First, THE LOOK. There is some decent, if fairly generic cover art in black and white. The text is easy to read with a fairly amusing border, but nothing distracting. It's about the dimensions of a comic book. Nothing eye-popping, but rumor has it that this preview edition is not only to get play-test feedback, but also to get money for good artwork. On the downside, the layout of information is scattered about the book, making page-flipping a bit of a necessity, but it’s not so bad for a 25-page booklet. On the plus-side, no noticeable proofreading gaffes like spelling errors or punctuation goofs! And it includes the Story Arc, a Character Sheet, and a weird little thing that wasn’t explained much called the Thought Balloon. How the Thought Balloon comes into play, I’m not sure.
Now, THE MEAT: how does this game do superheroes, and why should you spend money on it?
It uses a different approach than almost any other superhero game I’ve seen, except for a few homebrew games out on the Internet: it makes telling a story primary, making such concerns as stats and point-counting irrelevant. No point-cost for powers or stats, no trying to buy up to Superman and not having enough “flaws” to make up the difference, no worries about not having equal relevance or screen-time just because you prefer playing Daredevil to Thor. Also, no pre-built background to the game; the GM and the players sit down and put together a comic-book world of your own devising, telling the stories you want to tell. But it would not be fair to label this game “free-form”: there are rules and systems in place, rules designed to reinforce the comic-book superhero genre. Two important rules bear mentioning right away: if you cannot narrate/describe an action, you cannot do it. And, any narration you give must not directly contradict any narration that came before it.
First, before characters are created, The Struggle is decided on. The Struggle is a list of two primary, opposed goals that each hero has to choose between. Examples given are The Man vs. The Mask (Superheroics vs. Leading a Normal Life, a la Spiderman 2), Ideals vs. Practicality (a la The Authority, whose heroes have a *very* cynical, brutally pragmatic approach to being a “superhero”, or The Watchmen), Justice vs. Vengeance (Frank Miller’s Daredevil, Dark Knight, or *shudder* Faust), Independence vs. Belonging (Batman, Wolverine, early X-Men), etc. Determining this will give the GM focus on what type of stories to tell, and the players an idea of what kind of characters to play. In short: everyone gets on board from Day One.
Then, character creation starts. Players choose the aspects of their character that make him/her/it stand out from the crowd and be a superhero. These include Conviction (a belief the hero holds to above others), Duty (the main reason the hero became a hero in the first place), Power (what special ability sets the hero apart from everyone else), Origin (what traumatic event made him become a superhero, and still haunts him to this day), as well as the people the superhero knows and cares about for good or ill (Family, Acquaintance, Partner, and the ever-popular Romance). It doesn’t specify this, but I’m left to believe that you can take as many Aspects as you need to develop your character; it does note that as a rule, only up to three Aspects will come into play at any one time. It also doesn’t specify if your Powers are all lumped together in one Power Aspect, or can be separated. This is important, as I’ll explain later. Also, while writing out these Aspects, you should think of at least an example of how it could break down: a Romance could be threatened, a Duty could be left unfulfilled, an Origin could come back to haunt a character at an inconvenient moment (Batman’s parent’s murdered, Superman’s allergy to Kryptonite, etc.), a Power could go awry (Green Lantern unable to affect anything yellow, Spider-Man’s powers dropping out unexpectedly), etc. This is also important.
Now, play starts. There are two types of play: Enrichment Scenes, which help to highlight which Aspects of the Hero the player wants to focus on, and Conflict Scenes, when the hero has to oppose someone, usually the current main bad guy(s). The game uses playing cards as randomizers; each player has their own deck (hopefully with different backings), and the GM has one deck plus some spares available. Each deck should only have one Joker in it for playing the game. The players and GM start with three cards.
Enrichment Scenes simulate the building storyline of the comics, which draw us into the story and make it matter to us. Gamewise, it allows Aspects to be brought into play to 1) tell an interesting story, and 2) to give those Aspects Importance. Importance will be valuable for Conflict scenes later. The player or the GM draws a card from his/her hand. The lower the card, the more likely the scene is to go wrong, but the Aspect will gain more Importance, and vice versa. The hero is trying to succeed, and should be role-played as such, but the player is deciding separately how much effort the scene requires. Each player and the GM will have a set number of Enrichment scenes for their characters. Note an important point: Failure rewards the player, while in a story-sense, his/her character suffers. This remains constant throughout the game, and nicely simulates the comic-book drama that fuels the system and comics in general. The more the character’s lives suck, the better they’ll be prepared for Conflicts, especially the final one.
Conflict scenes start with someone (player or GM) calling for it. Conflict is played in a way similar to the card game War, but with a few more rules added. First, the players and GM must choose to either 1) pick an Aspect to be active, and put a number of cards into their hand equal to the Importance of that Aspect, or 2) allow the Aspect(s) used in the last Enrichment Scene to become active, and add a total number of cards equal to the Importance of those Aspects into their hand. The maximum number of cards a player may have at the beginning of Conflict is 7; the max for the GM is 7+ 4 for each hero. Then, whoever starts the conflict throws down a card. The conflictee must then either yield (be defeated) or throw down a card of the same suit but a higher rank. For the players, the Joker is wild. For the GM, the Joker, all 2’s and all 3’s are wild.
Important note: In Conflict, the GM has the deck stacked against the players. If you lose, one of your Aspects (which one is chosen by the GM, but it’s most likely that your Aspect with the most Importance will be targeted) will Suffer. An Aspect has five ranks of Suffering: Inactive (not currently used in the Conflict) , Active (used in the Conflict), Threatened (under stress and causing problems for the hero, but the player gets 3 cards), Imperiled (inches away from blowout, and the player cannot use them to get cards) and finally Devastated (GM can use the Aspect for cards in his hand, but the player now can use 2’s as wild cards). Two Devastated Aspects gives the player 3’s as wild cards, three Devastations gives the player 4’s as being wild cards. Again, there is strength in being creamed. Makes sense in the real world? No, but we’re talking comic-book dramaturgy, not real life, and this game definitely emphasizes the part morality play, part soap opera, and part high-special-effects pro-wrestling match that is the superhero comic.
However, when a player yields a Conflict and takes his lumps, he may play a card from his hand to the Story Arc. The Story Arc, as the appropriate cards are filled in, hobbles the benefits the GM has in combat. He loses wild cards, he gives a spare deck to the players, his villain Aspects can now be Devastated, and finally, the heroes can now un-Devastate their Aspects, although they have to modify them somehow. (Keep in mind, there are more players than GMs in the game. That Story Arc can fill up real quick with concerted effort.) This stacks the deck progressively against the GM, so that eventually they can (with good card management) mop the floor with the villains. Again, nice adherence to genre!
Needless to say, I’m glossing over the details and strategies in Conflict. There’s a lot of interesting tricks that can go on, but I don’t want to write down everything that the author (Michael Miller) wrote in 25 pages. To sum, it simulates the typical story arc of a superhero comic through the mechanics, it dodges the trap of power- and stat-fixation by focusing on the story, it gets the GM and players on board with the type of comic-book superhero subgenre they want to play, all with a bare minimum of fluff. At 25 pages, you get a more-developed superhero game than many currently on the market, one that can shift from one superhero subgenre to the next without a whole lot of rewriting. The basics are all there, and the preview is fully playable.
Are there any flaws? Yep. That’s why the game is a preview, not the full thing. (Would that other game designers had been so wise.) Mike, this game needs examples, more examples, and then a side helping of examples for garnish. Granted, on the above-mentioned link to Incarnadine Press there are links to a forum and an example of play. However, the example of play dates from when the game was called Excelsior, and the rules have changed somewhat. I assume I know how the game is supposed to play, but without having access to a playtest group, I can’t tell which rules work the way I think they do, and which work differently.
For some examples: I assume that fatal flaws like loses power in darkness, allergy to Kryptonite, berserker rage, cannot affect yellow-colored objects, etc. come under Aspect (Power) or Aspect (Origin) Suffering, but I’m not sure if that’s accurately simulated under these rules or not. I’d also like to see an Aspect related to Nemesis, someone who just enjoys messing with your character. I’m a little confused on page 8, where it discusses Prime Aspect and distributing Importance. Do you distribute Importance at the beginning of play, and if so, how much? Or is that old rules? How many Aspects are reasonable for a hero? How smoothly does play progress from one Panel to the next with multiple players? How are Generic Thugs treated in this game? Do they get their own deck, or are they treated as a Villain Aspect? And finally, how does Experience work in this game? Can you rewrite/modify your character? If so, when? Is character death a possibility in this game? What is the purpose of the Thought Balloon? These are questions that may already be in the rules as written, but without some examples and discussion, I cannot be sure.
By all I read, it appears that the ingredients are there, but this thing is currently only 2/3 baked and needs some examples to make it rise. I gave it, sadly, a 2 for Layout due to the information in the game being lumped together in odd places, but a 4 for some pretty ground-breaking Content. Fair enough for a preview edition. Is it still the end-all be-all game for superheroes? Depends. If you lump rpgs such as Aberrant and Godlike in with superhero games (when they’re more games of ordinary people with superpowers), it would be a pretty far stretch. For games designed to simulate comic-book Superheroics, this game is a godsend even in rough form. No more distractions about who has more powers/bigger stats or stopping game play to calculate real-world measurements. Even so, this game demands more involvement from players and more restraint from the GM than most gamers are used to. It might very well not be for everyone. But for every gamer who wished that just once there was a superhero rpg that played just like the comic books, With Great Power…is a worthwhile investment.
