Friday, December 17, 2010

Superhero RPGs: Welcome to the lower shelves

I started out this year on a Super Hero high.  I picked up Icons, Bash!, the new DC Adventures RPGs.  I was looking forward to the Mutants and Masterminds 3.0 and all was good.

Then today I put all my Mutants and Masterminds books on the lower shelves.  My lower shelves have these nice doors and look really sharp, but the games are there are ones I have not touched in a very long time.  Mutants and Masterminds 2.0, Hero High, Freedom City Source book and the Book of Magic all went down below today.  They were replaced with the Mentzer BECMI books I got at the auction recently that had just been sitting on my game table (much to chagrin of my wife).

The hierarchy of my games are the Upper Shelves, these are the games I play all the time.   The ones at the level the kids can reach are usually D&D related.  Out of their reach are my horror games and Unisystem games.  The Lower Shelves are closed off, so out of site, out of mind.  These games can sit there for months or years before I even recall I have them.  Then there is the selling shelf.  It is the same level as the Unisystem stuff, just a different part.  I am planning to sell these soon either at the game auction or Half-Priced books.

I am not sure when I going to play a supers game again.  I know I will, but I just have no ideas at the moment for one nor do I think my various groups will want to do one any time soon.  M&M joins some high quality games in the dark of my lower shelves.  The "new" World of Darkness books (Vampire the Masquerade remains on the higher shelf), True 20 (really wanted to love that game) and all my Anime games.  Dresden Files and Little Fears are there too, but I expect I'll be be pulling them back after a bit.

There are still some things I want to try though.
I have a character that is the daughter of Superman and Wonder Woman for this Next Generation supers game we started.  I am basing it on the events of Kingdom Come and Batman Beyond.  I wanted to try her out in a bunch of systems (M&M2, DCA, Bash, Icons) to get a good idea how the games stat up against each other. Plus I liked the character.  She was raised on Paradise Island, trained by Bruce Wayne and my main influence for her was...Ally McBeal.  Sorry. I just thought it would be neat if she had decided to be a lawyer.


Ok so you know how much I love Willow & Tara?  Well my oldest is the same way.  His obsession though is Fire and Ice. He has Fire and Ice figures and even Hero Clix that we use in his Dragonslayers game (in this game they are elemental wizards).  I feel like I owe it to him to stat them up at least once in some system.

Maybe I'll still get them up sometime.
I can go with their Pre-Crisis incarnations what are more magic based.

5 comments:

Emerson Harris said...

Well, since I run many of my campaigns in the HERO System, I end up using a lot of my Champions material even in scifi or fantasy campaigns. Subsequently, I'm riffling through my superhero books, which means I'm likely to run at least a one-shot.

Also... I think you need a reason (either RPG related, like a new sourcebook, or unrelated, like a new Thor movie) to go back to superhero RPGs.

Adam Dickstein said...

I do something very similar though with very different position priorities.

I have one bookcase in my bedroom with nothing but Star Trek books in it. From every book from every edition of a Star Trek RPG to novels to artbooks to reference books.

In the living room I have a shelf with Traveller on the top shelf, Mutants & Masterminds and its various supplements on the next shelf and finally fantasy games including the 6 or 7 D&D books I own (mostly AD&D 1E and 3.5).

Traveller will likely be switching spots with M&M and its related works shortly.

Higgipedia said...

I haven't found a superhero tabletop game yet that has me completely satisfied. Each game has it's thing. Some work well at a particular power level, others which span wide varieties of power often handle them all poorly.

I played a lot of Heroes Unlimited, Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP), and the Mayfair DC Heroes as a kid. I can still play them, but they seem to be kind of lacking in something...

Anonymous said...

My wife wants to play a character who is kinda the daughter of Superman and Wonder Woman, except that we've mixed 'em up for a non-standard setting. There's some definite neat there.

Gaming Ronin said...

well if we ever see beyond human I think it might be just the thing for lower powered supers. Although I really want it to put with ghosts to run non-savage worlds rippers.