Nuketown

Treasure Tables: Three Tips for Running Memorable Supers Games

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Thu, 09/07/2006 - 12:44pm

Just in time for my group's first foray into superhero roleplaying games is this post on Treasure Tables, which discusses techniques for improving your supers game.

One of author Patrick Benson's suggestions is to use minis as much as possible. I'm somewhat on the fence about that -- on the one hand, the artist in my wants to paint a vivid, 4-color picture of the scene, and have my players rely on that. On the other ... I've got a few hundred HeroClix that are just dying to be used in a game like this. Ultimately, I think I come down on the side of the props -- watching the action unfold in front of you (as it does in the photos that accompany this blog post) is just too cool, and I can't resist the tempation to use all those Clix I've been hording.

His suggestion about powers is right now -- from what we've seen, these games are all about powers: using them, balancing them, exploiting them. D&D's about the sword and sorcery, Spycraft is about feats and bullets -- superheroes is all about leaping tall buildings in a single bound and getting the villain monologuing so you can neutralize his minions.

erilar said,

Wed, 09/13/2006 - 12:27pm

Here's my vote for no minis, Ken. The designers put together and foster an unfettered, high-action and free-flowing system. I'd really like to try that out.

Our D&D combats sometimes seem to be slower-paced, and I think a lot of this stems from many of our members' experience in strategy gaming. Our recent successed in speeding up d20 combats aside, I'd really like to give it a go as the designers intended. Put me down for 4-color brain props!

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Kenneth Newquist said,

Wed, 09/13/2006 - 12:50pm

While it's not as mini as intensive as D&D, my read of it didn't have things quite as unfettered as yours -- there are far fewer line of sight issues and (thankfully) no attacks of opportunity, but I think for many combats you're still going to want the generalized idea of who's where that minis give you. That said, we should try a mini-free combat just to see what it would be like. My inkling says that it'll just end up putting more work on the game master, who has to keep track of who's where.

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