Best 10 or so archetypes for a high-powered GURPS Supers game?

[Michael Thayne]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how you'd write an equivalent of Dungeon Fantasy, Action, or Monster Hunters for the Supers genre. I think you'd want to make run it at the 100+ point level, to avoid too much overlap which Monster Hunters (which is already basically Supers if you de-emphasize the monsters). This raises its own challenges, though: not all Supers concepts scale equally well to the 1000+ point level. Nor does 1000 points of telepathy necessarily play well alongside characters that have invested hundreds of points in abilities like ST and Telekinesis.

Probably the templates wouldn't be as distinctive as the Brick/Dreadnought/Weatherworker trio from GURPS: Supers. That's OK. The existing books in this niche have some templates that are pretty similar to each other–the Assassin and Shooter, for example, mostly are about a choice of Craftiness and related skills vs. Gunslinger and more Guns specialties. For example, you might have something like the Weatherworker (which uses Telekinesis to model wind powers) while also having a Psychic who is (mandatorily, to fit in better with the bricks) more MCU Scarlet Witch than Charles Xavier.

But getting an exact list requires hammering out a combination of (1) which archetypes are most important to the supers genre and (2) which archetypes play best in GURPS. I think it's helpful to go to famous superteams for inspiration (in part because they're more likely to have abilities that play well on a team):

• The Justice League: most well-known members are probably appropriate in some incarnation or other, particularly since there seems to be a tendency to elevate them into Superman-level bricks. Even the oft-mocked Aquaman often seems to be to the oceans what Superman is to the skies. However, I'd rather not hurt our brains trying to make sense of how Batman could fit in here, unless we're doing a version that uses powered armor all the time.
• The Avengers: the recent Joss Whedon movies seem well-tailored to a tabletop RPG, since Joss Whedon seems to have taken pains to show that Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and The Hulk are on roughly the same level. Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Vision probably work too (MCU Scarlet Witch is a nice example of how to do a psychic who isn't a Charles Xavier-esque game breaker). Ant Man, Black Widow, and Hawkeye feel like Allies built on 50% of the PC's points, but Hank Pym-as-Giant-Man could work.
• The Fantastic Four: Ben Grimm and Sue Storm have a lot in common with the examples already mentioned from The Justice League and The Avengers. Reed Richards seems underpowered by comparison, but many interpretations seem to suggest he's packing quite a bit of super-strength. The Human Torch is powerful, but I worry about overspecialization.
• The X-Men: As famous as they are, they seem even trickier than the Fantastic Four. Many members are low-powered or potentially overspecialized. That said, my picks from the team are Colossus, Storm, and Jean Grey. Maybe Iceman too, if we're not too worried about overspecialization.

Looking at this list, some natural categories jump out, but I'm curious to get other people's thoughts before posting my own. Again, what are the categories of supers that are (1) essential to the genre and (2) viable in a high-level GURPS game. Attempts to define the important sub-categories of bricks are welcome. Also, any really important super-heroes I missed.

[Wavefunction]

A couple of things to remember would be that Reed Richards, Hank Pym, and Tony Stark all have preposterously high IQ and levels of Talent. They're geniuses above and beyond their superpowers, the differences being that Tony bought a set of Powers with Gadget Limitations representing his suit, whilst Hank and Reed bought innate superpowers.

Because of the above I might be tempted to put together 10 archetypes independently of any powers. These templates would probably be fairly obvious, The Smart Guy, The Detective, The Warrior, etc... Then have a set of Powers that could be added on top (to handle Batmen, one of those Powers might just be to add another template, or multiple templates, or possibly just boost an existing one).

So Tony, Hank, and Reed are all examples of Smart Guys, just with radically different power sets.

I'd also borrow something from GURPS Action and GURPS Monster Hunters with their background lenses, but I'd call the civilian identities instead.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I've been thinking a lot lately about how you'd write an equivalent of Dungeon Fantasy, Action, or Monster Hunters for the Supers genre.

We already have GURPS Supers, but you're spot on for realizing that it's not like Monster Hunters or Dungeon Fantasy. It's more like Fantasy: It's a discussion of how a particular genre works, with a bunch of templates appropriate to stories of that genre (thus, it's typical of Bill Stoddard's work. This not a criticism; sometimes that's exactly what you're looking for, this is just not the case). You want something more Krommian.

I often work on games like that too, and here's what I find works best. First, you need to understand what the gameplay is. DF is "killing monsters and taking their stuff." Specifically, it is finding out about a dungeon, getting into the dungeon (lockpicking, parkour, puzzle-solving), then fighting monsters in tightly controlled spaces and getting to the cool loot, and then getting out of the dungeon (more parkour) and then selling your stuff. The heart of DF is found not in DF 1, but in DF 2. Monster Hunters is the same: Monsters kill people, so you kill them. Specifically, you uncover some dangerous mystery, you solve the mystery, which always leads to a monster at its heart, you learn how best to kill the monster, you do so, and then you cover it up. Again, the heart of Monster Hunters is in MH 2, not MH 1.

So, what are the core gameplay elements of Supers? I would argue that they're pretty similar to monster hunters: There is a crime/threat to the world, the characters need to investigate it, then they get to the super-villain that is at its heart, then they fight him and lose, then they investigate how best to defeat him, then they have a final conflict with him, and then they win.

Think your way through a typical supers game. What should happen? What is genre appropriate? What is exciting? You push against the morals of the heroes. You threaten their loved ones. They need to solve the mystery, they need to puzzle out how best to defeat the villain. They need to fight lots of mooks. They need to escape a death trap. They need to fight the big villain. They need to save the world.

Once you understand the core gameplay elements, you can create niches. See Template Toolkit 1 for some advice. You're looking at challenges, and you're looking at the way heroes will tackle them. It's also not enough to think about how best to solve them ("Criminology for solving crimes") but the various ways they might solve them ("Well, you can also solve crimes with Streetwise and Intimidation, or with Contacts and Security Clearance..."). Once you've established a variety of ways that characters can solve the gameplay elements, you can start mashing them together into thematically appropriate templates.

Say you notice that every super needs some sort of moral code, some way to solve a mystery/crime, and some way to beat up the bad guys. I'll leave aside the moral code for now, and note a few ways you might solve mysteries:

• Like a detective (Criminology, forensics, etc)
• Like a gumshoe (Intimidation, streetwise, sheer cussedness)
• Like a spy (Contacts, Security Clearance, Intelligence Analysis)
• Like a scientist (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Quick Gadgeteer)
• Like a curious kid (Search, Scrounging, Diplomacy, Fast-Talk)

And you have a variety of ways in which the heroes tend to defeat the bad guys

• Brute force (ST, HP, DR)
• Blasts of energy (Innate Attack)
• Elemental Control (Control, a whole host of abilities)
• Sheer skill (DX, IQ, low-key advantages)
• One Clever Power (Telepathy, Invisibility, turning into a wolf, etc)

The next step is to put these together somehow. Perhaps all bruisers are also gumshoes and all man-plus characters are scientists. Or (better IMO) you have multiple templates that characters put together. I can select Man Plus and Super Spy, or Scientist and Bruiser or Sheer Skill and Detective.

Now, the nice thing about having all of this worked out against a sheet of typical difficulties that players will face: you can start to balance things. If you know, for example, that heroes will typically need skill 15+ to solve crimes, then you give them skill 15+ in pertinent crime-solving skills. If you want to prevent precognition or telepathy from turning crimes into something too easily solved, then you introduce required limitations to those advantages: The seer always has some issue to deal with that lets the detective stay equivalent with her.

The same is true for combat, and this is where the template/niche system gets nice. If you know that you want your game to play, say, on the C-scale, then you can start to balance everything around that. For example, we already know that blasters and bruisers have a problem, since Innate Attack is so cheap and ST is so expensive. But you can put a cap on how much innate attack the blaster can get and then give him options for expanded utility, while the bruiser gets some limitations or enhancements that bring him on level. And since you have these static assumptions, since you can define a power level, you can balance everything. No more fighting with making Superman fit into Batman's world: Everyone is 1000 points (or whatever) and you know exactly why your Skilled Detective in on par with your Flying Brick Journalist.

For thematically appropriate elements, you have to look no farther than GURPS Supers. I'd say the templates in there hit all the right combat notes. There's also a solid discussion of why supers do what they do. Draw on that for inspiration, as well as your own experience with supers, and then use that to build your templates once you understand the niches and how best to tackle them.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

I often work on games like that too, and here's what I find works best. First, you need to understand what the gameplay is. DF is "killing monsters and taking their stuff." Specifically, it is finding out about a dungeon, getting into the dungeon (lockpicking, parkour, puzzle-solving), then fighting monsters in tightly controlled spaces and getting to the cool loot, and then getting out of the dungeon (more parkour) and then selling your stuff. The heart of DF is found not in DF 1, but in DF 2. Monster Hunters is the same: Monsters kill people, so you kill them. Specifically, you uncover some dangerous mystery, you solve the mystery, which always leads to a monster at its heart, you learn how best to kill the monster, you do so, and then you cover it up. Again, the heart of Monster Hunters is in MH 2, not MH 1.

So, what are the core gameplay elements of Supers? I would argue that they're pretty similar to monster hunters: There is a crime/threat to the world, the characters need to investigate it, then they get to the super-villain that is at its heart, then they fight him and lose, then they investigate how best to defeat him, then they have a final conflict with him, and then they win.

Think your way through a typical supers game. What should happen? What is genre appropriate? What is exciting? You push against the morals of the heroes. You threaten their loved ones. They need to solve the mystery, they need to puzzle out how best to defeat the villain. They need to fight lots of mooks. They need to escape a death trap. They need to fight the big villain. They need to save the world...

Say you notice that every super needs some sort of moral code, some way to solve a mystery/crime, and some way to beat up the bad guys. I'll leave aside the moral code for now, and note a few ways you might solve mysteries...

The point about getting into dungeons and solving mysteries is a good one, and reminds me of a theory that the three basic RPG character archetypes are fighter, mage, and thief. "Thief" is the most misleading title here, it's really more scout/non-combat mundane skill guy. I remember years ago, Monte Cook (one of the designers of D&D 3.0) called the thief the "skill guy" (weapons training wasn't a "skill" in D&D 3.0), which was why in his indie RPG Arcana Unearthed he made a class called the "Akashic", which was basically the distilled essence of non-combat skills. This theory actually worms its way into GURPS 4e in the Templates chapter of Basic Set, as "Investigator, Mage, Soldier of Fortune." In Monster Hunters, I'd say the Commando and the Warrior are the fighters, the Psi and the Witch and arguably the Techie are the mages, the Detective is the thief/investigator, and the other templates blend roles.

Your suggested scheme seems to imply everyone should be roughly equally competent at the "thief" role, but that's not how most RPGs do things. Unfortunately, the "thief" role scales a bit awkwardly to high-powered supers. I'd say we should probably expect our "thief" to basically be a souped-up version of Batman, with either supernatural powers (vampire!?) or some really impressive gadgets. You could get a choice, I mean. You could also add a "cyborg" option for someone like Midnighter from The Authority.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

The point about getting into dungeons and solving mysteries is a good one, and reminds me of a theory that the three basic RPG character archetypes are fighter, mage, and thief. "Thief" is the most misleading title here, it's really more scout/non-combat mundane skill guy. I remember years ago, Monte Cook (one of the designers of D&D 3.0) called the thief the "skill guy" (weapons training wasn't a "skill" in D&D 3.0), which was why in his indie RPG Arcana Unearthed he made a class called the "Akashic", which was basically the distilled essence of non-combat skills. This theory actually worms its way into GURPS 4e in the Templates chapter of Basic Set, as "Investigator, Mage, Soldier of Fortune." In Monster Hunters, I'd say the Commando and the Warrior are the fighters, the Psi and the Witch and arguably the Techie are the mages, the Detective is the thief/investigator, and the other templates blend roles.

Your suggested scheme seems to imply everyone should be roughly equally competent at the "thief" role, but that's not how most RPGs do things. Unfortunately, the "thief" role scales a bit awkwardly to high-powered supers. I'd say we should probably expect our "thief" to basically be a souped-up version of Batman, with either supernatural powers (vampire!?) or some really impressive gadgets. You could get a choice, I mean. You could also add a "cyborg" option for someone like Midnighter from The Authority.

I notice when I join general RPG groups, that there's a significant segment of the RPG populace for whom everything is D&D. They can't really conceive of an RPG in any other way. There's a danger in that: It blinds you to what other games are trying to do. You say, for example, that most RPGs tend to split along the Fighter/Mage/Thief roles, but is that really necessary? Does Hillfolk do that? Does Legends of the Wulin? Fate? Gumshoe? No, they don't.

You can, of course, thrust that onto a game and try to make it fit that paradigm, as you've done with Monster Hunters, but go back and look at those templates. Every template can fight. Every template can investigate. The core gameplay of Monster Hunters is preserved across every template. If you took nothing but Warriors and Commandos, they could still investigate the monster, and if you took nothing but Slueths and Sages, you could still slay the monster. The two games would play very differently (and we would want them to!), but they both fulfill their basic gameplay elements.

Go back to your D&D analogy. You argue that the fighter, mage and thief are fundamentally different roles: Force, knowledge and skill. They do have those distinct roles, but I would argue that they all do the same things: They tackle the challenges of a dungeon and they kill monsters. The fighter tackles the challenges with brute force (he bashes down doors, he endures the traps) and fights the monsters the same way. The mage tackles the challenges with his supreme knowledge and mastery of powers (he finds the invisible door, he knows the answer to the lore puzzle, he knows the secret weakness of the monsters, he casts invisibility on the party) and he fights them with spells and crowd control. The thief defeats the challenges with guile (he sneaks past the enemies, he picks the lock, he vaults the walls, he finds the traps) and defeats his enemies with the same (poison, back stabs, evasion). They're not tackling inherently different things, because they're all playing the same game, they're just each playing it differently. it is not the case that when monsters show up, the fighter fights and the mage and thief pick their noses, and that when the fighting is done, the fighter sits around while the mage and thief get past puzzles.

You want your supers to play differently, absolutely, but you want them all playing the same game. How boring would it be to have the bruiser just sitting around picking his nose while the detective solves the crime? And then to have the detective pick his nose while the bruiser beats up the bad guy? You run into the Shadowrun problem if you do that.

And look at your comics. We all know that Batman is "the detective," but have you seen the Flash? They solve mysteries every week over there. Or have you seen the Superman animated series? He's always solving crimes (that the cunning Lex Luthor usually puts into action). The fantastic four, the X-men, every Avengers movie, has a mystery that people solve. Every one. And all the characters participate in the solving of that mystery. They just do it differently: Batman does it with supreme detective skills. Superman does it with x-ray vision and super-hearing and journalistic connections. The Flash does it with a team of scientists and his own scientific knowledge, and so on.

And all of them fight the villain. Batman doesn't solve the crime and then step aside to let Superman do all the punching. Batman fights too: He uses kung fu and cunning tricks. Superman does it with sheer power and speed. The Flash also does it with... sheer speed.

Everyone plays the same game, and the game has the same rules for everyone, and everyone is involved in every scene as much as possible.

But when you create a game, you want to create gameplay, and gameplay turns on interesting choices. You want the players to stop and think about how best to tackle a situation and you want them to weigh options. And the purpose of niches is that different players will bring different solutions to the table. Not that "Oh, it's a thief scene, so the thief gets to do something, while the rest of the party sits around," but "Oh, it's a tricky situation. How would my thief handle this? Oh, the mage has an interesting solution that's different than mine, but he has some problems that, perhaps, I can help with."

You want to do the same with your supers. You don't want to create divisive gameplay where people can't participate. You want everyone participating in the core gameplay of the game. That's not to say that nobody gets individual scenes but, rather, that everyone can slot into how the game is meant to be played. You can have nothing but bruisers and flying bricks without the game being stumped because they lack a detective, and you don't want a combat that can't proceed because everyone is a detective and a super spy and nobody is a bruiser or a blaster. Everyone can solve crimes. Everyone can fight. But everyone solves crimes differently, and everyone fights differently. The "solves crime" element and the "fight" element must necessarily break down into smaller parts, but everyone participates in that larger element.

Once you have those core gameplay elements and you've broken them down into subdivisions, then I often find it's quite simple to work out what the template structure should look like.

[vicky_molokh]

Of all the supers archetypes, the one I liked the most was whatever you call the archetype of [PROTOTYPE]. In GURPS, calling it Improvised Morph is probably most accurate. It also happens to scale up to 1k points easily (you just increase the morph pool).

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

I notice when I join general RPG groups, that there's a significant segment of the RPG populace for whom everything is D&D. They can't really conceive of an RPG in any other way. There's a danger in that: It blinds you to what other games are trying to do. You say, for example, that most RPGs tend to split along the Fighter/Mage/Thief roles, but is that really necessary? Does Hillfolk do that? Does Legends of the Wulin? Fate? Gumshoe? No, they don't.

When I think of my last GURPS Supers campaign, we had five characters. There was the team leader, who had psionically based flight, force fields, and energy blasts; because he didn't engage close up he was in a good position to make tactical decisions. We had the psychic, who basically had telepathy and mind control. We had the straight brick, a strong, invulnerable super soldier who favored squad-level weapons as personal carries. We had the weird brick, who had boosted strength, four extra arms, and boosted speed, but who could morph into a form where she was surrounded by an inner defensive field, a larger erosive field, and an even larger darkness field that made her unobservable. And finally we had the versatile brick, a huge dragon who could shapeshift (often into a human form) and teleport and who carried a magic weapon that gave him hand to hand and ranged attacks—possibly his most spectacular feat was attacking a foe who was guarded by angels, throwing his blade at the foe, and having it kill two or three of the angels who flew to his defense!

I don't think these can quite be fitted into the D&D triad. Four of the five were mainly combatants; none of them were sneakers; none of them went in for skills big time.

And all of them fight the villain. Batman doesn't solve the crime and then step aside to let Superman do all the punching. Batman fights too: He uses kung fu and cunning tricks. Superman does it with sheer power and speed. The Flash also does it with... sheer speed.

That's true of superteams whose members do superheroics on their own, which describes the Justice League and the original Avengers. It's not so true of teams that always work together. The Legion of Super-Heroes is the poster child for this, with Dream Girl (a clairvoyant/precog), Brainiac 5 (a lab geek), Chameleon Boy (disguise), Shrinking Violet (stealth), Triplicate Girl/Duo Damsel/Triad (self-duplication), Invisible Kid (duh!)—well, you get the idea.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

I notice when I join general RPG groups, that there's a significant segment of the RPG populace for whom everything is D&D. They can't really conceive of an RPG in any other way. There's a danger in that: It blinds you to what other games are trying to do. You say, for example, that most RPGs tend to split along the Fighter/Mage/Thief roles, but is that really necessary? Does Hillfolk do that? Does Legends of the Wulin? Fate? Gumshoe? No, they don't.

I don't know about those specific ones, as I'm not familiar with them. I can think of cases where it doesn't apply, which tend to be basically "games that don't have magic." I suggested the Techie in MH is basically a mage not because he's cerebral, but because he wields superscience tech that's basically magic. The distinctions here are magic vs. mundane and combat vs. non-combat, which would give you for categories except I can't think of a single game off the top of my head that makes a sharp distinction between "combat mage" and "utility mage" in its class system. There seems to be a tendency for games without magic to have more diversity and specialization among their non-combat roles, though.

You can, of course, thrust that onto a game and try to make it fit that paradigm, as you've done with Monster Hunters, but go back and look at those templates. Every template can fight. Every template can investigate. The core gameplay of Monster Hunters is preserved across every template. If you took nothing but Warriors and Commandos, they could still investigate the monster, and if you took nothing but Slueths and Sages, you could still slay the monster. The two games would play very differently (and we would want them to!), but they both fulfill their basic gameplay elements.

Warriors have pretty minimal investigative abilities. Sages and Sleuths are better at combat than the Warrior is at investigating but still noticeably worse at combat. But to avoid derailing things too much, I guess the question is whether a Dungeon Fantasy-esque treatment of high-powered supers should have a template or two that's noticeably worse in toe-to-toe fights, but excels at stealth and/or investigation. It's something I'd overlooked initially, but maybe it should be included?

[Phantasm]

The archetypes I see in a supers game/setting:

Blaster - the guy who is almost pure offense with ranged attack abilities; defensive abilities are in the energy absorption or dodging, perhaps wearing lightweight armor. Examples: Cyclops, Havok, Hawkeye.

Brick - the front line melee guy who can take a pounding as well as dish it out. Examples: Ben Grimm, Colossus, Hulk, Superman, Wonder Woman, Thor to some degree.

Scrapper - this guy relies on agility to avoid taking damage while dishing it out. Because he's not normally as strong as the brick, he normally can't deal as much damage without technological aids. Example: Spider-Man, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkgirl.

Controller - this guy, as the name suggests, is able to control some kind of "element", be it light, cold/ice, heat/flame, magnetism, weather, or something similar, or minds. Examples: Iceman, Jean Grey, Storm, Invisible Woman, Green Lantern.

Shapeshifter - be it stretching or impersonation. Examples: Reed Richards, Martian Manhunter, Plastic Man.

Investigator/Tactician - every team needs someone who is able to piece the information together and come up with battle plans, adapting them in the middle of the major fights. Examples: Batman, Captain America.

Speedster - do I need to explain it? :) Examples: Flash, Quicksilver.

I really don't have any others. A lot of characters mix and match; you might want to come up with, say, a 500 point "brick" lens, a bunch of 50-point attack abilities, a 50-point flight lens, a 200 point martial arts package, a 100 point sharpshooter package, a 50 point investigator lens, and a bunch of 100-points-or-less controlling lenses, and let your players pick and choose.

[Donny Brook]

-Speedster -- Flash, Silver Sabre
-Genius -- Brainiac 5, Reed Richards
-Brick -- Hellboy, Hercules
-Blaster -- Starfire, Sunfire
-Martial Artist -- Iron Fist, Elektra
-Body alterer -- (broad category!) Plastic Man, Chameleon Boy
-Robot/Cyborg -- Robotman, Vision
-Psychic -- Psylocke, Saturn Girl
-Mage -- Dr. Strange, Zatanna
-Revenant/Undead -- Deadman, Spawn
-Nature power person -- Animal Man, Brother Nature
-Weapon specialist -- Punisher, Green Arrow
-Acrobat -- Spider-man, Speedball
-Legion -- Multiple Man, Antman