Choosing a Supers System, Part 5: Cortex Prime

On December 22, 2024December 28, 2024 By MagicJMSIn Age of Wonders, Superhero Gaming, Tabletop Roleplaying1 Comment

Game number four of my deep-dive exploration of superhero games that can be played in a fantasy setting. Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me, that this is how my brain works.

By now you’re aware that I’m envisioning a new solo-play venture, one that involves a genre mash-up and thus a particular set of requirements for choosing my next game. These by-now-familiar requirements are:

A superhero game that can be played in a fantasy setting, plus allow for anachronistic weapons and technology. Basically, the superpowers and fantasy elements need to be satisfying, but allow for other genre shenanigans.
Is neither too crunchy (if I’m consulting forums or rulebooks more often than writing, that’s bad) nor too lightweight (I need to feel like the dice are guiding the story and enhancing the narrative). I want to feel like the mechanics support the story.
Level-up jumps in power. My idea is that the PCs start as “street level” heroes and become demigods as the story progresses. Something will be pushing them closer to godhood, which is a core part of the story. The game should not only allow for those different levels, but be fun to play at all of them.
No hard-wired comics tropes (like secret identities, costumes, etc.). The story will be a genre mash-up, so I can’t hew too closely to any overly specific formulas.

After three narrative-light systems in a row, it’s time to turn to something different. Today is my first (and only, at least for this series) dive into a true “setting agnostic” game, not built for any one genre, but meant for games in any of them.

Cortex Prime

Truth be told, I didn’t know that Cortex Prime existed until recently. Instead, I knew Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, a 2012 game by Margaret Weiss Productions and by far my favorite (out of five!) TTRPGs made under the Marvel banner. Marvel Heroic Roleplaying received rave reviews and introduced several innovative mechanics well-suited to the superhero genre. Sadly, the company lost its Marvel license within a year of launching the game and thus disappeared as quickly as it appeared. My sense is that if Margaret Weiss had retained the license, MHR would be talked about today as much as FASERIP, and likely would have spawned Cortex Prime—a generic system using the same engine as MHR—sooner. Instead, designer Cam Banks took the guts of that original game to a 2017 Kickstarter, and Cortex Prime released three years later. It may have sat dimly in my awareness the past few years alongside systems like Genesys and Cypher, but I had mostly steered away from generic systems towards more specific and unique game experiences. At some point this year, I made the connection between Cortex Prime and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, rubbed by eyes in disbelief, and promptly ordered the core rulebook.

The first thing to say about Cortex Prime is that it is beautifully produced. The cover, the interior art, the graphics used to explain game concepts, the layout… it’s all stunning. If the Supers! RED rulebook sits on one end of a sensory-stimulation spectrum, Cortex Prime is on the other.

It’s also a relatively unique rulebook in two ways: First, it reads like a “Game Design 101” textbook as much as a game instruction manual. Everything beyond the core mechanics in Cortex Prime is modular, and optional rules (called, in fact, “mods”) take up more room than the base rules, each painstakingly considered and guiding when you might use or not use that option. Because it’s a generic system, everything has a specific and technical term abstracted away from any one genre, and it’s a game that requires you to think beyond those technical terms to their application. Second, and relatedly, the book is targeted at Game Masters, not players. Because of its modular, design-the-game-to-your-world nature, Cam writes the book to bring GMs into the game design tent, letting them choose what sort of game they want to play. Cortex Prime is the single most earnest attempt I’ve seen to allow GMs to run the very specific game they want to play.

A number of great reviews of the system exist, and I’ll link to a few here by Mephit James, Gnome Stew, and Jeff’s Game Box. The best summary of the core mechanics are from a terrifically-written review by Cannibal Halfling, which I’ll quote here:

“Cortex is at its core a ‘roll and keep’ dice mechanic. For any challenge the player assembles a dice pool of around three dice, rolls them, and keeps the highest two results. Depending on which of your character’s traits are relevant to the roll, you could be rolling d4s, d6s, d8s, d10s, or d12s, with d6 being average, larger dice being better, and d4 being much less good, especially considering the high probability of rolling a 1. All dice rolls are opposed rolls; the base dice pool that the GM rolls is two dice whose size vary depending on the difficulty of the task.

There are two other mechanics which depend on the die results. First is the Effect Die. Once a player chooses the two dice they wish to keep, they choose the largest remaining die to be an Effect Die. The Effect Die determines the impact of certain dice rolls, and is dependent on the size (rather than result) of the chosen die. This does mean that it might sometimes be advantageous to choose a lower absolute result (provided it still meets the threshold for success) if it produces a larger Effect Die. Second result-based mechanic is the Hitch. A Hitch occurs when a player rolls a 1 on one of their dice. A die showing a one cannot be chosen for results or for the Effect Die. While there are no direct consequences beyond that for rolling a one (only rolling all 1s is considered a critical failure and is called a Botch), the GM may choose to spend that 1 on the roll to create a Complication. Complications, and their positive counterparts Assets, represent circumstances or items that exist in a scene, much like Aspects in Fate. A GM can add the die value of a relevant Complication to the dice pool that opposes a character’s roll, while the player can do the opposite with a relevant Asset. When a character creates an Asset, they may use the Effect Die to determine its die size and therefore its impact on the scene. The other core mechanic of note is the Plot Point System. Each player starts play with a Plot Point, and when the GM activates a Complication from a player rolling a 1, they also give that player a Plot Point. Plot Points can be spent on activating abilities, counting more dice in rolls, and preventing a character from being Taken Out of a Conflict. As more options are defined, so too are more ways to earn and spend Plot Points.”

For the previous games, I made a sample character to test out the system. I can’t do that here, because to make a character in Cortex Prime means first making a dizzying number of choices about what mods exist in a particular world. Are we defining characters by Attributes, Skills, Roles, Powers, Relationships, Affiliations, Values, or something else? What do the superpowers do in this world? What factions exist that characters can join? Etcetera etcetera etcetera. Every character sheet in Cortex Prime is unique to that GM’s vision for the world. Take, for example, the same character sheet on the game’s website, for their sample Hammerheads (sci-fi) setting:

Everything on the sheet above—the three Attributes, the Training Packages, how Relationships work, what Distinctions matter—it’s all a setting-driven choice that the GM made before a player ever got involved. The possibilities are dizzying, and means that, once a GM has done the work of designing the world, everything in it bends towards the specific setting and stories in that setting.

**Why Cortex Prme Works For Me**

In a lot of ways, Cortex Prime is my wildest dream come true. It is a system designed for genre mashups, to allow GMs to feel unconstrained by any pre-existing setting. This is exactly what I’ve been searching for in this exploration. Reading through my criteria at the top of this post, it’s hard to see how any of the next game systems are ever going to address my criteria better than Cortex Prime. I get the strong sense that I could spend months worldbuilding and turning all the modular knobs to create exactly, EXACTLY what I want to do. Heck, once I’d done this work, I would have a game sourcebook in my hands that I could use far beyond my own solo play adventures. I would be tempted to consider writing adventures for my world and publishing them, surely reaching out to my regular game group to start a campaign. It’s kind of like a dream come true for homebrew worldbuilders.

What about jumps in character leveling, something that I’ve been using as a primary screen against other systems? You guessed it: There are mods for that too. Character advancement is its own section in the Cortex Prime rulebook, and I could make leveling up as milestone-driven or dramatic as I want.

Finally, once the world and game are built and all that knob-fiddling is done, the game has exactly the balance between crunch and narrative that I’ve been seeking. The mechanics are clear and easy to execute, and the decisions lead to exciting story moments. Even though the book often reads like a dense technical manual, it’s obvious that the density of mechanics is meant to allow the GM to make choices before players get involved, but that gameplay is meant to be fluid and fun. Look back to the game that launched the system in the first place, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. In a lot of ways, MHR is an example of what Cortex Prime looks like once the GM choices are done.

The cherry on top: Because it’s a new game with such a wide scope and elegant presentation, the community around Cortex Prime is still vibrant. Unlike some other games I’m considering, I have no doubt that there would be plenty of people with which to bounce ideas or to lend inspiration. Moreover, I expect more and more setting books will be released over time, providing a whole ecosystem of Cortex Prime ideas to mine.

So, am I done? Did I find my perfect system? It sounds like it, right?

**My Cortex Prime Hesitations**

On average, I think each page of the ~250-page Cortex Prime rulebook took me more time to consume than any other game book I own. I had to reread sections multiple times to grok it and connect what I was learning with other sections, taking breaks between sections to allow my mind to breathe. It’s the only rpg book in memory that I’ve brought on an international business trip so that I could have the long plane rides to read it without distraction. To be clear: I’m not criticizing the book’s presentation or layout. For me, learning Cortex Prime is akin to learning a new language. Cam Banks has invited me to become a game designer and given me tools to do so. It’s as if I started the process of finding the perfect car for myself and stumbled upon a custom-kit dealership, where I can have any unique car I want if I’m willing to learn how to build it.

What I’ve come to realize, though, is that I’m not fundamentally a game designer. At best, I’m a competent GM who is comfortable homebrewing certain rules and tweaking settings to my taste. I’m a writer first, game player second. I don’t aspire to publish my own game system. Jumping back to my analogy, I’m a car enthusiast, not a mechanic—I want to buy a car and have someone give me the keys, complete with a maintenance plan if I run into trouble later. It’s clear to me that Cortex Prime offers the exact game experience I want for my project, as long as I’m willing to put in the significant work to assemble it from parts. Is that the work I want to do? I don’t think so. Everything about Cortex Prime feels tantalizingly full of possibilities but frustratingly far away.

I have two additional quibbles, but they are minor compared to the daunting, steep learning curve of building the system to my homebrewed world. First, as I’ve said throughout this series, Dungeon Crawl Classics titillated me with the story possibilities inherent in random tables. The more randomness I can insert into my process, the more that I surprise myself in my storytelling. Unless I want to build the tables myself, nothing about character creation in Cortex Prime is random. I’m sure that Cam Banks would encourage me to build those tables, but it’s just another step to a long process before I get to play and write. Woof.

Second, it sounds like there is some collective handwringing in the Cortex Prime community about how licensing works with the system (another article on this topic is here). In other words, once I’d put in the months of fiddling with the system to have it exactly represent my homebrewed, mashup setting, how public could I be with the choices I’d made? If I wanted to start releasing bits on this blog that became my own specific character sheets, powers lists, etc. – who owns those? It makes sense that there are legal questions there, because as I said, the Cortex Prime book feels uniquely like a game design toolbox more than a typical game rulebook. I don’t have specific goals or an endpoint in mind for this project (and honestly am not particularly ambitious about it), but I’d hate to regret choosing it as a system without fully educating myself on how licensing works. Add this step to the long lists of things I’d have to understand before beginning to play, which just all makes me want to sigh heavily.

One Game to Rule Them All

If it’s not obvious, I’m incredibly impressed by Cortex Prime as a system. It’s brilliant and unlike anything else I have on my TTRPG shelves. Kudos all around to Cam Banks and anyone else who created it.

It’s also a sobering game to explore. On the one hand, Cortex Prime delivers exactly what I want, as long as I’m willing to put in upfront work to create it. My resistance to doing that work is palpable, however, and makes me realize that I want a game that satisfies my requirements without needing to design the game myself. Back to my car analogy, I’d rather spend more time test-driving cars, finding the best one of the options available that I can drive right off the lot, than learning the skills necessary to build my own from a kit. There’s a reason that I spend time playing games and writing fiction and don’t spend that same time designing games. I hadn’t been forced to confront my missing game-designer gene until Cortex Prime.

As a result, I’ll keep it as an option, but distantly behind the others. If I truly can’t find something that works for me—or if I find myself with tons of free time and a willingness to crack my designer knuckles—it’s cool to know that Cortex Prime is there waiting for me.

Top Contender: ICONS

Second: Supers! RED

Third: Cortex Prime

Not currently in consideration:

Choosing a Supers System, Part 6

Choosing a Supers System, Part 4: ICONS

On December 18, 2024December 28, 2024 By MagicJMSIn Age of Wonders, Superhero Gaming, Tabletop Roleplaying3 Comments

Another post, another quest for my soulmate game.

By now you’re aware that I’m envisioning a new solo-play venture, one that involves a genre mash-up and thus a particular set of requirements for choosing my next game. These requirements are:

A superhero game that can be played in a fantasy setting, plus allow for anachronistic weapons and technology. Basically, the superpowers and fantasy elements need to be satisfying, but allow for other genre shenanigans.
Is neither too crunchy (if I’m consulting forums or rulebooks more often than writing, that’s bad) nor too lightweight (I need to feel like the dice are guiding the story and enhancing the narrative). I want to feel like the mechanics support the story.
Level-up jumps in power. My idea is that the PCs start as “street level” heroes and become demigods as the story progresses. Something will be pushing them closer to godhood, which is a core part of the story. The game should not only allow for those different levels, but be fun to play at all of them.
No hard-wired comics tropes (like secret identities, costumes, etc.). The story will be a genre mash-up, so I can’t hew too closely to any overly specific formulas.

I have another “lighter weight” game system on my pile, so I figured it would make sense to tackle it next in direct comparison to Supers! RED andProwlers & Paragons. It’s also the most popular of the three systems: It’s time for ICONS!

ICONS

ICONS (yes, it seems to be always capitalized, though it’s not an acronym… yell it with me now) is the brainchild of Steve Kenson, longtime TTRPG veteran and original designer of Mutants & Masterminds, probably the most popular and played superhero game of all time. In listening to interviews with Steve, it sounds like he was trying, with ICONS, to create a more accessible game than M&M, something that gamers of all ages could jump into with minimal start-up costs. This goal is further emphasized by the presentation of the core book (the “Assembled Edition” is the 2014 revised book, and seems to be the definitive ruleset), which features Saturday Morning Cartoon-like artwork from Dan Houser and is pocket-sized. Everything about ICONS is non-threatening and kiddie, which I’ll admit for me at first was a turn-off.

The bones of the game are steeped in Fate Core, a rules-light, narrative-focused system. Every opposed test includes rolling a single d6, adding the value of the Attribute or Power you’re using (always on a scale of 1 to 10), and comparing the result to another single d6 plus the opposing ability. Dead easy. Results of these tests have a narrative range (seven possible outcomes, from “Massive Success” to “Massive Failure”). Each character also has descriptive, non-numerical Qualities (e.g. “I can do this all day” or “All-American hero” might be on Captain America’s sheet), and players or the GM can invoke (using Determination points, the game’s metacurrency) these Qualities either for or against the PC. Stamina is the “hit points” stat, a combination of a character’s Strength and Willpower. Range and time in combat are both abstracted. All these points are like the previous two games I’ve explored and seem characteristic of many narrative games. I’ve read some reviews annoyed that ICONS uses many of the same mechanics as Fate Core but changes the terms unnecessarily. Since I’ve not played any Fate proper games, I’m blissfully unaware of these issues.

Sitting on top of these relatively basic mechanics are a metric ton of wrinkles and optional rules that make ICONS deceptively deep. Characters can combine effort to overcome otherwise-impossible opposing numbers, or the GM can set up “pyramid tests,” which are multistep challenges that simulate things like stopping trains from colliding. Players can retcon the fiction and use their powers for creative stunts. The game’s lethality is a choice, as are things like sustaining injuries. The list goes on and on, and that’s just from the 2014 rulebook. Over the past ten years, a metric ton of splatbooks, supplements, and additions have piled up, much like my bae Dungeon Crawl Classics. Unlike DCC, Steve Kenson has managed to collect many supplements into a few “greatest hits” books. For me, the best are Great Power, which adds a bunch of new powers to the base game, Origins, which expands the character creation process and introduces Knacks and Specialties, and ICONS Presents!, a 2019 summary of all sorts of variant rules and additions to the game. Included in this last book is a whole section on playing ICONS in a fantasy setting!

Character creation in ICONS is meant to be random (though there’s an optional point-buy way of making characters, the reverse situation from the last two games I explored) and is supposed to go quickly. So… let’s try it out!

To simulate what I want to do in my game, I’m dipping into ICONS Presents! for the alternate “fantasy hero” tables. I’m also going to roll on the very fun Background tables in Origins to flesh out the character. And, to fully stretch all the supplements I own, I’ll also use the expanded Powers tables in Great Power.

My first table is Origin, and I roll a 1 on a d6: My character is Arcane, with an innate gift for magical power. I also receive an additional arcane Knack.

I next roll on Archetype, a get a 5 on a d6: Stealth, adding +2 to my Coordination and Awareness. Cool. It’s an arcane trickster or thief of some kind.

Now it’s time to roll up my Attributes on 2d6, consulting a slightly modified table for Fantasy. Here is what I roll:

Prowess (ability to fight): 3 (Average)

Coordination: 6+2 from my Origin: 8 (Amazing)

Strength: 6 (Great)

Intellect: 6 (Great)

Awareness: 5+2: 7 (Incredible)

Willpower: 2 (Poor)

I then get to swap two Attributes, and I’ll swap Strength and Willpower. Whoever this person is, they’ll be a slight, agile, headstrong person, but not particularly musclebound.

Next I would roll for powers, but the Fantasy rules say to pick a few Knacks instead. I’m actually going to do a bit of both, selecting 2 each of Knacks and Specialties (their “fantasy” profession and skills), then rolling for a single Power.

For our magician-thief, I’ll pick Vanish and Escape Artist as Knacks, plus Stealth and Occult as Specialties. My character was, I’ve decided (at least until rolling up the background information), an Indiana Jones-like relic hunter before acquiring otherworldly abilities.

What was that Power? I roll “Offensive” and then “Dazzle.” My character can overwhelm an opponent’s senses somehow. Cool, and mighty handy given a PC who wants to mostly get out of combat instead of fight.

Now I turn to rolling up my character’s Background. After a whole bunch of rolls, I come up with a female, pale-skinned, seventeen-year-old who is a fun-loving and playful person. She values a mentor/teacher and yearns for love. She believes that people need leadership and guidance. She grew up in a rural community and was well-treated, at least until her entire family was betrayed by a loved one and lost everything. She then found a mentor and a windfall. Excellent stuff, random tables! I’ve got her in my mind, and as such writing her origin and Qualities is simple.

Here’s where I ended up:

The character creation process took me quite a bit longer than, say, Prowlers & Paragons, but that’s partly because I was flipping through four separate books. I have no doubt that it would become a fast process with practice. More importantly, it was fun, and generated a character that I could immediately drop into the story I’m wanting to tell.

**Why ICONS Works For Me**

It’s clear that Steve Kenson has put a lot of love over the past dozen years into ICONS, and it’s built on a Fate Core system that’s tried and true. As a result, ICONS is an intuitive system that is not only easy to understand but easy to tweak. I made a judgment call on what to use between standard superhero random character generation and the fantasy alternate tables without feeling self-conscious about the decision, even though Meri was my first character. Because the game always comes down to a single d6 role plus a single value, there’s not a lot to bog down speed of play. I love that the timekeeping system out of combat is divided into chapters, issues, and series, which sounds perfect for serial fiction. Which is all to say that ICONS’ core mechanics are easy to digest, easy to use, and I can easily see it working in my homebrewed world. With the four books I already own, I’m ready to play.

Although I didn’t think of it as a requirement when I began this process, I’m finding that random character generation is foundational to me being interested in the character creation process. Recall that I’m coming off six full months of Dungeon Crawl Classics, which is likely the most random-table heavy game in any genre. So much of solo play is combating my paranoia about overly railroading the story, and the randomness of rolls is what generates my surprise and delight. I’m already more interested in the character I made above than either of the Evlyn Towers I made with point-buy systems.

The level of support for ICONS is also heartening. There are tons of books, from both Ad Infinitum Adventures (Steve’s company) and third parties. I found no less than a dozen form-fillable PDF character sheets online, for example. There are Wiki and Facebook pages and a Discord server. The community feels dormant, but there’s still a faint heartbeat there. And hey… there’s even VTT support! I haven’t used Fantasy Grounds VTT before and have heard that it’s an expensive endeavor, but it’s nice to know that it’s there if I need it.

**My ICONS Hesitations**

My two hesitations on ICONS are related. First, because everything in the game is based on a 10-point power scale and every roll is a single d6, the power spread in the game doesn’t feel huge. As a result, I’ve read some forum comments that it might be a better game for low- and mid-level play instead of cosmic-threat level. It’s not a game that has particular rules for “street level” or “superheroic” play, because I don’t think those distinctions really exist in ICONS.

…Which means that it’s difficult to envision what “leveling up” looks like, when what I’m seeking are clear jumps in power once the character hit story milestones. There’s a section in the rulebook that discusses how to give Minor, Moderate, and Major Achievements, and Major Achievements (increasing Determination, adding Powers, etc.) might be enough, especially if I ignore the other two. It’s an open question, though, and one I probably wouldn’t sort out until I was already deeply invested timewise into my campaign. It would be a shame to get six months into a solo campaign, only to realize that I’m going to have to switch systems to fully realize the higher levels of play I had intended when I began.

I also don’t love juggling so many books to play, which is the same complaint I had with DCC. But I can’t really ding other systems for not having enough supplemental material and then complain that ICONS has too much material that I want to use. Consider this a minor irritant, not a reason to play another system.

One Game to Rule Them All

Of the three lightweight systems I’ve explored these past few weeks, it’s clear to me that ICONS is the best fit for what I want to do. The question is: Does moving it into first position on my list mean that I absolutely won’t come back to Supers! RED? For now, no. Yes, ICONS has the better character creation system, and far better support and materials. Supers! RED is different enough mechanically, though, that I may end up deciding that I want its narrative flexibility (particularly how it handles multiple Resistances) and the clear ladder of power levels. Heck, I could even see using the random tables in ICONS to generate the concepts for Supers! RED. So for now, I’ll keep both on the list:

Top Contender: ICONS

Second: Supers! RED

Not currently in consideration:

Choosing a Supers System, Part 5

Choosing a Supers System, Part 3: Prowlers & Paragons

On December 14, 2024December 28, 2024 By MagicJMSIn Age of Wonders, Superhero Gaming, Tabletop Roleplaying5 Comments

It’s my second of many superhero TTRPG deep dives (links at the end of each installment to the others)!

Why am I suddenly diving into so many games? I’m planning to continue my solo gaming experience, but this time using a homebrewed world, story, and characters. The setting I’m envisioning is a genre mash-up, basically superpowers layered onto traditional fantasy, with a sprinkling of technology. Could I have started with something simpler? Heck yes, and maybe I should have done so. But I’m enjoying the specific requirements for a project like this one, and using it as an excuse to pour over some games on my shelf that I’ve either never read or have wanted to take for a test spin. Choosing the system has become a time-consuming tangle, but it’s been fun so far.

Speaking of requirements, I’ve articulated them as:

A superhero game that can be played in a fantasy setting, plus allow for anachronistic weapons and technology. Basically, the superpowers and fantasy elements need to be satisfying, but allow for other genre shenanigans.
Is neither too crunchy (if I’m consulting forums or rulebooks more often than writing, that’s bad) nor too lightweight (I need to feel like the dice are guiding the story and enhancing the narrative). I want to feel like the mechanics support the story.
Level-up jumps in power. My idea is that the PCs start as “street level” heroes and become demigods as the story progresses. Something will be pushing them closer to godhood, which is a core part of the story. The game should not only allow for those different levels, but be fun to play at all of them.
No hard-wired comics tropes (like secret identities, costumes, etc.). The story will be a genre mash-up, so I can’t hew too closely to any overly specific formulas.

My previous exploration tackled Supers! RED, a game that I’d bought after reading its glowing reviews but that I’d never sat down to read cover to cover. The other game in this vein is Prowlers & Paragons, also bought when I was in a superhero TTRPG buying frenzy because of how many people said they love it. What’s different about P&P is how many folks declare loudly that it’s their favorite supers system. When I added it to my “to be explored” pile, it was in large part to give me an excuse to understand what everyone was raving about. Let’s jump in!

Prowlers & Paragons

Prowlers & Paragons was first released in 2013, with the “Ultimate Edition” launched via a 2019 Kickstarter. Before I sit down to read a rulebook for the first time, I often search through easy-to-find game reviews to orient my brain. What’s fascinating (and exciting) about P&P is how many old-school lovers of Champions swear by it, and it seems to be a haven for people who, for whatever reason, bounced off Mutants & Masterminds. Hey, I’m a lover of Champions! I bounced off M&M (at least gameplay… I still love making characters)!

Check out this comment, from Richard in the above DMs Guild forum: “I would recommend this game for players of games like Champions or Mutants & Masterminds who find the math oriented nature of combat to feel very clunky and not very comic book like. Likewise I feel that fans of other narrative games, such as Cortex Prime, could look at this and have a good alternative game to use if their players want more crunch in the character creation. Alternatively I could see this game being used to create a really good fantasy game as well. I have often used super hero rpgs to run Dungeons & Dragons games. I feel character creation is much more fun in such situations and combat tends to work better.”

Squeee!!

In terms of how the core mechanics work, I’m going to use another quotation, this time from a 2022 review from Timothy S. Brannan: “The game mechanic is very basic and very easy to use. Every trait, ability, power, or what have you has a score. Figure out what you want to do, find the right combination, add those numbers up, minus any negative modifiers, and then roll that number of d6s. “2s” and “4s” are one success, “6s” are two successes. Compare that to the Thresholds table and you will know by how much you succeed, or fail.”

In a lot of ways, then, Prowlers & Paragaons shares its base DNA with Supers! RED. Everything has a d6 value, and gameplay involves rolling pools of dice. The difference here is that you aren’t adding the dice values in a pool, but instead counting the number of successes. As a result, dice pools in P&P can get large, since the game doesn’t care about your ability to do much math. The book routinely uses pools of 12d6 or more. If you like fistfuls of dice, this is a great game for you.

Combat is the crunchiest part of P&P, with specific terms like “active and passive defense” and “subdual damage,” but everything is theater of the mind and based on the basic mechanics from the review quoted above. Range and movement are abstracted to provide narrative flexibility, and a GM can decide how much things like size and cover matter to combat (or not). There are multiple pages of combat maneuvers, including rules for grappling, stunts, ambushes, defending others, etc. My general sense in reading the rulebook is that the non-combat parts of P&P are about who the narrator is, with a lot of open space to describe what’s happening. Combat, on the other hand, becomes more scripted, with clear initiative order and Health tracking. I’m not sure how I feel about the balance here without playing it.

Also like Supers! RED, character creation in P&P is a point-buy system with an optional random generator if you need a launching pad for ideas. The main differences between the two are a) the overall pool of points is larger (for street-level heroes, I used 12 for Supers! RED and 75 for P&P), b) P&P has more Attributes and Talents, which is what soaks up a lot of those extra points, and c) Flaws serve a different purpose. In Supers! RED, the equivalent of Flaws give you extra points to spend. In Prowlers & Paragons, though, Flaws create roleplaying situations in which you can receive Resolve points, the metacurrency that allows players to add dice, reroll dice, or add narrative features to a scene.

Because there are so many parallels between the two, I thought it might be fun to try and recreate my character Evlyn from the last post to see how it might differ here:

Comparing the two Evlyns from Supers! RED and P&P, you can see that, even with a street level hero, there is more detail here. Indeed, I’ve heard new players sometimes feel intimidated by the sheer number of Attributes, Talents, and Powers, especially if they’ve entered expecting a “light mechanics” system. That said, most of that sheet is fluff (though I like the many ways to add flavor), and since everything is expressed in a simple Xd format, once you’ve stared at a few characters sheets it’s all easy to grasp. Making my first PC took a little more time than Supers! RED, but not much. Like any points-buy system, the biggest trick was the “add one point here, take away two there” fiddling at the end to make sure I used exactly 75 points. Overall, I felt that I had plenty of points and options to make the character from my mind’s eye.

Why Prowlers & Paragons Works For Me

I worry that Supers! RED is too light mechanically, and Prowlers & Paragons is a definite step up in complexity. Combats can get crunchy, and things like chases and hazards are handled in “goals,” or multiple steps to resolve the situation. Because the “who gets to narrate” question is a core focus of the game, it’s a little odd to think about it in solo play. Thankfully there’s a “traditional results” variant rule that creates a table reminiscent of Blades in the Dark, changing the narrate-and-respond structure of resolving actions into “failure,” “success,” or “failure/success with a twist” which the GM can dictate. I love those mechanics, and it’s something I often find myself weaving into other TTRPGs. Also, like Supers! RED, we have tiering of enemies into Villains (full stats), Foes (same stats, half health), and Minions (one xd6 value), which creates encounters where PCs can feel especially super. Which is all to say, Prowlers & Paragons seems to have a lot of things I want out of my next game.

The system also has easy, clear jumps in power level built into the system since everything is based on point-buy character creation. Check out this glorious table from the core rulebook:

Perfect! I can easily see, instead of allowing PCs to spend the incremental Hero Points they receive at the end of each successful adventure, forcing them to save up until reaching a certain threshold. This sort of sudden jump in ability is, mechanically, what I’m hoping to create, and P&P makes this part of the storytelling easy and straightforward.

Finally, I want to say it’s a minor thing, but the more superhero game books I read, the more it matters to me: The Prowlers & Paragons book is gorgeous. Some of the art makes me wish it was a full comic book, and the layout is clean and easy to follow. Bouncing around chapters to find information is easy. The writing is clever and often delivered with a wink. After half a year with Dungeon Crawls Classics’ absolute monster of a rulebook and its scattered supplements, it’s delightful to have such a well-assembled book.

My Prowlers & Paragons Hesitations

Despite the quotation earlier in this exploration, I think the base P&P game requires some work to make it fit cleanly into a fantasy setting. Several of the Talents–Professional, Science, Technology, and Vehicles–are aimed at a decidedly modern comic book experience, and missing are things like Lore and Magic/Arcana. Similarly, several of the descriptions for Motivations, Flaws, etc. lean heavily into modern comic book tropes. None of these problems are crippling to my ability to play it in a fantasy setting, but it’s not out-of-the-box ready. As I’ve said before, I’m leery of homebrewing a system before I’ve even had a chance to play it as intended, and though the core game here is simple to grasp, it’s unlike most other TTRPGs I’ve played.

The biggest stumbling block for a fantasy setting is Gear. For me, equipment in P&P is caught in a weird limbo between narrative and crunchy. Characters can basically have whatever mundane gear they want, but these items often have mechanical boosts or effects. At some point, equipment is good enough to justify becoming its own Power, but that point isn’t obvious to me. Armor and weapons have tags that have defined mechanical impacts as well, some of which mimic Perks or Flaws that would normally cost or give you Hero Points. When thinking about a fantasy world where the PCs have superpowers but others don’t, the whole thing feels like a mess to sort through. I wish there was a P&P supplement that fully explored alternate settings like sword-and-sorcery or cyberpunk, which would help me feel more confident in how to navigate the many issues I see ahead.

I have a few other minor gripes about the system that already make me want to fiddle with it. For example, why doesn’t a character’s Motivation, which is given more than a full page in the book, somehow provide ways to generate Resolve? Another example: when making Evlyn, the only distinction between Blink and Teleport seems to be about combat, and so buying both felt overly taxing on my points build. I read in some reviews that P&P is easy to “break” from a balance perspective, and I’m just beginning to sniff at the edges of this problem even from a single read through the book. There is a way that a highly crunchy system like GURPS Supers or a highly abstracted system like Supers! RED works better for me, which is a surprise to discover.

Finally, I’m bummed to see that Prowlers & Paragons neither has a vibrant, active community nor even a creator website where I can find discussions, alternate rules, sample builds, etc. for inspiration (though I do believe a small Discord server exists). There’s no VTT support that I can find. These absences aren’t an enormous barrier, but they are discouraging to my confidence for committing to it for more than a one-shot foray.

One Game to Rule Them All

When I began my exploration into Prowlers & Paragons and reading reviews, I was sure that it would rank ahead of Supers! RED. Much to my surprise, I can more easily see committing to Supers! RED, and, while writing this post, often found myself thinking “this would be easier to figure out in Supers! RED than here.” My worries about Supers! RED being too lightweight and thus not keeping my interest remain, but P&P simply didn’t pull me in, despite its flashy presentation. In fact, if Supers! RED had the same art and layout, I’m pretty sure that the decision would have been ridiculously easy to make.

To be clear: I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum; if P&P is your favorite supers system, that’s great. Feel free to argue with me in the comments. For me and for this particular project, however, I see too many ways it doesn’t quite match my hopes for it, despite the ridiculously-lovely rulebook.

As a result, our top contender hasn’t changed…

Top Contender: Supers! RED

Not currently in consideration:

Prowlers & Paragons
A whole bunch of other games!

Choosing a Supers System, Part 4

Choosing a Supers System, Part 2: Supers! RED

On December 7, 2024December 28, 2024 By MagicJMSIn Age of Wonders, Superhero Gaming, Tabletop Roleplaying4 Comments

Last time, I outlined my dreams for my next project: Continuing the solo-play, serial writing I’ve done the past year with Dungeon Crawl Classics, but in a fantasy-superhero mash-up story of my own creation. Because DCC doesn’t do superheroes, I’ve opened the door to another TTRPG as the underlying system I’m playing. My general instinct has been that it’s easier to adapt a superhero game to a fantasy setting than taking a fantasy game and adding superpowers. I’m also open to more setting-agnostic games, especially ones that have both fantasy and superhero supplements.

The special requirements for the game I choose are:

A superhero game that can be played in a fantasy setting, plus allow for anachronistic weapons and technology. Basically, the superpowers and fantasy elements need to be satisfying, but allow for other genre shenanigans.
Is neither too crunchy (if I’m consulting forums or rulebooks more often than writing, that’s bad) nor too lightweight (I need to feel like the dice are guiding the story and enhancing the narrative). I want to feel like the mechanics support the story.
Level-up jumps in power. My idea is that the PCs start as “street level” heroes and become demigods as the story progresses. Something will be pushing them closer to godhood, which is a core part of the story. The game should not only allow for those different levels, but be fun to play at all of them.
No hard-wired comics tropes (like secret identities, costumes, etc.). The story will be a genre mash-up, so I can’t hew too closely to any overly specific formulas.

I’ve discussed the dozens of popular games that I’ve already discarded from consideration, including all the behemoths in the genre and some of my personal favorites. Today I begin my dive into the eight (yes, last time I said seven… but comments on the last post here, plus Facebook and Reddit discussion, convinced me to add one) games I’m still actively pondering. Truly, I still have no idea which one I’ll choose, but I’m hoping this series will untangle my brain. Each post is meant to be a full dive and exploration, to really pressure-test each system against my needs and wants.

Let’s kick things off! First off is one of the games on the pile I know the least…

Supers! RED

Probably the most annoying thing about Supers! RED is its name, which is just generic enough to make web searches difficult. It’s an abbreviation for Supers! Revised Edition, a 2014 revamp of a game originally published in 2010 by a different author. Any reviews and play-throughs I can find on the game use the “RED” nomenclature, though, so Supers! RED it is. Also, sometimes SUPERS! is all caps, but inconsistently, so shhh.

The original Supers! is a lightweight game system, using handfuls of d6s in a way that I think originated from the West End Games Star Wars system. I don’t own the original Supers! book, but here’s a nice interview with the RED authors describing why they decided to revise it and what improvements they made. Suffice it to say, they clarified rules, filled in gaps not covered (like how you break things or grappling rules), improved the presentation, and added examples and optional rules—so the game is essentially the same, but polished up and with more options. In other words, if you want to buy the game, get Supers! RED by Hazard Studios, not the original.

The core mechanic is that each attribute, skill, and power have an xd6 value, which you roll whenever you want to do something. In combat, opponents also roll abilities or powers to defend themselves, setting the DC to succeed. Each character has four resistances (Composure, Fortitude, Reaction, and Will), and PCs (not the GM) choose when taking damage which resistances to lower, so each character effectively has four distinct “hit point” pools. Indeed, one of the strengths of the system is that the PCs have a good amount of control over how to interpret what happens and why, while still grounding these decisions in dice rolls. For a tutorial on the basic system, check out this short video. Watching that video alone, it’s apparent that Supers! RED is easy to figure out, has a lot of narrative wiggle room, and adapts easily to multiple genres (there’s no functional difference between, for example, an arrow and a laser).

On top of that basic system are several tweaks that give the game some depth. There are combat maneuvers, Competency dice (the game’s meta-currency to give players an edge), power boosts and complications, PC advantages and disadvantages, plus optional rules for dice caps, pushing actions, wild dice, and alternate damage. Even without the options (the one I like best is adding a “wild die” to each dice pool that explodes, making actions have the potential for more dramatic effects, since the level of success matters when determining results of an action), there are interesting trade-offs in playing Supers! RED that hopefully keep the game fun to play despite its seeming simplicity.

One more thing I love (which is similar to my favorite supers game Sentinel Comics RPG): Enemies have different levels of complexity based on how important they are to the story. Major villains are built like PCs, with all the same Resistances and access to abilities. Major lieutenants are “henchmen,” and have an xD value, scaled to the threat they represent and what they use for all attacks and defense. “Mooks,” meanwhile, are groups of nameless enemies with a single xD value. Mechanically, henchmen and mooks are identical but get interpreted differently, one as an individual and one as a mob. This system allows PCs to feel like real superheroes, tackling piles of low-level enemies at a time and making bigger threats feel like final bosses.

To wrap my head more fully around the system, I made a starter character, keeping it a low-powered PC with a more classic fantasy base. Here she is:

I’m not going to go into all the ins and outs of what’s on the sheet, but a few quick notes: You can see that from all the white space that the system does not contain a lot of detail (although admittedly this is a low-level “pulp hero,” about as basic as it gets). It was easy for me to grasp the character creation process, what trade-off choices I was making, and how to build what was in my mind’s eye, even only reading through the book once. Start to finish, Evlyn took me about fifteen minutes to make.

Interestingly, there isn’t anything particularly “fantasy” about Evlyn when looking at the sheet, though I had a fantasy trope in mind when building her—namely, the bookish scholar pulled unwittingly into danger. What’s heartening is that, although she’s meant to be a scholarly and investigative character, Evlyn is still useful in combat. As far as I can tell, in fact, there’s no such thing as a “useless in combat” Supers! RED character because of the open-to-interpretation nature of the Aptitudes and Powers, and the flexibility to attack or defend with anything on your sheet that has a d6 value as long as you can explain it.

**Why Supers! RED Works For Me**

As the above section illustrates, Supers! RED is an incredibly flexible system, grounded in creatively explaining how the few words and dice-value on a character sheet interact. Falling off a building? I’ll use my Ice Powers as a defense, creating a frozen slide to keep me safe. Someone’s throwing knives at me and hits? The damage is to my Composure, because they didn’t physically hit me but now I’m freaking out. I’m attacking a group of 2D mooks, doing 1D damage? I land on one of them, then spin a kick, sending a second one into a third, cutting my number of foes in half before they can blink. All the rules in Supers! RED are ways of increasing or decreasing the number of d6 used, and the effect adds or subtracts from the available d6s next time. It’s elegant and open to whatever interpretation works in your game. As a result, it’s a system that can basically work in any genre, all with a 168-page rulebook and nothing else. For a genre mash-up game, that’s a boon. In fact, I took glee in a Reddit comment from a player that said they’d played a multi-year Supers! RED fantasy, sword-and-sorcery campaign without superheroes.

Speaking of campaigns, I love the game’s clear scaling of power levels. Pulp heroes are 10-15D total in value, all the way up to cosmic legends of 50D value. I can imagine starting my PCs at 12D characters like Evlyn, awarding them Competency Dice each milestone or adventure, and letting them spend those Dice to improve their Resistances/Aptitudes/Powers, purchase Boosts/Advantages/Powers, or reduce Complications once they’d hit 15D, and then every 5D after that. After only eight “level” jumps, the PCs would have moved from barely enhanced humans like Evlyn above to a true cosmic demigod. This is exactly the sort of power jump that I consider a core part of the game I run next.

Because of the sparse, easy-to-understand system, making NPCs on the fly or improvising situations appears absurdly easy. The deeper I went into the rulebook, the more I thought that I could convert any adventure in any game system into Supers! RED without hassle. For a GM, the game is silly-easy to prep and requires simply the ability to translate situations into appropriately sized d6 pools. Oh, there’s a wildfire? That’s a 3D hazard. Twenty lizard men come pouring out of a fissure in the earth? Let’s call those two 2D groups of mooks, oh and let’s say they have a leader who’s a bruising 3D henchman leader. The simplicity of Supers! RED keeps the focus on vivid description and away from rules lawyering.

**My Supers! RED Hesitations**

I have one big worry about Supers! RED and three smaller ones. My largest hesitation is probably obvious: The system may be too lightweight to be satisfying. Making Evlyn’s character sheet was easy. Staring at it, though, it’s difficult to find inspiration for creativity. She has four Aptitudes and one Power… those five values must literally explain every single action she makes, adventure after adventure, until she levels up and adds 1-2 more (and that assumes that I add Aptitudes or Powers instead of solely increasing the value of those she already has). Will I get bored describing enemy after enemy in similarly restrained ways? Is a 3D fire elemental going to feel different enough from a 3D gang of skeletons to be interesting? The strength of Supers! RED is its open-to-interpretation, narrative focus, but I’m looking for something that gives me a feeling of tension and exhilaration when I roll the dice. I’m worried that I may not be giving myself enough narrative tools to enhance my writing versus simply, you know… writing.

I’ll cover my other three gripes quickly because they’re all minor. First, Supers! RED has very little support as a game system. There are no player or GM forums, there’s no module on Foundry VTT or any other virtual tabletop, and few supplemental books exist by Hazard Studios or other third parties. That’s fine, but I often mine forums and supplements for inspiration, ask questions of fellow GMs, and use the VTT to immerse myself in the game experience. None of that is possible here.

Second, I’m surprised to find that the lack of randomness–both in character creation and game play–is an unwelcome shock after playing so much Dungeon Crawl Classics (which is famous for how laden it is with random tables). There’s a random character creation variant process at the back of the rulebook, but it doesn’t really work for me and honestly feels a little half-baked. Thinking about it, I would probably make random characters in a different system, then quickly translate them into Supers! RED. That’s a fine workaround, I suppose, but strikes me as pretty silly if I’m going through all of this trouble to pick my game system of choice.

Finally, as someone who almost became a comic book artist after college, I’m utterly uninspired by the artwork in Supers! RED. I feel terrible saying it out loud, because I know how difficult good artwork is. A real joy about PF2E, however, is the rampant Wayne Reynolds art. DCC is famous for its old-school approach, led by Doug Kovacs. Heck, Johan Egerkranz is almost the entire reason that I bought physical copies of Dragonbane and Vaesen. For me, the art in a game is best when it sets my mind on fire with possibilities, wanting to lose myself in the world. Any superhero game is trying to attract comic books fans, which is a visual medium defined by its artists, so I’m a little baffled when supers TTRPGs get this wrong. With Supers! RED, I’m distracted by how little I enjoy looking at the book. Add to “the art problem” the lower quality paper and print from my print-on-demand copy of the rulebook, and I find the sensory experience of the game frustratingly poor. I am looking past a lot of blech to see the possibilities in this game.

Are any of these last three reasons enough to ditch Supers! RED as my chosen game? Absolutely not. It’s the lightweight gameplay that’s the primary worry. But since I have seven more systems (unless I continue to find more… lord help me) to consider, I suppose that everything is a factor. Speaking of which…

One Game to Rule Them All

I have a feeling that, at the end of this assessment process, I will have a pile of games that weren’t exactly right for my current project but that I desperately want to take for a test spin. In future installments, I’ll take the time to rank each system here. The game at the top will be the one I choose to solo-play next, but a handy ranked list will help kickstart me next time, if there is a next time. For now, though, I’ve only done one full exploration, so this section is as sparse as it gets:

Top Contender: Supers! RED

Next time: The exploration continues! If you have thoughts about this system or others I should add to my pile, I’m all ears!

Choosing a Supers System, Part 3

Reflections: Doom of the Savage Kings

On November 24, 2024 By MagicJMSIn Dungeon Crawl Classics, Tabletop RoleplayingLeave a comment

Whew! For a fifteen-page adventure, who knew that I would somehow manage to compile over sixty thousand words over seventeen posts? I’m thrilled to have finished my first DCC module, and hoo nelly do I have thoughts to share! Today is the same “look back, look forward” sort of post as after my Portal Under the Stars experience, a chance to towel off from the story, ponder what worked and didn’t, and consider where I go from here. Spoiler alert: new journeys await.

Reflections on Level 1 Play in Dungeon Crawls Classics

Throughout the past couple of months and largely because of the fun I’m having on this project, I’ve become bolder about describing Dungeon Crawl Classics as my current favorite game, surpassing Pathfinder 2^nd edition. It has the right balance between crunchy rules and narrative focus for me, and the countless random tables add to the story in delightfully unpredictable ways. It’s the best game that I’ve found that conjures the wonder and excitement of me as a kid while simultaneously incorporating modern game innovations.

You can’t spell “funnel” without “fun,” and I understand why the Level 0 murderfest funnels are so popular. Level 1, however, is when the entire core rulebook and supplements of DCC opened wide. To me, funnels are simply an added step of character creation, and an epic and important one for the game experience Joseph Goodman and the Goodman Games crew envisioned. Without bonkers spell tables, monster crits, Halfling Luck bouncing around the party, the threat of deity disfavor, intelligent magic items, and Mighty Deeds, however, the game hasn’t really started. I can’t emphasize enough how sold I am on Dungeon Crawl Classics gameplay.

Based on every account I’ve read from Judges and players, I also know that I was incredibly lucky through Doom of the Savage Kings. No PC died (though I had multiple close calls). My Cleric Erin was not disfavored by her god Shul. Hilda the Wizard experienced neither corruption nor spell backfires. No PC was put in a position of needing to burn his or her Luck down to single digits to survive. If some, or all, of these mishaps had occurred, would I still be so positive? I think so. Indeed, as I’ve gotten older and played more games, I find myself relishing the failures as much or more than the successes. They’re a chance for character development and story. If it wasn’t obvious while reading the game logs, I was quite disheartened that the Hound of Hirot didn’t put up much of a fight in any of its three battles, because I wanted challenge and peril. Which is all to say that yes, I’m aware that my plucky party experienced unusual success relative to many DCC tales, but I was both prepared for and understood the implications if the dice had rolled a different way. I expect Dungeon Crawl Classics to be a random, swingy game, and that risk is a big part of the fun.

Something else I love about the game is the lack of longform campaign storytelling. Though I’m not a big consumer of Matthew Colville’s videos (and thus don’t know more generally how aligned he and I are on other topics), I love his video on adventure length. To me, the idea of hundreds of possible “next adventures” for a party, based on what’s happened to this point, is exactly how I want to run my games. I’m a big fan of Paizo’s Adventure Paths, and have GMed a group of players through all six books of Age of Ashes over three years. It was a hoot. More and more, though, I find that I’m happy to be a player in an AP, but I don’t think that I want to run one again. I’d like the story arcs to be more emergent, for the epic quest at the end of a campaign to be the result of the dozen decisions the party has made to that point. The fact that so few longform stories exist for DCC is, for me, an exciting feature of its overall approach, and hugely satisfying.

Quick sidenote: Since beginning this project, I’ve run a group of players through a funnel (we played Hole in the Sky, which embraces the weirdness possible in DCC). What I realized from that experience is that the “hey, we’re just going to build the world as we go” can throw players off, especially ones coming from D&D or Pathfinder, where the setting is so deeply detailed. If I Judge a longer campaign (which is, ultimately, my goal), I will start with a Session 0 aimed at fleshing out basic details of the world (I’ve been playing Ironsworn with my friend Rob, and there are great tools there I’d steal for this sort of foundation), and creating our gaggle of peasants. Session 1 and 2 would be the funnel experience and leveling up their surviving PCs, and then we’d start the campaign in earnest with Session 3. Grounding the players from the beginning in a few basics plus giving them time to think a bit about their peasants before the Funnel experience would, I expect, provide a great campaign launchpad. The group I Judged is eager to play a Level 1 adventure, though, so I may have added a few DCC converts to the community.

That said, it’s not a perfect game. I have two primary complaints about Dungeon Crawl Classics now that I’ve played it for dozens and dozens of hours up to Level 2, and these complaints are related. First, I don’t know what the Goodman Games folk had against fantasy religions when designing the game, but Clerics got short shrift in the original core rulebook. Wizards and Warriors are the splashy classes in DCC, and what I hear people promote when convincing others to try out the game. Clerics, for whatever reason, feel like they received a tenth of the attention and writing. Worshipping one deity over another has no mechanical difference for a PC, whereas different Patrons dramatically change gameplay. The different gods and goddesses are described in a single page, with no flavor at all. Moreover, the more I create my own campaign world in DCC, describing the difference between deities and the otherworldly entities who are patrons is nearly impossible. In a nutshell: The entire system underlying Clerics and divine power feels underbaked in the game, and decidedly un-DCC-like.

Thankfully, some of my frustration is addressed in the one (and only, as far as I can tell) DCC Annual. Here, a handful of major deities receive write-ups detailing their background and beliefs. Each has special traits provided to Clerics, an individual Disapproval table, and thoughts about Divine Favors specific to that deity. The Annual introduces the ideal of “Canticles,” spells specific to a particular god. Clerics of the Known Realm is a free (!) supplement that took these features and applied them to the remaining deities listed in the core rulebook, which is awesome. And, as you know from Erin’s level-up post, I also found terrific inspiration from the Knights in the North (also free!). Add these three sources together, and I have the tools I need to make Clerics as satisfying and interesting as Wizards. The requirement to do so, however, leads to my second complaint…

The DCC community is amazing and pretty much everyone agrees it’s one of the best things about playing Dungeon Crawls Classics. Enthusiastic evangelists of the game create adventures, new patrons and deities, spells, magic items, classes, optional rules, settings, and on and on. Zines containing all the above are ubiquitous, as are third-party websites and blogs like Knights in the North. Goodman Games promotes or sells these supplements on their website and promotes them in its weekly newsletter. It’s clear that Joseph Goodman has made a conscious decision to allow a thousand wildflowers to bloom, with no attempt whatsoever to cultivate the DCC garden. You can, as a Judge, find anything you need to enhance your game, answer your questions, or fill in the gaps of your campaign.

So what’s the complaint? Well, after more than a dozen years, there are a lot of wildflowers. As someone new to the game, it’s overwhelming. I dipped my toe into a third-party class for Briene and had to decide for myself between three different Ranger classes. I’ve found several websites listing all the materials available for DCC, but none of them are comprehensive or up to date, so even finding my options takes significant work. I would LOVE for Goodman Games to provide compilations of some of these resources to help me. I would throw money at them for a compiled, edited book of Patrons, or Classes, or Spells. For example, take the material from Angels, Daemons and Beings Between Volumes I & II, add in all Patron write-ups from individual adventures and Gongfarmer’s Almanacs—Provide the most definitive book of Patrons you can provide over the past decade, please! Give me more Tomes that I can flip through to find inspiration rather than dozens of small booklets, some of which overwrite or build on each other in ways that aren’t obvious to me.

Unfortunately, I’m shouting into the void on this one, because I believe the dizzying pile of options is exactly what DCC enthusiasts want, and they celebrate the haphazard, “small press” approach to providing them. I want a map. The fact that this help is never coming is disheartening, and honestly diminishes my enthusiasm to keep delving deeper and deeper into the third-party mountain of options, discovering for myself where the gems are hidden.

In summary: I love Dungeon Crawl Classics. Playing it is incredibly fun. The Cleric class from the core rulebook needs some love to make it as satisfying as other classes, and I find it tedious to discover the many, many supplements to enhance my game. All of that said, I am looking forward to more DCC in my future.

Reflections on the module Doom of the Savage Kings

Doom of the Savage Kings is a beloved module from DCC’s early days, and it deserves adoration. Harley Stroh, one of the game’s more prolific and accomplished creators, clearly decided to transform Beowulf into a sword and sorcery adventure, and perhaps those mythical, narrative roots are part of what make it so satisfying. Gone are some of the bonkers, gonzo features of many DCC adventures that take you into different timelines and alien worlds, battling divine entities with uncontrollable items of power. Instead, Doom is a grounded story about helping a village full of color and depth with its monster problem. It’s great, and an adventure that I would happily run again for a group of players.

As with all DCC adventures, Doom contains several unexplained lore bits that can either be woven with parts of your campaign or lead to future adventures. What happened to Ulfheonar long ago and who were the Savage Kings? What’s with the “wolf versus snake” themes? How did the Hound come to be? What were those skulls on stakes in the Sunken Fens? What’s up with Ymae’s transformation? Etc. etc. Connecting these bits to Portal Under the Stars was fun and surprisingly easy to do. Both Graymoor and Hirot have standing stones and monuments to ancient warlords, so there is some internal consistency to say that these elements are related in the world’s history. I decided that the area surrounding the party was once a place of powerful and warring feudal Savage Kings, each with an animal motif and each playing with powers beyond their understanding in an ever-escalating attempt to defeat their rivals. I haven’t puzzled out how Ymae fits into the narrative, but if the party is ever exposed to Faerie (or Elf Land, or the First World, or whatever), I’m confident that there will be an opportunity to hook into something meaningful. Which is all to say that I’m enjoying the emergent worldbuilding inherent in DCC and appreciate how Doom helped flesh out some of the early seeds from Portal in my mind.

The part of the adventure mechanically that I find myself returning to again and again is the collapsing room hazard within Ulfheonar’s tomb. I haven’t before or since seen a trap work by ticking actions off specific initiative values, pushing players lower in initiative (and thus more dire threats) if they fail rolls. It’s cinematic and tense, with high stakes, and something I will definitely be looking to recreate in future games. In many ways, it’s the first time I’ve seen a hazard capture the “environment as actor” mechanic from Sentinel Comics RPG that I love so much. Bravo, Haley Stroh!

My biggest complaint around the module is how ultimately nonthreatening the Hound of Hirot was for the party. The PCs rolled well in the first encounter and had prepared well for the last encounter, but all three times I never felt the threat of a “final boss.” I like that the Hound’s stats are weaker at the beginning and beefier in its lair for the climactic battle, but either I missed a key part of the creature entry or the swinginess of DCC combat worked in my favor multiple times. Whatever the reason, the Hound felt like a chump. Meanwhile, the random encounter of the swamp jackals almost wiped out my fully rested and capable party. Heck, the tomb ghouls had me more on the edge of my seat than the Hound, and the biggest threat in the module was Iraco and his ambush. I’m beginning to form a theory that, in a game without balanced math and more randomness, a high number of enemies is far deadlier than a single enemy. Whether I’m correct or not, if I run Doom of the Savage Kings again, I will change the Hound’s stats, adding something (damage resistance, a howl that frightens all enemies who fail a save, etc.) that creates a bigger “holy shit we’re in trouble” feeling.

For solo play, the most challenging part of running Doom was the investigative chapter of Hirot. It’s a part of the adventure that I can vividly envision playing with a group, seeing how the players bounce off the various factions and interdependencies. For solo play, however, I experienced a moment of realization that I could write dozens and dozens of pages over multiple chapters without ever rolling a die, and I had trouble puzzling through how an investigation should work when I’m the only one at the table. I muddled through that bit in ways that hopefully worked, but in the future I’ll probably steer away from adventures with too many political, social, or investigative themes (which is a shame, since I love playing and running these sorts of adventures in groups).

Speaking of solo play…

Reflections on Solo-Play/Fiction

Adding my Portal and Doom blog entries together, I’ve written about 85,000 words for this project. A generally accepted minimum length for a novel is 90k words, to put that number in perspective. What’s particularly startling is that I began this project on May 26, 2024, almost exactly five months ago. Assuming I could keep up this pace, that means I’m roughly writing two novels a year worth of content. That’s amazing, and possibly the most prolific I’ve been on any single project (when I wrote my novel Birthright many moons ago, the first draft took me seven months). My undeniable conclusion is that this project has been a writing success.

The combo of solo-play and fiction also works for me. My strong sense is that if I focused on solo play without the blog, it would feel like a lonely and self-indulgent pursuit. It’s a funny distinction, since I only have two people consistently liking these posts (huge, fist-pumping shouts of gratitude for Rocket Cat and Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha (i.e. Kent Wayne)! They’re both awesomesauce, and you should check out their blogs and Kent’s novels). Apparently, though, having even a small audience is enough to help me fight through fatigue or malaise each week. I have never, on any writing project, regretted the hours spent tapping my keyboard, but I have often found excuses to not sit in front of my laptop in the first place. Publishing my solo play as public fiction is a terrific catalyst for continuing to write.

If I have a criticism of my process so far, it’s that, for whatever reason, my characters in this project are flat. I can’t tell why, exactly, but some theories I’ve kicked around are: a) perhaps the “disposable PCs” nature of the funnel and overall deadliness of DCC has kept me from investing too much in each character, b) six PCs is too many to juggle–especially for a system that expects them to stay bunched as a group–and for me the ideal number is probably somewhere in the 3-4 range, c) the emergent worldbuilding is distracting me from focusing on character depth, or d) my characters have always been flat, and I’m just noticing it now. Since I’m finding the gameplay of DCC so rich, the flat characters are particularly perplexing, and it’s something I am committed to addressing in the future. Whatever the case, it’s something I’m grateful to have realized on my own (my wife Sarah is usually my first reader, but given my pace on this blog I’ve been flying solo).

What’s Next?

After Portal, I focused on two writing streams simultaneously: Continuing the tale of my four surviving PCs and compiling my various blog posts into a coherent piece of fiction without the game-log portions. This time, I’m doing neither.

Whaaa-aa-aat?

While I would love to see what a fiction-only, polished version of Doom of the Savage Kings would be like, it’s simply too many pages and too complex a narrative to edit without major effort. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze for me; a Doom rewrite feels like an energy drain rather than something that brings me energy. Since this blog is a hobby, there’s no reason to spend time on something that feels overwhelming. I want to keep experimenting and building on this new formula without getting too bogged down in polishing. I do think that editing and rewriting is an important and often overlooked part of being a published author, but being a published author isn’t really my aim here. Heh… Those last four sentences basically all said the same thing.

Now that I’m more confident in solo play, there are a ton of other games staring at me from the bookshelf. At the same time, I’ve been interested in poking at my own adventures and setting, circling back to a few ideas that have plagued my thoughts over the past many years instead of relying on published supplements. Combining these two instincts, I’m going to change this solo-play-plus-fiction-blog experiment into a laboratory for other games and other ideas. I still want to continue down my Dungeon Crawls Classics rabbit hole, but with a group of players rather than solo.

There are two possible scenarios in my mind: In one scenario, I have a vibrant, longform campaign of DCC running, either online or in person. Because DCC is relatively easy to prep, I also have the creative energy to continue with my blog, where I’m testing out new games and adventure ideas, enriching both my TTRPG life and honing my writing skills. In this scenario, maybe I even find a new favorite game and start the flywheel all over again, launching another campaign with friends and exploring new games on my own.

In the second scenario, I return to this moment. Maybe I fail to get a group campaign off the ground, or I find that DCC is uniquely suited to my solo play blog, or maybe I just miss this story and these characters. In this scenario, I revive Umur, Erin, Haffoot, Hilda, Joane, and Briene, picking up where I left off and launching them straight into a Level 2 adventure. Heck, I could even see starting over with a new Funnel and a new cast of peasants, focusing my writing on characters who are (hopefully) deep and vibrant.

In either scenario: 1) I’m committed to continuing with Dungeon Crawl Classics, either with a group or back here, and 2) my creative energy is pulling me into different places right now. I’m slightly ambivalent about this choice, because I’ve been having a ton of fun and writing at a feverish pace. There’s a worry that I’ll somehow mess up my mojo, resulting in neither ongoing gaming nor writing.

But even as I type that worry, I smile and shake my head. Nah. I can always come back and would be happy to do so. As I wade into my fifties, it’s becoming easier to make decisions out of a place of joy and contentment than out of fear. Let’s try something new and see what happens!

If you have thoughts on anything I’ve written here, either DCC, this specific story, or where I go next, I’m all ears. For now, get hyped about pivoting into a new direction, starting next week and going until… well, until my fickle muse pulls me down a different path.

Here’s to more playing and writing!

-jms

Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 2

On June 18, 2024July 15, 2024 By MagicJMSIn Dungeon Crawl Classics, Fantasy Fiction, Tabletop Roleplaying5 Comments

Introduction: Portal Under the Stars Playthrough

Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 1

Councilwoman Leda Astford stared through the open door in wonder. She could feel the other Graymoor residents pressed beside and behind her in the cramped corridor, but her full attention was fixed ahead.

Old Bert Teahill had claimed that beyond the magical portal lay “jewels and fine steel spears.” There were crystals on the now-open door, dotting the wooden surface in star-like patterns, which she supposed could be mistaken for jewels. And spears?

Yes, there were certainly spears.

In a rectangular room, perhaps ten feet from the open doorway, straight ahead, was another stout, wooden door banded in iron, no crystals upon its surface. Four armored iron statues, two on each side, flanked that door. Each statue depicted a person–human men and women, judging by the physiques, ears, and roughly carved faces–in enameled armor holding a black spear, arm cocked back as if ready to throw. All four deadly spear-tips aimed directly at the open doorway in which Leda stood.

It was Bern Erswood, the herbalist, who pulled her aside forcefully.

“Leda! If those things loose those spears, you’re as dead as Mythey, that’s for sure,” he whispered fiercely, admonishing.

“If it were a trap,” sniffed Egerth Mayhurst, the unpleasant jeweler, panting, flattened himself on the opposite side of the hallway as Leda and Bern. His bald pate gleamed with sweat in the pale blue light. “It would have triggered, yes? Perhaps it was meant for someone who forced the door open before it was unlocked.”

“Well then, by alla’ means,” the dwarf, Umur Pearlhammer, grumbled from behind them. “Go on in and try the next door, yeah?”

“Absolutely not!” Egert blanched.

“I’ll- I’ll do it,” stammered Little Gyles, Bert’s grandson. He planted his pitchfork and pushed forward.

“No, son,” Umur and Bern said almost simultaneously, then chuckled at one another.

“Bravest one here is the wee lad,” Umur shook his head. “Step aside, step aside. We’re here. Might as well see what’s behind that next door since we’ve come alla’ this way.”

“I’ll join you, Master Pearlhammer,” Bern smiled, and the two men stepped into the room, shoulder to shoulder. Undaunted, Little Gyles was right on their heels.

Nothing happened.

Leda exhaled loudly at the same time as several others, not realizing she had been holding her breath.

The adventure text says that the statues “wait for an opportune moment, then suddenly hurl their spears at the characters.” Since I’m controlling the actions of both the traps and the PCs, it seems unfair to choose when that moment occurs. Instead, I’ll leave it up to chance.

I’ll roll a d4 to see how many cohorts of three individuals enter the room before the spears fly. I already have their marching order down on a piece of paper.

I roll a 1. Dang. I like all three of those characters in the lead!

Each statue attacks with a +2 against the PC’s Armor Class of 10 (12 for Bern, who is wearing Mythey’s leather armor), but poor Gyles is in the doorway, so any that target him get a whopping +4. They do 1d8 damage each. I’ll say one spear flies at each PCs, and two at Gyles unless the first one kills him. If so, the fourth spear will fly through the doorway at either Leda or Egerth at a +2 (what? You thought the point-of-view character Leda had plot armor? The dice decide the story, and everyone here is as fragile as a… well, as a villager thrown into a magical, alien portal.). Here goes…

The first spear flies at Umur: (19+2) 21, and hits for 2 damage. Umur has 3 hp… whew!

The next at Bern: (6+2) 8, sails wide of Bern. Whew again!

Now at Gyles: (8+4) 12, which hits for 3 damage. The boy only has 1 hp, sadly. Brutal.

That means the fourth spear targets either Leda (1-3 on a d6) or Egerth (4-6): A 4 is Egerth. It rolls a (7+2) 9 and barely misses.

Suddenly, with a coordinated, metallic THUNK! and a quick whirring noise, the four statues released their spears in unison. Before Leda and the others could even gasp, one had buried itself in Umur’s broad shoulder, another had clattered against the wall behind Bern, and a third had sailed through the doorway, narrowly missing Egerth’s leg and skittering across the stone floor amidst the others. The dwarf cried out in pain and stagged just as the jeweler clawed at the wall backwards, into the pressed crowd.

“No!” Bern yelled, much to Leda’s confusion. And then Little Gyles Teahill, the boy with the strength of a grown man, asked specifically to be there by his grandfather, fell back into her arms. A spear shaft protruded from the middle of his chest.

Gyles didn’t mutter last words or even make a single sound. The sleek, black spear must have killed him instantly. A bright bloom of red blossomed on the front of his homespun shirt, his eyes wide, surprised, and glassy. The pitchfork the boy had been clutching clattered to the floor.

For a long while, there was screaming, crying, consoling, and grief. Leda herself carried Gyles’ body to the end of the corridor and outside, placing him gently on the open ground in the nighttime air. She closed his eyes and said a prayer that Justicia, goddess of justice and mercy, watch over him. She had promised Bert that she would keep the boy safe and had utterly failed. The weight of that failure threatened to crush her into a ball on the cold dirt. Instead, she stood and planted fists on hips, staring at Little Gyles to memorize his every feature. Something cold and hard formed along her spine, keeping the tears at bay.

Bern, meanwhile, tried his best to tend to Umur’s shoulder wound, and managed at least to get the bleeding staunched. The dwarf looked pale and weak now, his voice strained. The others tried to convince the dwarf to turn back and head back to Graymoor, but he set his jaw stubbornly.

“You say me, but we should alla’ go back,” he grumbled. “We’ve found only death here.”

“We keep on,” Leda said decisively, joining them after her time outside. “They’ve taken Little Gyles, these bastards. We go in, we take what we can, and we ensure his death was not in vain.”

The group quickly realized that the black, sleek spears were better weapons than any of them wielded. Bern and Egerth were the first to take theirs, and after some discussion the Haffoot siblings, Ethys and Giliam, gripped the other two. The halfling pair, who made their living trading tea leaves in a small boat up and down the Teawood River, looked particularly small carrying the long, wicked weapons. When offered one, Finasaer Doladris explained that, as an elf, he could not touch the iron of the spears for long, but he did pick up Little Gyles’ wood-shafted pitchfork. Even the scholar, it seemed, had recognized the danger of their situation.

It was Erin Wywood, the sharp-witted minstrel and councilman’s granddaughter, who recognized that the armor on each statue was not part of the sculptures and could be removed. It took what felt like ages, but together they puzzled out how to unstrap the pieces from the unmoving iron and help others don them. Umur looked the most natural in the black metal, even though his dwarven physique forced him to exclude some of the original pieces. Hilda Breadon, the stocky baker, followed Umur’s lead and made hers fit in much the same way. Erin donned a full, scaled suit, which the others thought only fair since she had discovered it in the first place. And, thanks to the particular urging of Umur and Bern, Leda took the final suit of armor herself. She was unaccustomed to wearing anything but simple cloth, though she found the weight somehow comforting.

When everything was sorted, only the haberdasher Veric Cayfield found himself armor- and weapon-less. He smiled brightly and said that he didn’t mind… it was fun to help get the others fitted into armor, and he would feel ridiculous holding a spear.

“I have my scissors if it comes to fighting,” the halfling announced with cheer, patting a pouch at his hip. “But I don’t think it will. This strange place beyond the portal is full of traps, not monsters. What do you think the traps are protecting, do you figure?”

“And who was the principal architect of this demesne?” Finasaer wondered aloud, tapping his lip. “Fascinating.”

At that, the group grew quiet and looked warily at the closed, iron-banded door. After the experience of the last two doors and the talk of traps and mysterious builders, no one seemed especially eager to go first.

Filled with visions of Little Gyles’ glassy-eyed stare, Leda sighed and told the others to stand aside. “From now on, I’ll go first,” she announced. “Everyone keep sharp and have your eyes open. If you see something, speak up.” The others murmured assent, even bitter-faced Egerth. The smell of sour, nervous sweat filled the room. Leda’s gauntleted hand reached out to the door, she exhaled sharply, and tried the latch.

It clicked and the door swung open. Leda winced, expecting pain. Nothing happened.

Beyond the door was a large, square room with marble flooring and polished walls. At the far end of the space was a towering granite statue of a man. It was a detailed work of artistry Leda could hardly fathom, and must have been thirty feet tall. The statue’s eyes looked somehow intelligent, and his barrel-chested body was carved to show him wearing animal hides and necklaces from which dangled numerous amulets and charms. A heavy, stone sword was carved to hang at the man’s hip. Leda thought he looked both like a barbarian warrior and shaman, though from where or when she could not begin to guess.

One arm of the statue was outstretched, its index finger pointed accusingly at the doorway in which Leda stood. After the room with the spear-throwing statues, it was a nerve-wracking pose. She quickly stepped into the spacious room and aside.

“Come on,” she said to the others. “There are more doors here.”

Indeed, the square room had three additional doors, all identical to the one she’d just opened, at each wall’s midpoint. Four sides, four doors, one enormous statue. Otherwise, the room was empty.

Time to see if anyone notices some other features of the room with an Intelligence check, at DC 12. I’ll give the three high-Int PCs and Leda, as the first one in, a chance.

Erin for once misses an Intelligence check at (2+1) 3. Ethys also rolls a (2+1) 3. Leda rolls a (12-1) 11. Thankfully Umur rolls a (15+1) 16, which makes sense since he’s the stonemason of the town.

As everyone slowly filed in, boots echoing on the marble floor, Umur peered up and around, studying the statue and room’s construction.

“Careful,” he growled. “See those scorch marks on the floor and walls? And look here, this statue weighs tons but there’s grease here on the base where it meets the foundation.”

“What does that mean, master stonemason?” Bern asked nervously.

“It means, methinks, that the statue rotates and shoots fire, is my guess,” he rubbed thick fingers in his beard, frowning. “Though the masonry involved in such a thing, well… it boggles the mind.”

“Traps, not monsters,” Veric said from the back of the group.

At that, everyone froze and looked wide-eyed up at the enormous barbarian shaman, its finger outstretched accusingly at the empty, open doorway.

“What– what do you think activates it?” Erin Wywood whispered. Still no one moved.

Umur continued rubbing at his beard, eyes searching. “Could be pressure plates on the floor, s’pose, but I donna’ see any. Could be openin’ the doors, but it didn’t scorch us when we came in, did it?”

“Eyes open, everyone,” Leda tried to keep her voice from trembling as she called out. This enameled black armor would not help her at all when engulfed in flame. “And let’s not clump together.”

For the next several minutes, the ten Graymoor residents carefully, carefully spread out and searched the room. Other than discovering more evidence of fire to support Umur’s theory, they found nothing.

“Maybe… it’s broken?” Giliam Haffoot, the brother, asked, rubbing sweat from his brow with a sleeve. It was well known that his sister Ethys was the brains of their boating operation and he was there for the labor. “Been here for years, innit?”

“We have no idea how long,” Bern mused. “We could be standing in another plane of existence, outside of time, even on the surface of that distant Empty Star. That statue could be of the god who created everything, ever, all the stars and worlds. Who knows? This place is a wonder.”

“A miracle,” Erin the minstrel breathed, eyes wide.

“Let’s assume,” Umur murmured through teeth still clenched in pain. “That it will roast anyone who tries to open a door. What do we do?”

They all contemplated.

“We could open all three doors at the same time,” Ethys Haffoot tried, planting the tall spear on the stone to lean on it. “Maybe the statue will get confused, then.”

“Or only cooks one of you, at the least, while the others escape,” Egerth mused. Leda frowned that he said “you” and not “us.”

“And then what? The rest of us run to a door where it ain’t pointin’?” Giliam asked, his scrubby face scrunched in thought. “Sort of a shit plan, though, innit?”

“Do you have a better one, Master Haffoot?” Bern asked. The halfling seemed surprised to be asked and looked absolutely dumbfounded how to respond. Neither he nor the others could come up with an alternate suggestion on how to proceed.

With much apprehension, then, they assembled themselves. Leda would open the western door (none of them knew if it were truly west, but it helped to have a description, so they pretended that the door from which they’d come was south), Umur the northern one, and Giliam surprisingly volunteered for the eastern door. The others of them stood near one of the doors, Bern and Finasaer with Leda, Erin and Hilda with Umur, and finally Egerth and the two other halflings joining Giliam.

“Ready?” Leda called out, placing her hand on the handle of the western door. As she did so, a whirring noise began building within the room. “Now!”

I tried to puzzle out who would go with whom here. Bern the herbalist has been protective of Leda, and the elf Finasaer has seemed to gravitate to her side as well. Erin, one of the smartest of the group, will follow one of the other smarties in Umur, and Hilda is a fellow craftsperson (as much as bakers and stonemasons are similar) so would feel some kinship with the dwarf. Ethys would clearly stick near her brother, and it makes sense that Veric would want to be near the other halflings. Egerth, meanwhile, calculates that a group of four means he is less likely to be targeted by the statue than if he were in a group of three.

Egerth’s logic, it turns out, dooms his group. The statue targets the largest group first, and whoever is opening the door. It shoots out a gout of flame, and rolls a whopping (19+6) 25, for 5 damage. Giliam only has 2 hp, so he’s dead.

Into combat initiative we go… The PCs are lucky and most rolled higher than the barbarian-shaman statue.

In surprising synchronicity, the three figures at the door clasped the latches and opened their respective doors. As Umur had predicted, the immense stone figure rotated on its base with a sound of grinding rock so deep that they all felt it in their bellies more than heard it. Ethys and Veric shouted warnings, but too late. A fountain of fire erupted from the statue’s fingertip, engulfing poor Giliam Haffoot. The man shrieked and rolled on the stone as he died.

Veric, the haberdasher with neither weapon nor armor, did not pause. Quicker than Leda knew the man could move, he sprinted on short legs away from the flaming Giliam and towards Umur, diving through the open northern door. Umur, wide-eyed, followed the halfling, with Hilda right on his heels.

“In! In!” Bern shouted over the screams, and he pushed himself and Leda through the western doorway.

Egerth Mayhust, Graymoor’s jeweler, stumbled past the burning, shrieking Giliam Haffoot and into the eastern opening. Then, much to Ethys Haffoot’s utter astonishment, slammed the door closed behind him, right in her face.

There are now three villagers remaining when it is the statue’s turn: Finasaer the elf at the west, Erin Wywood the minstrel at the north, and Ethys Haffoot (facing a closed door) to the east. Since there is no group larger than the rest, we’ll roll randomly who the statue targets next. I’ll roll a d6 (1-2, 3-4, 5-6) and get a 2.

The statue rolls a (14+6) 20, which easily hits the elf. He takes 3 fire damage, leaving him with 1 hp. He is also burning, though, and will take an additional 1d6 of damage, killing him, unless he can succeed at a DC10 Reflex save. I’ll roll that now: Finasaer gets a 6.

The room seemed to shudder as the thirty-foot stone figure pivoted in its base, finger swiveling to the sage Finasaer Doladris, the only elf in Graymoor’s memory.

“No, wait!” he held up his hands, dropping Little Gyles’ pitchfork, before the WHOOSH! of fire jetted from the fingertip to surround him.

Through the open doorway, Leda could see the elf rolling around in his once-sparkling robes, frantically trying to extinguish the flames. Yet within moments he was nothing more than a burning pile, like Giliam Haffoot across the room.

A Haffoot family trait, the siblings had long told the Graymoor residents, was a single club foot. Both Giliam and Ethys had one, lending credence to the claim. Across the wide room, Leda and Ethys locked eyes and the councilwoman could almost feel her mind working out whether she could, on one lame foot, make the distance between them. The quick-witted halfling apparently decided she couldn’t, and ran in a galloping trot to the north using the spear as a makeshift crutch, out of Leda’s view.

“Miss Astford!” a small voice called out clearly from the direction in which Ethys had run. It was Veric, the haberdasher.

“Yes! I’m here! Me and Bern!”

“Quick! Run to us! So we’re not split!”

She turned to Bern at her side and the two shared a quick nod. As one they threw themselves out, leaping over the charred, flaming lump of Finasaer and towards the north. The room shuddered and rumbled as the statue began tracking their movement. She did not even pause to take in the surroundings behind the western door before exiting it.

Damn this armor! Leda thought wildly. Bern, in Mythey’s leathers, sprinted past her, around the statue’s base and into the northern opening. Leda stumbled, feeling clumsy with the weight of the enameled, black metal strapped everywhere. Ahead she could see a group of huddled faces, urging her on. Veric and Umur and Erin, all reaching out to her from the doorway as she panted towards them, each step heavy.

The scale mail that Leda (and Umur, Erin, and Hilda) is wearing decreases her movement by 5’ per round. So while Bern can dash from the eastern hallway to the northern in one turn, Leda cannot. She gets right to the north entrance, and the statue gets to make a strike against her. The only hope is that Leda’s AC is higher than everyone else’s, +4 for the armor and +2 for her high Agility. So her AC is 16, meaning the statue has just over a 50% chance of hitting. Oh boy.

The statue rolls a (13+6) 19, hitting. I literally winced when I rolled the damage, but it’s only 2! That’s half of Leda’s hit points, and now she needs to pass a DC 10 Reflex save. Now, scale mail also provides a “Check Penalty” for a variety of activities involving dexterity. I can’t find in the rulebook if this pertains to Reflex saves, though. A quick web search tells me that, while slightly disputed, no. Leda’s +2 Reflex save bonus is intact. So she has to only roll an 8 or better…

She rolls a 12. Yes! Whew.

Joseph Goodman, author of Dungeon Crawl Classics and the adventure The Portal Under the Stars has said that the statue room is incredibly deadly, able to wipe out whole parties of Level-0 characters if they aren’t careful. He’s not kidding.

“Come on!” Umur growled from mere feet away. “Run, lass!”

The others dove for cover as the sound of the flames fountained from behind her. Her back and legs seared with heat and she jumped with her last bit of strength towards the now-empty doorway. Leda landed painfully, with a clatter of armor, and suddenly multiple hands were all over her, rolling her and helping to extinguish the flames. Someone slammed the door shut, leaving only the sound of several people panting and the smell of burnt hair hanging in the air.

For several moments, Leda gasped for breath and lay her cheek on the stone floor beneath her. Her father’s longsword, never used once in her life, jammed painfully beneath her hip. Indeed, everything hurt, especially her back and legs. But she was alive, thank the gods. She squeezed both eyes shut and thought of Little Gyles.

Eventually, she rolled to her knees and, grimacing, stood. Umur sat gasping, his back against the door. She could see the dwarf’s bandaged shoulder through the gaps in his armor and it was soaked in fresh blood. Bern, Erin, Hilda, Ethys, and Veric all sat or stood nearby, looking stunned and out of breath. Seven of them, where they had once been twelve.

It was only in glancing at her companions that she first became aware of the shimmering, ethereal light in the room. She gasped as she looked beyond their group.

“What– what is this place?” she whispered.

Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 3

Introduction: “Portal Under the Stars” Playthrough

On May 26, 2024April 2, 2025 By MagicJMSIn Dungeon Crawl Classics, Tabletop Roleplaying12 Comments

As I mentioned in my last entry, I have recently been pouring over the Dungeon Crawl Classics rulebook by Goodman Games. Each of its 500+ pages is a delight. DCC is a game that a) I really, desperately want to try out, and b) for a variety of reasons (time, number of games already in the queue, my group’s interests, etc.) is unlikely something I can play soon with my weekly online group of players. I also mentioned solo play, and not-coincidentally received the Mythic GM Emulator as a Christmas gift (thanks mom!) last year. So, although superhero games are my first love, right now, in this moment in time, I’m going to try my hand at playing my way through an introductory DCC adventure.

One of the quirks of DCC as a system is “The Funnel,” which is a way of describing how players form new adventuring parties. The basic idea is this: Each player rolls up multiple pre-adventurers, called Level 0 characters. These are normal townsfolk living in a dangerous and mysterious world, ready to defend their livelihood but without the equipment or skills to do so effectively. Then, The Funnel puts these poor 10-15 souls in a brief, deadly scenario. Whoever survives the scenario creates the pool of potential Level 1 adventurers, and off you go.

From what I can gather, The Funnel is a barrier for many “modern” players to jump into DCC. Yet there are also countless testimonials for why a Level-0 Funnel is vital for a new group; The Funnel not only introduces beginners to the rules in a digestible way, but it also emphasizes the tone and tenets of the game world, helps players fall in love with their characters, and creates memorable stories the group will forever remember. Besides, it’s such a different way to start adventuring than most modern games, I am fascinated to try it out. I was immediately sold when reading the rulebook:

Woo! Sounds awesome.

There are a lot of DCC Level 0 adventures, and by far the most popular and highly-touted one is Sailors on the Starless Sea. I own SotSS and initially decided that I wanted it to be the object of my playthrough. What I concluded, however, is that I’d rather not have a public playthrough of such a beloved Funnel, which might ruin it for others (including my own group, if I convince them to try out DCC). Instead, I decided to focus on the Funnel provided in the core rulebook, The Portal Under the Stars.

The Cast of Characters

Before I can dive into my first Funnel, however, I need a large party of townspeople. Simulating four players with three characters each, I rolled up an ambitious TWELVE townsfolk. Below is a quick sketch of each, which is all of the backstory I want right now. There’s no need to create elaborate backstories for characters that might die in the first session, plus the spirit of DCC is to find the characters through playing them. It’s fun to wonder which of these poor saps might eventually become honest-to-goodness adventurers.

I’ll also provide the “stats block” for each character. Right now, don’t worry about understanding the gobbledygook of abbreviations and numbers… I’ll briefly explain mechanics as I go. Suffice it to say, if you’ve played any edition of Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, or another d20-based roleplaying game, DCC will be pretty easy to figure out.

Bern Erswood. Graymoor’s herbalist is well-liked and seen as a kind man eager to help his neighbors, even if his remedies rarely have any medicinal benefits. Bern lives on the village’s outskirts, where he has the most access to nature and can cultivate his gardens.

Bern Erswood. Level 0 Herbalist. STR 9, AGL 11, STA 13, PER 16, INT 12, LCK 11. Init +0; Atk club +0 melee (1d4); AC 10; HP 5; MV 30′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +1, Ref +0, Will +2; LNG Common; AL Neutral; Equipment: small hammer, herbs, 19cp.

Councilwoman Leda Astford. Leda is one of four councilmembers elected by Graymoor’s populace, and the most recent addition to the Town Council (taking her mother’s seat when she perished from illness). She is young, popular with town residents, and perhaps a touch naïve. Her three councilmember peers—all old, grizzled men who’ve held their seats for years—push Leda to do any and all hard work.

Councilwoman Leda Astford. Level 0 Noble. STR 8, AGL 16, STA 12, PER 15, INT 8, LCK 7. Init +2; Atk longsword -1 melee (1d8-1); AC 10; HP 4; MV 30′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +0; Ref +2; Will +1; LNG Common; AL Lawful; Equipment: 10′ pole, gold ring, 41cp. Note: Born with a clover-shaped birthmark. (-1 to find secret doors)

Egerth Mayhurst. The town’s only jeweler, Egerth has lived in Graymoor since he was a youth and yet still considers himself better than other locals, who he calls “backwater fools.” Selfish and ambitious, he has remained single well into his middle age and is more than a little bitter about it.

Egerth Mayhurst. Level 0 Jeweler. STR 13, AGL 10, STA 10, PER 9, INT 8, LCK 9. Init +0; Atk dagger +1 melee (1d4+1); AC 10; HP 2; MV 30′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +0, Ref +0, Will -1; LNG Common; AL Chaotic; Equipment: holy water (1 vial), gem, 24cp.

Erin Wywood. The granddaughter of Councilmen Wywood, Erin is the closest thing Graymoor has to a bard. She spends her time in the town’s tavern playing her ukelele. Erin should be more popular than she is, due mostly to her devout religiosity and fervor, which creeps into all of her interactions and songs.

Erin Wywood. Level 0 Minstrel. STR 13, AGL 11, STA 13, PER 8, INT 14, LCK 10. Init +0; Atk dagger +1 melee (1d4+1); AC 10; HP 5; MV 30′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +1, Ref +0, Will -1; LNG Common, Halfling; AL Lawful; Equipment: holy symbol, ukelele, 32cp.

Ethys Haffoot. Ethys and her younger brother Giliam are responsible for the trading barge up and down the Teawood River, which connects Graymoor to the neighboring settlements (one of which is the halfling village of Teatown, Ethys and Giliam’s birthplace). She has the family affliction of a club foot, but is otherwise hardy and unquestionably the brains of her family business.

Ethys Haffoot. Level 0 Halfling Mariner. STR 11, AGL 6, STA 12, PER 9, INT 15, LCK 12. Init -1; Atk knife +0 melee (1d4); AC 10; HP 2; MV 20′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +0, Ref -1, Will +0; LNG Common, Halfling, Elven; AL Lawful; Equipment: 10′ pole, sailcloth, 36cp. Infravision.

Finasaer Doladris. Master Finasaer arrived in Graymoor ten years ago from the woods, explaining to the Town Council that he was writing a book on provincial towns in the region. He is the only elf in Graymoor, and a town curiosity in every way. For his part, “Fin” (as the locals call him) is friendly but aloof, and his elevated vocabulary often alienates him from others.

Finasaer Doladris. Level 0 Elven Sage. STR 13, AGL 10, STA 14, PER 9, INT 11, LCK 14. Init +0; Atk dagger +1 melee (1d4+2); AC 10; HP 4; MV 30′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +1, Ref +0, Will +0; LNG Common, Elven; AL Neutral; Equipment: backpack, parchment and quill pen, 14cp. Note: Born on a full moon as a pack of wolves howled. (+1 to attack and damage for starting weapon). Sensitive to iron. Infravision.

Giliam Haffoot. Giliam and his older sister Ethys are responsible for the trading barge up and down the Teawood River, which connects Graymoor to the neighboring settlements (one of which is the halfling village of Teatown, Ethys and Giliam’s birthplace). He has the family affliction of a club foot, but is otherwise hardy and hard-working.

Giliam Haffoot. Level 0 Halfling Mariner. STR 12, AGL 7, STA 13, PER 12, INT 8, LCK 9. Init -1; Atk knife +0 melee (1d4); AC 10; HP 2; MV 20′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +1, Ref -1, Will +0; LNG Common, Halfling; AL Lawful; Equipment: grappling hook, sailcloth, 25cp. Infravision.

Gyles Teahill. “Little” Gyles Teahill is the son of Ephes Teahill, Graymoor’s most prominent rutabaga farmer. Ephes recently had an accident that has left him bedridden, so Gyles has taken up the majority of his father’s work. He is small, but strong for his size and everyone in the town is either overtly or secretly rooting for the Teahills to have a successful year because of Little Gyles’ heart.

Gyles Teahill. Level 0 Farmer (rutabaga). STR 12, AGL 6, STA 5, PER 12, INT 9, LCK 9. Init -1; Atk pitchfork +0 melee (1d8); AC 10; HP 1; MV 30′; Act 1d20; SV Fort -2, Ref -1, Will +0; LNG Common; AL Lawful; Equipment: hen, rations, 25cp.

Hilda Breadon. Graymoor’s only commercial baker, Hilda is famous for her pies, cakes, and cookies of remarkable variety. She would be more successful if she didn’t eat twice as much of her wares as she sells, but she is a woman of great passions and appetites.

Hilda Breadon. Level 0 Baker. STR 9, AGL 11, STA 18, PER 9, INT 11, LCK 11. Init +0; Atk rolling pin +0 melee (1d4); AC 10; HP 7; MV 30′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +3, Ref +0, Will +0; LNG Common; AL Lawful; Equipment: chain, flour, 26cp.

Mythey Wyebury. Mythey grew up in Graymoor as a ne’er do well, always in trouble and running from his bad choices. Unbeknownst to most of the town, he and a couple of his friends have recently been plaguing the roads as outlaws, stealing from travelers to fuel their tavern revelry. His most closely guarded secret, however, is that he has a sickness that he believes will kill him any day now.

Mythey Wyebury. Level 0 Outlaw. STR 15, AGL 11, STA 6, PER 13, INT 9, LCK 7. Init +0; Atk shortsword +1 melee (1d6); AC 12 (leather armor); HP 1; MV 30′; Act 1d20; SV Fort -1, Ref +0, Will +1; LNG Common; AL Chaotic; Equipment: small sack, 29cp. Note: Born as a bear visited the village. (-1 to Melee damage rolls)

Umur Pearlhammer. No one in Graymoor knows how old Umur is, but they know he’s outlived anyone else’s memory. He’s still hearty enough to be the town’s primary stonemason, though, and despite his dwarven gruffness he is one of Graymoor’s most well-liked residents.

Umur Pearlhammer. Level 0 Dwarven Stonesmith. STR 9, AGL 9, STA 9, PER 14, INT 13, LCK 9. Init +0; Atk hammer +0 melee (1d3); AC 10; HP 3; MV 20′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +0, Ref +0, Will +1; LNG Common, Dwarven, Giantish; AL Lawful; Equipment: fine stone, lantern, 26cp. Infravision.

Veric Cayfield. Like the Haffoot siblings, Veric grew up in the halfling village of Teatown, but moved to Graymoor several years ago to begin his life as a haberdasher. No one loves clothes as much as Veric, and what he loves about humans is how much more fabric he gets to use to make them.

Veric Cayfield. Level 0 Halfling Haberdasher. STR 13, AGL 16, STA 12, PER 9, INT 11, LCK 12. Init +2; Atk scissors +1 melee (1d4+1); AC 10; HP 1; MV 20′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +0, Ref +2, Will +0; LNG Common, Halfling; AL Lawful; Equipment: fine suits (3), flask, 19cp. Infravision.

And there we go. Have any bets on survivors or early deaths? And yes… several of them have 1 or 2 hit points. Yikes.

Next time… the adventure begins!

-jms

Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 1

Gaming at Fifty One

On May 22, 2024August 24, 2024 By MagicJMSIn Superhero Gaming, Tabletop Roleplaying11 Comments

Today is a (rather long) State of the Union address on my gaming life.

As best as I can remember, I started playing tabletop role-playing games (or TTRPGs) in Fifth Grade, in 1983, which would make me ten years old. It was one of those phenomena where a friend–though I can’t remember who Gamer Zero was–received a boxed set as a Christmas gift and we all dove in. Soon we all asked our parents to supply us with books, dice, graph paper, and pencils. Throughout the Spring, we played a mix of Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, not understanding that they were two largely different games. It didn’t really matter, though… what we actually played was some rules-light, make-it-up-as-you-go game that didn’t even try to involve the many complex tables in the books we didn’t understand. Usually our first-level characters wielded something like a +5 Sword of Dragon Slaying that could cut through anything.

As we transitioned to middle school, a subset of that original group began playing anything we could get our hands on. The biggest boon to our fledgling group was my buddy Russell’s older brother Jim, who was happy to run our games for us. I’m not sure this is an exhaustive list, but I remember playing a lot of Tunnels & Trolls, Gamma World, Car Wars, Top Secret, Marvel Superheroes, Villains & Vigilantes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT), Heroes Unlimited, Superworld, Champions, GURPS, and, yes, a good helping of D&D (this time using the rules and their published modules). Just seeing the covers of those games triggers a flood of nostalgic make-believe happiness. Those were fun times.

I had a new group of friends in high school and quickly introduced them to the hobby. We almost exclusively played superhero games, primarily Villains & Vigilantes and Champions, though we sprinkled in some TMNT, Golden Heroes, DC Heroes, and Super Villains as well. My good friend Ted ran us through a particularly memorable V&V campaign, which clued me into how cool a longform set of adventures with the same characters can be.

We all scattered to different colleges, and I met new TTRPG enthusiasts. Throughout my time at Occidental College, I ran a monthly Champions campaign, even drawing the “comic covers” for each session we played as keepsakes. At that point, Champions was my only game, and I was deep into the HERO System and its math-heavy fun.

Then it was off to graduate school, where I met both my wife and a little game called Magic: the Gathering, which would be the object of my obsession for years. Then my working career started to take off, I had kids, we moved around, and, as these things do, TTRPGs faded into the background of my life for nearly two decades. I remember trying to organize a D&D adventure with my wife and some friends once or twice during that time, but it never stuck. During that time, I bought-and-sold the D&D 3E and 3.5 rulebooks without really doing anything with them.

In 2018, I took a year off work to recoup, then in 2019 started a job in San Francisco that, unlike most of my previous roles, didn’t require heavy travel. Around that time, I started listening to a ton of podcasts, including the Glass Cannon Podcast. The TTRPG bug started inching its way into my brain, and I began to seek out my local game stores to see if there were people with whom I could play. After some false starts with Dungeons & Dragons 5^th Edition and Pathfinder at local stores, I found a group that was playing D&D 5E and were happy to have me join. They were interested in switching to Pathfinder 2^nd Edition once it was released, and eventually I GMed us through the game’s first 1-20 Adventure Path, Age of Ashes over three years. During those years we took occasional detours, experimenting with Blades in the Dark, Symbaroum, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds, and, at my urging, even returned to supers for a Sentinel Comics RPG one-shot.

That gaming group was my first experience with serious personality clashes in TTRPG groups. I ended up feeling picked on by a person there who was close friends with two other members, and after trying-and-failing multiple times to talk it out, my best recourse was to leave. Suffice it to say, it was the only real negative chapter I’ve had with TTRPGs, which have otherwise been a source of unqualified joy in my life.

For months I was genuinely wounded by my abandoned group. Thankfully the global pandemic had introduced me to virtual tabletops and online games. Eventually I found a couple fun virtual tables, including a delightful online group of Europeans that has met weekly now for almost two years. We mostly play PF2E, but have rotated GMs and done several sessions of Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer Fantasy, and most recently Mörk Borg. On our “really want to play list” are Vaesen, Dragonbane, Traveller, Forbidden Lands, Dungeon World, Lancer, Savage Worlds, and countless others.

It’s fair to say that, at age fifty-one, I’m in the midst of my Second TTRPG Renaissance. At the same time, the whole TTRPG industry is going through its own Renaissance, with intriguing new games popping up seemingly every week. Not surprisingly, my game shelf has exploded. I now own most of the games listed above, plus a metric ton of others I’ve Kickstarted, found in bargain bins or eBay auctions, or used birthday gift certificates on. I’ve even sold old game books and given my college-age son my D&D 5E collection to make room for them in my house.

There are two major differences between my TTRPG life as a gray-bearded geezer compared to my young, wispy-mustachioed self. The most obvious one is that it’s more difficult to find a group with which to play. Throughout middle school, high school, and college, I rolled dice with my core group of friends. Most of our interests were shared and we spent a ton of time together… easy squeezy. These days, in contrast, the vast majority of my contemporaries have neither the time for, nor interest in, TTRPGs. While online platforms make the pool of potential players wider, these online groups are ephemeral. It’s clear to me that if one of my current group members (all of whom are twenty years younger than me) has kids, takes a new job, or moves, it probably spells the end of the group… that sort of “life event disruption” can happen with any group, but somehow in-person groups feel stickier because the investment feels somehow deeper. Meanwhile, I’ve tried to think of how to conjure another reliable, fun in-person group and failed to come up with a solution.

The second difference is in the type of games I’m playing now versus in my youth. If it’s not obvious from the banner image on this blog, my first love is superheroes and comic books, and at one point in college set my sights on becoming a comic book illustrator. As my TTRPG life deepened as a young person, it skewed heavily–and eventually exclusively–to superhero games. Yet all of my groups in the last six years want to play fantasy or investigative horror games. That’s okay, because I can get excited about those games. But none of the groups I’ve encountered want to play superhero make-believe.

The feeling of being an odd-shaped puzzle piece continued recently as I started to discover the “Old School Renaissance” (or OSR) movement within TTRPGs. These games are built by people who love early Dungeons & Dragons and want to recreate the feel of those games for modern audiences. I’ve looked at OSR-type games like Old School Essentials, Knave, Ironsworn, and have absolutely fallen in love with Dungeon Crawl Classics. I’ve also rescued a bunch of my old D&D modules from my mother’s garage, joined the Ancient Dungeons & Dragons Players Facebook group, and have been bingeing the Vintage RPG podcast. Yet when I tell my online group that I’d love to run them through a DCC beginner adventure to test out the system, I get the same lukewarm response that I received when I tried to get my in-person group to play a superhero game. They’ll probably roll with it because they like and trust me, but there isn’t an itch there they need to scratch.

All of this has me reflecting deeply on the years ahead. I’ll certainly keep seeking out online groups and brainstorming how to form an in-person group, because these are games that are most fun when they’re social and played with friends. Just last week, for example, I jumped online with a bunch of strangers to learn to play Dragonbane, a game I own and have considered running for my regular group. I’ll also keep collecting games, because I find real pleasure in reading the books cover-to-cover and seeing them on my shelf. We truly are living in a glorious period of TTRPG innovation, and the sheer diversity and volume of options is awesome.

But I’m beginning to accept that a) I may never have a long, stable group of gaming friends again, even as an empty nester nearing retirement where my time is beginning to be more spacious, and b) the number of games I own and want to play far outweighs the number of hours I’ll be able to play with friends. I surely won’t ever get a chance to play everything, much less everything beckoning to me.

The final addition to my reflections is the rise of solo play in TTRPGs. Solo play has always been a feature of some TTRPGs dating back to the 1970s, but thanks to the global pandemic it has a lot more support now than ever. Many games, like Ironsworn and Vaesen, have solo play built into the base game as an option. Meanwhile, tools like the Mythic GM Emulator allow for being able to play any game solo, without the need for a gaming group. Indeed, one of my recent podcast obsessions is Tale of the Manticore, a great audio production of a guy solo-playing an old-school D&D system.

Maybe the answer is to begin solo play on the games no one but me wants to play? Would I enjoy that, or is the fun of TTRPGs really tied to a group? I’ll probably dip my toe into these strange, solo-play waters soon, while continuing my epic quest to find more time with awesome groups like my current online one. My enthusiasm for TTRPGs is as high as that ten-year-old kid pretending to swing his overpowered sword around. How best to channel that enthusiasm, though, is something I’m still contemplating.

If you have any thoughts about the TTRPG hobby these days, or ways you’ve tackled the hurdles I’ve outlined, I’d love to hear it. Comment below or shoot me an email at jaycms@yahoo.com.

Enthusiastically adventuring,

-jms

My Hero Brain

Tag: rpg

Choosing a Supers System, Part 5: Cortex Prime

Cortex Prime

**Why Cortex Prme Works For Me**

**My Cortex Prime Hesitations**

One Game to Rule Them All

Choosing a Supers System, Part 4: ICONS

ICONS

**Why ICONS Works For Me**

**My ICONS Hesitations**

One Game to Rule Them All

Choosing a Supers System, Part 3: Prowlers & Paragons

Prowlers & Paragons

Choosing a Supers System, Part 2: Supers! RED

Supers! RED

**Why Supers! RED Works For Me**

**My Supers! RED Hesitations**

One Game to Rule Them All

Reflections: Doom of the Savage Kings

Portal Under the Stars, Chapter 2

Introduction: “Portal Under the Stars” Playthrough

The Cast of Characters

Gaming at Fifty One