GURPS Sky High

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

Teen Hero -- Release for the Hero System that focuses specifically on teenage supers and their world and issues. Invaluable.

I would actually not suggest this book for precisely the same reason. It isn't useful unless you're running a teen hero in their world. It lacks any level of useful information if you're trying to run something of your own creation. I picked it up when I was working on my Teen Supers game and discovered it to be practically worthless.

Now, if you're interested in running a Teen Champions game, it's highly useful, but if you're trying to make your own teen game it really lacks useful information.

The Mutants & Masterminds teen book was much more useful. I can't remember what it's called, but my brain isn't firing on full cylinders today.

[Flynnarrel]

I've played Supers in Gurps and I play in a M&M2e game as well.

The Gurps nd M&M share a similar focus in character creation. Every power can be emulated and tweaked for how you envision it working. The point buy systems are great for this. M&M is more comic booky and involves liberal use of HandWavium by the GM and players, GURPs is more realistic.

Yes, Hero High is a great supplement and gives some good, thought provoking material for this genre regardless of system.

[pyratejohn]

Originally Posted by whswhs

FUDGE is still in print, and if you want a strong storytelling focus and less tactics, it's a good alternative; I've used it for a supers campaign. The current edition even has a few pages of mine on FUDGE supers!

Bill Stoddard

Ahhh... I seriously was thinking GURPS, but I just picked up my first set of FUDGE dice two weekends ago...

[pyratejohn]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

I must strongly disagree with this statement. Supers has an impressive amount of wordcount devoted to genre treatment (including several "genre assumptions -> rules" transmutations that drastically affect how "super-y" a campaign feels). I think a Sky High game would suffer without it.


And strong agreement here. IOU will give you a great grasp on "silly school" settings in general, and presents one which can be used pretty much as-is for supers. In fact, someone did a great Pyramid article on just that subject; if I weren't so lazy, I'd find it and link to it.

Would you recommend Supers over Powers, if one had to choose one or the other?

And how about School of Hard Knocks? Versus IOU?

And thanks everyone for the input! You guys rock!

[Perssek]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

The Mutants & Masterminds teen book was much more useful. I can't remember what it's called, but my brain isn't firing on full cylinders today.

It´s called Hero High, and it´s not only a teen superhero M&M book, it´s a teen superhero campaign book. It´s so good you can skip the (few) rules sections and go straight to the part where it describes how to create and mantain a angst-rich campaign where the main characters are getting into trouble by stealing the bat-car for a mall ride.

Yeah, that good and so generic it should be GURPS.

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by pyratejohn

Would you recommend Supers over Powers, if one had to choose one or the other?

And how about School of Hard Knocks? Versus IOU?

And thanks everyone for the input! You guys rock!

You kind of need Powers to get full value out of Supers (there are plenty of templates that depend on stuff introduced in Powers, for one), so if it *has* to be one or the other, I guess get Powers first.

School of Hard Knocks was mainly just a combat/hostage scenario, as I recall, while IOU has lots more good campaign advice on running games in a school setting, so I'd go for IOU instead unless you mainly want a map of a high school....

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

You kind of need Powers to get full value out of Supers (there are plenty of templates that depend on stuff introduced in Powers, for one), so if it *has* to be one or the other, I guess get Powers first.

IF you can only get one, it should be Powers... 'nuff said.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

You kind of need Powers to get full value out of Supers (there are plenty of templates that depend on stuff introduced in Powers, for one), so if it *has* to be one or the other, I guess get Powers first.

It's true that there are rules in Powers that you need/want but if it really is one or the other I'd go with Supers. You'll be using almost all of Supers (even without Powers) whereas you'll only be using part of Powers even with Supers.

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by pyratejohn

Would you recommend Supers over Powers, if one had to choose one or the other?

And how about School of Hard Knocks? Versus IOU?

And thanks everyone for the input! You guys rock!

Powers first. A fair amount of the game mechanical part of Supers depends on Powers. What Supers does that Powers does not is explore the Supers setting in far greater detail.

[PK]

Originally Posted by pyratejohn

Would you recommend Supers over Powers, if one had to choose one or the other?

I wouldn't. They're both really necessary, IMO. Supers will have the info that you really need and can use, but if you haven't read Powers, about 25% of it will make absolutely no sense and another 10-15% will be confusing.

And how about School of Hard Knocks? Versus IOU?

Get Supers and Powers before either. Then pick up IOU. Skip SOHK completely -- it, like most 3e supers stuff, is mediocre quality at best.