Superpowers & TTRPGs

It's no secret superheroic ttrpgs are among my favorite (if not my absolute favorite genre). Honestly, the only thing that stops me from making only superheroic ttrpgs is the requirement to make a living (they don't generally sell as well as dungeon fantasy rpgs, science fiction rpgs, or cthulhu/horror ttrpgs). But I think a lot about superheroic ttrpgs and how the conventions of superhero rpgs don't or do mesh with comic book games. There's no real point to this blog post other than me musing on thoughts as I noodle on a superheroic ttrpg (that's not tiny supers).

Superhero TTRPGs (I think probably due to the wargame dna of ttrpgs in general - though diminished nowadays) tend to lean one of two ways.

• They lean towards simulations/power rank comparisions (TSR Marvel, DC, Mutants and Masterminds, Icons, Champions, et al.)
• They lean towards narrative trope beats (Masks, City of Mist, et al.)

I think (to a degree) both ways are right, though I think the simulationist one falls apart faster.

Part of the joy of comic book reading is the gentle surprise of superpowers being pushed in presentation. "Oh, he can use X to do Y?!?" "Her power can do that?" There's a subtle flexibility in comic book superpowers where it can be pushed in a way that makes sense, without breaking immersion. You can go too far (and there are infamous examples of this), but there are also really reasonable "I hadn't thought it worked like that, but it makes sense" style stretches that work well.

The "Power Rank" style superheroic rpgs tend to put powers on a locked sliding scale up and down, where in comparison they can be quantified (at least relatively). "Super-Strength X lifts Y lbs." That sort of thing. It makes a comparison, quick, easy, but also...kinda not genre-accurate.

Let's use super-speed as an example (it's my favorite power followed by archer characters). I'm going to use Mutants & Masterminds 3e, one of my absolute favorite superheroic rpgs, by my North Star superhero rpg designer Steve Kenson. Hi Steve! I love your game, and I'm only using it as an example because it's so clearly written it's easy to communicate with.

Mutants and Masterminds uses a tool called "ranks" to show where on a sliding scale everything sits. You can find the OGL version at this link. But basically, superspeed rank 10 (a standard power for a speedster at the game's default power level - at least as I recall it) lets you move 2,000 MPH. They can cover 4 miles in 6 seconds (one action in the game).

Now, Barry Allen (The Flash) is fast. Very fast. So fast he can run faster than the speed of light (wikipedia says as fast as 13 million times lightspeed). Light is a rank 28 speed (a little over 1 million miles per move action). So Barry has roughly a rank 32 superspeed power (presuming he can hit that limit of 13 million times lightspeed. Rank 31 otherwise. It's splitting super fast hairs at that level).

Sidebar: Holy hell that's so fast.

But if you read a Flash comic, even presuming Barry can only go as fast as the speed of light, that speed doesn't hold up. Barry is often late to things that aren't reasonable for a person that fast to be late to, not logically. It's a narrative convention that Barry is late despite his exceptional speed. It doesn't make sense, but we accept it because it is a narrative convention.

That's because in Flash comics, there are three real speeds for super-speed and the actual numbers don't matter.

Barry is:

• just in time
• just too late
• fast enough to change the plot (and conversely not fast enough to change the plot, though that kinda falls into just too late).

That's it. Regardless of how fast Barry's top speeds are, those outcomes are kinda where it ends up. So how do we model that in an RPG? We can use the power rank system M&M 3e (and similar style systems in other games), but I think that is misleading a bit. It quantifies the powers too much and you end up where the power overrides the narrative utility of the power. If I'm a rank 32 speedster mechanically, I can't be late for anything, so it doesn't make sense for certain things to happen. The rules of the game then create friction with the rules of the genre.

This is where the more narrative PBTA style moves come in. It's easy to see how power might have those PBTA staggered outcomes (Success, Success at a Cost, Failure). But PBTA moves shift the power rank dilemma from the inherent game mechanics to the move mechanics. We're kinda presenting the same issue, wrapped in new narrative ttrpg language.

To me, it's a melding of both that works best. Honestly, I think super powers should be split into binary "in combat" and "non-combat' power stunts. Super-speed might look something like.

"Super-Speed:
Out of combat, when you try to arrive somewhere quickly, make a dice roll thingy. If X, then Y.

In combat, when you use super-speed, chose A, B, or C and make the indicated dice roll thingy."

A might be super-sonic punch.

B might be speedster whirlwind.

You get the idea.

Genre tropes are demanding and difficult to manage, especially inside the broad spectrum of cape comics.