The Game Formerly Known as Panels

[Andrew Martin]

Clinton R Nixon wrote:
> The area, or scope, of the game is defined before character creation.

> Scope Levels
> Neighborhood: The heroes are low-powered guardians of their local neighborhood, cleaning up the streets for the kids.

> City: The heroes are the paragons of the city (or town), protecting it from harm against outside influences.

> Nation: The heroes are the well-known protectors of an entire nation. They might be government-sponsored, or might be independent, even protecting a people from their own government. Their enemies may be as large as other nations.

> The World: "Authority"-level action, where the heroes are near-gods protecting a world from harm and from itself.

> The Galaxy: Marvel Comics-like cosmic guardians.

Why not use these levels of scope as levels of power and levels of difficulty? There's five levels of power above normal human, and you've got up to 10 dice to play with, so that's about two dice per level. It seems to fit for your descriptions of Jenny Sparks, Superman, Batman & Spiderman so far.

One could then use a simpler, more obvious system to determine interactions. If your hero's power level is higher than the task difficulty, then success is automatic (except maybe for negative triggers?). If your hero's power level is equal to the task difficulty, then the success is uncertain; time to roll D10 and perhaps look for assistance from their triggers. If your hero's power level is below the task difficulty, then the heroes have to call in success from their triggers, or fail automatically.

For example, Frank Furst, is a City level powered (3 Dice) hero and needs to track and follow some mafia gangsters along an alley way. This is probably a street level task, so Frank succeeds automatically, as City level is above Street and so finds out where they went.

Then Frank comes across their corpses, minus skull and spine, and tries to work out what happened, using his City level tracking skill against the Predator's superhuman (or City level) stealth (the cause of the deaths). Because the chance is equal, I'd roll 1D10 (or similar), plus another D10 because Frank hates the Mafia (a enemy of my enemy is my friend...). If either dice rolls above 5, then Frank works out what happened; otherwise Frank is mystified for now as to what happened.

Later, Frank gets hit several times by the Predator, but wants to keep going despite the wounds. Frank doesn't have superhuman endurance, so has to rely on his anger or similar trigger to keep going.

With this, one doesn't need to have a pool of D10, and can just use any size dice. Also, one doesn't need to keep track of "points". :)

So roll one dice if power is comparable to difficulty, add extra dice from triggers to assist. If negative triggers would more likely make the task fail, roll dice for them -- those dice must succeed to make the task successful.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Why not use these levels of scope as levels of power and levels of difficulty? There's five levels of power above normal human, and you've got up to 10 dice to play with, so that's about two dice per level. It seems to fit for your descriptions of Jenny Sparks, Superman, Batman & Spiderman so far.

I really like this idea - this is getting stolen.

The rest of the post sounds like a great system for a game designed by someone else - I really liked it, but it's a little too rules-light for me. I want chances for failure, even again people weaker than you that have a real purpose. I want chances for successes against seemingly insurmountable obstacles - because you have a reason to succeed.

[Andrew Martin]

Clinton R Nixon wrote:
> I want chances for failure, even again people weaker than you that have a real purpose. I want chances for successes against seemingly insurmountable obstacles - because you have a reason to succeed.

Just eliminate the automatic success and automatic failure chances -- make players roll for these situations. But don't be surprised then if Powerman (a Street level hero), can punch away an asteroid that threatens to destroy the earth. :)