From: rod@mks.com (Rod Currie)
Subject: Re: Best Super system...suggestions
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 05:03:50 GMT
Organization: Mortice Kern Systems, Inc., Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

>
> - If you can find it, Superworld has its charms.  The power system is a bit
>   wonky, but it's got that Chaosium feel to it (a recommendation).  I'd love
>   to buy a copy, so if you have one for sale....
>
>John McMullen 
>johnmc@mks.com                 f y cn rd ths, y cn wrk s a tchncl wrtr!

A number of years ago at Origins, I picked up a copy of Superworld from
Steve Perrin (the designer) himself at the Chaosium booth.  We got to talking
about superhero games and he mentioned that for work, he played his own game
but that when he wanted to have fun, he played Champions.  He had some
characters in one of the old Enemies books, I believe.

As for my own preferences, I have found nothing compares to Champions, and I
own or have owned every one of the games that John listed.  

Marvel just never worked for me (I didn't like their almost total lack of a 
character generation system; however, their Ultimate Power Book can be an 
interesting source of character ideas).  

DC seemed too table heavy and the character generation system didn't 
contain enough power advantages or limitations or enough character 
disadvantages (NOTE: these are the Champions terms, I forget the
corresponding DC terms) for my liking.  

GURPS Supers is kind of interesting if you like GURPS (I prefer playability
to realism, thank you).  It suffers from the same kludginess (sp?) as the 
rest of GURPS; however, unlike John, I like the IST world (not the sample
characters, but the world) since unlike a lot of roleplaying games set in 
the current day, it actually pays attention to the media's role in the 
world.  

Villains and Vigilantes can be fun for some quick-and-dirty-let's-roll-up-
some-heroes-and-have-fun adventuring, but it lacks a lot when it comes
to campaign play.  This was the first superhero game that I ever played
(I was charter member of both the Y-Men and the Revengers).

Superworld is a Champions knock-off (and Steve Perrin acknowledged it)
and was originally part of a product named Worlds of Wonder (far and
away the best of the three Worlds provided).  It was my first experience
with a design-it-yourself system; however, the expanded second edition
just never seemed to have the charm of that early edition.

And finally, I would like to add Heroes Unlimited to this list as the
only game ever to turn me off while reading the introduction where it
defended its roll-your-powers system with an assinine statement to the
effect that Peter Parker had no choice of what powers he got when that 
spider bit him.  No *he* didn't but his creators Stan Lee and Steve
Ditko did.  I don't mind roll-your-powers systems, but this statement
just rubbed me the wrong way.  Role-playing campaigns always struck as
a joint writing venture between the GM and the players; the GM designs
the universe, and the players design the characters that inhabit it.

Please keep in mind that these are the opinions of someone who has been
playing Champions for almost ten years, so I may be a little biased 
about the competition :-).

Rod Currie
rod@mks.com

Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc