Thoughts on Super System?

[hendybadger]

Hi all,
Im on the hunt for another 'non-RPG' Supers game to play aswell as Pulp City.
I found the Super System rules but there seems like a LOT to go through.

I was wondering if anyone could give me a quick overview of the game? What its about, how it plays etc?
And your own thoughts on it?

Thanks

[Christian]

I like it because of the endless customisation to characters. The Goal system isn't very difficult to get a hang of once you've tried it out a couple of times.

But nothing beats it for making custom super heroes... you can have varying levels of energy blasts, AOE damage, psychic powers (domination, telekinesis etc.), super strength... the list goes on.

You can also have groups of henchmen, which can have interesting abilities based on the super powers in the book.

You can also imbue gadgets with super powers... so a regular trooper could have a sonic gun, for instance. Or your regular human could have an alien artifact that grants him special powers.

I get really excited about the possibilities with Super System... there is a lot you can do with it (even go into "RPG" mode with continuing story lines etc.)

[BaronVonJ]

My opinion, the ONLY superhero tabletop game. There are better pure RPG games out there, but SS is the best for RPG-lite/wargame. Endless customizing. Through the Yahoo group there is an easy software program that lets you create a hero/villain in minutes and gives you a record sheet.
The best part for me is finding a mini, then making my own hero/villain. Here's some of our games:
http://baronvonj.blogspot.com/search/label/SUPERS

[sundayhero]

the systems of dice is really cool too. FInd some dice of diferent colours, modify them, and the game become even more playable.



Best few bucks you can spend on. Printing (I went in a student copy store, with the PDF I bought on a usb stick) is also quite cheap (around 15euros, with colour covers+transparent protection, black and white pages, binding and all the stuff you see on the photo.

[hendybadger]

So sorry I didnt reply to this.
Didnt get notification of the thread having replies.

Great looking games Baron.

What exactly are those marked dice used for?

[Hat Guy]

I really like SS, but I find it works best with a little customization. At our club, we streamlined the opposed rolls into target numbers and de-randomised some of the powers. For me the strength of SS is that it's easy to change and still keep the flavor of the game.

[fourcolorfigs]

So sorry I didnt reply to this.
Didnt get notification of the thread having replies.

Great looking games Baron.

What exactly are those marked dice used for?

Those are Heroscape dice Sundayhero has ingeniously adapted for use with SuperSystem. Essentially, you're rolling D6's and only looking for 4, 5, amd 6. Those are goals. However, 6's count as 2 goals.  So any six-sider that has 3 blank sides, 2 like non-blank sides, and a 6th unique side works very well. And Heroscape has that with its blanks, skulls, and shields.

Hope this helps!

--Scott

[hendybadger]

Helps alot. Thanks
I will check out my MonPoc dice. They could fit the bill

[obsidian3d]

Using the original heroscape dice is a great idea!  I have two sets of the core set, one with the original ones like this, and one with the white composite dice.  No need to have both of them in there...I'm going to borrow this idea for my SuperSystem games!

[hendybadger]

I have been having a read about SS3 on these forums over the last couple of days.
Everything I see just makes me like it even more!

[obsidian3d]

I think that baron was saying his group stuck with 2nd edition over 3rd.  I'm curious as to what their reasoning for not moving forward was, even though I just picked up a copy of the 3rd Edition myself.

[BaronVonJ]

Mr Pyle can jump here, but our group had played the hell out of SS2, and we had a very "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality. Scott did a lot of things based on feedback from other to tidy up some mechanics I'm sure were done to speed things up or balance fro SS3. Powers were altered, added or deleted. Our biggest dislike was the move away from how Action Points worked. We like being able to use multiple attacks without having to buy a power that let you do this. We felt there was more flexibility with the way SS2 worked. Just our opinion.
Having said that, I am a huge proponent of the Goalsystem series. Scott has allowed our group to play test most of his games before publishing and has taking alot of those ideas/criticisms.
-J

[obsidian3d]

I just joined the yahoo group so that I could download the excel character worksheet and I have to say that, after making stats for a half dozen characters last night...it really is an essential tool.  As some of the powers affect your stats, and others are actual powers, making characters can get confusing pretty quickly, and the powers list gets a little cluttered.

To the OP: I'm curious why you're looking for something in addition to Pulp City.  Is there something that it does / doesn't do for your game group?

[hendybadger]

I may have missed it but has anybody got a link to the Yahoo group?

@obsidian3d - I checked out SS3 due to being able to create your own Supers. I love Pulp City, my favourite game ever, but there are so many other Supers models out there I wanted to get and use.
Having them as Minions in PC just didnt seem good enough for them.
Hopefully in the future PC will have rules for creating your own Supremes as well.

[obsidian3d]

Creating characters was why I got the SuperSystem book instead of Pulp City, but I'm still planning on trying out the Pulp City rules anyway.  The models alone look good enough to make me want to play it.

Having only spent a few days with the SuperSystem rules, I'm not sure how much traction I'll be able to get with my group.  The creation system is really versatile, but it's also quite complicated (at least in my opinion).  Like any game of course, you need to learn/memorize what the power of your figures are of course, but the clutter on the character sheet is problematic as I mentioned above.

I'm working through making some characters with the worksheet in order to see how adding certain powers affects the stats, but of course it has its own quirks as well.  I'm still trying to figure out how the power pool / gadget configuration works in there.