[RPG Theory] Four-Color Roots

[stevekenson]

My friend and fellow RPG designer maliszew has been ruminating a great deal lately about the roots of sci-fi and fantasy RPGs: looking at the core essential ideas that constituted the earliest expressions of those genres in roleplaying (ruminations that have borne fruit in the form of his Thousands Suns RPG and his “Pulp D&D” project). This had led me to wonder about the roots and core RPG expressions of a favorite genre of mine: superheroes.

For me that means the days when the landscape was dominated by Villains & Vigilantes and Champions. I don’t dismiss games like Superworld out hand, but I never played them back then, so from when I started gaming in 1981 or so, until the release of Marvel Super-Heroes in 1984, V&V and Champions were superhero gaming for me. What do they tell us?

Well, like games at the time, they were short: little more than booklets by today’s standards (especially the 500+ page monster Champions/Hero System has become). They differ in approach: V&V was random character generation and relatively set powers (with some variables based on ability scores) while Champions was build-to-order with one of the first real point-build and effects-based systems. What was interesting in both was how implicit the superhero genre was: neither had an established setting, indeed, V&V never had one, and it took years for Hero Games to eventually try and cobble together a coherent “Champions Universe” out of their various sourcebooks and adventures.

Adventures were, in fact, the name of the game. They were practically the sole supplements for V&V, apart from a couple licensed things like DNAgents, and made up the bulk of early Champions releases, although Hero Games did experiment with some sourcebooks as well, primarily “monster manuals” focusing on particular organizations or villains (like the Enemies series). The adventures talked fairly little about the setting or genre, they simply assumed the obvious: the player characters were members of a superhero team, they had a headquarters of some sort, and they fought evil. What else did you need to know?

And what about Marvel Super-Heroes? As I said in my essay in Hobby Games: The 100 Best, MSH is the gold-standard of superhero RPGs, the basis for my longest-running campaign, and therefore a significant part of my “gaming DNA”. It was the first licensed superhero RPG, taking the gaming genre out of the realm of the theoretical (where you assumed your superhero setting was like the comics) and into the actual, where your superhero setting was the comics. Like V&V, MSH was a random-roll creation system with fairly broad power descriptions, assuming you weren’t playing the provided Mighty Marvel characters.

Adventures were also a staple of MSH, but sourcebooks were prominent as well, since the game sought to describe as much of the existing comic book universe as possible in game terms. This may be the beginnings of the expectation of superhero RPGs having a set “world” to them (followed on by DC Heroes, and then the development of an “official” Champions Universe). By contrast, by the time you look at Champions: New Millennium in the '90s, you see a superhero RPG coupled with a pre-packaged setting and “signature” characters.

Seems like superhero RPGs have gone from relatively light and often random or vague systems with the adventure as their basic supplementary unit (much like the individual comic issue for a superhero) to more structured and detailed, with built-in setting(s) and the genre book or sourcebook as their standard supplement (like the rise in popularity of graphic novels and trade paperbacks?).

Comments

[nvdaydreamer.livejournal.com]

I'll cheerfully point out the throwback to that trend: the SAGA System incarnation of Marvel Super Heroes, which we both know well and love. The rules system was less vague but still quite light, and the add-ons split evenly from sourcebooks and adventures. I also loved the digest-size format. A pity it "went away" in the TSR-to-Wizards, many systems-to-Only D20 transitions.

I might throw a quibble here: better guidance for miniatures use might have been nice. I notice the three old guard games you mention rely heavily on maps; Marvel-SAGA left all that in the realm of the story. This doesn't really bother me -- I seldom muck about with figures and use only the most abstractly doodled maps -- but with comic book superheroics being such a visually oriented medium, visual aids would tend to help a game. (If my recall of this is wrong, I'm sure someone will happily leap up to correct me.)

[tfbretz.livejournal.com]

I'd largely agree with your assessment, and I've been playing supers since I corrupted first edition Gamma World. :-)

I certainly preferred the vagueness of the earlier implied settings. Going to a convention and talking to players from around the country, comparing notes, and using those characters out of an Enemies book or an adventure as a benchmark for your own campaign was part of the fun. The number of times I heard, "In my campaign, Foxbat..." used to warm the cockles. We get some of that online now, but there seems to be much more of an interest in homogeneous canon than there once was.

Recently on the Hero Boards, Steve Long put up a thread asking players about the "great mysteries" of the Champions Universe they'd like to have explained in a future product. It really bothered me how many people wanted every little detail nailed down instead of using those blank spaces in the canvas to create their own "mad, beautiful ideas."

(Of course, that leads me on to the topic of "Superhero-Shaped Roleplaying" as opposed to "Superhero Roleplaying," which is a rant for another venue.)

[chadu.livejournal.com]

intriguing...

cu

[gamerguy.livejournal.com]

At least one part of my love for M&M is that it comes self-contained in one book that I can stick inside of a notebook. I dearly miss small concise book like the original V&V and Champions; the original Superworld book was indeed a booklet and the full-blown rule book not any bigger than the Champions book of the time.

We played the hell out of MSH, mainly because it was the first game (and the only one until M&M came out) that had the concept of spending some of your Karma to do That Cool Maneuver From The Comics That You Don't Do All The Time Because That Would Be Lame. We even had some concept of a sliding scale for it (OK, I blow 200 Karma and reverse Earth's rotation with my superspeed...).

[highmoonmedia.livejournal.com]

Have you tried taking the new 4C System for a spin? My friend Mark Gedak loves it (and Marvel) so we have begun supporting it with products and I think we're gonna play it via email or something soon enough.