Because 7-8-9

 In taking a look at my gaming shelf, I realize that I have a lot of superhero game systems at my disposal, and none of them the perfect choice for a superhero game.

I've gone on about Silver Age Sentinels recently, and it's one I will most definitely look into again, especially now that I know a new edition is coming out this year.

I got into a discussion with someone about Mutants & Masterminds, a game system I have very much enjoyed in the past. I have run several superhero campaigns, and my latest one was in Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition. The game did not go well - it fell flat and didn't really get me excited as a GM.

For the longest time, I blamed myself for it - that I was burned out, busy with other things, other distractions, etc. - but in having this conversation with a friend of mine, I really realized I was being obtuse about the whole thing.

I guess my realization is that M&M 3rd Edition is so bulky, that it gets in its own way. The system got in the way of the story I was trying to tell in the game, and I blamed myself for that. Now, I do certainly have my fair share of the blame, but I have to recognize what the M&M 3E system did to me - it made me a hostage of a rules system that allows abuse of those very rules.

This is why I don't review games or movies - I get blinded by the shiny bits and it may take years for me to see things as they are.

As I've said, I started with the FASERIP system in the Marvel Superhero Roleplaying Game from TSR back in the early 1990's, graduated up to Champions 4th Edition later, and then on to Silver Age Sentinels.

Well, from there, I, of course found Mutants & Masterminds, The first edition was okay, but didn't really make a cohesive superhero game until the second edition was released. In retrospect, the second edition was the best iteration.

The books looked good, the art looked good, and the writing was top notch. Third edition decided to try to be everything at once, and it got muddled in the process. I created many a character, villain, and story in the second edition of M&M. I like their Freedom City setting very much, and love the heroics that overshadow the game world in general. I folded much of it into my Superpowered setting.

When I became disillusioned with M&M 3E, I gave Savage Worlds Supers a shot. Now, Savage Worlds does some things very well - that being pulp adventure stories and modern action. It flows well once you get the hang of it, and it's a simple enough system. When you start adding in a superhero power structure, things can get a little crazy.

When Pinnacle released their second edition of the Super Powers Companion, the revisions they did were done well. I ran one game using these rules and it worked fine. It's hard to tell how it would have worked in the long-run, since I was running a game for some middle-schoolers at a birthday party, and things were a little chaotic to say the least.

I converted several characters over from M&M 3E to Savage Worlds and it worked just fine, like I said. It's not perfect, but it's good enough for me to want to try it again. Things got sidelined, however, when Pinnacle released the new edition of their Savage Worlds rules, the Adventure Edition, they announced they would be updating all that stuff as well ... eventually.

Now, I'm not complaining about Pinnacle, mind you. They put out great stuff. They've put out a new edition of Deadlands, Deadlands Lost Colony, are coming out with a Pathfinder conversion, and are busy making good stuff as quickly as they can while managing to make a good quality product. I'm content to wait until their companions are ready to come out.

So, let's see, that's seven different game systems I've ran that I can remember. I've played in a  few others - a homebrew system from someone about 15 years ago that wasn't bad, and I played in a one-shot of Tiny Supers, which, while fun with the people I was playing with, was a God-awful system and very much not to my liking. So much so that I opted not to play in the follow-up session.

I'm going to go ahead and look into the Sentinel Comics RPG, based on the Sentinels of the Multiverse game, as I've heard some good things about it, but I do so hesitantly. Like I said, I will get the new edition of SAS, oddly titled "Absolute Power" for some reason.

On a side note, there is a system that Modiphius uses called the 2d20 System. They've used it in their Mutant Chronicles, Star Trek, John Carter games, and other books, and I've played in it a few times. It's a good system, in my opinion, and I'd really like to see what they would do with a superhero iteration of those rules. It might be really awesome. I'd love to see it, but thus far, they've stuck with licensed settings like Fallout, Dune, Conan, and The Elder Scrolls. That's fine, too, they do excellent work, which is why I'd like to see them take on the superhero genre in some way.

Enough capes and cowls, it's Friday!