's a judgment call for the GM" means "we don't think this is important". Anything a game thinks is important, it provides rules for. Cyberpunk, humanity loss, head shots, shock saves. Call of Cthulhu, sanity checks. Etc.
This is a great explanation for why the D&D5e skill system is so under-designed compared to the combat rules. Unlike the combat numbers, much of the skill system does fall to "That's a judgement call for the GM" and that's really unsatisfying to myself and several of my players.
Quick question about Ascendant: With the scaling you're using (each point bing a doubling), how do you represent someone being stronger but not twice as strong? Is there room for fine tuning the differences between the fighting skills of Batman, Nightwing, and Deathstroke or the strength of Black Adam vs. Shazam?
Quote from: amacris on June 14, 2021, 04:25:36 AM
Quote from: Spinachcat on June 13, 2021, 09:52:46 PM
Has any Marvel RPG come close to the original RPG?
Also, is this a Marvel comics RPG or a Marvel "cinematic universe" RPG?
It's Marvel Comics, not the Cinematic Universe....No doubt about it. Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker, etc.
Based on the cover, it's an amalgamation and not the comics themselves. For instance, that's not Miles Morales on the cover.
Not that facts should get in the way of your story.
Quote from: Mistwell on June 14, 2021, 05:29:23 PMBased on the cover, it's an amalgamation and not the comics themselves. For instance, that's not Miles Morales on the cover.
Then who is wearing Miles Morales' costume on the cover between Iron Man and Storm?
Quote from: hedgehobbit on June 14, 2021, 06:15:09 PM
Quote from: Mistwell on June 14, 2021, 05:29:23 PMBased on the cover, it's an amalgamation and not the comics themselves. For instance, that's not Miles Morales on the cover.
Then who is wearing Miles Morales' costume on the cover between Iron Man and Storm?
Don't let facts get in the way of his story.
Quote from: amacris on June 14, 2021, 04:25:12 AM
Quote from: Anon Adderlan on June 13, 2021, 05:43:28 PM
Quote from: amacris on June 12, 2021, 01:56:47 PM
QuoteWater controller rolls 1d20+their Water Control Rank vs. DC 10+ Fire's Power Rank. Done.
That level of simplicity only works if you hand wave anything of substance. E.g you assume the water controller has unlimited access to water, the building doesn't matter, and that you know what the fire's power rank is. Where did you get that information? What if the building is fire-resistant or flammable? What if there's not any water nearby? If you don't care about that stuff - if you just want Drama and Narrative -- you're welcome to make up those variables or ignore them. On the other hand, maybe you think "it would actually be awesome if superheroes could do what they really could do if superheroes are real". And then Ascendant has your back 100%.
Yet instead of accounting for these variables you replace the provided example with a far simpler Fire Controller. And who's to say that ability can be used to suppress fires anyway?
The issue here is not one of hand waving anything of substance, but deciding on the specifics and degree of abstraction. There are always more variables to consider in a simulation. and Logarithmic scales don't make a game more realistic, but more consistent.
Realism requires consistency. I agree it's not sufficient, but it's necessary. Chris and I are definitely disagreeing on hand waving. He explicitly took the position that everything I've mentioned is just fluff that masks the real question of whether the GM wants it to be hard or easy for the player. I disagree. I agree with Eirik, who said "mechanics which enable people to transfer real-world experiences and knowledge into a game (when the world of the game follows the same expectations as the real world) do make a game more "realistic."
Is the game (yours) out yet? I checked DTRPG and the Autarch website, but found nothing but a preview. Seems like something I wouldn't mind dropping some cash on, but I'm not finding it...
Quote from: Mistwell on June 14, 2021, 05:29:23 PM
Based on the cover, it's an amalgamation and not the comics themselves. For instance, that's not Miles Morales on the cover.
Not that facts should get in the way of your story.
Um... That looks like the Miles Morales costume. Not either of the black Spider-Man costumes. And, well, Spider-Man is in the piece as well...
Who did you think that was? I am not saying you are wrong. But if it isnt Morales then who is wearing his suit?
Quote from: hedgehobbit on June 14, 2021, 06:15:09 PM
Quote from: Mistwell on June 14, 2021, 05:29:23 PMBased on the cover, it's an amalgamation and not the comics themselves. For instance, that's not Miles Morales on the cover.
Then who is wearing Miles Morales' costume on the cover between Iron Man and Storm?
Look on the bottom left of the cover. There is also Peter Parker/ Spiderman. Morales did not replace Parker. It's an amalgamation of both MCU and the comics.
Quote from: Omega on June 14, 2021, 07:47:32 PM
Quote from: Mistwell on June 14, 2021, 05:29:23 PM
Based on the cover, it's an amalgamation and not the comics themselves. For instance, that's not Miles Morales on the cover.
Not that facts should get in the way of your story.
Um... That looks like the Miles Morales costume. Not either of the black Spider-Man costumes. And, well, Spider-Man is in the piece as well...
Who did you think that was? I am not saying you are wrong. But if it isnt Morales then who is wearing his suit?
For fucks sake people, BOTH are on the cover. LOOK at the cover. All of it. Both Miles Morales AND Peter Parker are on the cover. What did you think I meant by "it's an amalgamation of both"?
Quote from: Mistwell on June 15, 2021, 11:13:54 AM
Quote from: Omega on June 14, 2021, 07:47:32 PM
Quote from: Mistwell on June 14, 2021, 05:29:23 PM
Based on the cover, it's an amalgamation and not the comics themselves. For instance, that's not Miles Morales on the cover.
Not that facts should get in the way of your story.
Um... That looks like the Miles Morales costume. Not either of the black Spider-Man costumes. And, well, Spider-Man is in the piece as well...
Who did you think that was? I am not saying you are wrong. But if it isnt Morales then who is wearing his suit?
For fucks sake people, BOTH are on the cover. LOOK at the cover. All of it. Both Miles Morales AND Peter Parker are on the cover. What did you think I meant by "it's an amalgamation of both"?
Right, but people are saying it's the comics universe, not the cinematic one. Both Peter and Miles are in the comics universe, together, in the same 616 universe. I'm not sure what you are trying to argue.
Quote from: Mistwell on June 15, 2021, 11:13:54 AMBoth Miles Morales AND Peter Parker are on the cover. What did you think I meant by "it's an amalgamation of both"?
I'm not sure what you mean as this RPG isn't an amalgamation of anything. It's 100% modern, woke Marvel comics, even down to the crappy modern Marvel art style. Marvel Crisis Protocol, OTOH, is an amalgamation because you have MCU Captain America fighting classic, comic accurate, Doc Oc.
(https://d1rbbjrn2xovty.cloudfront.net/000002/26/94/34/026943491220_big.jpg)
Quote from: HappyDaze on June 14, 2021, 06:00:45 AM
Quick question about Ascendant: With the scaling you're using (each point bing a doubling), how do you represent someone being stronger but not twice as strong? Is there room for fine tuning the differences between the fighting skills of Batman, Nightwing, and Deathstroke or the strength of Black Adam vs. Shazam?
No, sadly, fine tuning is limited by the logarithmic scale. Each supermetric point is a doubling so there is no direct way to represent someone who is stronger but not twice as strong. (Of if there is a way, I didn't find it.) The game allows you some indirect methods to represent differences, e.g. you can change the number of Hero Points they can expend on tasks, allowing one character to have a burst of strength the other cannot, or can make a character "Tireless" or "Easily Winded" to change their Might over periods of time, or can use skills to make one character or another better in specific areas, etc.
But you're limited to about half the granularity of a D&D5E range. A Strength of 18 or 20 (+4 or +5) matches to Ascendant 5, 14 or 16 is Ascendant 4, etc. I thought about switching to a ^1.5 logarithmic scale to address this but it was extremely counterintuitive for players.
Quote from: Mistwell on June 14, 2021, 05:29:23 PM
Based on the cover, it's an amalgamation and not the comics themselves. For instance, that's not Miles Morales on the cover.
Not that facts should get in the way of your story.
The Marvel comic universe is Universe 616. The system is set in Universe 616. That's the appeal of calling the system the d616 system.
The progressive characters that are at the forefront of the comic universe are also going to be at the forefront of the game.
I don't spout off on the internet about things I don't know about.
Quote from: amacris on June 15, 2021, 02:22:03 PMThe Marvel comic universe is Universe 616. The system is set in Universe 616. That's the appeal of calling the system the d616 system.
Yet the name of the game is "Marvel Multiverse" so we are getting mixed signals here. I assumed that they wanted to stress the multiverse aspect so Marvel can include all their alternate race swapped and sex changed characters into the game.
I'm not interested unless I can play as Howard the Duck.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 15, 2021, 03:31:58 PM
I'm not interested unless I can play as Howard the Duck.
What you do in your own bedroom is your business.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 15, 2021, 03:31:58 PM
I'm not interested unless I can play as Howard the Duck.
Best I can do is Hovard the Durulz in Glorantha.
Quote from: Mistwell on June 15, 2021, 11:13:54 AM
Quote from: Omega on June 14, 2021, 07:47:32 PM
Quote from: Mistwell on June 14, 2021, 05:29:23 PM
Based on the cover, it's an amalgamation and not the comics themselves. For instance, that's not Miles Morales on the cover.
Not that facts should get in the way of your story.
Um... That looks like the Miles Morales costume. Not either of the black Spider-Man costumes. And, well, Spider-Man is in the piece as well...
Who did you think that was? I am not saying you are wrong. But if it isnt Morales then who is wearing his suit?
For fucks sake people, BOTH are on the cover. LOOK at the cover. All of it. Both Miles Morales AND Peter Parker are on the cover. What did you think I meant by "it's an amalgamation of both"?
Yeah, but your claim, to which ppl are answering and to whose answers you're now taking offense was:
Quote from: Mistwell on June 14, 2021, 05:29:23 PM
Quote from: amacris on June 14, 2021, 04:25:36 AM
Quote from: Spinachcat on June 13, 2021, 09:52:46 PM
Has any Marvel RPG come close to the original RPG?
Also, is this a Marvel comics RPG or a Marvel "cinematic universe" RPG?
It's Marvel Comics, not the Cinematic Universe....No doubt about it. Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker, etc.
Based on the cover, it's an amalgamation and not the comics themselves. For instance, that's not Miles Morales on the cover.
Not that facts should get in the way of your story.
Bolding mine.
Ppl were talking about what would be INSIDE thye book, you answered with a lie or a mistake about THE COVER. And when called out got angry.
Quote from: amacris on June 15, 2021, 02:22:03 PM
Quote from: Mistwell on June 14, 2021, 05:29:23 PM
Based on the cover, it's an amalgamation and not the comics themselves. For instance, that's not Miles Morales on the cover.
Not that facts should get in the way of your story.
The Marvel comic universe is Universe 616. The system is set in Universe 616. That's the appeal of calling the system the d616 system.
The progressive characters that are at the forefront of the comic universe are also going to be at the forefront of the game.
I don't spout off on the internet about things I don't know about.
Tell you what, would you like to bet the contents include an amalgamation of MCU characters, Comics characters, and even non-modern Marvel comics characters?
Quote from: Mistwell on June 15, 2021, 07:05:27 PM
Quote from: amacris on June 15, 2021, 02:22:03 PM
Quote from: Mistwell on June 14, 2021, 05:29:23 PM
Based on the cover, it's an amalgamation and not the comics themselves. For instance, that's not Miles Morales on the cover.
Not that facts should get in the way of your story.
The Marvel comic universe is Universe 616. The system is set in Universe 616. That's the appeal of calling the system the d616 system.
The progressive characters that are at the forefront of the comic universe are also going to be at the forefront of the game.
I don't spout off on the internet about things I don't know about.
Tell you what, would you like to bet the contents include an amalgamation of MCU characters, Comics characters, and even non-modern Marvel comics characters?
Well, I shouldn't in good conscience take a bet with you because I have asymmetric information access. Knowing that, if you still want to bet, I'll agree to a gentleman's bet wherein loser has to post on TheRPGSite and write a humiliating essay extolling the other person's foresight compared to our own meager mind.
Quote from: Mistwell on June 15, 2021, 11:13:54 AM
For fucks sake people, BOTH are on the cover. LOOK at the cover. All of it. Both Miles Morales AND Peter Parker are on the cover. What did you think I meant by "it's an amalgamation of both"?
You must have missed it then. Miles Morales and Spider-Man have been in the same marvel universe for a few years now? 4 or 5? Marvel copied DC and did a "universe merger" event. End result was Morales ended up on earth 616. Its not an amalgam of both movie and comic.
I kind of miss the old Marvel Super Heroes game TSR licensed. I have a copy of FASERIP and 4 COLOR but it really just isn't the same.
I also had the old DC Mayfair game but never played it. Still in the box, probably in another box.
I had the Palladium super hero game, can't remember what it was called, but I had a Justice Machine add on for it. That was an old Comico comic I'd pick up at the convenience store on the way to High School. I read JM, the Elemental, Grendel, and a kind of sucky Robotech comic they put out. Mostly grim and gritty stuff.
The number "616" referet to "Earth-616", and is the alternate universe that most of marvel's stories take place in.
From the Marvel Fandom Wiki:
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Earth-616
QuoteQuote1.png [The] Prime Universe-- last of the old, first of the new. The hub it all revolves around. Here, science can be magic. Here, we can rewrite every story. Quote2.png
—The Maker[src]
History
Foreword: Multiversal Cycle
The reality of Earth-616 has gone through eight different incarnations, all triggered by different instances of multiversal renewal, which constitutes in the destruction and re-creation of everything there is.[14]
I imagine that it uses d6's for task resolution.
Quote from: palaeomerus on July 13, 2021, 04:40:26 AM
I kind of miss the old Marvel Super Heroes game TSR licensed. I have a copy of FASERIP and 4 COLOR but it really just isn't the same.
I also had the old DC Mayfair game but never played it. Still in the box, probably in another box.
I had the Palladium super hero game, can't remember what it was called, but I had a Justice Machine add on for it. That was an old Comico comic I'd pick up at the convenience store on the way to High School. I read JM, the Elemental, Grendel, and a kind of sucky Robotech comic they put out. Mostly grim and gritty stuff.
What isn't the same?
MSH has an incredible fan-community that regularly puts out material better than the original MSH game - and they keep putting it out. It's quite insane the quality of their PDF's they're creating and they do it for free.
I wish the MHR community would do one for Livewires, Galacta or even the Empowered verse. Maybe one day.. The thing is, i dislike the mechanics of MHR, it just dosent fit for me with what i want to play in. It just feels too ''handwavy'' for my tastes.
But back to this thing. While its way early in the game(so to speak), Marvel dosent seem to inspire a lot of confidence these days imho. Debatable on the series and its merits, i wonder if any of the wokeness will seep into the game. Im a bit suprised they made Miss Marvel attractive on the cover, she looks like a woman here, not the current androgynous version. Guess the thing to do is to wait.
That beeing said, i just want the system to be good enough to use it in other supers games. There are games i would like to do, and having tried multiple systems i still have found some i have issues with. Ofc this one will have issues too. Im just hoping for a good outcome i can work with.
Quote from: tenbones on July 13, 2021, 08:07:49 AM
Quote from: palaeomerus on July 13, 2021, 04:40:26 AM
I kind of miss the old Marvel Super Heroes game TSR licensed. I have a copy of FASERIP and 4 COLOR but it really just isn't the same.
I also had the old DC Mayfair game but never played it. Still in the box, probably in another box.
I had the Palladium super hero game, can't remember what it was called, but I had a Justice Machine add on for it. That was an old Comico comic I'd pick up at the convenience store on the way to High School. I read JM, the Elemental, Grendel, and a kind of sucky Robotech comic they put out. Mostly grim and gritty stuff.
What isn't the same?
MSH has an incredible fan-community that regularly puts out material better than the original MSH game - and they keep putting it out. It's quite insane the quality of their PDF's they're creating and they do it for free.
Did not know that. Can you shoot me a link? I could use a nice rabbit hole right about now.
Quote from: palaeomerus on July 13, 2021, 06:53:11 PM
Quote from: tenbones on July 13, 2021, 08:07:49 AM
Quote from: palaeomerus on July 13, 2021, 04:40:26 AM
I kind of miss the old Marvel Super Heroes game TSR licensed. I have a copy of FASERIP and 4 COLOR but it really just isn't the same.
I also had the old DC Mayfair game but never played it. Still in the box, probably in another box.
I had the Palladium super hero game, can't remember what it was called, but I had a Justice Machine add on for it. That was an old Comico comic I'd pick up at the convenience store on the way to High School. I read JM, the Elemental, Grendel, and a kind of sucky Robotech comic they put out. Mostly grim and gritty stuff.
What isn't the same?
MSH has an incredible fan-community that regularly puts out material better than the original MSH game - and they keep putting it out. It's quite insane the quality of their PDF's they're creating and they do it for free.
Did not know that. Can you shoot me a link? I could use a nice rabbit hole right about now.
Second that sentiment. I'm always up to check out an old system.
The MSH Facebook group is invitation only. Because I quit Facebook a couple of years ago, one of their mods gave me access to their Google Share (so I can't give it to you).
HOWEVER...
Most if not all of their material is put up on the Classic Marvel Forever website in their Resources>Downloads section
https://www.classicmarvelforever.com/cms/netbooks-and-enhancements.html
So there you go! Enjoy.
Thank you much!
Quote from: tenbones on July 14, 2021, 09:49:08 AM
The MSH Facebook group is invitation only. Because I quit Facebook a couple of years ago, one of their mods gave me access to their Google Share (so I can't give it to you).
HOWEVER...
Most if not all of their material is put up on the Classic Marvel Forever website in their Resources>Downloads section
https://www.classicmarvelforever.com/cms/netbooks-and-enhancements.html
So there you go! Enjoy.
Awesome. Thanks. :)
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on July 13, 2021, 07:20:33 AM
The number "616" referet to "Earth-616", and is the alternate universe that most of marvel's stories take place in.
From the Marvel Fandom Wiki:
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Earth-616
QuoteQuote1.png [The] Prime Universe-- last of the old, first of the new. The hub it all revolves around. Here, science can be magic. Here, we can rewrite every story. Quote2.png
—The Maker[src]
History
Foreword: Multiversal Cycle
The reality of Earth-616 has gone through eight different incarnations, all triggered by different instances of multiversal renewal, which constitutes in the destruction and re-creation of everything there is.[14]
I imagine that it uses d6's for task resolution.
Yes, it uses two ordinary d6 and one special "Marvel" d6.
Quote from: amacris on July 14, 2021, 01:33:03 PM
...
Yes, it uses two ordinary d6 and one special "Marvel" d6.
A proprietary die?
Making the same mistake as FFG right out of the gate are they?
They are already hobbling themselves by inserting characters in the RPG from the current comic line, and not focusing on the iconic characters from the successful films and classic comics.
One wonders what their metrics for success are for this thing...
Quote from: Jaeger on July 14, 2021, 06:56:40 PM
Quote from: amacris on July 14, 2021, 01:33:03 PM
...
Yes, it uses two ordinary d6 and one special "Marvel" d6.
A proprietary die?
Making the same mistake as FFG right out of the gate are they?
They are already hobbling themselves by inserting characters in the RPG from the current comic line, and not focusing on the iconic characters from the successful films and classic comics.
One wonders what their metrics for success are for this thing...
That was my reaction too. 'Oh for fuck's sake, not ANOTHER game with a goddamn proprietary die!'.
If its a d6 then can be proxied with a table or stickering blank dice. Pretty easy too if can get a blank die. Great for PNP games with custom d6s.
These are DIY custom dice for a PNP board game. Print off the facings on sticker paper and apply to blank dice.
(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/CKRohW_hF6B-dSZNbblj0w__imagepage/img/UQSfI7vBDvEYMqfNzbDsznHwYMc=/fit-in/900x600/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic943670.jpg)
I even did it with standard dice and still works.
Though could also be the dice are just come variant on HeroQuest/HersoScape dice of the standard 111223 format.
Who knows what will be though till more info is released.
I've joked about the Ghostbusters RPG, and it DID include a 'proprietary' die... except not really. The 'ghost die' only has an effect 1 in 6 times, and can be simulated simply by rolling a d6 with one of the faces being selected as the ghost result.
Heck, you could probably buy something off Chessex that'd work perfectly well for that.
Quote from: Omega on July 15, 2021, 07:40:04 AM
If its a d6 then can be proxied with a table or stickering blank dice. Pretty easy too if can get a blank die. Great for PNP games with custom d6s.
These are DIY custom dice for a PNP board game. Print off the facings on sticker paper and apply to blank dice.
(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/CKRohW_hF6B-dSZNbblj0w__imagepage/img/UQSfI7vBDvEYMqfNzbDsznHwYMc=/fit-in/900x600/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic943670.jpg)
I even did it with standard dice and still works.
Though could also be the dice are just come variant on HeroQuest/HersoScape dice of the standard 111223 format.
Who knows what will be though till more info is released.
You won't need a proprietary die. You can play the game with "two red dice and one white die" just fine. The special "Marvel" die just causes different effects on certain rolls, such that (for instance) 6 1 6 has a special effect, etc.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on July 15, 2021, 08:13:13 AM
I've joked about the Ghostbusters RPG, and it DID include a 'proprietary' die... except not really. The 'ghost die' only has an effect 1 in 6 times, and can be simulated simply by rolling a d6 with one of the faces being selected as the ghost result.
The actual ghost die was a cheapo thing with the pips and ghost printed rather than engraved, so it didn't last very long. I would just use a different-colored d6 and the 6 was the ghost.
The Nerdy Show podcast used to sell a really nice replacement.
The mechanic itself was really good.
Quote from: Jaeger on July 14, 2021, 06:56:40 PM
Quote from: amacris on July 14, 2021, 01:33:03 PM
...
Yes, it uses two ordinary d6 and one special "Marvel" d6.
A proprietary die?
Making the same mistake as FFG right out of the gate are they?
They are already hobbling themselves by inserting characters in the RPG from the current comic line, and not focusing on the iconic characters from the successful films and classic comics.
One wonders what their metrics for success are for this thing...
Whether you consider the dice a mistake or not, FFG did well with their RPGs by any marks short of D&D.
I was going to say the same thing. FFG has fully encompassed the Star Wars universe with their three lines. It's a wrap.
The only thing they could reasonably do now is "Era-specific" books, or just churn out endless books on gear and ships - but in reality, they got 95% of what most GM's would ever need already done.
This new Marvel game will *never* get that far.
Quote from: HappyDaze on July 15, 2021, 06:58:54 PM
Whether you consider the dice a mistake or not, FFG did well with their RPGs by any marks short of D&D.
FFG did so well with their proprietary dice that Asmodee fired their entire RPG division and took the license away from them.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on July 14, 2021, 10:22:46 PM
Quote from: Jaeger on July 14, 2021, 06:56:40 PM
Quote from: amacris on July 14, 2021, 01:33:03 PM
...
Yes, it uses two ordinary d6 and one special "Marvel" d6.
A proprietary die?
Making the same mistake as FFG right out of the gate are they?
They are already hobbling themselves by inserting characters in the RPG from the current comic line, and not focusing on the iconic characters from the successful films and classic comics.
One wonders what their metrics for success are for this thing...
That was my reaction too. 'Oh for fuck's sake, not ANOTHER game with a goddamn proprietary die!'.
Just catching up and I'll just add yet another reason why HERO/Champions, M&M and FASERIP will remain the mainstays is; standard dice.
HERO uses nothing but ordinary d6's, M&M uses 1d20 for everything, FASERIP is percentile dice. A commonality of just about any game with any sticking power is it's use of ordinarily numbered polyhedrals (I'd bet something that used an ordinary deck of cards could also pull it off; I've seen some very interesting naval wargames that used the combo of number and suit for hit coordinates and they can also, in a pinch, sub for any dice type).
Special dice are just one more thing to lose.
Quote from: Thornhammer on July 15, 2021, 06:47:32 PM
...
The actual ghost die was a cheapo thing with the pips and ghost printed rather than engraved, so it didn't last very long. I would just use a different-colored d6 and the 6 was the ghost.
...
I actually have a pristine Ghost die from that game. The game itself go too damaged in storage to salvage, but the die I have.
Quote from: HappyDaze on July 15, 2021, 06:58:54 PM
...
Whether you consider the dice a mistake or not, FFG did well with their RPGs by any marks short of D&D.
Yes. But they were leaning heavily on one of the evergreen RPG IP's this hobby has outside of D&D.
Lord of the Rings, Conan, and Star Wars seem to be system agnostic in RPG land. People love themselves their favorite IP and will buy it just for the art and lore. One of the people involved in 2d20 Conan admitted as much on this very forum.
FFG funky dice + 3e WHFRP = built in fanbase. It sold reasonably well.
FFG funky dice + Star Wars = built in fanbase. It sold well.
FFG funky dice 'genesys' system + no beloved IP = Nobody gives shit. Good luck finding a game.
There is also the fact that because of the funky dice playtesting such systems can be difficult outside of groups with ready access to them. And FFG's games all have playtest issues.
I have their Edge of the empire rpg. And the fact is; it is overcomplicated for what it is trying to do.
They could have done a count success variant of d6 star wars with normal d6's, where getting a 6 or a 1 on a different colored die kicked in some effect, and been within 80% of what they were trying to do with their funky dice rules.
It would have somewhat simplified the game, made it readily easy to playtest with a much bigger group to iron out system issues, and once it hit the shelves absolutely zero of their customers would have given a shit about any theoretical extras brought to the table if they used special funky dice.
So who is betting Marvel with race/gender/sexual preference-swapped tokenized characters with funky dice is going to sell and go the distance?
Place your bets. I'm betting on the House. The Poor House.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on July 16, 2021, 01:10:48 PM
Quote from: HappyDaze on July 15, 2021, 06:58:54 PM
Whether you consider the dice a mistake or not, FFG did well with their RPGs by any marks short of D&D.
FFG did so well with their proprietary dice that Asmodee fired their entire RPG division and took the license away from them.
Asmodee restructured and gave RPGs to Edge. The FFG RPG folks largely moved to Edge as well. It's mainly just a different logo but the same people, and it's all still under Asmodee.
Quote from: tenbones on July 16, 2021, 11:42:02 PM
So who is betting Marvel with race/gender/sexual preference-swapped tokenized characters with funky dice is going to sell and go the distance?
Dude, the cover we've seen has Captain America, Iron Man, 2 different Spider-Men, Storm and Wolverine. Probably the top tier in terms of popularity. Captain Marvel and GotG are super popular right now thanks to the movies, so a couple inclusions there make sense. The only things I don't recognize are the new Thor variant I haven't seen before and the dude in the background on the right. The one on the left is obviously Galactus, but I don't immediately recognize the other dude. Maybe Kang? Maybe some other cosmic entity? I dunno. I assume they'll include some of the increasingly bizarre current batch, too, but the first and only thing they've put out contains mostly heavy-hitters in terms of current popularity.
Quote from: GeekEclectic on July 17, 2021, 02:45:40 PM
The only things I don't recognize are the new Thor variant I haven't seen before and the dude in the background on the right. The one on the left is obviously Galactus, but I don't immediately recognize the other dude. Maybe Kang?
Looks like Kang. The lines, shape of the helmet, and even the hints of color match. Plus, he along with Galactus are supposed to appear in Phase 4.
Quote from: GeekEclectic on July 17, 2021, 02:45:40 PM
Quote from: tenbones on July 16, 2021, 11:42:02 PM
So who is betting Marvel with race/gender/sexual preference-swapped tokenized characters with funky dice is going to sell and go the distance?
Dude, the cover we've seen has Captain America, Iron Man, 2 different Spider-Men, Storm and Wolverine. Probably the top tier in terms of popularity. Captain Marvel and GotG are super popular right now thanks to the movies, so a couple inclusions there make sense. The only things I don't recognize are the new Thor variant I haven't seen before and the dude in the background on the right. The one on the left is obviously Galactus, but I don't immediately recognize the other dude. Maybe Kang? Maybe some other cosmic entity? I dunno. I assume they'll include some of the increasingly bizarre current batch, too, but the first and only thing they've put out contains mostly heavy-hitters in terms of current popularity.
First - I put nothing past Marvel.
Second - the characters on the cover are not the current incarnations of the characters in the books.
Third - Contrary to what you might think about the MCU, Marvel Comics in general, and the gaming populace - that is a Venn diagram of vastly different populations that generally have little to do with one another.
MCU fans don't collect comics generally. They watch movies and TV. Any roleplayers among them are an extreme minority - and if they do play RPG's it's D&D.
Comic fans that enjoyed the classic representations of those characters have long left the comic-collecting hobby. See: Sales. MOST comic collectors are not tabletop RPG players. Those that do are a minority. Of those that do - the majority of them play D&D... you'll see a pattern developing here. Comic fans that enjoy the current crop of Marvel - don't play rpg's. Of those that do... they majority of them play... you know the drill. They certainly don't like the classic renditions of Marvel characters. As a general segment of the comic-collecting audience they are an extreme minority overall. See: sales (the majority of current comic readers buy Manga not American comics.)
Roleplayers might read comics. The vast majority of them read Manga. See: Sales. When it comes to playing RPG's the overwhelming majority of players play Fantasy RPG's with D&D being the sky under which all other RPG's exist. Among the roleplaying populace ****very**** few GM's actively run Supers RPG's at their main table as their regular game (or in their regular rotations of games). I'm one of them.
Of the GM's that actively run Super's games - the *******VAST******** majority of them are dialed-in and locked on their favorite Supers RPG system of choice. MSH, M&M, V&V, HeroSystem, Champions, DC, etc. It's highly tribal and that way for a reason: Because very few Supers RPG's are commercially supported longterm. Those that engage in this flavor of TTRPG's are *die-hards* both for the genre and for their particular system(s) of choice.
At best most people interested in this offering for Marvel's game will be purely a passing thing for a casual sniff. And it won't go the distance because it's competing against all the factors above. It's a niche of a niche of a niche they're appealing to. And those in those niches are intensely loyal to their niche.
Lately I'm seeing long box stores suddenly make a come back. Not sure what is up with that or how business is but maybe nostalgia is a big driver in comics such that those who buy manga are also buying trades and omnibuses of older stuff and when necessary actually seeking out cheap n cheerful dog eared low grade back issues. I have no idea how that crosses over with gaming as right now it looks like board game is king.
Quote from: tenbones on July 17, 2021, 07:19:21 PM
Second - the characters on the cover are not the current incarnations of the characters in the books.
Dude, they're still popular characters. I don't think people in general are going to be all that confused because it's not the exact palette swap they're used to.
Quote*a bunch of other stuff*
Okay, 1, I am way too toasted to comprehend all of this right now. And 2 . . . you were just like "recent batch of trait-swapped characters" and all I pointed out was "like some of the most well-known characters, in any iteration, with like 2 or 3 exceptions." I don't know how good this is going to do. I don't know what other characters are going to be in the book, though I assume at least a few of the newer ones will probably be in there. I'm not sweating it. At least the cover looks pretty good. I'm very pro-Galactus, by the way. I am not unbiased.
We've got a system name, a game name and cover, and the stat spread that says MARVEL. It might not end up as good as it looks, but it looks fine right now.
Quote from: GeekEclectic on July 17, 2021, 11:38:41 PM
Quote from: tenbones on July 17, 2021, 07:19:21 PM
Second - the characters on the cover are not the current incarnations of the characters in the books.
Dude, they're still popular characters. I don't think people in general are going to be all that confused because it's not the exact palette swap they're used to.
Quote*a bunch of other stuff*
Okay, 1, I am way too toasted to comprehend all of this right now. And 2 . . . you were just like "recent batch of trait-swapped characters" and all I pointed out was "like some of the most well-known characters, in any iteration, with like 2 or 3 exceptions." I don't know how good this is going to do. I don't know what other characters are going to be in the book, though I assume at least a few of the newer ones will probably be in there. I'm not sweating it. At least the cover looks pretty good. I'm very pro-Galactus, by the way. I am not unbiased.
We've got a system name, a game name and cover, and the stat spread that says MARVEL. It might not end up as good as it looks, but it looks fine right now.
My only claim on this game is it will fail.
You can nitpick anything you want. I'm merely citing my observations.
While you can point out "these are popular characters" - to WHOM? Anyone interested in playing long-term Supers RPG's *is already doing it*. And they are a very small, but super-enthusiastic slice of an already small slice of the gaming population.
If your only claim is "It might be good." LOL great! Buy it. But that's not saying much. Nor is point you're making very meaningful in the context of the overall situation.
And hey look! I *could* be wrong. But I'm not betting on it.
Quote from: tenbones on July 17, 2021, 11:59:47 PM
My only claim on this game is it will fail.
Yeah, they don't have a great track record. I can dig that.
QuoteWhile you can point out "these are popular characters" - to WHOM?
Literally everyone. If you consume western media, you likely know what a Spider-Man or Wolverine is even if you don't read the comics or particularly care about the movies. If you play the video games, you're likely familiar with a lot of the older costumes even if you've never picked up a comic. Including a bunch of those is something Marvel game makers love to do.
QuoteAnyone interested in playing long-term Supers RPG's *is already doing it*.
Statistically unlikely. You have to assume that everyone who would be interested in playing a supers themed RPG already knows that superhero RPGs exist. Yeah . . . a lot of people's knowledge of D&D is spotty at best, much less anything more niche. Hard to want what you don't even know is an option.
QuoteAnd they are a very small, but super-enthusiastic slice of an already small slice of the gaming population.
Niche of niche, I'm following.
QuoteIf your only claim is "It might be good." LOL great! Buy it. But that's not saying much. Nor is point you're making very meaningful in the context of the overall situation.
My only real claims are that the cover looks nice enough and actually does contain currently popular characters . . . and I guess that the specific palette swaps used aren't going to be as confusing as you seem to think.
QuoteAnd hey look! I *could* be wrong. But I'm not betting on it.
I prefer not to gamble, too.
I think we generally see eye-to-eye on this.
But this thing here...
Quote from: GeekEclectic on July 18, 2021, 01:14:42 AM
Literally everyone. If you consume western media, you likely know what a Spider-Man or Wolverine is even if you don't read the comics or particularly care about the movies. If you play the video games, you're likely familiar with a lot of the older costumes even if you've never picked up a comic. Including a bunch of those is something Marvel game makers love to do.
Knowing about a thing, and consuming those things are entirely different actions. Let me elaborate a bit - *I* can see where you're coming from based on certain assumptions I make about you: 1) you're an RPG Forum talking about RPGS 2) you're *actually* talking about Marvel Superheroes 3) You're indicating that you have interests in these characters beyond either of these two endeavors (comics and TTRPGs).
My gut reaction is SURE - they're "popular" to the NPC normies. But... the reality my head tells me is this: They NPC Normies only know what they're told. They're not wide-spread consumers of these things. TTRPG's are their own distinct tribe of many intense little tribes. Videogame players are their own distinct tribe composed of many intense smaller tribes. Pop-culture consumers - movies, TV are in an entirely different orbit.
The degree of what you an I might agree is "popular" is relative. I own north of 30k comics (probably closer to 40k) going deep into the Silver Age and several complete runs of books up to One More Day where I pretty much quit collecting monthlies... and dwindled down to indies (Basically anything from Matt Wagner, Mobius, and a couple of others). I'll stand and bang talking comics with *anyone*. I've been running MSH (FASERIP) pretty much since it dropped at my table - so barring other campaigns, it's been a constant for the last 35+ years.
So I'm saying this to illustrate that I am a "fan". But the things I'm a fan of - pick your character from the Marvel Universe, is probably for reasons utterly so unknown, so obscure it may as well not even exist for the average modern fan that knows Marvel from all other pop-culture sources OTHER than comics. That includes TTRPG's.
I understand very clearly that these tribes consume comic-media in very different and discrete ways. So Captain America is popular to most people today because by the numbers people have watched the MCU. THAT is Captain America to them.
Captain America, disaffected by 1970's politics, wearing a Disco-pop-collared blue-plunging neckline to his dick-root Nomad-era cap, sans-Star Spangled Shield, but now tossing these weird little yellow frisbee-pucks would cause most modern "fans" to go "W.T.F.?". Or his now current modern Captain America - who now apparently is wrestling with his own realization according to modern writers, he's a Nazi creation that deep down hates America. MOST MCU viewers, the largest "fandom" that currently exists - would also scratch their heads at trying to square that circle too.
So yeah *I* am the outlier here. Not the NPC's. This is part of the problem. The only demographic that making this game makes *any* sense to is precisely no one but ultra-casual, borderline board-game enthusiasts that also happen to dabble in TTRPGS.
Hardcore TTRPG players tend to *not* player Supers RPGS - because it's hard enough to get GM's to run D&D, much less have a GM that wants to run a Supers RPG in lieu of D&D and find players that are willing to play. It's more of a GM issue than a player issue (to be sure).
MCU fans generally aren't going to become such fans that they suddenly want to play a Marvel RPG*
*Now - kids that learn about Marvel via the MCU might do this. And this is important, and where the Dead on Arrival prediction hurts most: Because Marvel can't even run their own Comicbook business anywhere but straight into the ground, what in the fucking world gives anyone the faith that they're magically going to become successful as an RPG enterprise? Those kids that play will suddenly find themselves with a mediocre game at best that will get dropped once the bean-counters realize that the money made on this project will amount to shit. Most of those people coming in via that vector will fade out... and if we're lucky, may decide to have a good enough experience to try another RPG and go a little further. But how many people will this be?
How much marketing do you actually think Marvel is going to put behind it?
Better still - they might discover there are scads of Superhero RPG's already out there with pretty vibrant communities that won't budge on their tried and true systems of choice, because those communities support their own games with their own content that *vastly* covers Marvel, DC, and pretty much every other pop-culture icon out there. Fuck man, I just wrapped up my latest MSH story-arc where the PC's fought alongside Raydeen from the Shogun Warriors against Ghidorah - and Beta Ray Bill, with members of Overwatch, and characters from Mutants and Masterminds off the coast of LA. There's *that* much stuff out there.
I'm saying this game will be mediocre *AT BEST* and that's me being ULTRA GENEROUS, it will have very little support. And any initial sales it makes will plummet with intense speed because Marvel is an incompetent company in their own medium. They deserve zero benefit of the doubt entering into this medium, especially considering their current political manifesto that will demand catering to - not necessarily by us, but by the usual suspects currently ruining pop-culture (and the rest of culture writ-large).
That Marvel minis game that came out I think last year, Crisis Protocol, is popular among my friends but nobody plays it . They paint and the minis and are a bit competitive about it but they don't play. That's why I stay out of it, I am a slops painter and can't hang when there is a reference to compare models against. Same with the Knight Models DC and Batman stuff and their old Marvel stuff. They buy and paint 'em but I've never seen anyone play them. It's kind of funny. I do have some of the knight models stuff though I use it in sci-fi skirmish and make no effort to pain them correctly and glue stuff to them. They make a nice line of huge armed thugs in raincoats or tank tops and a few powered armor things like the parademons and kryptonians from the Superman Movie and the Luthor Corp powered armor that work well for sci fi Skirmish. And I have a bunch of riddler and his gang stuff who I used as just cornball costumed bank robber type guys.
I was happy to find those fan MSH modules though. Those were neat. Spiced things up a bit.
Quote from: palaeomerus on July 18, 2021, 09:09:51 PM
That Marvel minis game that came out I think last year, Crisis Protocol, is popular among my friends but nobody plays it . They paint and the minis and are a bit competitive about it but they don't play. That's why I stay out of it, I am a slops painter and can't hang when there is a reference to compare models against. Same with the Knight Models DC and Batman stuff and their old Marvel stuff. They buy and paint 'em but I've never seen anyone play them. It's kind of funny. I do have some of the knight models stuff though I use it in sci-fi skirmish and make no effort to pain them correctly and glue stuff to them. They make a nice line of huge armed thugs in raincoats or tank tops and a few powered armor things like the parademons and kryptonians from the Superman Movie and the Luthor Corp powered armor that work well for sci fi Skirmish. And I have a bunch of riddler and his gang stuff who I used as just cornball costumed bank robber type guys.
I was happy to find those fan MSH modules though. Those were neat. Spiced things up a bit.
Now this would be a very smart way to go if they went pre-painted. But it would be tough to make an evergreen line of minis for it, though they might be able to create some hybrid game where they produced battle-mat focused adventures and scenarios. I never played the HeroClix game but damn I was sorely tempted if only to get all the Marvel/DC figures to use with my MSH games if nothing else.
Again the issue is Marvel doing it in-house. Something like this would be much smarter for their established licensees like Hasbro. But I'd prefer for it to go to a smaller crew of dedicated people.
Quote from: tenbones on July 18, 2021, 03:10:04 AM
Captain America, disaffected by 1970's politics, wearing a Disco-pop-collared blue-plunging neckline to his dick-root Nomad-era cap, sans-Star Spangled Shield, but now tossing these weird little yellow frisbee-pucks would cause most modern "fans" to go "W.T.F.?".
LOL! I remember that.
Quote from: palaeomerus on July 18, 2021, 09:09:51 PM
That Marvel minis game that came out I think last year, Crisis Protocol, is popular among my friends but nobody plays it .
At my game store, Crisis Protocol is the third most popular game they have after 40K and Star Wars Legion.
The main problem I see with a Marvel RPG is that there are already so many Marvel themed games that are much easier to get into than an RPG: Crisis Protocol, Marvel United, Marvel Champions have all been released in the last three years. Champions (pre-Hero System) was one of the first games I ever ran and I always found that it was a huge effort to make a decent superhero adventure compared to something like D&D.