I'm a major Supermegatopia fan. Supermegatopia is a superhero parody webcomic set in Supermegatopia, the kiwi captial of the world and unfortunate magnet of weirdness. (The comic iself is not work-safe, so I am not providing a link. You can use Google if you've never heard of it.) There's a webcomic, a MUCK, trade paperbacks, and I've heard there even was a short-run breakfast cereal. (I didn't ask what the marshmallows were.) So when I ordered it, I was excited.
The Supermegatopia RPG could have been the new Paranoia, except with slightly less maniacal computers and with slightly more fanservice in capes. If it failed as a humor RPG, it could have worked as a superheroes RPG; if it failed as a supers RPG, it could have been a parody of supers RPG. Unfortunately, it fell short on all of those counts.
As usual, this review is by section. Quotes from the book begin and end sections when appropriate.
"Supermegatopia is well-known for its large superhero population, which is often referred to as 'rats with capes'. Home to such super-teams as 'The Offenders', the 'Justice Legion of Supermegatopia', 'The Ex-Guys', and many more, not to mention dynamic duos like 'Beowulf and Grendal', and vigilantes like Ferret Man or Captain Squid. Oh, and they have super-villains too. We mustn't forget them now. After all, you can't have gripping action stories with just one side of people in colorful tights. Actually, you can, but that involves introspection, internal conflict, people dealing with other people in realistic situations, but you won't find any of that intellectual cr** in this city.".
Welcome To Supermegatopia
(Please wipe your boots off at the door)
This section provides a meager history about how Supermegatopia came into being. It's only a page long, so little can be written about it.
"Supermegatopia Labs: "Tampering In God's Domain Since 1912", Supermeagtopia Labs is responsible for Silly Slime™, the Pocket Portal™, and that still-smoking still-glowing crater outside of the city."
Character Stats
Here, stats are provided for characters of the Supermegatopia universe. Interspersed with the stats are comics -- eight pages of comics showing how Supermegatopia works, follwed by roughly the same number of pages of characters who were spotted or mentioned in the comic.
The comics take up a little under one-third of the PDF, and while it's impressive to have comics of the characters in action to go with the character stats, it'd be more impressive if they weren't comics available for free from the Supermegatopia website. In addition, many of the histories are incompatible with the characters -- for example, a character noted as being competent with 'any medieval weapon' has only three skills on his character sheet: Lockpicking, Persuasion, and Stealth. A few even have powers that aren't listed in the book (like Energy Battery). A point was taken off of Substance for this.
Many major players of Supermegatopia aren't mentioned at all, while some minor characters like Dark Chipmunk get a full page with illustration (normal character histories and stats fit in a single column, meaning there are usually two characters per page). In the comic, many of the storylines are due to the actions of Mad Dr. Nesbit, a mad scientist who uses her super-gadgeteering to intimidate her coworkers and get revenge for petty slights, or Avatar, an unfortunate girl who channels the randomly powers and personality of gods (one week Hera, a few days as Sopha, a weekend as Jehovah...). Neither has stats in the book. Nor does a single Offender, Ferret Man (the premiere antihero of the city), the World's Largest Hamster, any of the clones (neither the 'normal' clones, nor the Skippy clones), any part of the shadowy organization that actually controls Supermegatopia, Dr. Ghoti, or the Continuity Police. Another point was taken off of Substance for this.
However, these minor characters are given great writeups, and suiting for the style of Supermegatopia. For example, there's the Falchioned Falcon, who has so far only appeared in one panel of one comic. He is the unfortunate error in the universes; he has so many origin stories, he has no idea what his real name or age is, and at any moment, he might break down as his origin story breaks down again. And this is where the Supermegatopia shines: the stuff that the Brothers Grinn don't have time to tell you about as they write a comic about the god in a giant flying turtle about to omnipotencize the city out of existance. Their writing is funny and borderline brilliant, and it's almost worth the entrance fee.
Weasel Boy: "What the hell... The Goalie?"
The Goalie: "No, not exactly, Missus Goalie actually, but I guess I am since I'm filling in for him... now hands up!"
Weasel Boy: "Huh? Umm... I'm sorry... but could you explain what the heck is going on? I'm feeling as clueless as Mighty at the moment."
The Goalie: "I'm filling in for my husband whom you sent up the river, and my plan was to rob a couple banks... but since you two are here I figure I could just kidnap the both of you and ransom you off."
Mighty Yak: "But we can't be kidnapped, I'll miss the debut of the Yeti's new sitcom!"
The Goalie: "It's okay dear, I've got a TV in our guest room, you can watch it there, if you're nice I might let you watch it on the sofa in the family room."
Weasel Boy: "But why ransom us off?"
The Goalie: "'Cus I need to make Pierre's bail money, so we can get hitched before the delivery, 'cus I'm not giving birth to no bastard!"
Weasel Boy: "Fair enough... I guess."
The System
After the character stats are the eleven pages that make up the Supermegatopia system. Only eleven pages, and about five of those are superpowers. But that's not eleven pages in the gimmicky yet concise way, like FUDGE or Risus. The system is best described as throwing the mangled corpses of JAGS-2 and Tri-Stat dX into a pot, sucking everything innovative or interesting out of the combination, and presenting it with shoddy editing.
Characters have three basic stats (Mind, Body, Agil) and two derived stats (HP, equal to the three stats added together, and Move, equal to (BODY+AGL)/4... stop me if you've seen either equation before). Stats average 10, and cost 1 BP up to 10, 2 BP per point past 10; stat checks are either 1d20 or 2d10 under the stat (it didn't say which). Skills cost from 1 to 6 BP, and have a roll from Base Stat to Base Stat+5. There are two more derived stats that are used, Base THR (Base To-Hit Roll) and Defense, but they're calculated in combat.
Powers are somewhere between Fuzion and Tri-Stat dX. However, they're not very well explained. ("Nearly all player characters in Supermegatopia are going to have some kind of Superpowers (also called Powers).") For example, Animal Control costs 10 to 30 BP... but in the world of Supermegatopia, the characters are furries (save for the occasional alien, and the occasional human the Continuity Police hasn't yet retconned). Does the Animal Control power take over the minds of characters in Supermegatopia, since all the characters in the comic are half-animal? If so, does it count as the 10BP level or the 30BP level? If so, since we can limit the power to a certain group of animals, could we limit it to ninjas? And how many BP per level would Animal Control: Ninja cost? There's even a few 'notes-to-self' by the game's designer of things that he wanted to do, but didn't, that have been left in the text. A point was taken off of Style for this.
Combat, like character creation, is simple, looks concise, but leaves stuff to be desired. Initiative is AGIL+1d10, and combat rounds go in initiative order. Each combat round has two parts: a movement segement, and an action segement. People familiar with d20 will feel at home. Combat is 2d10 under a base attack; defense is 2d10 under a base defense, minus the attacker's margin of success. Damage is rated in d10s. Nothing particularly novel here.
After combat comes experience. In Supermegatopia, you gain experience in the usual ways (facing foes, succeeding in the mission, good roleplaying) and can lose it by failing the mission, poor roleplaying, or not being funny. As in HERO and GURPS, experience points are the exact same as character-creation points. ("Build points can be used for anything in between episodes that might improve the hero such as increased Stats, increased powers, better wardrobe, nicer car, a cell phone. Whatever it seems the character lacks -- maybe even a date!")
The system section wraps up on 'Implements of Destruction', a weapon and armor table. I couldn't figure out the armor table; the PV column is straightforwards enough, but MM and IM aren't explained. ("Hero Costume: PV 0, MM -0", IM -0. Generally for show. Female ones are worse.")
It's Snow Fair!
This is the two-page 'sample adventure' for Supermegatopia. I say 'sample adventure', but it's hardy an adventure; the footnotes are all listed at the end, there are no stats provided for any of the characters introduced, and there are numbers instead of periods at the ends of some paragraphs. It's a plot hook with a page and a half of witty banter used padding.
Miscellany
The credits for this book vary depending on where you are in the book. Although this book is sold by Team Frog, the footer of some pages credit Nightshift Games, and while the front cover and inside cover says the book was written by the Brothers Grinn and Michael Nunn, the legal text credits the Brothers Grinn and Paul Arden Lidberg.
One of my major problems with the book is that, like this and the preceeding paragraphs, paragraphs in the Powers section ran together. Heading was followed by text was followed by heading without space to break them up. This, plus other numerous editing errors (which I don't feel like going over), took two points off of Style.
Where Can I Get It?
The book is out-of-print, but the PDF version may be bought here at RPGnow. However, unless you really like the work of the Brothers Grinn and want to support them, I'd reccomend you save your money to buy something like Fuzion Core, Risus, or Silver Age Sentinels, and read a lot of Supermegatopia strips and stories while it ships to you.
The Final Verdict
Mediocre writing, art largely ripped from the Supermegatopia webpage, and a system which seems like it was done in 24 hours and left that way do a good job of marring a great license. It had funny moments, and it had times where it nearly shone, but Supermegatopia is the kind of RPG the word 'meh' was made for.
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