What I have concluded about Marvel Heroic RPG

[james_davis_nicoll]

Action risks feeding the Doom Pool (which is used by the antagonists) therefore to minimize the odds against them PCs should do as little as possible. I think the newspaper comic strip Spider-Man must be using MHRPG.

Comments

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

I think I agree with you about games that work to increase fun; I haven't seen any mechanics that I actually enjoy. (Okay, the Hero Games limitations and the ICONS challenges go a little way to providing hooks, but in neither case are you required to use them; you can go elsewhere if desire takes you.)

My inclination to tactical combat is quite different from yours. I found D&D4E deadly dull. What might have been an interpersonal thing became, in challenges, an exercise in dice throwing. And I was in a bad place, so I didn't particularly want to learn another set of fiddly rules, so the tactical aspects did not appeal to me. (I did not care about mastery.)

MHR has, somewhere in it, a game that rewards interesting tactical choices, but by only giving a few mechanical options, they end up all being the same, and confusingly so. ("Is that an asset? Or a resource? The heck with it, I'll hit him. Oh, he's protected by GM fiat.") I have the same problem with PDQ: I very much liked the setting in Jaws of the Six Serpents and the freedom implied by the casual rules set appealed to me, but it never came to fruition.

And thinking of it that way, maybe what I want to try is Savage Worlds. (Or not.)

There's a middle ground between "here are rules for combat; make everything else up" and "Here's a lot of dice hoohah that promises to increase your enjoyment but will instead suck the colour out of everything." I wish I could find it, though it might be a Pepsi sweetness problem.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Having been on both sides, I think 4e is better for the GM than it is for players. The GM is nearly always inVolved, providing opposition for all the players. The players get to do their thing and then sit and wait. I found it very HERO-like for all that, but I remember liking HERO more (maybe because PCs were basically at a set competency and the grow-stronger-with-more-things wasn't built in).

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Fate seemed promising to me as a game that had mechanical hooks which got people involved rather than getting in the way, but it never really lived up to that promise until the latest version, Fate Core. (Specifically I got into the beta of the Atomic Robo RPG and ran a few one-shots which all turned out great. There's a writeup of one of them here: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?684170-Atomic-Robo-Action-Accounting!) The Fate Core base system itself should be available as a pay-want-you-want download in a month or so; you might want to check that out.

It avoids the, "Is it an asset? Or a resource?" problem quite nicely, and it has great frameworks for non-combat challenges. It does go the other way though, making every mechanical option really exactly the same. It's not much about tactical choices at all, which rubs some people the wrong way. Mechanically, it's about bidding: just how much do I want to spend to do well on this particular roll / avoid this particular consequence. Pretty much any tactic will work as well as any other (beyond the very basic, "Try to use stats you have a high bonus in") since your effectiveness is based on how many points you choose to spend.

A completely different approach that I've seen people rave about is Apocalypse World and its fantasy spin-off, Dungeon World (which was released under a Creative Commons license so you can find a free download of it easily.) As far as I can tell what makes it cool is that whenever you take an action you only fully succeed on a critical success: more often, actions look like this:

On a roll of < threshold, something bad happens to you (or you simply fail)
On a roll of >= threshold, you succeed but something bad happens as well
On a roll of >= high threshold, you succeed with no sacrifice needed

Often this is phrased like:

Scry spell: You gain a flickering, fragmentary vision of a subject of the GM's choice, lasting for several seconds. Roll the dice:
If you roll < threshold, pick one of the following.
If you roll >= threshold, pick two of the following.
If you roll >= high threshold, pick three.
* The vision is of a target you choose.
* The vision is clear and lasts for several minutes.
* You do not attract the attention of a hostile other-worldly being.

Which seems like a fun way to present choices.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Apocalypse World, and its derivatives fall squarely into the realm of "here! we give you mechanics to bring the awesome!! SYSTEM DOES MATTER!!!"

Which is cool and all if that's what you're in to.

But I kickstarted DW and have read it, and followed the chitter-chatter, and I have to say I rather agree with the old-schoolers on this one -- if your group already knows how to fave fun, then, really, go play D&D if you want an homage to D&D.

AW at the very least has the advantage of not having too many "gritty post-apoc world" antecedents...

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

As someone who's played Savage Worlds, I'll say give it a shot. The only book you really need is only about ten bucks (American) and if it doesn't suit you you're not out much. It's a nicely lightweight system that's detailed enough for doing most things. The superhero genre is a special and system-stressing one; there's a Savage Worlds expansion to cover actual superpowers (and a generic 'powers' system in the basic book), but I've never actually played a SW Supers game.