I remember when role-playing games came in boxed sets, with 64-page rulebooks, staple bound, a 16 page adventure, character sheet, and dice.  These were complete games, too. No splatbooks, worldbooks, or optional-but-really-required supplements. Not all  games were packaged like this, of course. Some were 96, or even 128 pages, but I digress…

My point, and I do have one, bear with me, is that eight hundred pages of rules spread out over three or more books might be overkill. Further, if your rulebook can stop small caliber fire, there might be a problem.

Enter BASH! (Basic Action Super Heroes Role Playing System!, for those feeling acronymonius), which extols the virtues of simplicity and brevity, cramming itself into 32 pages (including character sheet, four page adventure, three pages of sample superheroes, and a couple more pages devoted to  vehicles, minions, etc.)  For those who feel overwhelmed by this, take heart: BASH! also ships with a 24 page “print-friendly” version, which eliminates some of the art  and the full color cover but retains all of the text.

At this point, you’ve probably decided whether or not BASH! Is for you. For those who have decided it’s not, thank you for reading this far, and enjoy the rest of your day. For those who decided it is, keep reading…

Characters are rated in Brawn, Agility, and Mind on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is normal human, and 5 is Superman level. Everyone has 10 Energy to power their powers, and 100 Hits to resist damage. Players roll 2d6 and multiply  by the controlling characteristic or power, and attempt to roll over a target number.  Everything is point-buy, with powers costing fixed amounts. Power enhancements add to the cost, limitations decrease the cost. Most powers, enhancements, and limitations have only a few lines of description.  Players are responsible for providing their own special effects. The enhancements and limitations are also coarsely defined. Players can also get Advantages (such as a Super Vehicle, or Dumb Luck), and Disadvantages (e.g. Destitute, or an Enemy.)  Rules for skills, chases, environmental damage, and collateral damage round out the game.

This is a very coarsely defined system: there isn’t any real game difference between, say, Aunt May and Flash Thompson. The power descriptions will no doubt require adjudication by the Game Master due to their brevity.  Rules lawyers and munchkins will no doubt find it easy to twist the point-buy system to their advantage. The game doesn’t handle cosmic level or street-level games particularly well (and cheerfully admits it)—It seems most comfortable in the Avengers/X-Men power range.

On the positive side, there’s no, absolutely no game fiction or “flavor text” in sight. The art is decent, and the rules are short enough not to need a table of contents or index. Indeed once your character is created (the author boasts that you can use index cards instead of character sheets) there’s almost no need to consult the rules at all. The dice mechanic is easy to understand and explain to new players.

Ultimately, you either buy into the rules-light, make-it-up-as-you-go-along, freewheeling simplicity of the game, or you require a game with a little more meat on its bones. BASH! firmly falls in the first category, and does a great job of keeping its rules streamlined and skeletal.

And yet I wonder…

Simplicity of game design requires firm limits; it’s easy to add complications to a simple game, easy to justify rules creep as a way of handling special instances.  Nothing in BASH!’s design is set to prevent this. Indeed, it would be easy to expand the powers descriptions, which might mean revisiting the enhancements and limitations for point balance, which might mean expanding the characteristics scale…

Champions first edition was a 64-page rulebook, staple-bound, including sample characters and a one page character sheet.