Greetings Adventurers!
A few weeks ago, I attended the extremely fun and well-run
game convention TFest in Pflugerville Texas. This was about 10 minutes from my
house and was organized by Kennon James who had done the last cover for my
adventure The Dungeon of the Tormentor for DCC rpg. The convention was very
popular and when I registered many of the games I wanted to play in were
already full. I managed to get a spot for a classic Traveller game, a tabletop
game called Western Legends, a D&D BX game, and I managed a slot to play in
Jeff Dee's Mighty Protectors superhero RPG game. This was the highlight of the
convention for me. I had no idea that Mr. Dee lived here in the Austin area and
was gleefully surprised to see him at his booth. He was gracious and
informative. He beckoned me to sit down and gave me a demo of his new
prehistoric caveman/dinosaur game that used a unique pebble/stone system
instead of dice. It played very fast and my poor caveman succumbed to some
wolves after getting separated from my hunting party. I enjoyed this demo but
caveman/dinosaur games isn't really my thing. I then asked him about his newish
superhero incarnation of Villains & Vigilantes called Mighty Protectors.
I had told him I owned the .pdf and had checked it out but
really didn't do a deep dive into it. He was more than excited to give me a
bunch of highlights that this new V&V v3 could offer, including a very
unique and interesting vehicle design system. I had many questions about
gadgets, powers, and mechanics and he spent quite some time going over many of
the features of this "new" (well, it came out in 2017) system. Our
conversation continued and then we spoke business (he is quite a famous
RPG/Comic artist having illustrated his own games as well as working for TSR
back in the 80's) and discussed an opportunity for me to commission him to do
my next adventure cover, which I was very excited about. I spent nearly an hour
chatting with him and in the end purchased a hard cover copy of the Mighty
Protectors rule book (and later came back the next day to buy a physical copy
of the adventure Market Forces for the same system). In departing, I mentioned
I would be playing in his game on Sunday and that I was very excited to try out
this "new to me" system.
Sunday rolled around and I had a great time playing Mighty
Protectors with GM Jeff Dee. What a rush to play with one of the super RPG
industry founders (after all V&V was one of the first superhero RPGs ever
created!) I played Shutterbug, the internet blogging super who had been bitten
by a radioactive insect, think Spider-man without the webshooters. Shutterbug,
along with Hot Shot (think Human Torch) and the mighty Gilgamesh (think Thor or
Hercules from the MU) faced off against a big bruiser supervillain (I can’t
remember his name) and a band of CrimeTech baddies who were trying to steal a
highly technological component from a space shuttle on display aboard the
floating aircraft carrier museum, the USS Intrepid in New York. As we were
playing Jeff was gracious enough to go over and highlight many of the rules and
mechanics of the game specifically for me as I had mentioned I really wanted to
learn this system and wanted to try out
my newly purchased book version of the .pdf I had already owned...not to
mention I had brought a copy of the inserts to the MP GM screen I had purchased
from DriveThru RPG the night before, which came in very handy as the small space
we had to play in had prevented Jeff from using his awesome purple screen.
William and Shutterbug to the rescue!
During the game some interesting developments in game
mechanics caught my attention. First the combat was kinda slow paced. There
were lots of rules needed and interpretations of said rules required in order
for the system to work. Now, this isn’t surprising as it is a supers game where
magical maces, spears, flames, burning auras and where a giant fighter bomber
was picked up and slammed down on the bad guy so this is expected but it seemed
that there was a tad bit of crunch to be encountered as a GM running the game.
Second, it is a roll low system which is always a bit awkward, at least to me,
and criticals have to be confirmed (natural 1's and 20's) by rolling a second
time. What is very cool is there are two awesome critical hit and critical
fumble tables, what was sad is that we never were able to confirm any criticals
to use said cool tables, which I felt was a shame (RAW). After all, this is a
supers game and cool stuff should happen and happen fairly often, at that.
Third, it appeared odd to me that I had a fair bit of super strength, a wildly
high DEX and pretty good fighting but I struggled badly to take out a few of the
CrimeTech mooks and was hit several times by these bad guys. Fourth, it seemed
with all the other cool mechanics available like knockback, pushing your powers,
making inventions, and sucking up damage by using Power Points (think of them
like endurance points) that it lacked any easy way to do acrobatic attacks or
multiple attacks. Yes, multiple attacks are available but at a steep cost (like
at -3 to hit each) and my super did have a sort of cool "martial
arts" kick but it was at a -2 to hit and only did like +2 damage (which in
this game is pretty easily soaked by the aforementioned Power Points). Lastly,
Jeff is a master with the system, yeesh he WROTE it! yet he had to look up
several specific things that occurred, especially things like falling into
water from a great height, ripping holes into walls (yeah but that one is
pretty cool, as there is a table that tells you how big a hole you make with
what strength you have vs the material you are ripping up), and figure out some
rather complex interpretations of rules to adjuvate some of the crazy things we
tried to do (like me jumping off the aircraft carrier to rescue a baddie I knocked
unconscious and with knockback- knocked off the carrier deck and so that he
would not fall into the water, ala Gwen Stacyish death, and or drown, and flame
guy trying to melt the bad guys getaway boat control panel.) Now, this is no
Hero System/Champions type system in complexity but neither is it FASERIP
Marvel Super Heroes (of TSR fame). While playing I found myself thinking,
"this might be pretty hard to run" especially if someone had a
complex character ala Green Lantern or Dr. Strange let alone if I had a big bad
villain with lots of power options like Doctor Doom or geez, the Mandarin and
his ten rings!
So, in our timeslot we really only had time to complete the one combat (which I think was like 4 hours) and we did successfully prevent the theft and defeat the baddies but we didn't do anything else. There wasn’t time to do any investigation, story stuff, or interlude role-playing. I know this was a convention game but it seemed that combat was so complex that we missed out on some of the other cool stuff a supers RPG consists of, especially things like said investigation or dealing with death traps, and some cool super-science. I was also bugged (pun intended) that there wasn't a meta-currency that could be rewarded or spent to do heroic actions. Like the "Hero Points" found in M&M, “Bennies” in SWADE or "Karma" in TSR's MSH. Shutterbug did some really "in character things" (as did the other supers especially Hot Shot continuously taunting the big bad) like stopping to film some blog entries and that saving a bad guy from a fall to his death situation. It was too bad that there wasn’t a “in game” reward for this super trope behavior like other games.
This got me thinking about all of the supers games that I have collected over the years and which one is really going to be my "go to" for superhero roleplaying. I've got to admit I have a bunch of them and I really struggle to find out which one works for me and what delivers the fun aspects of superhero gaming. Currently, I'm doing somewhat of a deep dive and reading the Mighty Protectors rulebook and I keep harping back to Mutants & Masterminds and how elegantly they do powers (which MP does pretty well too) and how elegantly the mechanics of the game fit the supers genre. I find myself comparing the mechanics of both systems while I read. I'm on an airplane right now flying over Illinois on my way to a layover in Chicago following on to Duluth to get to Hayward Wisconsin to help my Mom. I've got some time and my pad (which contains .pdfs of all of the supers games I own that are available in digital form). I think I am going to do a bit of thinking and comparison "shopping" for one to be MY supers RPG system. I know I have some that are right out due to finding out some really big disasters (aka huge holes in the gaming systems or stinky mechanics) when they were actually brought to the table (Hello- MSH/FASERIP bad advancement system, Champions the mega math game and the venerable yet confusing DC Heroes AP system by Mayfair Games I’m talkin to you guys) and I know there are some that are a nogo because I just think I want a crunchier system that handles character creation (I'm talking to you Cartoon Action Hour and sadly Steve Kenson's ICONS.) My next post I'll list all the games I have and talk about each of them...some in more detail and others just a short mention. So, stay turned true believers.
