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Old 09-30-2015, 02:54 PM   #1
Gef
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Yucca Valley, CA
Default Running Powers-based game

No questions here, just a collection of insights from running a powers-based game for a year. Notwithstanding considerable prior experience, I've grown as a GM over the course of this campaign.

Tactical combat is right out
The last game I ran was about gladiators. We had martial arts styles and put the combat system through its paces, combat on a hex grid at least every other session. This campaign actually doesn't have much combat, but when it does, I have a telepath and a teleporter with worldwide range, a Mach 1 speedster, a ninja with a couple dozen attacks per turn, a character who can be in several places at once, and more. It just makes sense to run combat in narrative fashion. Players announce their intentions, I try to visualize it, and call for some skill rolls. If I tried to to track seconds and yards and roll Acrobatics for every Dodge, it'd take all night.

So is wealth-tracking
I haven't handed out many points all year, but I also haven't charged for Wealth. I figure it's a wash. There are so many ways to make money with powers. Even the girl whose only power is to turn her fingers into simple metal tools has a measly 1pt power (Accessory: Swiss Army Knife) but is very interesting to researchers, such that she can earn a six-figure salary just for being a guinea pig. Likewise the girl whose eyes shine like headlights on a car: Where does the energy come from?

Comic Books get it wrong
I started this game to take a premise from comic books – super powers cropping up in a fraction of the teen population – and explore it to a logical conclusion. I've found that the tropes exert a powerful influence on player expectations (and likely would on the culture of the world), but costumed crimefighters aren't what I'm seeing. Instead, states and big business recruit mutants for research, military, and commercial purposes. Supers combat hasn't been vigilante-versus-robber but more army-versus-terrorist, and it seems more plausible that way. The public reaction is mixed but net positive; mutants are scary but foreign mutants are scarier, so nobody's out to kill the geese that lay the golden eggs.

Three-part builds work great
In previous supers games, I've used a two-part build: Player designs his normal guy pre-event, another player designs his power, a surprise and a puzzle that makes it possible to roleplay origin stories. That's fun but you get some glass canons. This game I have a basic mutant template with enhanced physical attributes, and powers go on top of that. It seems to work better, even though it constrains the cosmology.

Unusual Background makes sense
I was skeptical before, thought advantages should have a fair cost and that would make UB unnecessary. I was wrong. While I don't need UB in a game where all player characters are mutants, if somebody tried to bring a super-normal into my campaign, at the same point budget, they'd be totally out-classed. This isn't to say that they couldn't be effective, politically, but they'd surely be swimming with sharks.

Point balance is just a notion
That said, when you allow large point totals and free choice of abilities and modifiers, you just don't achieve balance between concepts. The important thing is niche protection: Make sure every player character can do something cool that the others can't do. I thought mind control would be the killer app; instead it's gates, with mind control a close second. Anti-power is a big deal, too. So is clairvoyance. Combat monsters not so much, until you have a combat. Also, there's no substitute for creativity or aggression. I actually ran a power-swap scenario, and some old powers found new uses in new hands.

Strength is wonky
In the human range and a bit beyond, strength is an attribute, a general-purpose ability. But beyond that, it's more of a special purpose ability, and that's because, simply put, heavy things are big. So you can lift a pick-up truck? Big deal. You still can't carry it into any place where you couldn't drive it, because most doors aren't big enough to admit trucks. To carry a lot of small things, you need a container as strong as you are. To dish out high damage with a weapon, it needs to be a specialty weapon or else it's max ST is around 33, and you're better off punching. With Karate damage bonuses stacking up with each die, you're better off with fists anyway once you hit ST 50 or so; it's like swing damage doesn't exist.

Affliction is broken
Not news, right? In other games, I could live with it, but I never ran with 500 points before. Permanent Afflictions are cheap. You can make a guy who can hand out Luck to dozens of people every second. Or IQ +2. Or Gadgeteer. Or Telepathy. See, it's worse if it's a modular ability for afflictions. Change the time frame, bless someone with a permanent ability only once per day, and now it's still a big deal but doesn't break the setting. Cumulative durable Afflictions are pretty bad too: As an exercise, build a cumulative Affliction for Altered Time Rate and see how many levels you can stack up, on average, with a 200pt power. Yeah. This is the first game I've run where I've denied an ability just because it was too powerful.

Assorted systems are a rough fit
I already knew that the standard magic system didn't jive well with magic-as-powers, not what I'd call broken but less than ideal, so I didn't allow the standard system in this game. I did however allow Trained by a Master (et al.) and now wish I hadn't. Instead of Flying Leap and Lizard Climb, they can buy Super Jump and Clinging. Same for Imbuements, which are expensive for 150pt characters but cheap for 500pt characters.

Multiplicative Modifiers are better
I didn't choose this option but wish I had. With standard mods, your best price is for a powerful ability heavily modified for 80% off, whereas even a cheap advantage with big enhancements is expensive, and the same load of restrictive limitations just don't get you much of a discount when you start with potent enhancements, so some cool abilities just aren't cost-effective. Some math: 10pt ability, -80% in limitations, net cost 2. Add 100% enhancement, net cost 12. With multiplicative mods, net cost 4. Suppose part of the limitation load is all-day prep. Yeah, even with a cool enhancement, it probably should cost less, not more, than a base ability you can use all the time.

Power Stunts good and bad
Modify a power, or use a different ability plausibly related to one you've got. The main benefit is that it's fun. Can I shoot farther? Affect a larger area? Attempt conditioning with mind control? What I just said about no really cool enhancements in the absence of Multiplicative Modifiers is somewhat mitigated by power stunts. As with many things in GURPS, the balance is fatigue and skill penalties, but in this case they're fungible. And that's the bad; with a large energy reserve that regenerates fast, you can do power stunts all day long. For most of my campaign, gates were the killer app, but now there's a guy who can energize others, and he's become the most sought-after talent. For any project, his output determines the time table. With his help, any teleporter can create a gate for others, the gate guys can make theirs permanent, the massbender can shrink an aircraft carrier so that it can be moved by a forklift, and the weather witch can relieve drought by a million acre-feet of rain per month. That's a bit more effect than I meant this guy to have.

Last edited by Gef; 09-30-2015 at 02:59 PM.
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Old 09-30-2015, 11:21 PM   #2
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Running Powers-based game

I'd like sometime to run a campaign where powers come up at a different point in the life cycle. Hindu thought, and to a lesser degree Buddhist, has siddhis emerging in old age. You go through your periods as student, householder, and retiree, you become a sadhu/sadhvi, and as you meditate powers start to emerge. I think that the traditional rule was that when you did this you were considered to have died, which is a good analog to the traditional superheroic origin event. I thought it could make a cool campaign, but I couldn't sell my players on it.
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Old 10-01-2015, 01:08 PM   #3
Gef
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Yucca Valley, CA
Default Re: Running Powers-based game

I'd go for it. There's a parallel in Judaism, about qabala being a subject best studied when your hair turns gray, if I recall.
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